The Women Who Flew for Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries
Page 9
‘This masculine Third Reich owes much of its success to its women athletes,’ the New York Times reported from the Berlin Olympics64 Although the Nazis had initially opposed women’s participation in competitive sport on the grounds that it was unfeminine and might damage their reproductive organs, the regime came to appreciate the propaganda value of female Olympians. Nevertheless, there was far less coverage of the women’s events than the men’s. As always, race was a very different issue. The selection of one part-Jewish German woman to compete in fencing, the ‘honorary Aryan’ Helene Mayer, who had previously fled to America to avoid persecution, was offered as evidence to the IOC that the regime selected athletes purely on merit. In fact, the only other German Jewish athlete they acknowledged, the track and field star Gretel Bergmann, was discreetly removed from the team at the last minute. Many people around the world cheered Jesse Owens’ historic win as a victory over Nazi ideology, but few, even within Germany, realized that a woman of partly Jewish heritage had quietly starred in the opening Flight Day.
The 1936 Olympics proved an enormous success for Germany, both in terms of medal tally and for international relations. We are ‘the premier nation in the world’, Goebbels recorded with delight in his diary, while the Olympia-Zeitung asked more presciently, ‘Must we not conclude that the biggest victor of the Olympic Games was Adolf Hitler?’65 Most overseas commentators were positive. ‘Only a determined deaf-and-blind visitor to any corner of this land could fail to see and hear the sight, the sound, of Germany’s forward march,’ the New Yorker reported66 Meanwhile the famous American pilot Charles Lindbergh, who had been Göring’s guest at the games, noted that he had ‘come away with a feeling of great admiration for the German people’. Although he added that, having been invited to tour the new civil and military air establishments, he still had many reservations about the Nazis, Lindbergh believed that the rumoured treatment of Jews in Germany must be exaggerated, and that German Jews must in any case accept some fault for having sided so much with the communists. ‘With all the things we criticize,’ he continued, Hitler ‘is undoubtedly a great man, and I believe he has done much for the German people.’67 His wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the first American woman to earn a first-class glider pilot’s licence, was even more enthusiastic, describing Hitler as ‘a visionary, who really wants the best for his country’68 Despite the Nuremberg Laws, and despite the invasion of the Rhineland, this was a common conclusion.
Carving out careers in the competitive male world of aviation under the Third Reich had not brought Hanna and Melitta together. Despite her mother’s concerns about pride and vanity, Hanna loved to perform and regularly demonstrated that she was more than willing to fly through public relations hoops for the Nazi regime. After one of her overseas visits, the German Aero Club wrote to thank her for having ‘had an admirable political effect’69 She was becoming a very useful propaganda tool and, while she may not have recognized the full implications, if the pay-off was in her favour, Hanna was perfectly happy to be used in this way. The more publicity she received, the more secure she was in her role as a pilot in a country that was rapidly becoming militarized and had less and less need for glamorous female aviators. Melitta was also keen to serve her country but, for her, in 1935, ‘public relations’ under the Nazis had a very different connotation. The thought of having to expose her family to public scrutiny was distasteful at best. That they would eventually be discovered to have ‘Jewish blood’, and that this meant inevitable censure both socially and professionally, was appalling. From now on all Melitta’s decisions and actions would be determined by the knowledge of her, and her family’s, increasing vulnerability.
Hanna and Melitta had both been prepared to play their part in the pageant surrounding the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Their sensational performances would bring them new levels of fame and attention, but would also set them on increasingly divergent paths. Soon both women would again be required to play public roles in support of their country. Like it or not, their reputations as brilliant female pilots were growing, and the way in which they positioned themselves in the new Germany was becoming more important than ever.
4
PUBLIC APPOINTMENTS
1936–1937
Just a month after the glamour and excitement of the Berlin Olympics, Melitta abruptly left the job she loved at DVL, the German Research Institute for Aeronautics. It was a shocking departure. She had spent the last eight years steadily earning the respect and friendship of her colleagues in defiance of every expectation of her as a woman. The pioneering concepts she had developed through theoretical and experimental investigations into aerodynamics as an engineer and test pilot had been widely adopted for both commercial and military applications. The official reason for her departure is not known, but descriptions in DVL’s reference of an ‘enthusiastic’ and ‘skilful’ pilot who ‘always carried out the work entrusted to her to a high standard’ show it was not dissatisfaction with her work.1
Melitta’s reference also states that ‘she left her position at her own request’.2 In a letter to her former colleague Hermann Blenk, however, she referred to certain ‘difficulties’ she had encountered at the institute, and talked of her ‘dismissal’. ‘I very much hope that you will not have any unpleasantness at all on my account,’ she added.3 Her sister Jutta felt that DVL was uncomfortable with what she called Melitta’s ‘independent nature and thoughtfulness’.4 Blenk later admitted that Melitta was more critical of the regime than either himself or other colleagues. Similarly, another member of the team felt that ‘after the takeover of power . . . she probably sensed Nazi intrigue’ at work and inevitably ‘suffered’ under the regime’s influence. Things came to a head after Melitta made an unauthorized flight to Budapest. ‘In such a situation, incidents which under other circumstances have no lasting consequences,’ one colleague commented cautiously, ‘are enough to produce discord, and if the resentment reaches a certain level, it is only a question of time before a separation must come about.’5 It seems that Melitta’s ‘independent nature’ had been ringing alarm bells at a time when her application for ‘Aryan’ status drew official attention to her. Her unauthorized flight made a convenient pretext for her removal.
DVL was in effect a state institution, under the de facto control of the Ministry of Aviation. This was not a place where someone with questionable heritage could now be employed. Whether it was a pre-emptive resignation or an informal dismissal, Melitta’s departure had been engineered. Struggling to find an alternative employer, for a while she turned back to clay sculpture, starting a very fine bust of Alexander. At the same time, her youngest sister, Klara, had been forced to give up her position at the University of Giessen, together with her doctorate, and was seeking work overseas. Otto also found himself no longer eligible for an embassy posting to Peking, and instead went into industry in Romania. The Schillers were on a list.
Hanna’s career, conversely, had been going from strength to strength since her performance at the Olympics. Still working as a test pilot at the Darmstadt gliding research institute, she spent the autumn of 1936 completing a series of nosedives in a Sperber (Hawk) glider equipped with the air-brake flaps developed by Hans Jacobs along the lines that Melitta and others used for engine-powered aeroplanes. At the end of the year Udet arranged for her to give a demonstration to some Luftwaffe generals. They were so impressed that the Aviation Ministry agreed to confer the title of Flugkapitän, or flight captain, on test pilots; a rank previously used only to denote the senior civil pilots of Lufthansa after they had completed a series of test flights and exams.
Hanna was only twenty-five when she received the distinction of being named Germany’s first female honorary flight captain in the spring of 1937, and found herself briefly presented to Hitler.* In private she later claimed to have been unimpressed by the Führer, who, she noted, sounded uncultured, wore a crumpled suit and repulsed her by indiscreetly picking his nose.6 The German press were equally bemused by Hanna
. While applauding her courage and determination, they clumsily labelled her as ‘a girl’ who ‘acted like a man’.7 Hanna was certainly exceptional. Without her considerable skill and steely determination, as a woman she could never have enjoyed a career as a pilot. Even so, few male pilots would be considered for such a title before they were thirty, but Hanna also had more than 2,000 hours in the air, high public recognition and the support of Udet on her side.
Hanna’s flight captain ceremony took place in one of the large hangars at the Darmstadt airfield. As symbols of her new rank, she was presented with a captain’s cap and a sabre sheathed in a section of aeroplane wing. All the men of the research institute then had to march to her commands. It was a scene that ‘ended in chaos’, she wrote to a friend, and ‘nearly resulted in the loss of my new rank’ as she had no idea how to correctly word the commands.8 Nevertheless, Hanna was immensely proud of her new honorary title and insisted on its constant use, much to the irritation of some of her colleagues who believed she had ‘used her feminine wiles’ to gain the rank, and would later claim that ‘she used that title to death’.9
That March, Hanna fleetingly visited Hirschberg for her sister Heidi’s wedding, but she could not stay for long. She was now sufficiently important to have a glider, a Sperber Junior, tailor-made for her by Hans Jacobs. This machine was so beautifully crafted that she alone could fit into the pilot’s seat, and once there she felt such a part of it, she claimed, that ‘the wings seemed to grow out of my shoulders’.10 It was in this Sperber that, in May 1937, Hanna would make headlines once again.
Salzburg was warm and still, perfect flying conditions, when she set off as one of many competitors at an international gliding meet aimed at setting some long-distance and high-altitude records. It was a now familiar sensation when a jerk on her glider forced her backwards, and her machine swayed as the tow rope tightened and swung the glider in behind the straining plane ahead. Picking up speed, the noise of the wheels suddenly ceased as she lifted off, and soon there was only the drumming of the wind on the fuselage until she cast off her tow completely. Below her the valleys were filled with morning mist; above were occasional shreds of cloud. After a gentle start she felt the air currents grow stronger as the sun warmed the slopes, and she headed towards the snow-covered peaks to the south.
Gliding above the mountains a few hours later, so unexpectedly far from Salzburg that she had neither the map nor the warm clothes she needed, Hanna once again felt an almost transcendental connection. ‘Suddenly I was a child again . . .’ she wrote, ‘weeping to see the glory of God.’11 Shivering in her seat, she brought her mind back to the business in hand and turned her Sperber round to catch the upcurrents from the Dolomites. When she landed, she was over a hundred miles from Salzburg, on the Italian side of the Alps. Four other German gliders had crossed the Alps that day, a historic first that made the national papers. Hanna received plenty of attention as the only woman among them. A few weeks later she and Heini Dittmar took their gliders 220 miles to Hamburg during the International Gliding Contest at the Wasserkuppe, Hanna setting a new women’s long-distance record while Heini collected the ‘Hitler Prize’. Her position as one of the Third Reich’s leading celebrities was confirmed.
Melitta would have been following the gliding news, but she did not have time to dwell on Hanna’s rising star. Although forced to leave DVL, her skills and experience in aeronautical engineering were second to none and before 1936 was over she had secured work at a private company based in Berlin-Friedenau. Askania was one of the most respected names in aeronautical engineering, producing tools such as navigational and gyroscopic instruments for Lufthansa. Melitta was employed to work on the development of their autopilot flight system for transatlantic flights, initially tested on the twin-engine Dornier Do 18 flying boat, and the four-engine Blohm & Voss Bv 139 ‘float plane’.*
Askania’s corporate mission, as outlined in their in-house magazine, was to work ‘for peace and uniting peoples for the good of nations on both sides of the ocean’.12 In experimental aeronautical engineering, however, the boundaries between civil and military research are porous. In early 1937, Sir Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador to Germany, reported that ‘the building up of the German air force was . . . a striking achievement’.13 Then, in late April, the Luftwaffe showed their capability when their dive-bombers destroyed the Basque town of Guernica, with horrific loss of civilian life, in support of General Franco’s fascist campaign in Spain. Inevitably, both Melitta and Hanna would soon be drawn into the development of their nation’s air force.
In June 1937, Udet was appointed to head the Luftwaffe’s technical office. A great advocate of dive-bombers, one of his first actions on the day he assumed his post was to renew investment into developing the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka. The Stuka weighed about 7,000 pounds and stood nearly thirteen feet off the ground. To dive from high altitude and pull out at less than 1,000 feet needed considerable strength. Udet had undertaken four vertical nosedives in late 1933, and was so physically exhausted afterwards that he could hardly climb out of his seat. Diving also required great courage. Stuka pilots experiencing extreme G-forces as they pulled up were at risk of losing consciousness. Nevertheless, Udet had long been convinced that Stukas were the way forward, and had used ‘cement bombs’ to demonstrate the accuracy of dive-bombing to the top brass of the Party. Despite some ongoing opposition, he secured the green light for a development programme. Askania’s aim was to automate the process as far as possible. There was no question now that Melitta was employed in defence rather than civil aviation. ‘You know, we only work for armament, war is already predetermined,’ she told her fellow test pilot, Richard Perlia. ‘When I started flying, I only worked with small planes and commercial aeroplanes and now it is the opposite. It will come to a terrible end.’14
Despite her concerns, Melitta was still dedicated to her career. An Askania colleague, Georg Zink, described her ‘inexhaustible patience and reliability’ as they developed the application of gyroscopes through empirical research.15 A series of test flights led to modifications in the Stuka’s rudder and elevator angles and the recalibration of the pneumatic automatic course-changing device, until steep turns of up to eighty degrees of bank could be achieved without any pilot involvement. As flights of increasing duration were controlled, Udet and Erhard Milch, Göring’s number two at the Reich Aviation Ministry, were invited to watch. Askania won the contract to develop automatic take-off and landing technologies as a result, and Melitta was once again part of a development team and working directly for the Nazi regime. Although she was a test pilot as well as an engineer, there was no discussion of promoting her to the rank of honorary flight captain, but at this moment Melitta was more concerned about her other official status.
Following her application for ‘honorary Aryan’ status for herself and her siblings, the German consulate in Russia had been trying in vain to secure Michael Schiller’s birth certificate from Odessa. Now another complication emerged. The University of Würzburg, where Alexander lectured, was pursuing the state policy of encouraging single staff to ‘marry someone desirable for the Third Reich’.16 Although Alexander had volunteered with a cavalry regiment when he was eighteen, and had been a private in the reserves since 1936, he was pointedly not a member of the Party, and he was risking his career with his uncompromising, critical attitude towards the regime.
Alexander was ‘against the Nazis from the very beginning’, his nephew later wrote, ‘and said so, many times – thoughtlessly, as was his way’.17 He may have spoken carelessly at times, but his position was very considered. He refused to lend legitimacy to the Nazis, and when he started to disregard and deny the official line on ancient history, and to question the ideals of power-seeking emperors, his academic papers were censored. In July 1937, he used a public lecture to criticize the deliberate Nazi glorification of ancient Germanic peoples as a means to support their fanciful theories of racial supremacy. His younger brother Claus, who
read the paper while on military leave that summer, was impressed by his courage at a time when all public comments were scrutinized, and suspected anti-Nazi sympathies were already dangerous. The essay had caused quite a flutter, he wrote, and was ‘the best piece of his I have read in a long time’.18 Alexander was protected to an extent by his family name, but his refusal to marry might prove all the excuse the university needed to remove him. At best he might be regarded as unpatriotic; at worst, he was vulnerable to arrest and imprisonment as a suspected homosexual.