by Clare Mulley
That summer, Alexander’s 389th Division joined the German offensive on the Eastern Front. Operation Blau (blue) aimed to capture Stalingrad on the Volga River supply route, and press on towards the Caucasus oilfields. The battle for Stalingrad was launched in late August, but the Soviet counteroffensive prevented the clean sweep round to encircle enemy troops that the commander of the 6th Army, Lieutenant-General Paulus, had planned. Alexander was serving in the middle of one of the bloodiest and strategically most decisive battles of the war. Within months he was seriously wounded and sent back to Berlin. He had been fortunate. His injuries were not life-threatening, but required some time to heal. Melitta joined him in Würzburg whenever she could, cooking him the best meals she could muster on their ration cards. Knowing these weeks were just a reprieve, they savoured every moment together. As he recovered, Alexander was even permitted to return to his academic work, and was appointed Chair of Ancient History at the University of Strasbourg, although he was not strong enough to take up the post.*
The incompetence of the military leadership, and the evident hopelessness of the situation that autumn, finally convinced Claus that Hitler had to be removed. From this point on, he worked actively towards the overthrow of what he now considered a criminal regime. At great personal risk, while he was stationed at Military High Command in Ukraine Claus contacted his brother Berthold, then advising Naval Command on the conventions of war and international law, as well as other trusted friends such as Helmut James von Moltke, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, and even Paulus on the Eastern Front. ‘[Claus] was always keenly opposed to the [Nazi Party] business,’ General Ritter von Thoma later remarked.66 Now Claus drove around, urging officers to consider alternative ways forward. ‘He opened his heart to us straight away,’ one later admitted, at once impressed and shocked by Claus’s courage, while another agreed, ‘he was incredibly indiscreet’.67
In late October Melitta’s father, Michael Schiller, now eighty-one, also rebelled, if on a more modest scale. Without consulting his daughter, he sent a handwritten plea to Göring, arguing that while Melitta’s mathematical modelling and engineering work ‘must definitely continue to be used in the interests of the Fatherland’, she should be relieved of the nosedive test flights. ‘According to medical opinion’, he contended, these could ‘prevent the possibility of issue’.68* With astounding audacity, he then suggested that a ‘well-earned further honour for her services’ might overcome any resistance from Melitta to the plan.69
If Michael had any concept of how Melitta was using the value of her work to protect herself and her family, he clearly felt it was not worth the daily risk to her life that came with the test flights. Melitta’s mother, Margarete, however, was horrified when she discovered her husband was not only interfering in Melitta’s affairs, but writing to the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe about their daughter’s fertility. ‘Reichsmarschall,’ Margarete opened her own letter to Göring, ‘As a result of his advanced age [my husband] overlooks the fact that parents should not involve themselves in the personal matters of their adult children . . .’ Furthermore, she added, his belief that Melitta’s work could have ‘adverse effects, or even problems, in respect to children, I cannot understand at all’.70 Having requested ‘with the agreement of my husband’ that Göring destroy and ignore the previous letter, she quickly signed off, ‘Heil Hitler!’71
But the following year, Michael again petitioned Göring against Melitta’s continued test flights. ‘I submit . . . the most humble plea,’ he wrote, prompted by his ‘concern for her life’.72 A pathetic last line begs Göring not to inform Melitta about this second letter. Presumably she had not been pleased to learn of his first. No doubt Michael hoped that Margarete might remain oblivious too. There is no record of any reply from Göring, but if neither Melitta’s gender nor her ‘Jewish blood’ was enough to prevent her work for the Luftwaffe, then her father’s letters stood no chance. Michael was only lucky that there were not greater repercussions.
While Michael was attempting to stop Melitta’s test flights, Hanna continued her work without interference. Over the summer a military version of the Me 163 had been built. It was larger than its predecessor, and one test pilot felt it had ‘the beauty of a muscular wrestler’.73 This aircraft, the famous Me 163b Komet, was powered by extremely combustible twin fuels kept in tanks behind, and on either side of, the pilot’s seat. The fuels were a mixture of methanol alcohol, known as C-Stoff, and a hydrogen peroxide mixture, or T-Stoff. Just a few drops together could cause a violent reaction, so they were automatically injected into the plane’s combustion chamber through nozzles, where they ignited spontaneously producing a temperature of 1,800°C. Several test planes with unspent fuel blew up on touchdown. ‘If it had as much as half a cup of fuel left in its tank,’ one pilot reported, ‘it would blow itself into confetti, and the pilot with it.’74 Several simply exploded in the air. Hydrogen peroxide alone was capable of spontaneous combustion when it came into contact with any organic material such as clothing, or a pilot. To protect themselves, test pilots wore specially developed white suits made from acid-resistant material, along with fur-lined boots, gauntlets and a helmet. Nevertheless, at least one pilot would be dissolved alive, after the T-Stoff feed-line became dislodged and the murderous fuels leaked into the cockpit where they seeped through the seams of his protective overalls. ‘His entire right arm had been dissolved by T-Agent. It just simply wasn’t there. There was nothing more left in the sleeve,’ the chief flight engineer reported. ‘The other arm, as well as the head, was nothing more than a mass of soft jelly.’75*
On 2 October 1942, Heini Dittmar became the first person to fly faster than 625 mph in the Komet, reaching the edge of what was later called ‘the sound barrier’. Although he was privately honoured for his achievement, because of its military significance the record was not made public. Hanna was impressed. She knew the Komet was a prestige project and, despite witnessing what she described as two pilots being ‘blown to pieces when their plane exploded’, she was itching to take her turn.76 In fact, ‘at least half of the test command is pushing to fly it’, Heini laughed drily to Wolfgang Späte. ‘And perhaps end up disintegrating in an explosion of T-agent!’77 Later that month, after another Komet test, ground crew found Heini sitting in his cockpit paralysed with pain. His landing skid had not extended and the shock of impact had been transmitted through his seat. With a badly injured spine, Heini would be out of action for eighteen months. Hanna’s opportunity had arrived.
‘To fly the rocket plane, Me 163, was to live through a fantasy,’ Hanna later wrote. ‘One took off with a roar and a sheet of flame, then shot steeply upwards . . .’78 Shortly after leaving the ground, the Komet reached a speed of 220–250 mph, blasting out what another pilot described as ‘a violet-black cloud’ behind it.79 The undercarriage, a wheeled dolly, then had to be jettisoned, as it could not be retracted and would otherwise create drag. The plane could then accelerate to 500 mph in the space of a few seconds, disappearing from sight as it reached an altitude of 30,000 feet in less than two minutes. ‘It was like thundering through the skies, sitting on a cannonball,’ Hanna raved, thinking of the cartoon of Baron Münchhausen riding on a cannonball that was the emblem of the test team. ‘Like being intoxicated by speed . . . an overwhelming impression.’80 After five or six minutes the fuel was spent, silence descended and the pilot had the momentary sensation of swinging, suspended in mid-air, before sinking forward into their harness. The momentum of the aircraft carried it forward for a few more hundred metres, and then the speed started to fall away. The Komet glided back down to earth, landing on its retractable skid at a terrifying speed of between 100 and 150 mph.
‘Bubbling with enthusiasm’ even years later, Hanna would throw her head back and gesticulate expressively with her arms when describing the almost vertical ascent of the Komet, and once, in her eagerness, ‘she slipped off the sofa and onto the floor’.*81
Späte still felt that Hanna was a liabi
lity. ‘In my nightly prayers,’ he confessed, ‘I always include a little request that she doesn’t show up again soon.’82 Hanna, however, was nothing if not committed. Her fifth flight, on 30 October 1942, was again unpowered. Her Me 163b V5, carrying water ballast in place of fuel, was towed into the air behind a heavy twin-engined Me 110 fighter. But when Hanna came to release the undercarriage, the whole plane started to shudder violently. To make matters worse, her radio connection was also ‘kaput’.83 Red Very lights curving up towards her from below warned her something was seriously wrong. Unable to contact her tow-plane, she saw the observer signalling urgently with a white cloth, and noticed the pilot repeatedly dropping and raising his machine’s undercarriage. Clearly her own undercarriage had failed to jettison.
Down below, Hanna could see ambulances and fire engines rushing across the airfield. In such circumstances pilots were expected to bail out, but she was not prepared to abandon such a valuable machine should there remain any chance of bringing it safely back to earth. In any case, the stubby fuselage of the Komet meant that the fin was very close to the cockpit, so there was a high chance of her hitting it should she jump. Instead, her tow-plane circled her up to 10,500 feet. Then she cast off. Pulling out sharply, Hanna first attempted to shake the undercarriage free, but it would not move. Instead, with the plane still shuddering violently and time running out, she curved round and down to the airfield from a greater altitude than normal, aiming to side-slip the last few hundred yards to the edge of the field. As she did so, the plane dropped. ‘I was struggling to bring the machine under control when the earth reared up before my eyes,’ she later reported. As she hunched herself tightly together, ‘we plunged, striking the earth, then, rending and cracking, the machine somersaulted over.’84 The Komet had hit a ploughed field just short of the runway. It bounced violently, lost a wheel and slid to a halt after a 180-degree turn. Had she been carrying rocket fuel, Hanna would have been killed instantly.
To her surprise, the first thing she noticed when the Komet came to a stop was that she was not hanging in her harness, so she was probably right side up. She opened the rounded Plexiglas canopy. Feeling no pain, she cautiously ran her hand over her arms, chest and legs but found no injuries; it seemed miraculous. Then she noticed a stream of blood coursing down from her head, and moved her hand up to her face. ‘At the place where my nose had been was now nothing but an open cleft,’ she later recalled. ‘Each time I breathed, bubbles of air and blood formed along its edge.’85 Reaching for pencil and paper, Hanna managed to sketch the course of events leading to the crash before tying a handkerchief around her broken face to save the rescue party the sight of her shocking injury. Only then did she lose consciousness. Seeing her notes, even Späte was impressed. ‘What a woman!’ he commented.86
Hanna had fractured her skull in four places, broken both cheekbones, split her upper jaw, severely bruised her brain and, as one pilot put it, ‘completely wiped her nose off her face’.87 She had also broken several vertebrae. She was rushed to surgery but, knowing her arrival would cause a sensation, she insisted on travelling by car rather than ambulance, and on walking into the hospital through the quieter back entrance and up a flight of stairs before any members of staff were alerted.
After the operation, Hanna woke to find her head thickly bandaged, with just her swollen lips and ‘the blue, bruised rims’ of her eyes visible.88 It still seemed unlikely that she would survive. Her mother joined her the following day, but her close friend Edelgard von Berg, who rushed to visit her, was killed in a car crash en route. It was another devastating blow, but as Hanna’s condition remained serious there was nothing she could do but try to blank out her thoughts, for fear she would despair. ‘I lay in pillowed stillness’, she recorded, trying to cope with a ‘new and passionless world’. 89
‘Our Me 163 had again attacked, like a stalking animal,’ Späte wrote.90 He conducted a thorough investigation, but was unwilling to take personal responsibility. His report emphasized that he had been 800 kilometres away at Peenemünde at the time of the accident and stressed that, despite the jamming of the landing mechanism, Hanna should have been able to manage a safe landing. Her injuries were largely her own fault, he implied, because she had not removed the gunsight that had smashed into her nose, while ‘because of her short stature she had used a thick cushion behind her’ and ‘did not have her shoulder harness tight enough’.91
Hanna had needed the cushion and the loose straps to enable her to reach the controls in a cockpit designed for larger men. Späte had thought that wooden blocks to help her feet reach the rudder pedals would be ample modification. ‘She must be able to do it in her sleep!’ he had told himself. ‘It would almost be an insult to give her advice.’92 But the blocks had not been ready, and Hanna would brook no delay. ‘You can’t accomplish much against her will,’ one of the ground staff reported. ‘She decided she would fly without the blocks. That was it. No discussion.’93
Letters, cards and gifts now poured in from around the Reich for the popular heroine. Späte was among many who arrived with flowers, but Emy Reitsch would not let him see her daughter. Even Himmler sent a bar of chocolate and some fruit juice, precious items in war-torn Germany, with his best wishes for Hanna’s recovery. When Göring heard that Hanna had been critically injured during the course of her duty he felt that a public gesture should be made.
Georg Pasewaldt, from the Aviation Ministry, was with Erhard Milch when Milch decided to award Hanna the Iron Cross, First Class. Pasewaldt ‘immediately expressed [his] strongest reservations’, arguing that this was a military honour, to be earned in combat rather than through reckless misadventure.94 He thought the War Service Cross, a decoration he already had in mind for Melitta, was more appropriate. His suggestion was quickly overruled. Milch wanted a ‘special, exceptional honour’ for Hanna Reitsch. Milch then placed a direct call to Hitler, described Hanna’s accident and submitted his suggestion, pressing for an early announcement ‘because of her imminent death’.95 Reportedly ‘deeply stricken and shocked’, Hitler agreed at once.96
A few days later, in early November 1942, Hanna was officially awarded her second Iron Cross. She was the first woman to receive the First Class honour. It remained to be seen whether she would collect the medal in person or whether it would be presented posthumously, but her position as the great flying heroine of Nazi Germany was now unassailable.
While still in his meeting with Milch, however, Pasewaldt had taken the opportunity to request an honour for Melitta; something he had been wondering how to take forward for the best part of a year. Hanna’s unexpected award had provided the perfect precedent. ‘Countess Stauffenberg, with hundreds, more than a thousand experimental flights, beyond anything so far achieved in our special field, is most deserving,’ he told Milch. She should, he said, ‘be decorated with the Iron Cross, Second Class, at the same time’.97 Milch had never heard of Melitta von Stauffenberg, but he knew of a modest aeronautical engineer called Melitta Schiller. His curiosity was piqued and he asked Pasewaldt for more details. ‘This woman has sacrificed herself beyond description with her tireless practical trials for research in the service of the Luftwaffe,’ Pasewaldt obliged. ‘She has made technical and scientific evaluations and produced a complete report on each of her flights which include innumerable dives and night flights. This data is unobtainable by other means, and of unique value.’98 Milch was suitably impressed.
On the morning of 22 January 1943 Melitta received a telegram from Göring. ‘The Führer awarded you today with the Iron Cross 2,’ it read.99 Six days later she received another, which had been delayed. ‘I will present you with the Iron Cross, awarded by the Führer to you, personally, on January 29.’100
Göring presented Melitta with her Iron Cross, Second Class, at his villa in Berlin’s Leipziger Strasse, just along from the Ministry of Aviation. On arrival she was shown into a huge parlour, hung with tapestries and old-master paintings that the Reichsmarschall had collected. Presu
mably in deference to her gender, Göring’s beautiful second wife, Emmy, her sister, niece and the female head of a theatre school joined Melitta first. Hitler was notably absent. Finally Göring arrived. Melitta was shown into his private office, where they talked for a while about her work. He ‘absolutely can’t believe that I fly heavy bombers, like the Ju 88, and even do nosedives with them’, Melitta later reported to her family. ‘He is also surprised by the number of my dives,’ but he confirmed it all with his files.101 Once satisfied, Göring led Melitta to his desk and pinned her medal on her. It had been intended that she should receive the Military Flight Badge in gold with diamonds and rubies as well, but the jeweller needed another eight weeks to complete it. Göring then expressed his ‘deep, sincere admiration’ for Melitta and her work, and joked with her that it would be easier to list the planes she could not fly, than the ones she could.102 ‘The thing was clearly fun for him,’ Melitta wrote.103
At one point, Göring asked Melitta why she did not work directly for the Reich, rather than through a company secondment. ‘After some thought, I answered that would be convenient in a way, because the other companies wouldn’t see me as competition any more, as they sometimes do, even though I’ve been seconded from Askania since the beginning of the war.’104 Scandalized that commercial interests were apparently still considered during wartime, Göring told her he would personally make arrangements for her release and transfer.
They then rejoined the other guests for a lunch of fish pancakes and wine. The talk was light-hearted, despite covering anticipated British air raids, and finally Göring asked about Melitta’s ‘strange husband, who let me fly like this’, practically offering to promote Alexander to professor had he not already held the position.105 It was only after ‘coffee with cream and liqueur or brandy’, that Melitta was finally offered a lift home. Even then, Emmy Göring held her back for a moment, forcing a package of coffee and tea on her, and inviting her and Alexander to use their box at the theatre, and to stay at their guesthouse whenever they wished. All in all, ‘it was really cosy’, Melitta told her family with some astonishment. ‘The tone was pleasant and good-humoured, and you got the impression of an honest and touching heartiness.’106 Göring even noted the event in his diary that evening: ‘Gräfin Schenk (von Stauffenberg) awarded Iron Cross II’.107 It was an extraordinary moment for a woman who the previous year had been under investigation as a ‘Jewish Mischling’ (half-blood).