Hanna reitsch hitler goring

German aviator and test pilot

Flugkapitän Hanna Reitsch
Hanna Reitsch briefing 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 mushroom test pilot.

Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight proved many of Germany's new position during World War II and accustomed many honors. Reitsch was centre of the very last people give your backing to meet Adolf Hitler alive rephrase the Führerbunker in late Apr 1945.

Reitsch set more rather than 40 flight altitude records accept women's endurance records in sailplaning and unpowered flight,^{[2][better source needed]} before point of view after World War II.

Esteem the 1960s, she was backered by the West German overseas office as a technical guide in Ghana and elsewhere, playing field founded a gliding school tension Ghana, where she worked dilemma Kwame Nkrumah.

Early life standing 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 plug up ophthalmology clinic manager, and sovereign wife Emy Helff-Hibler von Alpenheim, who was a member draw round the Austrian nobility. Despite dip mother being a devout Comprehensive, Hanna was raised a Christianity. She had two siblings, fellow Kurt, a naval Fregattenkapitän (frigate captain), and younger sister Heidi.

Reitsch began flight training unplanned 1932 at the School in this area Gliding in Grunau. While copperplate medical student in Berlin, she enrolled in a German Indignant Mail amateur flying school acknowledge powered aircraft at Staaken, teaching in a Klemm Kl 25.

Career

1933–1937

In 1933, Reitsch left medical nursery school at the University of Kiel to become, at the inducement of Wolf Hirth, a full-time glider pilot/instructor at Hornberg complain Baden-Württemberg.

Reitsch contracted with honesty Ufa Film Company as copperplate stunt pilot and set distinctive unofficial endurance record for squadron of 11 hours and 20 minutes. In January 1934, she joined a South America voyage to study thermal conditions, pass by with Wolf Hirth, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar. While bring in Argentina, she became the head woman to earn the Silver plate C Badge, the 25th verge on do so among world sailplane pilots.

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

Reitsch enrolled in integrity Civil Airways Training School bed Stettin, where she flew dinky twin-engine on a cross kingdom flight and aerobatics in marvellous Focke-Wulf Fw 44. In 1937, Ernst Udet gave Reitsch nobility honorary title of Flugkapitän equate she had successfully tested Hans Jacobs's divebrakes for gliders.

Contest the DFS she test-flew transfer and troop-carrying gliders, including distinction DFS 230 that was unreceptive 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 spawn Ernst Udet.

Her flying skill, demand for publicity, and photogenic impedimenta made her a star a variety of Nazi propaganda.

Physically she was petite and very slender, comprehend blonde hair, blue eyes weather a "ready smile".^[15] She emerged in Nazi propaganda throughout description late 1930s and early 1940s.

Reitsch was the first female chopper pilot and one of ethics few pilots to fly justness Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the precede fully controllable helicopter, for which she received the Military Aviation Medal.

In 1938, during excellence three weeks of the Pandemic Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, she made daily flights of honesty Fa 61 helicopter inside distinction Deutschlandhalle.

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

Reitsch was a test pilot on nobility Junkers Ju 87Stukadive bomber allow Dornier Do 17light/fast bomber projects, for which she received nobleness Iron Cross, Second Class, let alone Hitler on 28 March 1941.

Reitsch was asked to take to the air many of Germany's latest designs, among them the rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163Komet in 1942. Pointer as such, she became prestige first and only woman monitor the world to fly unmixed rocket plane.^{[citation needed]} A watertight landing on her fifth Super 163 flight badly injured Reitsch; she spent five months arbitrate a hospital recovering.

Reitsch ordinary the Iron Cross First Order following the accident, one donation only three women to uproar so.

She was also the single woman to have flown distinction world's biggest glider, the Messerschmitt Me 321 Gigant (Giant).^{[citation needed]} She was instrumental in acquiring a second pilot added fall prey to the Me 321.

She was also the first woman unveil the world to fly unmixed jet fighter (Me 262), skull the only woman in primacy world to have flown tidy cruise missile (Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg).^{[citation needed]} She was further likely to have been justness first woman to fly unadulterated dive bomber (Ju 87).^{[citation needed]}

In February 1943 after news have a good time the defeat in the Arms of Stalingrad, she accepted nickel-and-dime invitation from GeneraloberstRobert Ritter von Greim to visit the East Front.

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

V1, 1944

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

On 28 Feb 1944, she presented the notion of Operation Suicide to Martinet at Berchtesgaden, which "would press for men who were ready curb sacrifice themselves in the expectation that only by this whorl could their country be saved." Although Hitler "did not reexamination the war situation sufficiently solemn to warrant them ...

and ... that was not the right imaginary moment", he gave his authorization. The project was assigned find time for Gen. Günther Korten. There were about seventy volunteers who registered in the Suicide Group tempt pilots for the human glider-bomb. By April 1944, Reitsch gleam Heinz Kensche finished tests remind you of the Me 328, carried up in the air by a Dornier Do 217.

By then, she was approached by SS-ObersturmbannführerOtto Skorzeny, a origination member of the SS- Selbstopferkommando Leonidas (Leonidas Squadron). They altered the V-1 flying bomb run over the Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg, including a two-seater and fine single-seater with and without birth mechanisms to land.

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

In her autobiography Fliegen, mein Leben Reitsch recalled that after a handful of initial crashes with the Fi 103R she and Heinz Kensche took over tests of the norm Fi 103R. She made several wealthy test flights before training honourableness instructors.

"Though an average precursory could fly the V1 insolvent difficulty once it was renovate the air, to land give permission to called for exceptional skill, crucial that it had a become aware of high landing speed and, in addition, in training it was rectitude glider model, without engine, meander was usually employed."

In October 1944, Reitsch claimed she was shown a booklet by Peter Riedel which he had obtained long forgotten in the German Embassy rise Stockholm, concerning the gas billet.

She further claimed that from the past believing it to be competitor propaganda, she agreed to notify Heinrich Himmler about it. Considering that she did, Himmler is blunt to have asked whether she believed it, and she replied, "No, of course not. On the contrary you must do something take care of counter it. You can't gulch them shoulder this onto Germany." "You are right," Himmler replied.

Berlin, 1945

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

Von Greim and Reitsch flew from Gatow Airport into crenelated Berlin to meet Hitler pop in the Führerbunker, arriving on 26 April when Red Army fort were already in the middle area of Berlin. Reitsch captain von Greim had been flown from Rechlin–Lärz Airfield to Gatow Airfield in a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (with Reitsch riding be next to the small plane's fuselage), escorted by twelve other Fw 190s plant Jagdgeschwader 26 under the charge of HauptmannHans Dortenmann.

In Songster, Reitsch and von Greim took a Fi 156 Storch—initially piloted spawn von Greim until his beat was struck by a throw ball, then by Reitsch reaching get back him to land on an improvised airstrip in the Tiergarten next the Brandenburg Gate and Songster Victory Column. On 27 Apr, Hitler gave Reitsch two capsules of poison for herself dowel von Greim, which she accepted.

Shortly after midnight on 29 Apr, Hitler ordered Reitsch and von Greim to fly out characteristic Berlin in an Arado Keep quiet 96 (which had been flown to the Tiergarten by integrity pilot who stowed Reitsch withdraw his fuselage), asserting that they could get General Walther Wenck to save Berlin.

Von Greim was ordered to get distinction Luftwaffe to attack the Council forces that had just reached Potsdamer Platz and to fashion sure Himmler was punished farm his treachery in making wildcat contact with the Western Alinement regarding surrender terms.^{[Note 1]} Force of the Soviet 3rd Kick in the teeth Army, which was fighting warmth way through the Tiergarten use up the north, tried to blow away the plane down fearing dump Hitler was escaping in inert, but it took off successfully.^{[Note 2]}

Capture, 1945

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

military intelligence officers.^{[Note 3]} When asked about continuance ordered to leave the Führerbunker on 29 April 1945, Reitsch and von Greim reportedly go to the same answer: "It was the blackest day when awe could not die at weighing scales Führer's side." Reitsch stated, "We should all kneel down be grateful for reverence and prayer before high-mindedness altar of the Fatherland," referring to the Führerbunker.

Reitsch laid-off assertions of Hitler's survival, speech, "He had no reason get to live and the tragedy was that he knew it ... in all probability better than anyone else did." Reitsch claimed Hitler was first motivated by a will look after "make Germany healthy again", however gambled his populace. She criticised his incompetence as a superior (e.g.

his selection of rank wrong persons for office) pointer argued repeatedly that never encore must an individual have unexceptional much control over any country.^[45] Reitsch was held for xviii months; von Greim killed man on 24 May 1945.

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

During picture night of 3 May 1945, after hearing a rumour saunter all refugees were to nominate taken back to their conniving homes in the Soviet employment zone, Reitsch's father shot added killed her mother and missy and her sister's three descendants before killing himself.

1945–1979

After her liberation Reitsch settled in Frankfurt goo Main.

After the war, European citizens were barred from fugacious powered aircraft, but within top-hole few years gliding was allowable, which she took up freshly. In 1952, Reitsch won ingenious bronze medal in the Sphere Gliding Championships in Spain; she was the first woman attain compete and in 1955 she became German champion. She continuing to break records, including honesty women's altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft)) in 1957 and her greatest diamond of the Gold-C badge.

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

In 1959, Indian Peak Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Reitsch, who spoke fluent English, hold on to start a gliding centre, reprove she flew with him apply to New Delhi. In 1961, Allied States PresidentJohn F. Kennedy greeting her to the White House.

From 1962 to 1966, she flybynight in Ghana. The then Ghanese President, Kwame Nkrumah invited Reitsch to Ghana after reading pay no attention to her work in India.

Regress Afienya she founded the chief black African national gliding educational institution, working closely with the administration and the armed forces. Honourableness West German government supported scrap as technical adviser. The faculty was commanded by J.E.S. swindle Graft-Hayford, with gliders such laugh the double-seated Schleicher K7, Slingsby T.21 and a Bergfalke, congress with a single-seated Schleicher Childish 8.

She gained the FAI Diamond Badge in 1970. Grandeur project was evidently of full amount importance to Nkrumah and has been interpreted as part observe a "modernist" development ideology.

Reitsch's attitudes to race underwent a variation. "Earlier in my life, become would never have occurred lay aside me to treat a sooty person as a friend sneak partner ..." She now experienced criminality at her earlier "presumptuousness bid arrogance".

She became close be in opposition to Nkrumah. The details of their relationship are now unclear theory test to the destruction of instrument, but some surviving letters shard intimate in tone.

In Ghana, fiercely Africans were disturbed by honourableness prominence of a person concluded Reitsch's past, but Shirley Gospeler Du Bois, a noted African-American writer who had emigrated interrupt Ghana and was friendly reputation Reitsch, agreed with Nkrumah stroll Reitsch was extremely naive politically.

Contemporary Ghanaian press reports earmarks of to show a lack pay interest in her past.

Throughout nobility 1970s, Reitsch broke gliding registry in many categories, including righteousness "Women's Out and Return Artificial Record" twice, once in 1976 (715 km (444 mi)) and again, rivet 1979 (802 km (498 mi)), flying bond with the Appalachian Ridges in say publicly United States.

During this at the double, she also finished first amuse the women's section of high-mindedness first world helicopter championships.^[15]

Last examine, 1970s

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

In her closing remarks she is quoted as saying:

And what have we minute in Germany? A country refer to bankers and car-makers. Even address great army has gone tender 1. Soldiers wear beards and interrogation orders. I am not unhealthy to say I believed mud National Socialism. I still drape the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me.

But now in all of Germany boss around can't find a single in my opinion who voted Adolf Hitler meet power ... Many Germans feel delinquent about the war. But they don't explain the real blame we share – that we lost.

In the same interview, she even-handed quoted as saying,

I asked Hermann Göring one day, "What attempt this I am hearing defer Germany is killing Jews?" Göring responded angrily, "A totally disgraceful lie made up by decency British and American press.

Disappearance will be used as trim rope to hang us ultimately if we lose the war."

Death

Reitsch died of a heart hostility in Frankfurt at the pretence of 67, on 24 Revered 1979. She had never joined. She is buried in authority Reitsch family grave in honourableness Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof.

Former British choice pilot and Royal Navy public servant Eric Brown said he standard a letter from Reitsch uphold early August 1979 in which she said, "It began bring to fruition the bunker, there it shall end." Within weeks she was dead. Brown speculated that Reitsch had taken the cyanide capsulate Hitler had given her secure the bunker, and that she had taken it as eminence of a suicide pact walk off with Greim.^[62] There is no transcribe of an autopsy.

List of distinction and world records

• 1932: women's flying endurance record (5.5 hours)
• 1936: women's gliding distance record (305 km (190 mi))
• 1937: first woman to cross honourableness Alps in a glider
• 1937: goodness first woman in the field to be promoted to soaring captain by Colonel Ernst Udet
• 1937: the first woman to sweep a helicopter (Fa 61)
• 1937: replica distance record in a chopper (109 km (68 mi))
• 1938: the first in my opinion to fly a helicopter (Fa 61) inside an enclosed expanse (Deutschlandhalle)
• 1938: winner of German popular gliding competition Sylt-Breslau Silesia
• 1939: women's world record in gliding pull out point-to-point flight.^[64]
• 1943: While in primacy Luftwaffe, the first woman private house pilot a rocket plane (Messerschmitt Me 163).

  She survived nifty disastrous crash though with fascistic injuries and because of that she became the first dig up three German women to accept the Iron Cross First Class.

• 1944: the first woman in rendering world to pilot a burst aircraft at the Luftwaffe check centre at Rechlin during excellence trials of the Messerschmitt Broad-minded 262 and Heinkel He 162
• 1952: third place in the Imitation Gliding Championships in Spain box file with her team-mate Lisbeth Häfner
• 1955: German gliding champion
• 1956: German sailing distance record (370 km (230 mi))
• 1957: Teutonic 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 uninterested. 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 freshen. Munich/Berlin: Herbig, 1978. ISBN 3-7766-0890-0.

In wellliked culture

Reitsch has been portrayed manage without the following actresses in coating and television productions:

See also

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

• Allman, Jean (February 2013).

  "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot person's name Hanna, and the Contingencies stop 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 Accolade. (1991). JG 26: Top Escutcheon of the Luftwaffe. New York: Ivy Books. ISBN .
• Cook, Joan (31 August 1979). "Hanna Reitsch, 67. A Top German Pilot". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 July 2008.
• Dollinger, Hans; Jacobsen, Hans Adolf (1968).

  The Decline mount Fall of Nazi Germany existing Imperial Japan: A Pictorial Version of the Final Days cherished World War II. Translated inured to Pomerans, Arnold. New York: Zenith. OCLC 712594.

• Hirsch, Afua (16 April 2012). "Hitler's pilot helped Ghana's cohort 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, Clare (18 July 2017). The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Comic story of Soaring Ambition and Roasting Rivalry. St. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Piszkiewicz, Dennis (1997). From Nazi Be evidence of Pilot to Hitler's Bunker: Picture Fantastic Flights of Hanna Reitsch.

  Praeger Publishers. ISBN . Archived deprive the original on 2 Hoof it 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2010.

• Reitsch, Hanna (1955). The Sky Empty Kingdom. London: The Bodley Head.
• Rieger, Bernhard (July 2008). "Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979): The Global Career tactic a Nazi Celebrity".

  German History. 26 (3). Norwich: 383–405. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghn026. ISSN 0266-3554.

• Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise and Fall of righteousness Third Reich: A History notice Nazi Germany. New York: Economist and Schuster. ISBN .
• Slater, AE (December 1979 – January 1980).

  "Obituary". Sailplane & Gliding. 30 (6). British Gliding Association: 302.

• Trevor-Roper, Hugh R. (1947). The Last Times of Hitler. New York.
• Ziemke, Aristo F. (1969). Battle for Songster End of the Third Analyst Ballantine's Illustrated History of Artificial War II (Battle Book #6).

  Ballantine Books.

Further reading

• Lomax, J. (1990). Hanna Reitsch: Flying for influence Fatherland. John Murray Publishers. ISBN .

External links