Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 3 - Aviation and the Periods of Enlightenment, Romanticism and Modernism

In the century that passed from the end of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century, there were sharp ideological and political changes in Europe. They are described as a transition from the Enlightenment to the Romantic period. These changes took place in coordination with technological developments in general, and in the field of aviation in particular.

It was a transition from the agricultural revolution to the industrial revolution. From God revealed in the cycles of fertility and growth to God revealed from the machine. From the hot air balloon technology that flew at the mercy of the weather to the motorized airship.

The balloon, the airship, the airplane and the missile, were revolutionary inventions that the learned science did not predict, but the practical human technical sense created. During the 19th century the balloons and airships carved new paths. Man took off into the realms of God in the heavens and the chains of the earth were removed. Man's boundaries and limitations have been redefined, creating a revolution in his worldview. The universal ideas of the French Revolution were transformed into extreme nationalism.

At the beginning of the 20th century, further ideological changes took place: with the development of the invention of the airplane, romance was replaced by modernism.

Aviation, which is of great military importance, was identified, in the era of the total state, also with the spiritual flight of man. This happened in the secular aviation dictatorships of the first half of the twentieth century: Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan and Italy. Aviation in them has become a a new form of religious fanaticism. It was a symbol of national progress, unification and victory.

Modernism was replaced by postmodernism in the second half of the 20th century. During this time missles replaced the airplane as the ruler of the skies. The missile, which is controlled at the push of a button that can lead to the elimination of humanity, has brought humans to a cynical and self-centered worldview.

Germany was the country that developed aviation in the most extreme way. Romance, imperialism, militarism, Nazism, and air power, are steps in the process that led to the final solution.

The prominent leaders of the Nazi movement were young pilots, who sought to implement technological and social change too quickly and by firm political means. They grew up on the knees of German romance and did not pay enough attention to the need for caution and slow and controlled experience in the dangerous air medium. They embarked on a crusade towards the sky.