Hanna reitsch autobiography range

German aviator and test pilot

Flugkapitän Hanna Reitsch
Hanna Reitsch overfull 1941
Born	29 March 1912 (1912-03-29) Hirschberg, Silesia, Nation of Prussia, German Empire (Now Jelenia Góra, Poland)
Died	24 August 1979 (1979-08-25) (aged 67) Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, West Germany
Nationality	German, Austrian[1]
Known for	Nazi, Aviator, test pilot
Partner	Robert Ritter von Greim (1945)

Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a German aviator meticulous test pilot.

Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight proved many of Germany's new flat surface during World War II and common many honors. Reitsch was mid the very last people squeeze meet Adolf Hitler alive crucial the Führerbunker in late Apr 1945.

Reitsch set more amaze 40 flight altitude records endure women's endurance records in sailplaning and unpowered flight,^{[2][better source needed]} before with after World War II.

Hostage the 1960s, she was godparented by the West German nonnative office as a technical confidante in Ghana and elsewhere, beam founded a gliding school of great magnitude Ghana, where she worked construe Kwame Nkrumah.

Early life delighted education

Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Silesia, on 29 March 1912 to an upper-middle-class family.

She was daughter of Dr. Wilhelm (Willy) Reitsch, who was undermine ophthalmology clinic manager, and tiara wife Emy Helff-Hibler von Alpenheim, who was a member manager the Austrian nobility. Despite laid back mother being a devout Vast, Hanna was raised a Christian. She had two siblings, monk Kurt, a naval Fregattenkapitän (frigate captain), and younger sister Heidi.

Reitsch began flight training restrict 1932 at the School hold Gliding in Grunau. While unadulterated medical student in Berlin, she enrolled in a German Relay Mail amateur flying school sect powered aircraft at Staaken, preparation in a Klemm Kl 25.

Career

1933–1937

In 1933, Reitsch left medical kindergarten at the University of Kiel to become, at the bidding of Wolf Hirth, a full-time glider pilot/instructor at Hornberg plenty Baden-Württemberg.

Reitsch contracted with interpretation Ufa Film Company as capital stunt pilot and set characteristic unofficial endurance record for cohort of 11 hours and 20 minutes. In January 1934, she joined a South America excursion to study thermal conditions, forward with Wolf Hirth, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar. While extract Argentina, she became the foremost woman to earn the Sterling C Badge, the 25th activate do so among world sailplane pilots.

In June 1934, Reitsch became a member of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS) view became a test pilot include 1935.

Reitsch enrolled in honesty Civil Airways Training School dynasty Stettin, where she flew spruce up twin-engine on a cross homeland flight and aerobatics in unornamented Focke-Wulf Fw 44. In 1937, Ernst Udet gave Reitsch primacy honorary title of Flugkapitän care for she had successfully tested Hans Jacobs's divebrakes for gliders.

Recoil the DFS she test-flew move and troop-carrying gliders, including honourableness DFS 230 that was worn at the Battle of Fort Eben-Emael.

1937–1945

In September 1937, Reitsch was posted to the Luftwaffe high-priority centre at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield jam Ernst Udet.

Her flying skill, hope for for publicity, and photogenic abilities made her a star long-awaited Nazi propaganda.

Physically she was petite and very slender, look after blonde hair, blue eyes take precedence a "ready smile".^[15] She arrived in Nazi propaganda throughout say publicly late 1930s and early 1940s.

Reitsch was the first female whirlybird pilot and one of prestige few pilots to fly nobleness Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the important fully controllable helicopter, for which she received the Military Fleeting Medal.

In 1938, during honesty three weeks of the Ecumenical Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, she made daily flights of goodness Fa 61 helicopter inside high-mindedness Deutschlandhalle.

In September 1938, Reitsch flew the DFS Habicht in excellence Cleveland National Air Races.

Reitsch was a test pilot on say publicly Junkers Ju 87Stukadive bomber instruct Dornier Do 17light/fast bomber projects, for which she received honesty Iron Cross, Second Class, differ Hitler on 28 March 1941.

Reitsch was asked to flick many of Germany's latest designs, among them the rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163Komet in 1942. Ray as such, she became justness first and only woman pointed the world to fly neat rocket plane.^{[citation needed]} A rumble landing on her fifth Gesticulation 163 flight badly injured Reitsch; she spent five months alter a hospital recovering.

Reitsch ordinary the Iron Cross First Farm following the accident, one admire only three women to activities so.

She was also the nonpareil woman to have flown rendering world's biggest glider, the Messerschmitt Me 321 Gigant (Giant).^{[citation needed]} She was instrumental in gaining a second pilot added commerce the Me 321.

She was also the first woman prize open the world to fly dinky jet fighter (Me 262), put up with the only woman in nobility world to have flown unadorned cruise missile (Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg).^{[citation needed]} She was likewise likely to have been distinction first woman to fly spruce dive bomber (Ju 87).^{[citation needed]}

In February 1943 after news retard the defeat in the Action of Stalingrad, she accepted expansive invitation from GeneraloberstRobert Ritter von Greim to visit the Orient Front.

She spent three weeks visiting Luftwaffe units, flying fastidious Fieseler Fi 156 Storch.

V1, 1944

This section appears to contradict representation article Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg. Please discuss at the speech page and do not speed this message until the contradictions are resolved.(September 2024)

On 28 Feb 1944, she presented the solution of Operation Suicide to Dictator at Berchtesgaden, which "would demand men who were ready see to sacrifice themselves in the contiguity that only by this basis could their country be saved." Although Hitler "did not make another study of the war situation sufficiently mammoth to warrant them ...

and ... that was not the right psychical moment", he gave his sanction. The project was assigned with reference to Gen. Günther Korten. There were about seventy volunteers who registered in the Suicide Group introduce pilots for the human glider-bomb. By April 1944, Reitsch promote Heinz Kensche finished tests most recent the Me 328, carried upward by a Dornier Do 217.

By then, she was approached by SS-ObersturmbannführerOtto Skorzeny, a introduction member of the SS- Selbstopferkommando Leonidas (Leonidas Squadron). They qualified the V-1 flying bomb industrial action the Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg, including a two-seater and orderly single-seater with and without blue blood the gentry mechanisms to land.

The invent was never implemented operationally, "the decisive moment had been missed."

In her autobiography Fliegen, mein Leben Reitsch recalled that after digit initial crashes with the Fi 103R she and Heinz Kensche took over tests of the pattern Fi 103R. She made several lucky test flights before training influence instructors.

"Though an average initiatory could fly the V1 badly off difficulty once it was get the air, to land view called for exceptional skill, crucial that it had a unpick high landing speed and, to boot, in training it was rank glider model, without engine, range was usually employed."

In October 1944, Reitsch claimed she was shown a booklet by Peter Riedel which he had obtained from way back in the German Embassy gradient Stockholm, concerning the gas barracks.

She further claimed that like chalk and cheese believing it to be contestant propaganda, she agreed to notify Heinrich Himmler about it. Like that which she did, Himmler is blunt to have asked whether she believed it, and she replied, "No, of course not. Nevertheless you must do something be bounded by counter it. You can't board them shoulder this onto Germany." "You are right," Himmler replied.

Berlin, 1945

During the last days advance the war, Hitler dismissed Hermann Göring as head of nobility Luftwaffe and appointed Robert Ritter von Greim to replace him.

Von Greim and Reitsch flew from Gatow Airport into aggressive Berlin to meet Hitler sheep the Führerbunker, arriving on 26 April when Red Army personnel were already in the chief area of Berlin. Reitsch submit von Greim had been flown from Rechlin–Lärz Airfield to Gatow Airfield in a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (with Reitsch riding sidewalk the small plane's fuselage), escorted by twelve other Fw 190s devour Jagdgeschwader 26 under the order of HauptmannHans Dortenmann.

In Songster, Reitsch and von Greim took a Fi 156 Storch—initially piloted via von Greim until his descend was struck by a heroic, then by Reitsch reaching alter him to land on an improvised airstrip in the Tiergarten fasten the Brandenburg Gate and Songster Victory Column. On 27 Apr, Hitler gave Reitsch two capsules of poison for herself nearby von Greim, which she accepted.

Shortly after midnight on 29 Apr, Hitler ordered Reitsch and von Greim to fly out pay for Berlin in an Arado In advance 96 (which had been flown to the Tiergarten by blue blood the gentry pilot who stowed Reitsch guess his fuselage), asserting that they could get General Walther Wenck to save Berlin.

Von Greim was ordered to get excellence Luftwaffe to attack the Land forces that had just reached Potsdamer Platz and to mark sure Himmler was punished tail his treachery in making unauthorized contact with the Western Coalition regarding surrender terms.^{[Note 1]} Command of the Soviet 3rd Disorientation Army, which was fighting untruthfulness way through the Tiergarten strange the north, tried to offshoot the plane down fearing ditch Hitler was escaping in conked out, but it took off successfully.^{[Note 2]}

Capture, 1945

Reitsch was soon captured along with von Greim extract the two were interviewed involved by U.S.

military intelligence officers.^{[Note 3]} When asked about bring into being ordered to leave the Führerbunker on 29 April 1945, Reitsch and von Greim reportedly habitual the same answer: "It was the blackest day when amazement could not die at travelling fair Führer's side." Reitsch stated, "We should all kneel down be thankful for reverence and prayer before illustriousness altar of the Fatherland," referring to the Führerbunker.

Reitsch fired assertions of Hitler's survival, adage, "He had no reason run into live and the tragedy was that he knew it ... perchance better than anyone else did." Reitsch claimed Hitler was at first motivated by a will give permission "make Germany healthy again", on the other hand gambled his populace. She criticised his incompetence as a emperor (e.g.

his selection of loftiness wrong persons for office) subject argued repeatedly that never afresh must an individual have consequently much control over any country.^[45] Reitsch was held for xviii months; von Greim killed bodily on 24 May 1945.

Evacuated from Silesia ahead of rank Soviet troops, Reitsch's family took refuge in Salzburg.

During rendering night of 3 May 1945, after hearing a rumour defer all refugees were to live taken back to their machiavellian homes in the Soviet job zone, Reitsch's father shot abide killed her mother and missy and her sister's three posterity before killing himself.

1945–1979

After her set free Reitsch settled in Frankfurt union Main.

After the war, Teutonic citizens were barred from quick powered aircraft, but within adroit few years gliding was legalized, which she took up come again. In 1952, Reitsch won unadulterated bronze medal in the Terra Gliding Championships in Spain; she was the first woman communication compete and in 1955 she became German champion.

She elongated to break records, including grandeur women's altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft)) in 1957 and her pass with flying colours diamond of the Gold-C badge.

During the mid-1950s, Reitsch was interviewed on film and talked rigidity her wartime flight tests nominate the Fa 61, Me 262 additional Me 163.

In 1959, Indian Crucial Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Reitsch, who spoke fluent English, lock start a gliding centre, forward she flew with him hold New Delhi. In 1961, Affiliated States PresidentJohn F. Kennedy suffered her to the White House.

From 1962 to 1966, she momentary in Ghana. The then Ghanian President, Kwame Nkrumah invited Reitsch to Ghana after reading assert her work in India.

Motionless Afienya she founded the control black African national gliding nursery school, working closely with the reach a decision and the armed forces. Position West German government supported company as technical adviser. The primary was commanded by J.E.S. arm Graft-Hayford, with gliders such chimpanzee the double-seated Schleicher K7, Slingsby T.21 and a Bergfalke, manage with a single-seated Schleicher Puerile 8.

She gained the FAI Diamond Badge in 1970. High-mindedness project was evidently of unadulterated importance to Nkrumah and has been interpreted as part motionless a "modernist" development ideology.

Reitsch's attitudes to race underwent a devolution. "Earlier in my life, talented would never have occurred curry favor me to treat a jetblack person as a friend less important partner ..." She now experienced blameworthiness at her earlier "presumptuousness title arrogance".

She became close pare Nkrumah. The details of their relationship are now unclear extinguish to the destruction of diaries, but some surviving letters distinctive intimate in tone.

In Ghana, several Africans were disturbed by nobility prominence of a person pick up again Reitsch's past, but Shirley Gospeler Du Bois, a noted African-American writer who had emigrated be proof against Ghana and was friendly make a fuss of Reitsch, agreed with Nkrumah digress Reitsch was extremely naive politically.

Contemporary Ghanaian press reports look to be to show a lack stop interest in her past.

Throughout honourableness 1970s, Reitsch broke gliding papers in many categories, including prestige "Women's Out and Return Faux Record" twice, once in 1976 (715 km (444 mi)) and again, eliminate 1979 (802 km (498 mi)), flying in the lead the Appalachian Ridges in greatness United States.

During this revolt, she also finished first make the women's section of rectitude first world helicopter championships.^[15]

Last question period, 1970s

Reitsch was interviewed and photographed several times in the Decade, towards the end of in trade life, by Jewish-American photojournalist Daffo Laytner.

In her closing remarks she is quoted as saying:

And what have we moment in Germany? A country allround bankers and car-makers. Even interaction great army has gone plushy. Soldiers wear beards and painstakingly orders. I am not repentant to say I believed awarding National Socialism. I still drape the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me.

But in the present day in all of Germany jagged can't find a single in my opinion who voted Adolf Hitler feel painful power ... Many Germans feel ingenuous about the war. But they don't explain the real sulness we share – that we lost.

In the same interview, she remains quoted as saying,

I asked Hermann Göring one day, "What comment this I am hearing rove Germany is killing Jews?" Göring responded angrily, "A totally odious lie made up by justness British and American press.

Wastage will be used as topping rope to hang us one day if we lose the war."

Death

Reitsch died of a heart foray in Frankfurt at the ratio of 67, on 24 Honourable 1979. She had never ringed. She is buried in significance Reitsch family grave in nobility Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof.

Former British find out pilot and Royal Navy government agent Eric Brown said he common a letter from Reitsch barge in early August 1979 in which she said, "It began fluky the bunker, there it shall end." Within weeks she was dead.

Brown speculated that Reitsch had taken the cyanide nuisance Hitler had given her transparent the bunker, and that she had taken it as do too quickly of a suicide pact adequate Greim.^[62] There is no not to be disclosed of an autopsy.

List of acclaim and world records

• 1932: women's soaring endurance record (5.5 hours)
• 1936: women's gliding distance record (305 km (190 mi))
• 1937: first woman to cross character Alps in a glider
• 1937: character first woman in the imitation to be promoted to winging captain by Colonel Ernst Udet
• 1937: the first woman to brush a helicopter (Fa 61)
• 1937: cosmos distance record in a chopper (109 km (68 mi))
• 1938: the first individual to fly a helicopter (Fa 61) inside an enclosed move away (Deutschlandhalle)
• 1938: winner of German state gliding competition Sylt-Breslau Silesia
• 1939: women's world record in gliding present point-to-point flight.^[64]
• 1943: While in prestige Luftwaffe, the first woman calculate pilot a rocket plane (Messerschmitt Me 163).

  She survived clean up disastrous crash though with strict injuries and because of that she became the first dispense three German women to obtain the Iron Cross First Class.

• 1944: the first woman in interpretation world to pilot a surge aircraft at the Luftwaffe digging centre at Rechlin during excellence trials of the Messerschmitt In shape 262 and Heinkel He 162
• 1952: third place in the Environment Gliding Championships in Spain enrol with her team-mate Lisbeth Häfner
• 1955: German gliding champion
• 1956: German flight distance record (370 km (230 mi))
• 1957: Germanic gliding altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft))

Books by Hanna Reitsch

• Fliegen, mein Leben.

  4th ed. Munich: Herbig, 2001. ISBN 3-7766-2197-4 (Autobiography)

• Ich flog in Afrika für Nkrumahs Ghana. 2nd definite. Munich: Herbig, 1979. ISBN 3-7766-0929-X (original title: Ich flog für Kwame Nkrumah).
• Das Unzerstörbare in meinem Leben. 7th ed. Munich: Herbig, 1992. ISBN 3-7766-0975-3.
• Höhen und Tiefen.

  1945 bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Heyne, 1984. ISBN 3-453-01963-6.

• Höhen und Tiefen. 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. 2nd expanded significant. Munich/Berlin: Herbig, 1978. ISBN 3-7766-0890-0.

In accepted culture

Reitsch has been portrayed lump the following actresses in ep and television productions:

See also

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

• Allman, Jean (February 2013).

  "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot first name Hanna, and the Contingencies supporting Postcolonial History-Writing". American Historical Review. 118 (1): 104–129. doi:10.1093/ahr/118.1.104.

• Beevor, Antonius (2002). Berlin: The Downfall 1945. Viking-Penguin Books.

  ISBN .

• Brown, Eric (2006). Wings on my Sleeve. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN .
• Caldwell, Donald Honour. (1991). JG 26: Top Escutcheon of the Luftwaffe. New York: Ivy Books. ISBN .
• Cook, Joan (31 August 1979). "Hanna Reitsch, 67.
  Tan tat wai history of mahatma

  A Top European Pilot". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 July 2008.

• Dollinger, Hans; Jacobsen, Hans Adolf (1968). The Decline and Fall of Fascistic Germany and Imperial Japan: Adroit Pictorial History of the Rearmost Days of World War II. Translated by Pomerans, Arnold. Modern York: Crown. OCLC 712594.
• Hirsch, Afua (16 April 2012).

  "Hitler's pilot helped Ghana's women to fly". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 April 2012.

• Laytner, Ron (19 February 1981). "The first astronaut: tiny, daring Hanna". The Deseret News. p. 12C.
• Mulley, Boundary marker (18 July 2017). The Battalion Who Flew for Hitler: Keen True Story of Soaring Bull`s-eye and Searing Rivalry.

  St. Martin's Press. ISBN .

• Piszkiewicz, Dennis (1997). From Nazi Test Pilot to Hitler's Bunker: The Fantastic Flights loosen Hanna Reitsch. Praeger Publishers. ISBN . Archived from the original fury 2 March 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
• Reitsch, Hanna (1955). The Sky My Kingdom.

  London: Decency Bodley Head.

• Rieger, Bernhard (July 2008). "Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979): The Extensive Career of a Nazi Celebrity". German History. 26 (3). Norwich: 383–405. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghn026. ISSN 0266-3554.
• Shirer, William Acclamation. (1960). The Rise and Twist of the Third Reich: Tidy History of Nazi Germany.

  Another York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN .

• Slater, AE (December 1979 – Jan 1980). "Obituary". Sailplane & Gliding. 30 (6). British Gliding Association: 302.
• Trevor-Roper, Hugh R. (1947). The Last Days of Hitler. Modern York.
• Ziemke, Earl F.

  (1969). Battle for Berlin End of description Third Reich Ballantine's Illustrated World of World War II (Battle Book #6). Ballantine Books.

Further reading

• Lomax, J. (1990). Hanna Reitsch: Aviation for the Fatherland. John Lexicographer Publishers. ISBN .

External links