Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a German aviator and test pilot. Reitsch was among the very last people to meet Adolf Hitler before his suicide in the in April 1945. Following her capture, she provided information about her departure from Berlin and denied that she might have helped Hitler escape.

During the 1930s, Reitsch set more than 40 flight altitude records and women's endurance records in gliding and unpowered flight. In the 1960s, she was sponsored by the West German foreign office as a technical adviser in Ghana and elsewhere. She also founded a gliding school in Ghana, where she worked for Kwame Nkrumah.

Another female test pilot was Melitta von Stauffenberg who also flight-tested many of Germany's new aircraft during World War II and received many honors.

Early life and 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 an ophthalmology clinic manager, and his wife Emy Helff-Hibler von Alpenheim, who was a member of the Austrian nobility. Despite her mother being a devout Catholic, Hanna was raised a Protestant. She had two siblings, brother Kurt, a naval Fregattenkapitän (frigate captain), and younger sister Heidi. Reitsch began flight training in 1932 at the School of Gliding in Grunau. While a medical student in Berlin, she enrolled in a German Air Mail amateur flying school for powered aircraft at Staaken, training in a Klemm Kl 25.

Career

1933–1937

In 1933, Reitsch left medical school at the University of Kiel to become, at the invitation of Wolf Hirth, a full-time glider pilot/instructor at Hornberg in Baden-Württemberg. As well as instructional duties, she set an endurance record for women of 11 hours and 20 minutes but this had to be "unofficial" because the observations that were necessary for a record were not fulfilled.

Reitsch also contracted with the Ufa Film Company as a stunt pilot for a film called "Rivals of the Air", in which as well as other flying, she had to land in a lake.

In January 1934, she joined a South American expedition to study thermal conditions, along with Wolf Hirth, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar. While in Argentina, she became the first woman to earn the Silver C Badge, the 25th in the world.

In June 1934, Reitsch became a member of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS) and became a test pilot in 1935. Reitsch enrolled in the Civil Airways Training School in Stettin, where she flew a twin-engined aircraft on a cross country flight and aerobatics in a Focke-Wulf Fw 44.

In 1937, Ernst Udet gave Reitsch the honorary title of after she had successfully tested Hans Jacobs's divebrakes for gliders. At the DFS, she test-flew transport and troop-carrying gliders, including the DFS 230 that was used at the Battle of Fort Eben-Emael.

1937–1945

thumb|upright=1.2|Reitsch in 1936 at [[Wasserkuppe]]

thumb|upright=1.2|Hitler awards Reitsch the Iron Cross 2nd Class in March 1941

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

Her flying skill, desire for publicity, and photogenic qualities made her a star of Nazi propaganda. Physically she was petite and very slender, with blonde hair, blue eyes and a "ready smile". That night, she and von Greim were flown in a Ju 188 from Germany's Neubiberg Air Base to the Rechlin airfield, about 100 km (60 mi) northwest of Berlin. They were then flown to Gatow, Berlin, in a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (Reitsch riding in the tail by way of an emergency opening), protected against the Soviets by perhaps 40 fighters, The interrogation report claims that the plane took off from the Tiergarten's makeshift runway under heavy Soviet fire; it was spotted by searchlights and attacked by shells, but only shrapnel hit the plane. When asked about being ordered to leave the , Reitsch stated: "It was the blackest day when we could not die at our Führer's side." She asserted that "We should all kneel down in reverence and prayer before the altar of the Fatherland," referring to the bunker. After it was suggested that Hitler had been seen alive (in Tyrol, Austria, near where she had flown), Reitsch dismissed assertions of his survival and her possible complicity, stating, "He had no reason to live and the tragedy was that he knew it ... perhaps better than anyone else did." Reitsch's interrogator noted that she seemed to be a reliable witness, having struggled with thoughts of suicide since the war but more recently becoming interested in advocating for democracy.

Last interview (1970s)

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

In the same interview, she is quoted as saying,

Death

thumb|upright|Grave of Hanna Reitsch in [[Salzburg]]

Reitsch died of a heart attack in Frankfurt at the age of 67, on 24 August 1979. She had never married. She is buried in the Reitsch family grave in the Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof.

Former British pilot Eric Brown said he received a letter from Reitsch in early August 1979 in which she said, "It began in the bunker, there it shall end." Within weeks she was dead. Brown speculated that Reitsch had taken the cyanide capsule Hitler had given her in the bunker and that she had taken it as part of a suicide pact with Greim. There is no record of a postmortem.

List of awards and world records

  • 1932: women's gliding endurance record (5.5 hours)
  • 1936: women's gliding distance record ()
  • 1937: first woman to cross the Alps in a glider
  • 1937: the first woman in the world to be promoted to flight captain by Colonel Ernst Udet
  • 1937: the first woman to fly a helicopter (Fa 61)
  • 1937: world distance record in a helicopter ()
  • 1938: the first person to fly a helicopter (Fa 61) inside an enclosed space (Deutschlandhalle)
  • 1938: winner of German national gliding competition Sylt-Breslau Silesia
  • 1939: women's world record in gliding for point-to-point flight.
  • 1943: While in the Luftwaffe, the first woman to pilot a rocket plane (Messerschmitt Me 163). She survived a disastrous crash though with severe injuries and because of this she became the first of three German women to receive the Iron Cross First Class.
  • 1944: the first woman in the world to pilot a jet aircraft at the Luftwaffe research centre at Rechlin during the trials of the Messerschmitt Me 262 and Heinkel He 162
  • 1952: third place in the World Gliding Championships in Spain together with her team-mate Lisbeth Häfner
  • 1955: German gliding champion
  • 1956: German gliding distance record ()
  • 1957: German gliding altitude record ()

Books by Hanna Reitsch

  • . 4th ed. Munich: Herbig, 2001 [1951]. (Autobiography)
  • . 2nd ed. Munich: Herbig, 1979. (original title: ).
  • . 7th ed. Munich: Herbig, 1992. .
  • . Munich: Heyne, 1984. .
  • . 2nd expanded ed. Munich/Berlin: Herbig, 1978. .
  • Reitsch is one of the two female test pilots (alongside Melitta von Stauffenberg) featured in The Woman Who Flew for Hitler (Pan Macmillan, 2017) by Clare Mulley

Reitsch has been portrayed by the following actresses in film and television productions:

  • Barbara Rütting in the 1965 film Operation Crossbow
  • Diane Cilento in the 1973 British film Hitler: The Last Ten Days.
  • Myvanwy Jenn in the 1973 British television production The Death of Adolf Hitler.
  • Anna Thalbach in the 2004 German film Downfall ().

See also

  • Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft

References

Footnotes

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading

  • where she exclaims about Hitler's understanding in avionics: "I was deeply astonished about his interests"
  • testing the Me 163 rocket plane
  • as depicted in Downfall