Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch (14 page)

Göring was powerful, but imprudent. He could whip a crowd into a fever of patriotic Nazism, but it was all words and so little substance. He had so many responsibilities it was impossible to uphold them all, and though he devoted time to the Luftwaffe in the early years, it slowly drifted from his grasp, until even he was unaware of the failings of his own force. Göring wanted power; he did not want responsibility. He wanted to wine and dine pretty mistresses, show off his fanciful and ludicrous uniforms and collect expensive
objets d’art
(though by the inexpensive means of stealing them). However, as much of a dreamer as he was, Göring was also a realist. At the back of his mind was the nagging doubt that things might not last, and in the final weeks of 1945 Göring was working on his exit strategy at the expense of his former friend. It had been good while it lasted, but Göring was not an idealist and once Nazism turned a fatal corner, he was quick to make his escape.

‘Göring had a kind of charm,’ said V2 designer Wernher von Braun:

In his way, he could even be said to have been likeable. With his perfume and his gaudy uniforms, I thought of him as a Renaissance prince who had been born into the wrong time. He was a re-incarnated Borgia, lover of food and drink, patron of the arts – with a little poison in somebody’s wine at midnight, just for the fun of it.

If the public loved him for the pompous and absurd speeches that buoyed them with confidence, those who knew him found him distasteful, boastful and egotistical. Goebbels in particular despised him, but he was not alone. Hanna Reitsch found Göring impossible and completely out of his depth. She could never forgive his failings towards the Luftwaffe.

The day after meeting Göring, Hanna met Hitler, only her second encounter with him since 1937. She was received in the Chancellery, that grand building of old paintings, glittering ornaments and sturdy, Teutonic furniture. Hitler was to present Hanna with her Iron Cross. He wanted to know about her work on dive brakes and balloon cables, and gave the impression of being knowledgeable on the subject. Hanna liked to talk about her flying, so the conversation was easy enough. Later Hanna spotted one of her friends and couldn’t resist calling out, ‘Guess where I’ve been! Hitler invited me! Come with me and I’ll tell you all about it.’ Then, continuing in a confidential whisper, ‘I find that Hitler a dreadful fellow.’

7

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Hanna was a national heroine, but there was a special piece of her heart reserved for Hirschberg, and her hometown had taken its long-lost little Hanna into its bosom. When news of her award circulated, Hirschberg was determined to celebrate its home-grown celebrity and Hanna was invited to a great reception. Strangely for someone who didn’t mind talking about herself, the thought of the big party and greeting of her hometown worried Hanna and she turned down the invitation. Not to be deterred, the mayor of Hirschberg drove to Berlin and fetched her in person.

Hanna soon realised the clamour she had caused in her old town. All along the roads leading to Hirschberg flags hung from windows to welcome her, flowers were thrown upon the car and more than once the mayor had to stop to allow local schoolchildren to sing to Hanna, shake her hand and give her homemade gifts. Hanna was speechless at the impact she had made. She posed with her parents on the town hall steps while flash bulbs popped on all sides. The Grunau Gliding School welcomed her with enthusiasm, current pupils forming a ‘guard of honour’ for her alongside the local Luftwaffe detachment. It was a far cry from those days when she was teased for being a girl and told to go back to the kitchen. As a brass band played and the streets were filled with people eager for a glimpse of the Führer’s beloved test pilot, Hanna was given a scroll of honorary citizenship, a distinction she shared only with Gerhart Hauptmann, poet and playwright. It was a rather ironic honour to share, as Hauptmann had been a pacifist during the First World War.

Hanna carried on to her old school, where she spotted the faces of old friends among the current students. It was a bittersweet moment. Hanna was not quite 30, but a lot of time seemed to have passed and she found herself looking at these girls with their whole future ahead of them and thinking, ‘I seemed to catch a reflection of my own youth.’ She had to smile, though, at the careful spin her teachers had placed on her academic career. When her award was announced Hanna was held up to the girls as a model student: ‘Do well in your studies and you too could be like Hanna Reitsch. She was industrious, attentive and well-behaved!’ That was far from the truth as the girls had discovered, unfortunately for the teachers, when they had leafed through an old class book. Page after page illustrated Hanna’s failures as a pupil, with many black marks against her name. They were usually given for talking too much, or for being in high spirits during class. The girls were elated; the teachers were not. The offending pages were removed and specially bound as a memento for Hanna (and to ensure future attempts at school propaganda could not be so easily found out!).

The gliding school had one last surprise for Hanna: she was presented with her own Grunau Baby. Since she now flew Dornier 17s, Messerschmitts and Junkers, the Baby looked rather old-hat, but Hanna warmly accepted the gift. In a rare moment of sentiment she christened it ‘Otto Bräutigam’ after the young man she would never see again.

Excitement was soon tainted by tragedy. The first blow was delivered by her old companion and supporter Ernst Udet. For some time he had been struggling and it had exacted a heavy toll. His friends wondered how Udet survived sitting behind a desk day-in and day-out, the idea of this daredevil being constrained to one place was so ludicrous as to seem impossible. Udet was not the sort to sit still; he craved adventure and freedom, and he didn’t like being told what to do. While his friends wondered how he survived, in truth Udet was floundering fast. Udet had virtually stumbled into his new role – for Göring he was a poster-boy, one of the surviving air aces of the First World War, the Udlinger who was well known to the general public as the face of stunt flying and barnstorming. From Göring’s perspective, Udet was great publicity, and if his one-time comrade treated him with a mix of disdain and mild amusement, what did it really matter? Even better, Udet had no intention of getting mixed up in Nazi politics; he was effectively non-political with very little clue as to the way his future would shape up. His only concern was with the world of flying; everything else could take care of itself.

Udet failed to grasp the power games politicians played. He initially worked well with another commander, Erhard Milch, whom he had in fact taught to fly. Göring resented Milch’s power and, in a strategy he and other high-up Nazis would use time and time again, he decided to play off Milch and Udet to undermine the former. Göring reorganised the Luftwaffe so that Udet now reported directly to his commander-in-chief, cutting Milch out of the process. The two men, though once friends, became suspicious of each another and were soon antagonistic. Determined to undermine Milch further, Göring fast-tracked Udet through a series of promotions until by 1939 he was generaloberst.

The new responsibilities and stress of working against others gnawed away at Udet. He was failing fast; his biggest triumph was also his biggest downfall. While in South America he spotted a new type of plane in development – the dive-bomber. Convinced this would be a key weapon in any future Luftwaffe arsenal, he returned to Germany full of news of the amazing craft. The plane could swoop down in a near-vertical dive, pulling up at the last moment to deliver a lethal payload of bombs. At first his enthusiasm was dampened by his colleagues, but he caught the attention of Göring and persuaded him to put funding into the development of the Stuka dive-bomber. When Hitler went on his campaign of invasion it at first appeared that Udet had been completely right about the aircraft. Using the Stukas to bombard cities and populations in a stunning and unearthly raid that levelled the ground, crumbled buildings and set people screaming in terror, the early campaigns were easily won and Udet was flavour of the month.

All too soon the glory came to an end. The Allies studied the Stuka and realised it was vulnerable during its dive; it exposed itself as a highly visible target as it plunged. Before long, Stukas were being shot down before their lethal dive could be completed. Suddenly the wonder weapon was useless. Udet took the full blow of the disaster – he had pushed for Stukas, so clearly he was the one to blame for the Allies out-smarting them.

Udet began to crumble like the buildings his Stukas had once demolished. On a miserable October evening he stood in his villa on the outskirts of Berlin and poured himself a brandy. The Battle of Britain had been another disaster; his Stukas were being annihilated at every turn. All criticism fell on his shoulders and Udet could not take the burden. Walking into his gun room, he selected a revolver from a rack on the wall. He raised his arm, stared down the barrel and pulled the trigger. The quiet room erupted with the roar of the bullet as it spiralled through the air and thudded into a far wall. More bullets followed – bang, bang, bang – until the gun was empty and Udet lowered his arm.

Slumping into a chair, Udet looked at the wall, the bullet holes conjuring ideas in his disillusioned and disconnected mind. He had taken to drinking heavily to cope with the strain of his responsibilities and this spoiled not only his temper, but his aim. Udet was spiralling out of control. ‘I’m doing the best I can in this job, but don’t expect too much from me,’ he had once said. His plea had fallen on deaf ears. Faced with endless challenges thrust at him by Hitler, fighting a war on too many fronts and with not enough forces, Udet was facing defeat after defeat after defeat. But he was not giving up yet. Outside his villa he beamed jolly smiles, visited the airfields and test centres and praised the work being done. He would not spread his depression, not while those under him needed his calm, though fraudulent, comfort.

A year later, the upkeep of the pretence had become too much. Udet’s plans for reinvigorating the Luftwaffe had failed, Göring’s constant mishaps and incompetency were tying his hands. When Göring failed, so too did Udet, and the pressure was becoming unbearable. The higher echelons of the Luftwaffe were now managed by politicians rather than airmen. As a neutral, Udet was rapidly sidelined, and no matter how sensible his project or suggestion, it was ignored as not being part of the political scheme. Göring was no help at all. When Udet went to him with his troubles, he simply smiled and told him to get some rest. Rest? Rest from a perpetual nightmare? Trapped in a hornet’s nest, judged on all sides, pursued by the Gestapo, who distrusted his foreign connections, and promoted far beyond his ability, Udet’s health rapidly deteriorated. On 14 November, just over a year after his target practice in the gun room, an almost identical scene began to play out. Udet rose and dressed in his red dressing gown. He went to the gun room and selected a revolver. Loaded it. He poured out a brandy and went back to bed. Lying very still, he remembered the words he had only recently spoken to a friend: ‘I have no one to fear now. No longer.’ He placed the revolver against his head; none of them could get him now. He pulled the trigger.

Three days later Goebbels had worked the tragic suicide of Udet into a heroic sacrifice. Udet had died, not in bed, not with a revolver to his head, but testing a new weapon. It was a terrible accident that had robbed Germany of one of the greatest pilots of all time. At Udet’s funeral Göring was there in all his glory, puffed up with vanity. ‘Now we must take leave of you,’ he told ‘dear’ Udet in a public speech. Neither Goebbels nor Göring blanched at the hypocrisy, by now they were well used to it.

The shock of Udet’s death tore at Hanna. She had idolised and worshipped him, he had replaced Wolf Hirth as her father figure, the man she could always turn to when she needed advice or help. More than once Udet had personally removed obstacles to enable her to fly. Now he was gone. She blamed Göring. She would blame him even more when she learned the true nature of Udet’s death. Tragedy now seemed to haunt Hanna. As each blow was weathered so another was added to bring her down. Her brother-in-law was killed a month after the death of Udet, leaving Heidi widowed, heavily pregnant and with three small children to look after. Emy rallied round, but even so the shock affected Heidi’s unborn baby. It was born sickly and died within eight months. To add to the growing losses, Kurt’s latest ship was sunk and there was no news to tell them if he had survived or not. All this weighed heavily on the shoulders of Herr Reitsch, who bowed further under the load and sank into a deep depression.

At the same time Hanna found herself at odds with an old flying colleague, Heini Dittmar. It seemed years since they had stood on a ship heading for South America and Hanna had complained to Peter Riedel about Dittmar’s attentions. Riedel was now married to an American and Dittmar was testing early rocket planes. He had grown resentful of the influence Hanna had with the upper levels of the Luftwaffe. ‘Hanna pays more attention to prettying up new gliders with parsley to impress the generals than to pioneering test-flying,’ he complained bitterly. It was an unfair comment. Hanna had risked her life more than once. It was not her fault that as the only female test pilot in the Luftwaffe she was regularly singled out for special praise and used as propaganda – not that she was an unwilling victim, far from it. But Dittmar was jealous of her influence and the way she so readily smoothed over obstacles in her path by speaking to one of the superiors she was friendly with; she would do it for others too, though – it was partly her influence that had enabled Riedel to marry a foreigner in wartime.

There was another reason Dittmar agitated against Hanna; it came in the form of a rocket plane, the Me 163b. When Dr Alexander Lippisch designed the first Me 163, it was following the principles he had been promoting for years that a plane need not have a tail. The Me 163b or Komet had no horizontal tail surfaces, instead it was controlled by elevons, which acted as either ailerons or elevators. The plane almost looked like a cartoon drawn by a child, with its shortened body, stubby nose and rounded girth. In fact, the few surviving pictures of the Komet fail to do it justice; it was not the tiny plane it might appear at first glance. Its wingspan was only a little less than that of the Bf 109, while the actual surface area of the wing was 20 per cent greater. It was its length, or rather its lack of it, that made it look squat. Unlike its elegant cousin the Bf 109, the Komet was more of an egg-shaped flying bubble. It was comical in appearance, but this belied its deadly potential.