Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch Read Online Free PDF Page A

promise.
    It was now 1931. The rise of National Socialism was like a feverish virus infecting the German population. In 1928 the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) had been nothing more than a chain-rattling splinter party with only 2.6 per cent of the vote. Two years later, with the unexpected dissolution of the Reichstag, it made a triumphant rise to 18.3 per cent; 810,000 Nazi voters in 1928 had turned into 6.4 million in 1930. National Socialism was now a big threat to the other political parties and Prussia was particularly uncomfortable at seeing such a controversial splinter group making the biggest gain of any political party in German history. Nazi apologists have made a case for National Socialism seeming very innocuous in its early days, fooling innocent, if gullible, citizens into voting for a party that would later turn out so evil. But this is whitewashing history; the Prussian authorities recognised the danger in 1930 and made it illegal for any Prussian civil servant to join the NSDAP. They considered the Nazi Party anti-constitutional and preparations were even made to have it banned altogether. As history tells us, this never happened.
    Instead, the Nazi Party continued to gain popularity, as did its paramilitary branch, the SA – despite a ban on their activities. Across Silesia membership of the SA had gone from 17,500 in December 1931 to 34,500 in 1932. As sheltered a life as Hanna led, it would be impossible to avoid all signs of the conflict within Germany. It was akin to a small revolution. SA storm troopers, identifiable by their brown shirts, would rumble into the streets after dark and seek out Communists for a fight. Soon the police and the Reichsbanner (a half-forgotten republican militia) were absorbed into the fray and all-out brawls turned streets into battlefields, with residents finding evidence of the violence the next morning in the blood on the pavements, smashed windows and the odd lost knuckle-duster. Still, in 1931 Hanna was lost in her plans to fly.
    The School of Gliding in Grunau would have done little to inspire a casual observer; there was a large hangar where the gliders were kept and a small wooden building that served as a canteen and shelter during bad weather. The rest was open ground. But for Hanna riding up on her bicycle, the scene was electric. ‘My heart was filled with joy,’ she later recalled.
    The instructor at the school was Pit van Husen, a man who would later be remembered as the greatest of glider pilots. Van Husen was strict with his pupils, for good reason. Gliding looked simple, even safe, but it was far from it. Glider pilots did die when their flimsy craft were hurled into an unexpected storm or they misjudged a landing. Hanna rarely knew fear, however, and now she was on the practice field she would not be deterred by talk of accidents. Nor would she be upset by the unpleasant stares and comments made by her fellow, all-male, students. Hanna was not welcome. Her presence was resented and openly mocked. She was a petite 5ft 5in among the lean, tall Aryans who sidled around the airfield and she endured her fair share of snide remarks that a woman should know her place and stay in the kitchen. She later claimed that she ignored these comments, but evidence from other sources suggests she was more sensitive than she cared to admit. The sneers of her fellow students stung and they spurred her to become defiant and to be the first to truly fly.
    Van Husen started his students slowly, first allowing them to learn to balance the glider on the ground while he held one wing-tip, then having them perform short slides on the ground. It was during one of these that Hanna decided enough was enough – she would show these obnoxious boys what she was made of! She had completed one slide and was restless. ‘Flying does not seem difficult,’ she thought to herself as she sat in the glider waiting for her last slide. ‘How would it be if I pulled back