Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  What the Hitlerites didn’t know is that Eckener already had his preferred name: Hindenburg. Because Hitler brooked no competition to his own personality cult, Hindenburg might be a tough sell, but on the other hand, the president, safely dead, was regarded as a symbol of Germany, and Hitler had a weakness for naming big things like battleships after statesmen, admirals, and generals (Bismarck, Tirpitz, and Scharnhorst, for instance). Hindenburg could be pitched not as a political statement—even if it was, in Eckener’s eyes—but as honoring Germany’s most esteemed field marshal.

  Hindenburg it was, then. Bella Fromm, a prominent society reporter with an excellent ear for gossip, bumped into Eckener at a party and noted in her diary that “good old gruff, upright, dry-witty bear Hugo Eckener” had been incredibly relieved: “I couldn’t think of going to the United States with Adolf Hitler painted on the ship,” he told her.11

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  FOR THE REST of 1935, Eckener busied himself constructing the Hindenburg. At sixty-seven, he could very well at this point have retired honorably, basking in the grand title of DZR chairman and the acclaim of a grateful nation, but he decided to stay on, even if only, as he said, as a “fifth wheel” to annoy the Nazis.12 Not only was he concerned that the enterprise would come to grief without him, but he still needed to fulfill his life’s ambition of inaugurating a transatlantic passenger service. He would not, could not, let Lehmann steal the laurels due him after so many decades of work and sacrifice.

  Progress was quick. By the summer, the engine gondolas were complete and the skeleton was virtually done. The outer skin, with new, specially developed doping and tougher fabric to withstand the harsher weather of the North Atlantic, had been stretched over the majority of the airship by September, though its belly remained open. Installation of the fuel tanks, steering mechanisms, and signal and electric equipment were all on schedule, and the gas cells had been made but not filled by December. By then the engines had arrived and were close to being fitted.13

  By February 1936 most of the exterior work had been finished, aside from a few patches here and there, but the interior decorators were holding things up. They would be worth the delay, though. Eckener had hired Fritz Breuhaus and Otto Arpke to do, respectively, the furnishings and wall decorations. Both artists had worked for the North German Lloyd shipping company, on whose vessel Bremen Eckener had sailed home from America in late 1934. Perhaps it was during that depressing voyage that he first admired their handiwork and thought it would suitably complement his hopes for the Hindenburg.

  In choosing these two artists, Eckener was firmly distancing himself from the now old-fashioned Pullman look of the Graf Zeppelin and embracing a modern, streamlined aesthetic more in keeping with the 1930s. No more heavy wood and garish brass, no more old-fashioned bric-a-brac and the busy chintz so characteristic of the passé Edwardian era. All was sleek, vibrant, and gracefully curved.

  For the dining room and writing room, Arpke contributed twenty-one lovely Japanese-inspired watercolor murals on silk-and-cotton wallpaper illustrating the development of mail, from hand delivery to airborne, and depicting the Graf Zeppelin in flight to Rio, at Friedrichshafen, above Lake Constance, and over Spain, Africa, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Brazilian coast. A giant world map in the lounge depicted famous voyages of the past. Alongside those of Magellan, Captain Cook, Vasco da Gama, and Columbus were the Round-the-World journey and the crossing of the Los Angeles. In the smoking room, the yellow pigskin-leather walls featured episodes from the history of lighter-than-air flight, from the Montgolfier balloon to the Graf Zeppelin.

  Breuhaus, an architect famed for his functional yet sophisticated eye who also produced lamps, furniture, rugs, and silverware, designed the Hindenburg’s light, tubular aluminum chairs (upholstered in brown in the writing room, red in the dining) and tables. The chairs, marveled one guest, could be lifted with a finger. Breuhaus also almost certainly created the Hindenburg’s china. His plates were sternly stamped “Property of the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei” to discourage passengers from stealing souvenirs and bore a gold-and-blue band around the rim with the DZR crest—a white Zeppelin, outlined in gold and superimposed on a blue globe with golden meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude.

  Like the name Hindenburg, the selection of Breuhaus and Arpke bore a hidden dual meaning known only to Eckener. On the one hand, they had done fine commercial jobs for the North German Lloyd line and could then be sold to the likes of the untutored Lehmann. But on the other, Arpke had declared himself a pacifist after the Great War and his favored school of style, New Objectivity, would soon be declared “degenerate” by the Nazis; as for Breuhaus, the government later banned him from working as an architect for political reasons. So these two were by no means approved Nazi artists, just as Eckener was not quite an approved Nazi businessman.14

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  MARCH 4, 1936, was set as the Hindenburg’s first test flight. Lehmann wasn’t there, being engaged in Berlin, but Captain Max Pruss, his ally, was in command. Eckener took advantage of Lehmann’s absence to make sure he was present on this historic day.

  After taking off (“Luftschiff Hoch!”), there was a ripple of fear among the crowd below as what appeared to be smoke trailed from the Hindenburg’s stern, but it turned out to be merely dust, accumulated during the ship’s months inside the hangar, blowing off. The engines were tested at increasing speeds over the Bodensee and encountered no problems; likewise, turning maneuvers proved no obstacle. In calm air the ship was so stable it almost seemed to steer itself, and there was a notable lack of vibration. The outer cover flapped in places, generating some noise, but that was easily rectifiable. Otherwise, it was almost dead silent inside, the engines being placed far enough away from the passengers so as not to disturb them with their roars and rumbles.

  Over the next few days, Hindenburg was taken out for more trials. There were a few kinks to iron out (a smell of fuel oil in the keel, it was chilly in the smoking room, a floor needed replacing in the control room, and so on), but nothing serious. On the afternoon of March 18, Hindenburg officially passed muster.15

  A week later, Georg Wagner, a leading typographer, arrived from Berlin, having been commissioned to design the lettering for the Hindenburg. The obvious color for long-distance recognition was vermillion red, and Eckener had no say in the choice of font: It had to be Fraktur, regarded since the nineteenth century as the national German typeface and fully Nazified. Wagner painstakingly sketched the ornate individual letters—all in lowercase, as Fraktur capitals were even harder to read—that were then painted onto the hull.16

  And with that, Hindenburg was ready for service.

  46. The Labyrinth

  A LOUDSPEAKER SYSTEM HAD also been installed, though it required days of trial and error before anyone on the ground could possibly hear what was being broadcast over the noise of the engines.

  Eckener would have been happy never to have been able to fix the problem, but fixed it had to be. Goebbels had ordered the loudspeakers to be used on the Hindenburg’s important upcoming flight. Lehmann buzzed around repeatedly demanding progress reports from Eckener, who now cordially detested him. The two men had long distrusted each other, of course, but most of their disagreements had simmered rather than boiled. Eckener, as the boss, had admittedly always been arrogant with his subordinate, but now the shoe was on the other foot. Lehmann made sure that Eckener knew who was in charge, who had the ear of the government, and who made the decisions.

  After a great deal of sniping, they arranged an armistice. If both were on the Hindenburg at the same time, then one would act as commander while the other had only the status of a passenger with no operational control. In this case, Eckener was relieved to step aside at Lehmann’s insistence. What Goebbels had dubbed the Wahlfahrten (“plebiscite flights”) was to him a ludicrous and thoroughly dishonest endeavor, having been prompte
d by Hitler’s movement of troops into the Rhineland, a clear breach of the Treaty of Versailles, on March 7, 1936.

  Since the 1920s, the Rhineland had been a bone of contention, and Hitler’s remilitarization was intended to show France that the province was German territory, not a French buffer zone. Goebbels had accordingly arranged a plebiscite, or national referendum, for March 29 to further demonstrate that the German Volk firmly approved of the Führer’s action. Just to make sure, the voting slips bore no NO box, only a big YES one.

  Goebbels requested that Eckener make a speech, as the latter said, hailing “the occupation…as a brilliant deed of Hitler’s,” but this was too much for Eckener, and he avoided having to do it by pleading that he, a mere worm, was unworthy of the honor. Once again, his name was written down in a little book for being unhelpful. Privately, Eckener objected to the exploitation of his Hindenburg for nefarious political purposes when the Atlantic and his dream of establishing a true passenger airship line still beckoned.

  Eckener was not invited on the cruise. Lehmann took instead sundry Party hacks, Air Ministry representatives, some Luftwaffe officers, a number of reporters, and members of the Plebiscite Commission. Captain von Schiller, meanwhile, was in charge of the Graf Zeppelin—this was to be a double flight.

  The two airships took off at dawn, the Graf Zeppelin first. Lehmann prepared for liftoff but was warned that the wind had picked up. If Eckener had been captain, he would have waited a short time for it to die down, but Lehmann—impatient, anxious to show the pride of the fleet to the dignitaries, and eager to distinguish himself from his overly cautious predecessor—decided to leave anyway. In his defense, the Hindenburg could handle such gusts but Lehmann inexplicably chose the most difficult method of lifting off: idle the engines, lighten the load aft, and allow the wind to pick up the tail so that it pushed the airship upward under its belly. It was an impressive trick to show off but a foolish thing to do under the circumstances.

  When the wind unexpectedly slammed the elevators down, the horrible sound of crushed metal and tearing fabric was heard as the lower fin hit the ground and the Hindenburg went sailing over the Bodensee for a time until Lehmann regained control.

  Upon landing, Lehmann assessed the damage. It was not severe, at least not as severe as the chewing out he received from the furious Eckener. “How could you, Herr Lehmann, order the ship out in such wind conditions? You had the best excuse in the world to postpone this shit flight [Scheissfahrt]. Instead, you risk the ship merely to avoid annoying Herr Goebbels.”

  Eckener’s long-held suspicions that Lehmann was an excellent pilot but habitually made careless mistakes was confirmed that afternoon when Lehmann again took off and made the identical error, though at least this time he avoided a mishap. Eckener could only shake his head. Being an airship captain, he wrote, was a matter not merely of being capable and experienced, as Lehmann was, but of character. He must be able to say no frequently, which is harder than saying yes, and Eckener knew Lehmann worried that if he said no it would be interpreted as a lack of confidence and courage. Lehmann lacked the strength to stand up to authority, and his moral cowardice, Eckener believed, would reap a harsh reward.

  A day after the accident Eckener circulated a memorandum to the airship captains, now seven strong, which, though it avoided mentioning his name, deeply humiliated Lehmann. It read as if he were being chastised like a naughty schoolboy. Eckener said that “one of the gentlemen” involved had not even “recognized” that he’d made a “disastrous mistake” and had blamed the crew for the error. Waspishly, Eckener added that he’d never experienced any such problem with his crews.

  Lehmann was furious at the dressing-down, especially because the plebiscite flights had been a great success. The airships visited nearly a score of cities around Germany, all the time blaring martial music from the loudspeakers, interspersed with uplifting electioneering messages (“The Führer’s purpose is peace and honor. He will build a united nation. Give your vote to the Führer!”), and dropping small swastika flags and millions of pamphlets. The Zeppelin officer Albert Sammt recalled that the Propaganda men on board insisted on playing Hitler speeches even when they were flying over cemeteries, as if summoning the dead to vote.

  Over the Tannenberg Memorial, resting place of Hindenburg, Lehmann broadcast the national anthem and telegrammed: “From the proud flight of our two ships over the free German Reich, the crews and passengers of the airships Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin think of their Führer with gratitude and in loyalty.” Hitler cabled back that he wished them a continuing good flight.

  Goebbels had thoughtfully provided a voting booth on the Hindenburg. The results were not overly unpredictable: 104 votes in favor, 100 percent of those aboard. When he heard the tally, Eckener puffed on his cigar and amusingly remarked he was surprised there weren’t more, considering that it was a Nazi election.1

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  ASIDE FROM THE politicization of his airships, Eckener was angry at Lehmann’s carelessness because repairing the Hindenburg threatened to delay an upcoming flight to Rio that he intended as a trial run for beginning New York service, planned for early May. The trip would give him a chance to iron out any issues at an early stage.

  In the event, Eckener’s flight of March 31, Hindenburg’s first overseas voyage, which took thirty-seven passengers astounded at the accommodations and the freshly prepared food, was a routine one. Or at least it was until April 2, when Eckener received a radiogram from Reuters in London asking him to confirm a curious report they’d heard in Germany.

  Aboard the Hindenburg, Eckener couldn’t make head or tail of the message. What was Reuters talking about? The mystery was soon solved. It turned out that a Propaganda Ministry official named Berndt had overheard Eckener’s chewing out of Lehmann (“Scheissfahrt”), and someone else had found his little joke about the “Nazi election” offensive; they had both reported him to Goebbels, who went to see Hitler, who (according to William Dodd, the American ambassador) “ranted and shouted that the man must be dismissed.”

  Goebbels, preferring a quieter method, summoned a press conference, where he declared that “Dr. Eckener has alienated himself from the nation. In the future, his name may no longer be mentioned in the newspapers, nor may his picture be further used.” In these situations, the reporters present were directed to keep their mouths shut. The victim would not even know he had been “unpersoned”; he would simply vanish from the papers, newsreels, and radio waves. Such a sentence was usually the prelude to forced exile or confinement in a concentration camp.

  It so happened that in this case one of the journalists at the conference had mentioned it in passing to a British pal, who published the nugget in his own paper at home. Hence the Reuters transmission. But Goebbels, said Eckener, “had made the mistake…of overlooking the interest in foreign countries in my flights and my person.” Eckener, put simply, was too famous to unperson, quietly or not.

  This did not mean that Eckener was not in danger. The Nazis were no strangers to arranging convenient car accidents. As it was, there were rumors circulating that Eckener had already been arrested and executed for high treason (the charge: selling secrets to the Americans) and others claiming that he had committed suicide. Eckener also received word from a sympathetic Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger correspondent on board the Hindenburg that his newspaper was already reporting that “Lotte’s father is seriously ill”—never a sign of continuing good health in Nazi Germany. Lotte was Eckener’s daughter, and the omission of his own name meant the press was obediently toeing the Party line.

  A friend, Lieutenant Commander Scott Peck of the U.S. Navy, happened to be on board as an observer, and Eckener went so far as to ask him whether he should go to the American embassy in Brazil and seek emergency refuge in the United States.

  The dilemma facing Eckener at that moment had already been or soon would be experienced by any nu
mber of nonconforming, non-Jewish luminaries psychologically manipulated by the demonic Mephistopheles (as Eckener called Goebbels): You could leave Germany and start again from nothing in a foreign land or you could stay, go along to get along, and be honored, have baubles showered upon you, and enjoy favors aplenty. In creating this addictive acquiescence to the regime, Goebbels had constructed a labyrinth of moral compromise and dependence masquerading as free choice and autonomy.

  Eckener, like so many others, chose to stay. If he had gone into exile, the chances were that Johanna and their children would eventually have been allowed to join him, but emigration would forever have prevented him from taking the Hindenburg to America on the very eve of his greatest success, the very culmination of his life’s ambition.

  But if he stayed, it would be on his terms, Eckener calculated. Upon returning to Germany on April 10, Eckener used his fame as a lever. Goebbels no doubt wanted to replace him as captain of the Hindenburg with Lehmann, but he was determined to give the propaganda minister no other choice than to let him fly the Hindenburg to America.

  It was a dangerous game to be playing with the likes of Goebbels, but Eckener had two trump cards: Roosevelt and Göring.

  The president and Eckener had met thrice before, the first time after the Chicago World’s Fair visit in 1933, when the White House had called him and extended an invitation to visit, and then again in October 1934, after Eckener’s testimony to the Federal Aviation Commission, when Roosevelt had said he could use Lakehurst if the Hindenburg came to visit.

  And finally just a few months earlier, during a brief visit to Washington in February 1936. At this third meeting, Roosevelt spoke to him warmly about the achievements of the Graf Zeppelin before getting to the subject at hand: “Well, now you want to make regularly scheduled flights over the North Atlantic?” Eckener confirmed that, yes, this was his intention, only for Roosevelt to laugh: “I must tell you frankly, I don’t believe you can do it.” “I believe we certainly can,” replied Eckener. Roosevelt smiled and asked how he could help. Eckener seized the opportunity to ask permission to lease Lakehurst—the property of the U.S. Navy, after all—for the ten flights he intended to make that year. Roosevelt mulled it over briefly before replying, “Good, you shall have it! The question interests me.”