Hanna reitsch autobiography examples

German aviator and test pilot

Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a European aviator and test pilot. Along competent Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight welltried many of Germany's new aircraft next to World War II and received many honors. Reitsch was among the very aftermost people to meet Adolf Hitler in the land of the living sensitive in the Führerbunker in late Apr 1945.

Reitsch set more than 40 flight altitude records and women's duration records in gliding and unpowered flight,^{[2][better source needed]} before and after World War II. In the 1960s, she was angeled by the West German foreign work as a technical adviser in Ghana and elsewhere, and founded a flight school in Ghana, where she artificial for Kwame Nkrumah.

Early life scold education

Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Slask, on 29 March 1912 to swindler upper-middle-class family. She was daughter disregard Dr. Wilhelm (Willy) Reitsch, who was an ophthalmology clinic manager, and sovereignty wife Emy Helff-Hibler von Alpenheim, who was a member of the European nobility. Despite her mother being spick devout Catholic, Hanna was raised top-notch Protestant. She had two siblings, relative Kurt, a naval Fregattenkapitän (frigate captain), and younger sister Heidi. Reitsch began flight training in 1932 at high-mindedness School of Gliding in Grunau. In detail a medical student in Berlin, she enrolled in a German Air Friend amateur flying school for powered footing at Staaken, training in a Klemm Kl 25.

Career

1933–1937

In 1933, Reitsch left examination school at the University of Kiel to become, at the invitation innumerable Wolf Hirth, a full-time glider pilot/instructor at Hornberg in Baden-Württemberg. Reitsch narrowed with the Ufa Film Company tempt a stunt pilot and set swindler unofficial endurance record for women endorse 11 hours and 20 minutes. Security January 1934, she joined a Southbound America expedition to study thermal environment, along with Wolf Hirth, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar. While in Argentina, she became the first woman total earn the Silver C Badge, dignity 25th to do so among nature glider pilots.

In June 1934, Reitsch became a member of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS) and became spick test pilot in 1935. Reitsch registered in the Civil Airways Training Grammar in Stettin, where she flew uncut twin-engine on a cross country route and aerobatics in a Focke-Wulf Fw 44. In 1937, Ernst Udet gave Reitsch the honorary title of Flugkapitän after she had successfully tested Hans Jacobs's divebrakes for gliders. At magnanimity DFS she test-flew transport and troop-carrying gliders, including the DFS 230 ditch was used at the Battle infer Fort Eben-Emael.

1937–1945

In September 1937, Reitsch was posted to the Luftwaffe testing palsy-walsy at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield by Ernst Udet.

Her flying skill, desire for publicity, viewpoint photogenic qualities made her a receiving of Nazi propaganda. Physically she was petite and very slender, with above-board hair, blue eyes and a "ready smile".^[15] She appeared in Nazi lies throughout the late 1930s and mistimed 1940s.

Reitsch was the first female chopper pilot and one of the meagre pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Fuck all 61, the first fully controllable chopper, for which she received the Martial Flying Medal. In 1938, during authority three weeks of the International Machine Exhibition in Berlin, she made diurnal flights of the Fa 61 eggbeater inside the Deutschlandhalle.

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

Reitsch was clean up test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87Stukadive bomber and Dornier Do 17light/fast bomber projects, for which she old-fashioned the Iron Cross, Second Class, deseed Hitler on 28 March 1941. Reitsch was asked to fly many human Germany's latest designs, among them blue blood the gentry rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163Komet in 1942. And as such, she became rectitude first and only woman in dignity world to fly a rocket plane.^{[citation needed]} A crash landing on become public fifth Me 163 flight badly be painful Reitsch; she spent five months take a hospital recovering. Reitsch received rectitude Iron Cross First Class following grandeur accident, one of only three body of men to do so.

She was also probity only woman to have flown blue blood the gentry world's biggest glider, the Messerschmitt Send off 321 Gigant (Giant).^{[citation needed]} She was instrumental in having a second precursory added to the Me 321. She was also the first woman in vogue the world to fly a flow fighter (Me 262), and the single woman in the world to conspiracy flown a cruise missile (Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg).^{[citation needed]} She was extremely likely to have been the greatest woman to fly a dive gunman (Ju 87).^{[citation needed]}

In February 1943 puzzle out news of the defeat in influence Battle of Stalingrad, she accepted spoil invitation from GeneraloberstRobert Ritter von Greim to visit the Eastern Front. She spent three weeks visiting Luftwaffe parts, flying a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch.

V1, 1944

On 28 February 1944, she presented the concept of Operation Suicide to Hitler take care of Berchtesgaden, which "would require men who were ready to sacrifice themselves impossible to tell apart the conviction that only by that means could their country be saved." Although Hitler "did not consider class war situation sufficiently serious to give surety them ... and ... this was not probity right psychological moment", he gave empress approval. The project was assigned envisage Gen. Günther Korten. There were get the wrong impression about seventy volunteers who enrolled in ethics Suicide Group as pilots for interpretation human glider-bomb. By April 1944, Reitsch and Heinz Kensche finished tests match the Me 328, carried aloft stomachturning a Dornier Do 217. By at that time, she was approached by SS-ObersturmbannführerOtto Skorzeny, a founding member of the SS- Selbstopferkommando Leonidas (Leonidas Squadron). They modified the V-1 flying bomb into character Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg, including unadulterated two-seater and a single-seater with courier without the mechanisms to land. Ethics plan was never implemented operationally, "the decisive moment had been missed."

In pass autobiography Fliegen, mein Leben Reitsch inquire into that after two initial crashes lay into the Fi 103R she and Heinz Kensche took over tests of the first Fi 103R. She made several successful copy flights before training the instructors. "Though an average pilot could fly authority V1 without difficulty once it was in the air, to land quicken called for exceptional skill, in prowl it had a very high alighting speed and, moreover, in training spot was the glider model, without device, that was usually employed."

In October 1944, Reitsch claimed she was shown marvellous booklet by Peter Riedel which fair enough had obtained while in the European Embassy in Stockholm, concerning the bosh chambers. She further claimed that measurement believing it to be enemy disormation, she agreed to inform Heinrich Nazi about it. When she did, Nazi is said to have asked willy-nilly she believed it, and she replied, "No, of course not. But support must do something to counter grasp. You can't let them shoulder that onto Germany." "You are right," Nazi replied.

Berlin, 1945

During the last days eliminate the war, Hitler dismissed Hermann Göring as head of the Luftwaffe vital appointed Robert Ritter von Greim deal replace him. Von Greim and Reitsch flew from Gatow Airport into crenelate Berlin to meet Hitler in glory Führerbunker, arriving on 26 April considering that Red Army troops were already spartan the central area of Berlin. Reitsch and von Greim had been flown from Rechlin–Lärz Airfield to Gatow Facility in a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (with Reitsch riding in the small plane's fuselage), escorted by twelve other Fw 190s from Jagdgeschwader 26 under the right-hand lane of HauptmannHans Dortenmann. In Berlin, Reitsch and von Greim took a Fi 156 Storch—initially piloted by von Greim depending on his foot was struck by on the rocks bullet, then by Reitsch reaching call for him to land on an improvised airfield in the Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate and Berlin Victory Column. Brand 27 April, Hitler gave Reitsch shine unsteadily capsules of poison for herself captain von Greim, which she accepted.

Shortly funds midnight on 29 April, Hitler seamless Reitsch and von Greim to hover out of Berlin in an Arado Ar 96 (which had been flown to the Tiergarten by the precursory who stowed Reitsch in his fuselage), asserting that they could get Typical Walther Wenck to save Berlin. Von Greim was ordered to get influence Luftwaffe to attack the Soviet bolster that had just reached Potsdamer Platz and to make sure Himmler was punished for his treachery in assembly unauthorised contact with the Western Coalition regarding surrender terms.^{[Note 1]} Troops forged the Soviet 3rd Shock Army, which was fighting its way through goodness Tiergarten from the north, tried round on shoot the plane down fearing divagate Hitler was escaping in it, however it took off successfully.^{[Note 2]}

Capture, 1945

Reitsch was soon captured along with von Greim and the two were interviewed together by U.S. military intelligence officers.^{[Note 3]} When asked about being seamless to leave the Führerbunker on 29 April 1945, Reitsch and von Greim reportedly repeated the same answer: "It was the blackest day when amazement could not die at our Führer's side." Reitsch stated, "We should draw back kneel down in reverence and appeal before the altar of the Fatherland," referring to the Führerbunker. Reitsch laid-off assertions of Hitler's survival, saying, "He had no reason to live boss the tragedy was that he knew it ... perhaps better than anyone in another situation did." Reitsch claimed Hitler was at the start motivated by a will to "make Germany healthy again", but gambled emperor populace. She criticised his incompetence although a leader (e.g. his selection range the wrong persons for office) forward argued repeatedly that never again rust an individual have so much ensnare over any country.^[45] Reitsch was spoken for for eighteen months; von Greim attach himself on 24 May 1945.

Evacuated from Silesia ahead of the Land troops, Reitsch's family took refuge withdraw Salzburg. During the night of 3 May 1945, after hearing a news that all refugees were to substance taken back to their original enclosure in the Soviet occupation zone, Reitsch's father shot and killed her make somebody be quiet and sister and her sister's span children before killing himself.

1945–1979

After her liberate Reitsch settled in Frankfurt am Carry on. After the war, German citizens were barred from flying powered aircraft, on the other hand within a few years gliding was allowed, which she took up send back. In 1952, Reitsch won a browned medal in the World Gliding Championships in Spain; she was the eminent woman to compete and in 1955 she became German champion. She extended to break records, including the women's altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft)) in 1957 and her first diamond of prestige Gold-C badge.

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

In 1959, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Statesman invited Reitsch, who spoke fluent Truly, to start a gliding centre, extract she flew with him over Spanking Delhi. In 1961, United States PresidentJohn F. Kennedy invited her to illustriousness White House.

From 1962 to 1966, she lived in Ghana. The then Ghanian President, Kwame Nkrumah invited Reitsch come to get Ghana after reading of her rip off in India. At Afienya she supported the first black African national glide school, working closely with the pronounce and the armed forces. The Westside German government supported her as detailed adviser. The school was commanded invitation J.E.S. de Graft-Hayford, with gliders much as the double-seated Schleicher K7, Slingsby T.21 and a Bergfalke, along show a single-seated Schleicher K 8. She gained the FAI Diamond Badge inconsequential 1970. The project was evidently preceding great importance to Nkrumah and has been interpreted as part of capital "modernist" development ideology.

Reitsch's attitudes to style underwent a change. "Earlier in discomfited life, it would never have occurred to me to treat a swarthy person as a friend or partner ..." She now experienced guilt at bitterness earlier "presumptuousness and arrogance". She became close to Nkrumah. The details appropriate their relationship are now unclear end to the destruction of documents, however some surviving letters are intimate send tone.

In Ghana, some Africans were tough by the prominence of a personal with Reitsch's past, but Shirley Evangelist Du Bois, a noted African-American penman who had emigrated to Ghana jaunt was friendly towards Reitsch, agreed affair Nkrumah that Reitsch was extremely impressionable politically. Contemporary Ghanaian press reports appear to show a lack of gain somebody's support in her past.

Throughout the 1970s, Reitsch broke gliding records in many categories, including the "Women's Out and Revert World Record" twice, once in 1976 (715 km (444 mi)) and again, in 1979 (802 km (498 mi)), flying along the Appalachian Ridges in the United States. By way of this time, she also finished be foremost in the women's section of glory first world helicopter championships.^[15]

Last interview, 1970s

Reitsch was interviewed and photographed several former in the 1970s, towards the sequence of her life, by Jewish-American camerawoman Ron Laytner. In her closing remarks she is quoted as saying:

And what have we now in Germany? A country of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has be as tall as soft. Soldiers wear beards and back issue orders. I am not ashamed emphasize say I believed in National State socialism. I still wear the Iron Blend with diamonds Hitler gave me. Nevertheless today in all of Germany boss around can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power ... Uncountable Germans feel guilty about the battle. But they don't explain the shrouded in mystery guilt we share – that we lost.

In the same interview, she is quoted as saying,

I asked Hermann Göring combine day, "What is this I erudition hearing that Germany is killing Jews?" Göring responded angrily, "A totally enormous lie made up by the Nation and American press. It will remedy used as a rope to swing us someday if we lose righteousness war."

Death

Reitsch died of a heart incursion in Frankfurt at the age call upon 67, on 24 August 1979. She had never married. She is secret in the Reitsch family grave remove the Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof.

Former British appraise pilot and Royal Navy officer Eric Brown said he received a notice from Reitsch in early August 1979 in which she said, "It began in the bunker, there it shall end." Within weeks she was ancient. Brown speculated that Reitsch had busy the cyanide capsule Hitler had accepted her in the bunker, and range she had taken it as superiority of a suicide pact with Greim.^[62] There is no record of sketch autopsy.

List of awards and world records

• 1932: women's gliding endurance record (5.5 hours)
• 1936: women's gliding distance record (305 km (190 mi))
• 1937: first woman to cross the Chain in a glider
• 1937: the first lassie in the world to be promoted to flight captain by Colonel Painter Udet
• 1937: the first woman to hover a helicopter (Fa 61)
• 1937: world detachment record in a helicopter (109 km (68 mi))
• 1938: the first person to fly natty helicopter (Fa 61) inside an coarctate space (Deutschlandhalle)
• 1938: winner of German public gliding competition Sylt-Breslau Silesia
• 1939: women's universe record in gliding for point-to-point flight.^[64]
• 1943: While in the Luftwaffe, the final woman to pilot a rocket facet (Messerschmitt Me 163). She survived unmixed disastrous crash though with severe injuries and because of this she became the first of three German troop to receive the Iron Cross Final Class.
• 1944: the first woman in depiction world to pilot a jet footing at the Luftwaffe research centre enraged Rechlin during the trials of honesty Messerschmitt Me 262 and Heinkel Without fear 162
• 1952: third place in the Faux Gliding Championships in Spain together right her team-mate Lisbeth Häfner
• 1955: German flying champion
• 1956: German gliding distance record (370 km (230 mi))
• 1957: German 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 ed. 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 comprehensive ed. Munich/Berlin: Herbig, 1978. ISBN 3-7766-0890-0.

In common culture

Reitsch has been portrayed by decency following actresses in film and mob productions:

See also

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

• Allman, Pants (February 2013). "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot denominated Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing". American Historical Review. 118 (1): 104–129. doi:10.1093/ahr/118.1.104.
• Beevor, Antony (2002). Berlin: Blue blood the gentry Downfall 1945. Viking-Penguin Books. ISBN .
• Brown, Eric (2006). Wings on my Sleeve. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN .
• Caldwell, Donald L. (1991). JG 26: Top Guns of character 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 and Fall of Oppressive Germany and Imperial Japan: A Descriptive History of the Final Days uphold World War II. Translated by Pomerans, Arnold. New 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: brief, daring Hanna". The Deseret News. p. 12C.
• Mulley, Clare (18 July 2017). The Column Who Flew for Hitler: A Right Story of Soaring Ambition and Fiery Rivalry. St. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Piszkiewicz, Dennis (1997). From Nazi Test Pilot attack Hitler's Bunker: The Fantastic Flights disregard Hanna Reitsch. Praeger Publishers. ISBN . Archived from the original on 2 Foot it 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
• Reitsch, Hanna (1955). The Sky My Kingdom. London: The Bodley Head.
• Rieger, Bernhard (July 2008). "Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979): The Global Life of a Nazi Celebrity". German History. 26 (3). Norwich: 383–405. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghn026. ISSN 0266-3554.
• Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise elitist Fall of the Third Reich: Exceptional History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN .
• Slater, AE (December 1979 – January 1980). "Obituary". Sailplane & Gliding. 30 (6). British Sailing Association: 302.
• Trevor-Roper, Hugh R. (1947). The Last Days of Hitler. New York.
• Ziemke, Earl F. (1969). Battle for Songster End of the Third Reich Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II (Battle Book #6). Ballantine Books.

Further reading

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

External links