The Women Who Flew for Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries

by Clare Mulley

  * Joachim Küttner had a brilliant career at NASA in the USA. He remained friends with Hanna and, in 1972, attended her sixtieth birthday party in Germany.

  * Every year, on 20 July, Claus, Berthold and Melitta are remembered with a small ceremony at Lautlingen.

  * Ironically, the Zionist paramilitary organization known as the Stern Gang was also incensed by Hugh Trevor-Roper’s book, threatening to assassinate him for placing too much emphasis on Hitler’s charisma and too little on the German people’s willing consent.

  * Otto Skorzeny never publicly denounced Nazism, although it is now believed he may have worked for Mossad after the war, perhaps for self-preservation. He died of cancer in Madrid in 1975, and was buried in a coffin draped in Nazi colours by former comrades who gave the Nazi salute.

  * Beinhorn did not fly during the war. Later she won several international medals. She was often a guest of Melitta’s former boss, Georg Pasewaldt, although he reportedly ‘did not have any closer contact’ with Hanna because of her politics. Beinhorn died aged one hundred in 2007. (Correspondence Barbara Pasewaldt/Mulley, 2014.)

  * Founded in 1933, the original Sudeten Party had been one of the largest fascist membership organizations in Europe. After the war, many former members fled to South America where there was considerable sympathy for Nazi ideology.

  * Nina died in 2006. Just before her death, she told Konstanze she was bored, then smoked a last cigarette.

  * Generalmajor Berthold Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg, served most of his military career during the Cold War. He retired in 1994.

  * A precursor of the EU.

  * Wernher von Braun became a naturalized citizen of the USA in 1955. He died of cancer in 1977, eight years after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

  * There is no evidence that Hanna was offered such a role. Eric Brown felt it unlikely, as she was a test pilot rather than an engineer like Braun or General Dornberger, both of whom joined the American programme.

  * Ironically, Hanna had been recommended to Nkrumah by an Indian economist with the UN who had studied in Germany until 1938 when, as he put it, the ‘change in the ideological climate’ diminished the country’s appeal. Perhaps there was an anti-British accent in the suggestion that it was Nehru who had recommended her, however; here two former British colonies were cooperating with a famous Nazi pilot. (History Workshop Journal, issue 64, Maya Jasanoff, ‘Border-Crossing: My Imperial Routes’, Autumn 2007, p. 375.)

  * Marlene died in 2001, and was buried next to Alexander.

  * After a career as a nutritional scientist, Klara, the longest-surviving Schiller sibling, died in 1996. Jutta had worked as a journalist, and Otto had become a professor of agricultural policy and sociology at the universities of Hohenheim and, later, Heidelberg.

  * Hanna’s English was not perfect, but her meaning is clear.

  * The original Stahlhelm [Steel Helmet] was founded as a paramilitary force in 1918. Subordinated to the SA, it was dissolved in 1945.

  * Hitler had coined the phrase Meine Ehre heisst Treue (‘My Honour is Loyalty’) in 1931. Himmler then used a modified version of the phrase as the official motto of the SS, engraved into their knives and belt buckles. Hanna had clearly taken to heart the message that only blind obedience was honourable.

  * Hanna’s British pilot friend, Barry Radley, later claimed: ‘She did intend to marry, but he was killed during the war.’ Greim was already married, but her relationship with him was probably the deepest of her life. (Ian Sayer Archive, anon. newspaper, Barry Radley letter, 27.11.1979.)

  * Eva Braun never joined the Party. Nor did Himmler’s personal adjutant, Waffen SS field officer Joachim Peiper, despite being a committed Nazi, as he was waiting for a low membership number to come up. Oskar Schindler, however, was a card-carrying Party member. Hanna’s lack of Nazi Party membership therefore does not necessarily comment on her political or ethical standpoint.

  * Dates in parentheses are when the interviews took place.

  Notes

  EPIGRAPH

  1 Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Photographer (Frontline, 2011), pp. 194–5.

  PREFACE: TRUTH AND LIVES

  1 Hanna Reitsch in Die Welt, ‘Wie klein Mäxchen such den Untergang des Dritten Reiches vorstellt’ [How the Little Maxes Imagine the Downfall of the Third Reich] (02.08.1973).

  2 Quoted in Konstanze von Schulthess, Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg: Ein Porträt [A Portrait] (Piper, 2009), p. 208.

  3 Cornell University Law Library: Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection, Robert E. Work, Hanna Reitsch interrogation report, ‘The Last Days in Hitler’s Air Raid Shelter’ (08.10.1945).

  4 Gerhard Bracke archive, letter Klara Schiller to Hanna Reitsch (27.06.1977).

  5 Deutsches Museum archive, 101B, anon., ‘Conversation with Hanna Reitsch’ (nd).

  6 Hanna Reitsch, The Sky My Kingdom: Memoirs of the Famous German World War II Test Pilot (Greenhill, 2009), p. 261.

  7 Eric Brown, Mulley interview (March 2013).

  8 Gerhard Bracke archive, letter Hanna Reitsch to Klara Schiller (07.02.1975).

  9 Ibid. (07.02.1975, 18.02.1975).

  10 Ibid. (18.02.1975).

  11 Ibid. (07.02.1975).

  1: LONGING FOR FREEDOM

  1 Elisabeth zu Guttenberg, Sheridan Spearman, Holding the Stirrup (Duell, Sloan and Pearce/Little, Brown, 1953), p. 212.

  2 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Melitta Schiller (von Stauffenberg), ‘Vortag gehalten in Stockholm am 6.12.43: Eine Frau in der Flugerprobung’ [A Woman in Test Flying], Stockholm lecture (06.12.43).

  3 Otto Dietrich, Mit Hitler an die Macht: Personliche Erlebnisse mit meinem Führer [With Hitler to Power: Personal Experiences with My Leader] (F. Eher nachf, g.m.b.h., 1934), p. 83.

  4 Richard J. Evans, ‘The Life and Death of a Capital’, review of Thomas Friedrich’s Hitler’s Berlin, in New Republic (27.09.2012); http://www.newrepublic.com/book/review/abused-city-hitlers-berlin-thomas-friedrich

  5 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Melitta Schiller (von Stauffenberg), ‘Vortag gehalten in Stockholm am 6.12.43: Eine Frau in der Flugerprobung’ [A Woman in Test Flying], Stockholm lecture (06.12.43).

  6 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Gertrud von Kunowski, portrait of Margarete Schiller née Eberstein (1906).

  7 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Jutta Rudershausen, ‘Frau über den Wolken: Ein Leben für Wissenschaft und Fliegen’ [Woman Above the Clouds: A Life for Science and Flying] (unpublished manuscript, nd).

  8 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Melitta Schiller (von Stauffenberg), ‘Vortag gehalten in Stockholm am 6.12.43: Eine Frau in der Flugerprobung’ [A Woman in Test Flying], Stockholm lecture (06.12.43).

  9 Ibid.

  10 Peter Fritzsche, A Nation of Flyers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination (Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 63.

  11 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Lieselotte Hansen, ‘Memories of Lieselotte Hansen, née Lachman’ (unpublished manuscript, nd).

  12 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Jutta Rudershausen, ‘Frau über den Wolken: Ein Leben für Wissenschaft und Fliegen’ [Woman Above the Clouds: A Life for Science and Flying] (unpublished manuscript, nd), p. 26.

  13 Marie-Luise Schiller, diary 1918, quoted in Thomas Medicus, Melitta von Stauffenberg: Ein Deutsches Leben [A German Life] (Rowolt, 2012), p. 35.

  14 Ibid. p. 36.

  15 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Lieselotte Hansen, ‘Memories of Lieselotte Hansen, née Lachman’ (unpublished manuscript, nd).

  16 Ibid.

  17 Ibid.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Ibid.

  23 Technical University Munich archive, Melitta Schiller entrance records (1922).

  24 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Lieselotte Hansen, ‘Memories of Lieselotte Hansen, née Lachman’ (unpublished manuscript, nd).

  25 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Melitta Schiller (von Stauffenber
g), ‘Vortag gehalten in Stockholm am 6.12.43: Eine Frau in der Flugerprobung’ [A Woman in Test Flying], Stockholm lecture (06.12.43).

  26 Ibid.

  27 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Jutta Rudershausen, ‘Frau über den Wolken: Ein Leben für Wissenschaft und Fliegen’ [Woman Above the Clouds: A Life for Science and Flying] (unpublished manuscript, nd), p. 37.

  28 Gerhard Bracke archive, Klara Schiller, Gerhard Bracke interview, ‘Erinnerungen’ (09.10.1982).

  29 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Marie-Luise (Lili) Lübbert, ‘Zweig Otto Eberstein’ [Otto Eberstein family branch].

  30 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Hermann Blenk, ‘Erinnerungen an Melitta Schiller’ [Memories of Melitta Schiller] (13.09.1974); and Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Georg Wollé, ‘Memories of a Colleague of Melitta Schiller in the Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt [Institute of Aviation] (DVL)’ (11.02.1974).

  31 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Jutta Rudershausen, ‘Frau über den Wolken: Ein Leben für Wissenschaft und Fliegen’ [Woman Above the Clouds: A Life for Science and Flying] (unpublished manuscript, nd), p. 33.

  32 Ibid. p. 38.

  33 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Paul von Handel, ‘Erinnerungen an Litta’ [Memories of Litta] (nd).

  34 Ibid.

  35 Gerhard Bracke, Melitta Gräfin Stauffenberg: Das Leben einer Fliegerin [The Life of an Aviatrix] (Herbig Verlag, 2013), privately translated, p. 99.

  36 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Georg Wollé, ‘Memories of a Colleague of Melitta Schiller in the Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt [Institute of Aviation] (DVL)’ (11.02.1974).

  37 Gerhard Bracke, Melitta Gräfin Stauffenberg: Das Leben einer Fliegerin [The Life of an Aviatrix] (Herbig Verlag, 2013) privately translated, p. 99.

  38 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Paul von Handel, ‘Erinnerungen an Litta’ [Memories of Litta] (nd).

  39 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Paul von Handel, ‘Erinnerungen an Litta [Memories of Litta] (nd).

  40 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Hermann Blenk, ‘Erinnerungen an Melitta Schiller’ [Memories of Melitta Schiller] (13.09.1974).

  41 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Georg Wollé, ‘Memories of a Colleague of Melitta Schiller in the Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt [Institute of Aviation] (DVL)’ (11.02.1974).

  42 Melitta Schiller, CV (1943), quoted in Thomas Medicus, Melitta von Stauffenberg: Ein Deutsches Leben [A German Life] (Rowohlt, 2012), p. 78.

  43 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Jutta Rudershausen, ‘Frau über den Wolken: Ein Leben für Wissenschaft und Fliegen’ [Woman Above the Clouds: A Life for Science and Flying] (unpublished manuscript, nd), p. 44.

  44 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Melitta Schiller (von Stauffenberg), ‘Vortag gehalten in Stockholm am 6.12.43: Eine Frau in der Flugerprobung’ [A Woman in Test Flying], Stockholm lecture (06.12.43).

  45 Ibid.

  46 Ibid.

  47 Ibid.

  48 Ibid.

  49 Ibid.

  50 Ibid.

  51 Ibid.

  52 Ibid.

  53 Ibid.

  54 Ibid.

  55 Ibid.

  56 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Paul von Handel, ‘Erinnerungen an Litta’ [Memories of Litta] (nd).

  57 Gerhard Bracke, Melitta Gräfin Stauffenberg: Das Leben einer Fliegerin [The Life of an Aviatrix] (Herbig Verlag, 2013), privately translated by Barbara Schlussler, p. 26.

  58 Elly Beinhorn, Premiere am Himmel, meine berühmten Fliegerkameraden [First in the Sky: My Famous Aviator Comrades] (Malik National Geographic, Munich, 1991), p. 250.

  59 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Georg Wollé, ‘Memories of a Colleague of Melitta Schiller in the Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt [Institute of Aviation] (DVL)’ (11.02.1974).

  60 Gerhard Bracke archive, Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, jg. 38, No. 42 (20.10.1929).

  61 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Melitta Schiller (von Stauffenberg), ‘Vortag gehalten in Stockholm am 6.12.43: Eine Frau in der Flugerprobung’ [A Woman in Test Flying], Stockholm lecture (06.12.43).

  62 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Paul von Handel, ‘Erinnerungen an Litta’ [Memories of Litta] (nd).

  63 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Jutta Rudershausen, ‘Frau über den Wolken: Ein Leben für Wissenschaft und Fliegen’ [Woman Above the Clouds: A Life for Science and Flying] (unpublished manuscript, nd), p. 52.

  64 Karl Christ, Der Andere Stauffenberg: Der Historiker und Dichter Alexander von Stauffenberg [The Other Stauffenberg: Historian and Poet Alexander von Stauffenberg] (C. H. Beck, 2008), p. 9.

  65 Gerhard Bracke archive, Philippa Countess von Thun-Hohenstein (née von Bredow), filmed interview, ‘Memories of Melitta: personal impressions of Countess von Stauffenberg’ (07.07.2000).

  66 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Paul von Handel, ‘Erinnerungen an Litta’ [Memories of Litta] (nd).

  67 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Jutta Rudershausen, ‘Frau über den Wolken: Ein Leben für Wissenschaft und Fliegen’ [Woman Above the Clouds: A Life for Science and Flying] (unpublished manuscript, nd), p. 53.

  68 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Paul von Handel, ‘Erinnerungen an Litta’ [Memories of Litta] (nd).

  69 Gerhard Bracke archive, letter Peter Riedel/Mrs Hacker (25.08.1980).

  70 Martin Simons, German Air Attaché: The Thrilling Wartime Story of the German Ace Pilot and Wartime Diplomat Peter Riedel (Airlife, 1997), pp. 11–12.

  71 Ibid. p. 12.

  72 Gerhard Bracke archive, letter Peter Riedel/Mrs Hacker (25.08.1980).

  73 Gerhard Bracke archive, Peter Riedel interview (late 1980s).

  2: SEARCHING FOR THE FABULOUS

  1 Hanna Reitsch, The Sky My Kingdom: Memoirs of the Famous German World War II Test Pilot (Greenhill, 2009), p. 1.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid. p. 177.

  4 Ibid. p. 178.

  5 Ibid. p. 3.

  6 Ibid. p. 3.

  7 Quoted in Judy Lomax, Hanna Reitsch: Flying for the Fatherland (John Murray, 1988), p. 5.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Hanna Reitsch, The Sky My Kingdom: Memoirs of the Famous German World War II Test Pilot (Greenhill, 2009), p. 3.

  10 Ibid. p. 9.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Hanna Reitsch: Hitlers Fliegerin [Hitler’s Pilot], Interspot Film (dir. Gerhard Jelinek and Fritz Kalteis, 2010).

  13 Deutsches Museum archive, 130/18, Wernher von Braun obituary, unknown newspaper (June 1977).

  14 Michael J. Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), p. 147; Arthur C. Clarke, Astounding Days: A Science Fiction Autobiography (Bantam Books, 1990), p. 181.

  15 Deutsches Museum archive, 130/18, Wernher von Braun to Harry Walker (6 January 1960).

  16 Arthur C. Clarke, Astounding Days: A Science Fiction Autobiography (Bantam Books, 1990), p. 181.

  17 Hanna Reitsch, The Sky My Kingdom: Memoirs of the Famous German World War II Test Pilot (Greenhill, 2009), p. 16.

  18 Ibid. p. 18.

  19 Ibid. p. 26.

  20 Gerda Erica Baker, Shadow of War (Lion, 1990), p. 23.

  21 Otto Dietrich, Mit Hitler an die Macht: Personliche Erlebnisse mit Meinem Führer [With Hitler to Power: Personal Experiences with My Leader] (1934), p. 74.

  22 Ibid. p. 9.

  23 Ibid. p. 86.

  24 Ibid. p. 10.

  25 Hanna Reitsch, The Sky My Kingdom: Memoirs of the Famous German World War II Test Pilot (Greenhill, 2009), p. 27.

  26 Ibid. p. 31.

  27 Ibid. p. 31.

  28 Ibid. p. 32.

  29 Ibid. p. 33.

  30 Ibid. p. 34.

  31 Ibid. p. 49.

  32 Deutsches Museum archive, PERS/F/10228/1, Alte Adler member magazine, Friedrich Stahl, Alte Adler president, speech at Hanna Reich’s sixtieth birthday party (Spring 1972), p. 8.

  33 Hanna Reitsch, The Sky, My Kingdom: Memoirs of the Famous German World War II Test Pilot (Greenhill, 2009), p. 50.

  34 Ibid. p. 51.

  35 Ibid. p. 51.

  36 Ibid. p. 56.
<
br />   37 Quoted in Judy Lomax, Hanna Reitsch: Flying for the Fatherland (John Murray, 1988), p. 15.

  38 Hanna Reitsch: Hitlers Fliegerin [Hitler’s Pilot], Interspot Film (dir. Gerhard Jelinek and Fritz Kalteis, 2010).

  3: PUBLIC RELATIONS

  1 Helen L. Boak, ‘The “Frauenfrage” and the Female Vote’: http://www.academia.edu/498771/Women_in_Weimar_Germany_The_Frauenfrage_and_the_Female_Vote, p.1.

  2 Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend (Frontline, 2011), p. 143.

  3 Ibid. p. 142.

  4 Bernt Engelmann, In Hitler’s Germany: Everyday Life in the Third Reich (Schocken, 1986), p. 27.

  5 Norman H. Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler 1922–1939, vol. 2 (OUP, 1942), p. 1021.

  6 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Georg Wollé, ‘Memories of a Colleague of Melitta Schiller in the Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt [Institute of Aviation] (DVL)’ (11.02.1974).

  7 Archive Reinhart Rudershausen, Jutta Rudershausen, ‘Frau über den Wolken: Ein Leben für Wissenschaft und Fliegen’ [Woman Above the Clouds: A Life for Science and Flying] (unpublished manuscript, nd), p. 44.

  8 Luftfahrt (Aviation) 30 (20.08.1926), quoted in Peter Fritzsche, A Nation of Flyers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination (Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 109.

  9 Hanna Reitsch, The Sky My Kingdom: Memoirs of the Famous German World War II Test Pilot (Greenhill, 2009), p. 61.

  10 Ibid. p. 64.

  11 Martin Simons, German Air Attaché: The Thrilling Wartime Story of the German Ace Pilot and Wartime Diplomat Peter Riedel (Airlife, 1997), p. 88.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Hanna Reitsch, The Sky My Kingdom, Memoirs of the Famous German World War II Test Pilot (Greenhill, 2009), p. 66.

  14 Eric Brown, Mulley interview (June 2014).

  15 Martin Simons, German Air Attaché: The Thrilling Wartime Story of the German Ace Pilot and Wartime Diplomat Peter Riedel (Airlife, 1997), p. 88.

  16 Hanna Reitsch, The Sky My Kingdom, Memoirs of the Famous German World War II Test Pilot (Greenhill, 2009), pp. 69, 71.

  17 Ibid. pp. 69, 70.