Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch (17 page)

Asking Himmler to show some respect to other religions! Now, better than ever before, Hanna demonstrated her complete naïvety and her misconception that everyone could be a better person, should they only listen to reason. Himmler was naturally unmoved. When Hanna spoke on to a subject she felt passionately about – Himmler’s opinion that women were only useful for reproduction – it was plain she was getting heated and Himmler attempted to calm her. He had been misunderstood, he stated plainly, he too was concerned. Hanna had heard rumours about the SS that could potentially undermine German morality. She may have meant the proviso that had been issued enabling illegitimate children of SS men to be recognised legally, and the general policy that SS soldiers breed as profusely as possible so as to populate Germany with the right sort of person. Himmler shook his head; all wrong, all wrong, he said. Naturally he was lying, but he wove a web around Hanna, leaving her believing his words had been misused and the rumours she had heard were malicious.

Hanna was easily swayed all her life. A kind explanation would be to deem her very forgiving and determined to like everybody. A less kind one would be that playing the Nazi game enabled Hanna to continue flying, and thus it was best to ignore the worst excesses of the party. A plain example of this came in 1944. Peter Riedel, briefly back in Germany, found Hanna at a flying club and threw a booklet down on the table before her. ‘If you want to know what is going on in Germany, look at this! This is what we find on our desks in the Embassy.’ The booklet told of the gas chambers in use in concentration camps, now notorious, but for much of the war not known to most Germans, or, if known, not believed. ‘And you believe this?’ Hanna asked angrily. ‘In the First World War, enemy propaganda smeared the German soldier with every imaginable barbarity – and now it has come to gas-chambers!’

Hanna genuinely believed the stories were no more than Allied propaganda. Such awful cruelty was unthinkable to her, thus, she reasoned, so it must be abhorrent to everyone, especially her gracious and kindly Führer. Riedel was somewhat relieved at her vehemence; he too had been struggling to believe the stories and was desperately hoping someone would tell him he was wrong. ‘I’ll believe that from you,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you’d best inform Himmler.’ Hanna agreed. She arranged a meeting with Himmler and presented him with the booklet. ‘What do you say to this, Reichsführer?’ Himmler flicked through the pages. It was all very familiar to him, but he glanced up casually and with a quiet smile said, ‘And you believe this, Frau Hanna?’ ‘No, of course not,’ Hanna responded loyally. ‘But you must do something to counter it. You can’t let them shoulder this onto Germany.’ Himmler laid down the booklet and looked Hanna directly in the eye. ‘You are right,’ he said, and the meeting was at an end.

An almost fully recovered Hanna went to Peenemünde, the German rocket test centre, in time for its first air raid. Peenemünde had so far avoided being bombed, but its luck would not last. However, for three years there had been so many false warnings that the scientists, mechanics and various staff on the site had become complacent when the air-raid sirens went off. Everyone worked long hours and on the night of 17 August 1943 few were in bed before midnight. Wernher von Braun was heading for his quarters under a brightly moonlit sky when the early warning siren sounded. He barely heard it. For too long that siren had gone off to announce that Allied aircraft had been spotted flying towards Germany without there ever being any subsequent attack. The planes would fly across Germany, aiming for Berlin. Peenemünde would shield itself in a cloak of darkness; lights were turned out and the anti-aircraft batteries manned, though there was a standing order never to fire unless the test site was directly attacked. For all anyone knew, Peenemünde had yet to be identified as a worthwhile target for the British.

Von Braun had not been long in bed when the next siren sounded. This one summoned the weary scientists and workers to the concrete shelters. Machinists only had moments to shut down their workstations, close valves to prevent fire and hurry down dark streets to the nearest shelter. After fifteen minutes an officer would close the steel door, and those left outside had to take their chances with the Allied bombs. No one was that concerned, however, as they ran in the darkness. If someone was missing it was not deemed greatly urgent, they would probably just get a reprimand in the morning. That Hanna Reitsch failed to respond to the siren went unnoticed.

At the shelter von Braun reached there was no rush to close the steel door. Instead he stood with fellow scientists watching a low fog rolling in across the test site. A scattered blackout squad was rushing around checking for forgotten lights and in general enjoying a little action after the usual tedium of the day. Von Braun was just beginning to think of his bed and the heavy tiredness that was weighing him down when the first sign came that this was not to be an ordinary night. Somewhere high up a plane dropped a flare. Von Braun and his companions watched as the bright lights descended, fluttering outwards to give the impression of a vivid, Christmas tree shape hanging in the sky. There was no doubt now that false warnings were in the past; the Allies had decided to take out Peenemünde.

Complacency dissolved instantly. As the anti-aircraft batteries started to bark at the swarming planes, at last being allowed a taste of action, von Braun and his companions jumped into their shelter and pulled the heavy door shut. The loud explosions began almost at once. A rain of bombs crashed onto the site and violent, thunderous crashes echoed within the shelters. The walls shuddered and people clapped their hands over their ears as the world erupted in fury. As hard as the anti-aircraft crews worked, the planes slipped among them and delivered their horrendous payload. The raid lasted only minutes; it was over almost as soon as it had begun. Their bombs dropped, the Allied planes turned for home. The guns continued to squeal into the night, but soon there was nothing to aim at.

When Wernher von Braun stepped out of his shelter he looked upon the destruction. The light fog was now replaced by thick smoke. Fires lit up buildings, flames licking at walls and windows. Acrid smoke hit the back of the throat, making people cough and eyes stream. The inferno before von Braun was a scene he could never forget. As he headed out with a team of volunteers to recover what he could from the debris – important files, papers and test parts – more bombers were heard approaching. Between search operations and attempts to damp down fires, the men had to flee into the nearby woods as more bombs hit the site now lit-up like a beacon. It was plain the Allies were determined to leave nothing standing.

The local fire brigade tried to come to the assistance of the beleaguered base and surrounding town. In between air raids they attempted to bring their engines down roads now completely destroyed or blocked with burning debris. Loose electric wires sparked dangerously all over the place, combining with water to make a horrific barrier to helpers. Those who avoided electrocution choked on the black, stinking smoke, collapsing where they stood. Somehow people kept moving. A first aid station was created and canteen staff valiantly worked in the heat and destruction to bring out fresh soup and coffee to the men.

Slowly the night drew to a close. A sole surviving plane enabled von Braun to make an aerial survey of the site and to realise despondently that the British had achieved the close to complete destruction of Peenemünde. Using maps and aerial photographs the RAF attack had been meticulously planned, the main targets established and accurately bombed. Six hundred bombers had dropped around 3 million pounds of high explosive and killed close to 800 people, including many important scientists. V2 production could no longer continue at the site: aside from a lack of men, machines and supplies following the raid, the British now knew where to look and would keep an eye on Peenemünde and thwart any attempts to rebuild. Wernher von Braun was relocated. Peenemünde would continue as a research and test facility only.

‘I’m terribly ashamed to say I slept through the whole night,’ Hanna later confessed:

They forgot I slept in the house where the … officers slept and when there was the siren I didn’t hear it, I slept so deeply and everybody thought the others had fetched Hanna. So I was quite alone in this house sleeping deeply, I didn’t hear anything and the next morning I was so ashamed. I thought, oh it’s misty, but it was the smoke from things burning and you see the main attack was East and I was in the West. It was not so near.

February 1943 saw the disaster of Stalingrad. Five months of close-quarters fighting and a bombing campaign reduced the Russian city to rubble, and still the Germans found themselves ultimately overrun and defeated. As Germany was awaiting the spring, part of its army was trapped in the ruined city, surrounded on all sides by the Russians, low on supplies, almost out of ammunition and utterly exhausted. There was no hope left for them as Hitler shrieked from safe quarters that they must continue to fight to the last man, to the last bullet. A pointless waste, but Hitler had lost all perspective and he would rather lose his army entirely in the fight than see it come home defeated. In the end those troops that remained surrendered, having lost all faith in their Führer.

What few at the time realised was that the Russians’ triumph was partly down to bands of valiant and courageous women acting as soldiers and as pilots. In other circumstances Hanna would have been impressed to know that some of the best fighter pilots coming out of Russia were female and they were making their mark on German aircraft. In this Russia was unique. Women in Germany, France, Britain and America could not expect to fly as part of squadrons, no matter how desperately they wanted to. In the UK and US there was the alternative of Auxiliary Transport squads, though even these took time to recognise the valuable contribution women could offer. In Germany women in the air force were few and far between. As far as Hanna knew (and she seems right), she was the only one to be specifically working with the Luftwaffe. As a test pilot she had already broken through a male barrier which her female contemporaries in Britain could not attain, yet even though she had achieved this level of respect, no amount of begging, persuading or tantrum pulling would get her closer to action than a test runway at Rechlin.

Things were different in Russia, where German men were dying by the thousand. Hanna’s Soviet equivalent was Lilya Litvyak, affectionately known as the White Rose of Stalingrad. In another world the two women could have been friends, or at least comrades in the pursuit of female flying. As it was, they were natural enemies. Lilya was younger than Hanna, born in 1921, but she had a similar passion for the pursuit of freedom in the open sky. She didn’t survive the war to give us a full understanding of her personality, but she was spirited and strong willed. When she entered the Russian air force she was expected to have her hair cut in the same fashion as a male pilot; Lilya refused for as long as was possible. On another occasion she cut the fur tops off her pilot’s boots to make a collar for her coat, and an irate superior made her put them back. Hanna would not have entirely understood this longing for identity and femininity in a male world; she conformed as much as was possible, though she retained her own foibles, including dyeing her hair blonde.

Russian women had found their way into flying clubs with a little more ease than German women, though they still faced the stigma of being the ‘wrong gender’. When war was announced with Germany, the Russian female flyers wanted to fight to protect their country. There was reluctance among the authorities – was it even ethical for a woman, the mother and peacemaker, to take to the skies or battlefields and kill? Germany was having similar doubts; in fact, most of the fighting countries could not quite bring themselves to have women in the air.

Stalin’s hand was forced over female pilots in two ways. First, it was becoming more and more apparent that women were running off to fight with the army. Some were dressing as men, others were simply finding a gun and helping out frontline troops where they could. They stated that they were protecting their family and should be allowed to do so. At the same time, there had been a concerted effort by female aviators to steal planes in order to participate in the air battle that the Germans were currently winning. Second, Stalin was coming to realise that he was facing a war of attrition and losing men faster than he was replacing them. Was it unreasonable to tap into a ready army that just happened to be female?

News on female flyers was slow to reach Germany. Few Luftwaffe pilots knew that at times they were being attacked by, or shooting at, women. Lucky crash survivors learned on the ground that they had been shot down by a woman, much to their chagrin. There was no sense of respect or admiration for these flying women. Lilya made her first kill over Stalingrad, on her third mission to provide air cover for troops fighting below. This made her the world’s first female fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy plane. She later became the first woman to earn the title ‘fighter ace’. Her time covering the air at Stalingrad earned Lilya her nickname. Hanna, like her male colleagues, preferred not to know that a woman was beating Germans at their own game.

The Battle of Stalingrad was clearly over, but Hitler would not let his troops admit defeat. They would fight on until none was left, while those at home were told lies of triumphs and successes. Even so, the defeat could not be entirely ignored by the media. Propaganda tried to put a gloss over the worst, but people still knew something awful had happened. ‘After Stalingrad, the shadows began visibly to descend over Germany and in spite of official propaganda, which was still turned to victory, month by month the feeling grew that the end was inexorably approaching,’ Hanna recorded. She was not to know the extent of her Führer’s madness, but a trickle of doubt was creeping into her mind. As blindly as she followed him for patriotism’s sake, now she wondered if Hitler would not be the end of Germany.