The Fantastic Flights of Hanna Reitsch

FROM NAZI TEST PILOT TO HITLER'S BUNKER,

The Fantastic Flights of Hanna Reitsch

by Dennis Piszkiewicz (Praeger, 1997).

Hanna Reitsch's father was an opthamologist and wanted her to be a doctor. Her mother taught her a simple faith in God. Above all else, Hanna (1912-1979) wanted to fly. As a result of these influences, young Hanna planned to be a flying missionary doctor. However, over time, the flying influence won out.

Hanna started with gliders. She became the twenty-fifth pilot and first woman to earn the Silver Soaring Medal (for a cross-country flight of fifty kilometers). She set the Women's World Record for distance and the Women's World Altitude record for gliders. She flew in South America, Finland, Portugal, and here in the U.S. at the National Air races at Cleveland, Ohio in 1938. By this time she had moved to powered flight and had flown the first practical helicopter, the FW61 - indoors even. Once she demonstrated this revolutionary aircraft for Charles Lindbergh. The Luftwaffe gave her the Military Flying Medal for this and accomplishments with other aircraft. She was the first woman to receive it.

When Germany went to war, she became a test pilot for the Fatherland. She nearly lost her life testing a barrage balloon cable cutter mounted on the wings of a Dornier 17. In recognition of her achievements she received the Iron Cross, Second Class, the second woman in Germany's history to receive this award.

The fastest plane she flew was the top secret German rocket plane. First she flew the prototype without the motor, the Me 163A. Then she flew the militarized version, the Me 163B, Komet. The undercarriage was designed to fall away on take off, but on one test flight it stayed attached instead. She managed to land it in a plowed field, but the sudden deceleration slammed her face into the gun sight. Some precautions on her account could have lessened her extensive injuries; nevertheless, she received further recognition for her flying efforts. As she was recovering from her injuries, she was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, the only woman to receive this medal.

When Hanna met Heinrich Himmler, she, still a believer in God, found that Himmler was not. But soon her faith began to shift from God to the Fatherland. In the words of Piszkiewicz, her faith changed "from humble acceptance of God's blessings to a perverted patriotism in support of the Nazi cause." This shift of allegiance led Hanna, in the waning days of the Third Reich, to call for suicide missions against the Allies. Hitler and others were against this idea, but allowed a test program to start. Hanna test-flew the most likely candidate, a piloted V-1 bomb. However, with the Allies pushing across Europe from Normandy, there were no longer any high-payoff targets within range of the V-1. The suicide program never became operational.

Hanna ended up undertaking a dangerous flight to Hitler's bunker in Berlin. She flew in with Robert Ritter von Greim, possibly her lover. Hitler named Greim head of the Luftwaffe, but when it looked like he could not leave, he and Hanna planned to commit suicide with Hitler. At the last moment Hitler ordered them to leave, and somehow they got out. She was one of the last to see Hitler alive.

Hanna survived the war, but she found herself somewhat alone. Greim committed suicide, and her father had killed her mother, her sister, and her sister's children. Then he turned the rifle on himself. She happened to meet the famous film maker, Leni Riefenstahl, in a cemetery soon after the war, but the two never met again.

She wrote her memoirs, Fliegen, mein Leben (1951), which were translated in 1954 as Flying is My Life. In this book she presents herself as a patriot, and makes no moral judgments about Hitler and Nazi Germany. Piszkiewicz calls it "an exercise in selective memory, rationalization, and denial."

In 1953 Hanna won the bronze medal in the International Gliding Championships in Madrid, Spain. In 1957 she set two women's altitude records for gliders. In 1962 she set up the National School for Gliding in Ghana. She flew for Kwame Nkrumah until he was deposed in 1966. She reported these experiences in a 1968 book, Ich Flog fur Kwame Nkrumah. Hanna died of a massive heart attack in 1979 at age 67. As she wished, she was buried near her family in Salzburg, Austria.

So ends the sad story of a heroine of the Third Reich. One wonders what would have happened if she had become that flying missionary doctor.