Holocaust and Aviation - Part C, Chapter 21 - The Gliding Sport

Gliding is the gateway for the aviation world. In order to fly an airplane one must first know how to fly a glider, which is much easier and cheaper to. A glider flight is also the closest to birds flight. Gliding experience relies on the strength of wind. It therefore requires repeated trails, without promise of success, due to the uncertainty of weather conditions. The experience of gliding in a glider is very similar to surfing in the sea on a surfboard. Both attract the same kind of population of brave young people, but to some extent also destitute, un institutionalized. The large public interest in Germany in the sport, during the Weimar Republic period, added a competitive, professional and nationalist dimension to it. Hitler resembled gliding young people. He could get on a political "air wave" and "glide" on it.

The imaginary fall - the feeling of terror, paralysis and loss of control, is a familiar phenomenon among flight trainees. In the sky, the trainee sometimes finds himself in a sudden panic because of the fear of falling. He is fixed, in his body and mind, in one blind flight path, without the ability to deviate from it. As a result, he very quickly loses control of the aircraft and crashes to his death. All this to the astonishment of his flight guide and the spectators from the ground. They do not understand why he did not resort to a basic maneuver of acceleration, elevation and turn, which would have saved his life. According to Gaston Bachelar, the experience of the imaginary fall is an initial truth of the dynamic imagination. But it does not exist in the aerial imagination as an invitation for travel. For the most part it is a journey into the void, the pit of utter emptiness, the endless fall, the dive like a stone into the abyss where there is nothing. It is known in psychology as "Vertigo". It's a primitive fear. It is found as a constant component in fears of various kinds, such as in the fear of the dark. It's the fear of being completely unprotected, completely exposed. We fear the approach of this fear and try to stay away from it as much as possible. But the attitude to the fear of falling can be defined as an attitude of hate-love. The subconscious is drawn to this basic life experience. But as a result of the lack of mental strength, there are not enough words to describe it. Man is therefore unable to use the fear of falling per se, but rather as a source of inspiration for images of ascent only. As a result of the shortage of the images of the fall, its human and poetic imagery and expression are of an extreme ascent. The imagination imagine in abundance heights but not depths. The psychological fall, in its simple and dynamic form, is the dialectical game of fall and victory. It is the courage associated with standing and uprightness, the desire to live against weight, to live  vertically in the sense of healthy rising, height growth and proud head-raising. Sometimes, to further revive the images of the ascent, there are those who enrich them through occasional images of the fall. In Germany, before the Nazis came to power, the fighter pilots who fell in World War I were mentioned along with the glider pilots who fell as part of the sporting pursuit. Hitler added anti-Semitism to this.

Otto Lilienthal - Gliding is one of the first documented experiences in human culture. From the dawn of civilizations man has tried to imitate the flight of birds, by building wings made by his hands. The legend in Greek mythology about Daedalus and Icarus is one testimony of many kinds. Almost every culture in the world has similar legends or historic tales. Hence the immense importance of the enterprise of Otto Lilienthal, the German Jew who, at the end of the 19th century, was the first man to succeed in partially imitating bird flight by gliding. He built gliders with stiff, bird-shaped wings, harnessed himself to them and jumped from a hill tens of meters high, which he set up himself. He made hundreds of attempts, which he documented in photographs. The photographs, in the early days of photography, were widely circulated in the press and they made him one of the most famous people in the world. He was able to gradually improve the gliding results. The gliders he built hovered only hundreds of feet away, in a straight line and for a few seconds. Despite this it was an unprecedented achievement. The Wright brothers used his research to build the world's first motorized aircraft. Lilienthal fell to his death while flying in his glider, in 1896. He is known for a number of sayings he composed. One is: "Designing a plane is nothing, building it is something, but flying it is everything''. A second statement is about the risks of flight: "Sacrifice is required''. The nationalist Germans used his sayings to promote the achievements of aviation in their country.

Oskar Ursinus - Oskar Ursinus [1877-1952] is known in Germany as "the father of gliding". Following his great interest in the then modern technology of motorized flight he began, in 1908, to publish articles on aviation. In 1909 he organized an amateurs group to promote the flight without an engine. After building a self-designed glider, the group embarked on flight trials. In 1912 they set a record of close to two minutes in the air and a record distance of close to one kilometer. Amateurs and technology institutes have organized additional gliding clubs throughout Germany. As the models improved and with them the records, the public interest in the subject expanded. The outbreak of World War I led to a freeze on gliding research. Germany focused on building military airplanes. Ursinus joined the army, to design military aircraft. A week after being posted in a factory, he presented a plan for a heavy bomber, the largest and most innovative of its kind. The prototype was operationally tested on the Russian front, in early 1915. After proving its effectiveness on the battlefield, more with more powerful engines were ordered. In all, several hundred were built, with the constant development of more advanced models. The bomber was used in a variety of operational missions. He terrorized all fronts, including successful strategic bombings over Britain. It was the first airplane in the world to be used for this purpose. Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, all the bombers were destroyed at the end of the war. But Ursinus did not take part in the revolt against this move, as he thought the German airplanes were bad. He argued that the warplanes were too heavy and powerful to effectively study the aerodynamics of flight. Their awkwardness created a major problem of motivation for the air crews. It was this lack of flight experience that caused Germany's military defeat. Aviation in the pre-war era was inspired by aerodynamics purity. It could demand idealism and self-sacrifice, in the name of the spirit of ascent that Gaston Bechelar described. In contrast, the service in the air force during the war was in awkward airplanes with no good gliding capabilities, complicated machines which tended to fall swiftly, while requiring mostly obedience to authority from the crews, resulting in constant shortage of pilots. He believed that in order to increase motivation for a pilot career, Germany has to design better airplanes. This will attract young people because the trainees will identify with the birds flight characteristics. They will become better men, pilots and citizens. He saw the new circumstances as an opportunity to return to the field of gliding. In order to master advanced aerodynamics, aviation engineers must return to gliding. Germany could engage in the development of gliders, because it was not restricted in the Versailles Treaty. Ursinus organized a first yearly gliding competition in 1920. Ten years later this competition became an international event. Germany became the world center for gliders research and production. Gliding became a major factor in the development of aviation during Weimar Germany. Ursinus' contribution to the Nazis rise to power was immense. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933. He happily agreed to Nazi gradual oversight and nationalization of the sport of gliding, as it was accompanied by massive financial support from the regime. His many students were among the founders of the Luftwaffe and the Nazi aviation industry. He continued his research until the end of World War II. Later on he watched the gradual revival of the gliding sport in Germany, while receiving much respect for his life long work.

Gliding in Germany during the years 1918-1933 - The flat-topped summit of mount Wasserkuppe, in the Rhone Mountains range in central Germany, is the site where Oscar Ursinus chose to make his first gliding flights. Ursinus organized the first gliding camp on mount Wasserkuppe in 1920. The format was similar to an alternative festival outdoors, lasting several weeks, during the summer. Several groups of gliders, from gliding clubs throughout Germany, gathered in the camp to fly gliders they had built. Thus began a snowball that had accumulated immense dimensions. Only four gliders were found eligible for flight in the summer of 1920. The longest flight lasted less than a minute. A successful conclusion of the event, through a new glider that broke a world record, led to a second event in the summer of 1921. More than double the number of participants were recorded and new records were broken. In August 1922, one of the gliders flew in Wasserkuppe for more than two hours. Most of the gliders were built by students of technological institutes from all over Germany. Despite their young age, they were mostly veteran pilots from World War I. The international aviation community has begun to pay attention to what is happening. The German government also began to support the activity. The German press was enthusiastic. It called the pilots "Birdmen''. Many journalists climbed to the mountain summit. On their return they claimed that the gliding event had restored their faith in Germany. There were young pilots who broke world records, even though "they came from nowhere and with nothing''. Four years after the defeat, the Germans again acted and won. Gliding has become, for this reason, nothing less than a "national duty''. The national pride as a result also carried on the thousands of participants in Wasserkuppe, who initially came for science and sports purposes. After the connection between gliding and German nationalism was shaped, history was rewritten. What Ursinos described as a return to aerodynamics research soon became a legacy of a nationalist visionary enterprise. This is especially after France invaded and occupied the Ruhr region in West Germany in January 1923. For the third event, in the summer of 1923, 53 gliders were registered. The summit of the mountain turned from a tent camp into a small town. The clumsy models of the early years became gliders of advanced design, designated for  a production line. A world record was set for more than 3 hours  in the air. The highlight of the season was the inauguration of a memorial site, established by the Veterans German Pilots Association, in honor of the fellows who fell in the war. More than 30,000 visitors came, including many from the German social elite. Government officials announced that a memorial service would be held at the site each year. They stated that the German nation must conquer the skies "for the sake of all mankind''. In the summer of 1926 a significant breakthrough occurred in the mountain, with the discovery of thermals, which are vertically rising hot air currents, allowing birds, by circling and ascending in them, to soar to heights without investing a lot of energy. The discovery occurred by accident, when a pilot suddenly entered into a thermal. He found himself hovering to heights and distances not yet known until then. The discovery made the sport of gliding much more meaningful. The gliders pilots glided for many hours above storm clouds, for distances of hundreds of miles, backed by advanced meteorology. They passed over metropolitan areas and crossed national borders. The new destinations they reached were in Czechoslovakia, France and Poland. At that years, motorized aircraft had limited performance. Gliders surpassed them in terms of range, altitude and flight duration. They could also have greater carrying capacity, as they were constructed of lightweight materials. So gliding was perceived as the third part in a triangle that also included airplanes and airships. Most of the influential figures in the German aviation world, regularly visited Wasserkuppe. They did so for the sake of gettting impressions, social encounters and flights in the latest models. A tradition has developed, on which new generations have grown. The glorious days of the "Flying Circus" were a source of inspiration. Pilots and spectators shared the feeling: "We are here to upset the Allies''.

Gliding in Germany between the Weimar Republic and Nazi regime - on one typical day in August 1931, there were about 20,000 visitors on the summit of mount Wasserkuppe. That year there were close to 40 gliding schools across Germany. The gliding industry has become the gatekeeper of German aviation and the temporary executor of its ambitions. The number of gliders built each year has increased from tens to several hundreds. The gliding associations had tens of thousands of members, most of them young people aged 18-26. They attended summer camps of gliding, where special folklore developed. The opportunity to engage in a semi-military sport fascinated many young people. From this also developed a rebellion against the Allies, accompanied by strong patriotic feelings. gliding has become more than just a sport. It served a national purpose. Members of the gliding clubs began to wear uniforms. They openly participated in nationalist and pro-Nazi demonstrations. The nationalist movement adopted them, but the socialist left liked them too. Along with many people in the Weimar Republic, they loathed the decadent lifestyle of the period. The teams of the gliding camps were a sample of the population, bridging the various classes. The glider became a medium and a message: the aerodynamic appearance of the glider expressed accurate mathematical calculations of weight and stability, while also highly valued for its elegant shape and graceful movement in the air. it became a style model. Their pilots were, for the political left, a new breed of laborers. Opponents of the Weimar Republic, from both the left and the right, saw themselves as servants of a new Germany. Gliding summed up for them the world in which they lived, in which Germany was both glorified and endangered. The effort of left and right politics was to create a new model of human being, who will combine technology and patriotism. The gliding teams were soldiers of the first line. Gliding prepared them for the challenges of technology: they learned to work with wood, metal, fabrics and other materials. They acquired knowledge in meteorology, aerodynamics, engineering and more. They specialized in many new professions and created professional work teams. Many of them subsequently began careers in all civilian and military aviation sectors. But most of them saw Nazism, not Communism, as the ideology by which aviation society will be established. They applied their experience to the underground re-establishment of Germany's military might. After the rise of the Nazis to power, mount Wasserkuppe  became a center of German military nationalism.

Gliding in Germany during the years 1933-1939 - In the July 1932 elections, more than 50% of the voters at the Wasserkuppe polls put the Nazi party ballot paper. Much higher than the national average of 37%. The Nazis took the first steps in shaping civilian air consciousness immediately after coming to power, during the period of "ideological coordination" in the spring of 1933. Aviation was intended to serve Germany's mission. In conclusion, it was only the Nazi state that oversaw all activities in this area. Ministry of Aviation established. It was headed by Herman Goering. He declared: "We will become a nation of pilots''. He reorganized the various aviation sporting bodies into one framework, named the "German Aviation  Sports Association". Another, much larger framework, was the "Reich Air Defense System". It included all the organizations of the air defense volunteers. The Nazis manned the managements of the aircraft manufacturing factories and the civil airlines. Schools required diverse aviation studies, integrating them into as many other subjects as possible. Many streets in Germany were named after fighter pilots who fell in the war. The Nazification of the gliding clubs was carried out as if by itself. There was no objection whatsoever. Goering budget abundantly the gliding clubs, with the aim of training a new generation of Nazis. Beginning in 1934, participants in the camps at Wasserkuppe wore uniforms and operated on a Nazi military agenda. In 1935 the sporting character was excluded from the competitions. They were redefined as a "military demonstration." Goering stated that the gliding teams are ''workers and students, artisans and professors, who repeatedly pull together the gliders with the rope up the mountain and this is the essence of National Socialism ... The whole nation is fighting as one man for one goal: the greatness of Germany''. The gliding superstars of the Weimar Republic had no more room. The new Aviation Association has started awarding medals to teams only. The Nazi authorities worked to rewrite the achievements of individuals. Until 1937, the Nazis completed their political control of aviation, under the slogan: "First a Nazi and then a pilot''. Mount Wasserkuppe  had become an official training base of the Luftwaffe. Large buildings were built, to meet the growing demands of the Third Reich. Ironically, in the center of the buildings is the "Hall of Fame", a magnificent mausoleum in memory of Otto Lilienthal, for all the pilots who lost their lives during flight. The building was inaugurated about a month before the outbreak of World War II.

Gliding during the World War II, 1939-1945 - Transporting fighters with their equipment using freight gliders was developed by the Germans in the late 1930s. Large gliders were built, capable of carrying dozens of armed soldiers, or light vehicles and cannons. At the same time, the Airborne Forces army was established, with trained soldiers brigades for operating extensively on the battlefield, immediately after landing in gliders and parachuting from the airplanes who pulled the gliders. At the beginning of World War II, the Wehrmacht carried out successful small-scale gliding operations, with elite commandos, in Norway, the Netherlands and France. The success encouraged the Germans to carry out the conquest of the island of Crete, in May 1941, through a massive invasion by airborne forces. It was the first time in history that a major military campaign had been carried out in this way. The lack of experience in transporting the forces harmed the Germans heavily. On the other hand, the Allies had deciphered orders in the German enigma code for the first time. The invading Germans encountered heavy resistance from small forces, which included local guerrilla forces. The Allies surrendered, after about ten days of fighting, while inflicting heavy losses on the Germans. The result had a significant impact on the course of events of World War II, as the Germans re-examined the doctrine of airborne forces. In light of the losses, Hitler stopped further such operations. He abolished the massive use planned for the airborne units in the forthcoming campaign in the Soviet Union. For his deputy, Herman Goering, what happened in Crete was added to the list of more bad news, which undermined his political status. On the eve of the invasion to the Soviet Union, in June 1941, he was left with thousands of airplanes less than he originally planned and completely without airborne forces, which could become a major base of political power for him. On the eve of Tisha B'Av 1941, he wrote the order to Reinhard Heydrich to begin the "Final Solution'', by which the Jews from all over Europe were ''transported'' directly to the gas chambers.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part C, Chapter 20 - The Flying Circus

For many, the term "ace" is best remembered from World War I. The aces were senior pilots in each country who shot down at least 5 planes in air battles. Their governments nurtured them for the sake of raising morale and the citizens adored them for their courage, perseverance, and talent. The press immortalized them as knights of the skies.

In no country has the ace figure been more popular than in Germany. At the beginning of the war, most of the army's resources, with the enthusiastic support of the public, were invested in the development of the zeppelin. During the war, after the airplane's advantages as a weapon became clear, the German government had to divert public attention from the zeppelins and used aces for this purpose. They were described in the media as modern knights, who embodied the ideal of the German warrior. The highest military decoration, "For the Merit", was awarded to many of them. At their death a royal funeral was held for them. The public admired them, in part because most of them were from the middle-class. They starred in movie diaries and in the press. Some have even won a popular biographical book.

The possibility of receiving the title "ace" was a strong incentive for pilots. After receiving the coveted title, the additional medals and prestige pushed them to pursue a pilot career. The downside was that many of them died, during air battles or in airplanes crashes that were very common in those days. This is because the planes were unreliable and in addition the flight experience was little. It was necessary to turn them into mythological figures not only in the eyes of the public, but also in the eyes of themselves, so that they could routinely deal with the death that awaited them soon.

The "Flying Circus" was a fighter airplanes squadron set up by the German army to deal with Allied air superiority at the war's end. It is probably the most famous fighter squadron in history. Its commander, Manfred Richthofen, the "Red Baron", is one of the most famous pilots in history. There is no aviation enthusiast in the world who does not know the name and over the years his memory has intensified. He and his friends have become a major icon in aviation history.

Few know that the flying circus was the incubator in which the leaders of the Nazi regime and the Nazi worldview grew up. This is where the big bang occured. It created the chain reaction that led directly to World War II and the Holocaust of European Jews. Hitler's deputy, Hermann Goering, was Richhofen's successor as the commander. Goering and his friends did not accept the surrender agreement signed by their government in November 1918. Surrender was out of the question, for those who the war propaganda cultivated as Supermen. In his farewell speech to his friends, Goering assured them that "our day will return''. They smashed their airplanes, even though the surrender agreement ordered to transfer them to the Allies.

Several movies, adapted to guide viewers on certain topics, were commissioned by the Nazi state before the outbreak of World War II. The most important in this category was the aviation film "For the Merit" (1938), created by Carl Ritter, the government's senior filmmaker, who was also a celebrated fighter pilot in the First World War. The film was  establishing cultural event. In fact, it officially rewrote all of German history from the end of World War I until Hitler came to power, in a way that conformed to Nazi ideology. 

The film deals with a group of former fighter pilots, who according to clear biographical and historical characteristics are from the Flying Circus. They are headed by the squadron commander, whose character is modeled on the biography of Herman Goering. The first half of the film has many air battles. In the second half, after the war, he leads his men to revolt against the ruling regime and Democrat Weimar republic, whom he publicly despises, mainly due to its attitude towards the discharged soldiers. Out of the hardships of existence, the pilots join the small Nazi party. Their struggle succeed and Hitler comes to power. At the end of the film we see the new German Air Force, which they have become its commanders.

The film depicts civil politics as a continuation of the war in other ways and scenes of violations of the law are presented in it as inevitable, due to the rule of the corrupt left. The film was described as "the purest Nazi film". At its premiere in Berlin in December 1938, Hitler, Goering and Goebbels watched it, with Carl Ritter by their side. Outside the cinema hall stood a guard of honor of veterans. Apart from the great political, box office and artistic success, the film was also recommended for viewing by youth, and millions of young people watched it as part of the compulsory screenings held for "Hitler's Youth".

The marginal Nazi party accepted into its ranks, with the addition of Hermann Goering, the figure of the military man who was perhaps the most perominent in Germany, despite his young age and rank. He brought with him his friends, led by Ernest Udet and established with them the Luftwaffe, which was the mainstay of the Nazi army. Rudolf Hess, a pilot in the flying circus towards the end of the war, became Hitler's second deputy and tried, by secret flight, to bring about a peace agreement between England and Germany without the knowledge of the Nazi leadership. Arthur Greiser, a squadron commander in the German navy who apparently joined the Flying Circus in its last days, was a jealous Nazi whose war conduct as mayor of Danzig in Poland caused the outbreak of World War II. During the war he was the governor of the Lodz region and created the models for the Nazi occupation and expropriation policy and for the extermination of the Jews in the entire Third Reich. The younger Reinhard Heydrich, the planner of the final solution, combined his career as deputy commander of the SS with that of a fighter pilot. Chapters in the book "Holocaust and Aviation" are dedicated to everyone. Another chapter in the book deals with the great influence of the sport of gliding, in Germany after the First World War, on the revival of nationalism and the awakening of Nazism. Senior members of gliding clubs were pilots and aircrew members from the First World War. They became the backbone of the Luftwaffe after its establishment.

The entire Nazi regime was run according to the patterns formed in the Flying Circus. Adolf Hitler was shaped as a young patriot in the spirit of military propaganda that glorified the knights of the sky. He must have sought the proximity of the pilots when he began political activity. He understood the potential and political significance they could provide. He made the Nazi Party publicly identified with aviation. He gave huge budgets for the re-establishment of the German aviation industry and air force, while challenging the Versailles Agreements. The figure of the forged pilot as the popular Nietzschean Superman became the Aryan human model. The simple and effective but ruthless warfare tactics of the Flying Circus became the tactics of Nazi politics and the fast war method used by the Nazi army.

The flight is automatically perceived in the subconscious in a positive way. Therefore everyone who flies is automatically perceived as a positive, brave, communicative person, with a broad worldview. Adolf Hitler conducted his campaign as a mythical magician, mediating between the aerial and earthly mediums, between the glorious pilots and the common people. He rtraveled from city to city by airplane. In each speech he emphasized the conspiracy theory that Germany surrendered not on the battlefield, but through the fault of politicians. The airplane on which he flew became meaningful in itself. The medium became a message. Thus Hitler won the election and came to power democratically. Lenny Riefenstahl has perpetuated the immense popularity of Hitler's flights in her "Triumph of the Will" film, which opens with long minutes in which the shadow of his airplane is seen constantly passing over German soil. Through the "air order" the Nazi management culture was outlined, replacing the celestial eye of God with an eye-shutting dictatorship.

The clear symbol of mythical totalitarian modernism in Nazi Germany was the airplane. At the forefront of propaganda and popular culture were motion pictures, which were the favorite medium of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels the propaganda minister. They closely monitored their making. UFA, the nationalized film studios corporation, produced many Nazi-style aviation films, with a high degree of redesign of reality. The airplane has been incorporated, thanks to its prominent harmonic contours, as a mythical icon in cinema from its beginning. It became the main symbol in Carl Ritter's films. 

Ritter, who was also a flight instructor, developed the subject of aviation in expanding circles. Various aircraft models starred in his first films, along with their air crews. In the second circle, his films featured the large, professional and diverse ground crews who work at the airfields. In the third circle is the civilian front in the cities, in which the loved ones of the air crews live together with all the civilians, all recruited for air defense efforts. In an even wider circle are the fronts on the various borders of Germany. In the widest circle is the whole world, which is the full German living space. It was revealed to the public through exotic films about pilots who are a combination of explorers and adventurers. In this way, a perfect format was found for building a new Germany.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 19 - Hanna Reitsch Hitler's Squadron

The use of the proverb "seek the woman" in the study of history is gaining in the biographies of various leaders, especially tyrants, with scholars pointing to the roles their wives, played in the rise and fall of different countries. The search for the woman behind the rise and fall of the Third Reich leads the researcher to one woman, who more than any other influenced the fate of this regime. The woman is Hanna Reitsch, whose character and career as a test pilot served as a source of inspiration and an essential contribution  for the regime.

Hanna Reitsch [1912-1979] began her activities as an outstanding glider pilot. She broke about forty world records of gliding industry, during a very long career of about fifty years, before and after World War II. Simultaneously with her gliding career she became a test plot of the most advanced and important Nazi fighter aircraft. One remarkable accomplishment of her was being one of the first helicopter pilot in the world,  flying experimental model in 1938, in an Indoor stadium in Berlin.

Her autobiography, "Flight is my life", on which this chapter in the book "Holocaust and Aviation" is based entirety, is full of fascinating and unique flight descriptions, which testify to her skills as a pilot. Reitsch expands on describing her experiences during the experimental flights and most of the book is devoted to the love of flight. But at the same time one learns of her blind loyalty to Hitler and the Nazi regime, which provided her with the opportunity to realize her love of flying. The racist anti-Semitism demonstrated in Germany, which was an integral part of her daily life, does not receive any attention in the book, so it is understandable that she supported it.

Reitsch gradually became one of the pillars of the regime, as the propaganda of German aviation achievements was an integral part of the Nazi air dictatorship. As a photogenic woman she became one of the most prominent symbols of propaganda and traveled on many international tours, in order to cultivate foreign relations.

Hanna Reitsch had a short and slender boyish figure, with a lovely but common appearance. She was far more important and famous than any other woman pilot in the world, including the well-remembered American Amelia Earhart from that period. Earhart was a global media star. After Earhart disappeared in the Pacific in 1937, a vacuum was created. Reitsch became the most famous pilot in the world.

Although she belonged to the Nazi Party, which was right-wing and conservative in its views on women, she was opinionated, unconventional and controversial. She was greater then life, aspired to full self-realization and breakthrough of limitations. To some extent she was swept out with her enthusiasm, that became destructive for her. She is remembered in this way in history.

Hannah Reitsch has influenced global public opinion, the German public and the fanatical Nazi elite. She held the stick at both ends. On the one end, she gained international recognition and acclaim as an ambassador for the masses on the aviation world. At the same time she was at the forefront of the development of secret weapons for the Nazi army. It was an unusual combination that had no equal in Nazi Germany. It placed her in an excellent position of inheriting Hitler's place, along with her partner, the Luftwaffe chief Robert Greim, Hermann Goering's successor at the end of the war.

More than any other biographical detail, significant is the fact that her personal career accurately reflected all of the history of the Third Reich: in her early days, in the early 1930s, she was a personal student and friend of some of the forerunners of the gliding sport in Germany. Gliding linked war veterans with the aviation industry and air force established by the Nazis, who violated Versailles Treaty. Later in her career, in the late 1930s, she became an outstanding test pilot for Ernest Udet, head of the development department of fighter airplanes, during the period of establishing and strengthening of the Luftwaffe. In the early 1940s, at the middle of the war, She was involved in several ambitious aviation projects designed to overthrow the Allies. Towards the end of the war, when Nazi Germany collapsed, she set up the Nazi Suicide Squadron, with the aim of using pilots to fly the guided bomb V-1. 

She made the last flight to Hitler's bunker in Berlin in the last days of the war and was one of the few witnesses to his last days. After the war she became an object of admiration for the neo-Nazis, because her last flight to Berlin was the key in their conspiracy theory, about Hitler's survival. Although she remained a firm supporter of the Third Reich after the war, declaring its achievements with no remorse, her international activities in the gliding and helicopters arenas helped her connections with third world leaders, who hoped to promote aviation in their countries. She contributed greatly to the restoration of Germany's international status.

Because Reitsch was in many ways an exemplary figure of a woman larger than life, a brave pilot, who opened up new frontiers in aviation, the autobiography is a challenge for the critical approach to Nazism. The solution to the riddle of her character lies in the set of social reasons for the rise of Nazism. She was not a fanatic. Like most German citizens, she was undecided about her full solidarity with the regime. It is not clear whether notable events that should have served as personal warning signs such as the Nuremberg Laws, the violation of the laws of Versailles and the conquest of Czechoslovakia, Kristallnacht and the Final Solution, were part of her ideological worldview. Maybe she saw them only as necessary or as alien propaganda. She belonged to the "state generation". Her personal development as a person and as a pilot was integrated with the development of the Nazi regime. Her love of flying was combined with German patriotism and admiration for Hitler, along with the many personal benefits that she received thanks to her volunteering spirit. As a test pilot she was also trapped in a career in which only the few and best survived the challenges. This could make her identify with the race theory and ''survival of the strong''.

Hannah Reitsch wrote "Flight is My Life" in chronological order. Each chapter describes another stage in her life. As a result, Reitsch focuses on the technical side of test flights. In addition, she describes the landscape, her feelings and opinions of the people around her. The whole is very technical, personal and difficult to separate into its components. For this reason, Reitsch has apparently not received the proper attention of researchers of The Nazi regime.

You can learn about Reitsch's world from the chapter in her book that deals with her conversations with SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Reitsch had two long private conversations with him during the war. The first was immediately after she recovered from the serious injury she suffered in 1942, during a test flight on the ''Comet'' airplane. The Comet was a very fast and dangerous airplane, with rocket engine, designed to take off at great heights very fast and then, using gliding maneuvers, attack Allied bombers from above. Reitsch was the chief test pilot of the project, that the Luftwaffe hoped for its success desperately. Following the flight accident she was hospitalized for several months, delaying the entire effort to stop the Allies.

Himmler sent her many congratulatory letters and she went to him to thank him. She stayed with him for many hours and was positively impressed by his friendly nature and his interest in design. She was honest with him and revealed her opinion that like many in Germany, she disagrees with his steps in two main areas: the attitude towards religion and the attitude towards women. Himmler answered her at length on both subjects. He attacked the Christian religion for its hypocrisy, but failed to respond substantively to her claims regarding the right of every person to religious freedom. Regarding the inequality for women in Nazi Germany, which was expressed in the propaganda as the role of women in having Aryan children, he claimed that it was a misunderstanding and distortion of his views and that he was about to establish a big military unit of combat women, proving that he strived for gender equality. The issue of treatment of Jews did not come up at all in the conversation.

In October 1944, Hanna Reitsch spoke again in private with Heinrich Himmler, this time about the "Final Solution''. Reitsch learned of the issue through a friend, after the Allies sent a special booklet to German embassies around the world, describing the horrific face of Nazi Germany. The friend met Reitsch at the pilots club in Berlin. He threw the booklet on the table and challenged her: "If you want to know what's going on in Germany, look at it!" Reitsch glanced at the booklet, which described the gas chambers and asked angrily, "And do you believe that? In World War I enemy propaganda depicted the German soldier conducting every conceivable barbarism. Now it's the gas chambers!''

The friend said his opinion was similar to hers, but still asked her to find out from Himmler. Reitsch called Himmler and obtained permission to visit him at his headquarters on the Eastern Front. When she got there, she put the booklet in front of him and asked: "What do you say about that Reichsfuhrer?" Himmler picked up the booklet and flipped through the pages and then, without changing the tone of his voice, looked up, examined her quietly and asked: "And do you believe that, Frauline Hanna?" Reitsch replied: "No, of course not, but you must do something against it. You can not let them publish this about Germany''. Himmler placed the booklet on the table, looked at it once more, and said: "You are right''."

Reitsch contented herself with this answer and immediately returned to her test flights. As for Himmler, this booklet was probably also a warning sign. He realized that the final solution, conducted in the utmost secrecy, had been revealed to the Allies. In the event of the defeat of Nazi Germany he would thus be the first they will look for. He began to slow down the extermination and sent some of the Jews to camps such as Bergen-Belzen, where they remained in horrible conditions until the end of the war. Only few of them survived the Holocaust.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 18 - The Nazi Doctors

World War I ended in November 1918, at the end of a wave of influenza epidemics among soldiers. It is possible that the German political and military leadership saw the epidemic, which drastically reduced the number of able soldiers, as the main factor for which surrender should be declared. The plague intensified around the world after the war, causing losses and suffering to dimensions that overshadowed the war itself. A state of weakness is typical of the post-war period. In this case it caused suffering on a scale that overshadowed the war itself. The social impacts of the epidemic were worldwide. They have led to general weakness of the international political system. Hiding information from the public about the extent, military significance of the epidemic, its severe social impact and the danger of psychiatric complications, constituted the habitat for the far-right and Nazi party in Germany.

Support for the Nazis reached a peak among German doctors. Three-quarters of German doctors were members of the Nazi party. There was no social group in Germany that joined them on such a large scale. A significant number of them joined the SS. The Nazi party promised health care reforms and doctors saw the need for an immediate change in the national medical system so that new tools such as X-rays and statistical records of the entire population, would help prevent the spread of epidemics.

X-ray was a state-of-the-art technology that allowed anyone to take part in the Nazis' new social experiment. X-rays have a transparency similar to that of the air element. Statistics cards were another component of health care reform. The doctors' new motto was to keep documents and numbers. The medical computing of the entire German population began. Racial theory was seen as complementary to the reform of the German public health system. Racial theory ensured the efficiency of the system, both by eliminating hopeless patients and by eliminating in any way the non-Nordic minority, the Jews and the rest of the dark-skinned, whose presence in Germany was inconsistent with the new and severe health norms. The "gracefull killing" and the "killing of the Jews" complemented each other, within the framework of Nazi medicine. They reflected the Nazi political schizophrenia. They were bound together under the value of the Supreme Man.

According to Gaston Bashelar, in the infinite air the dimensions are erased and we come into contact with a dimensionless substance that gives us a sense of complete inner purification. Having arrived with the help of the air so far and high, the mind is carried on uncontrollably. Eager to try the reality of the upper air, the imagination in its entirety will double any impression by adding a new image to it. In this transformation, the imagination expresses one of its ambiguous flowers, blurring the colors of good and evil and violating the most stable laws governed by the values ​​of humanity. The end result of this longing may be a moral ambiguity.

On January 30, 1933, the Nazis came to power, by a large majority of the German people. Hitler promised "a healthy Germany" and the doctors sent a letter of congratulations to the new Chancellor: "The German doctors are very pleased to be in the service of patriotism, and swear to fulfill their duty with maximum loyalty, as servants of the nation's health''. Their motto became: "Work for the Fuhrer". On June 2, 1935, the ''Nazi School of Leadership in the Medical Professions'' was opened in a picturesque village in northern Germany. Physicians were trained in it to apply the laws of racial theory: heredity, reproduction, selection, the survival of the strong. The participants in the courses were doctors from various fields, as well as nurses. They lived in barracks and underwent a training regime similar to that of soldiers. The culmination of each course was the ceremonial swearing-in at the end, in which the students declared: "We will be honest, faithful and friends only to our brothers in blood, and to no one else''. The school trained the leaders of Nazi medicine to carry out euthanasia effectively and for their roles in the extermination facilities and concentration camps.

A flood of laws cancelled the Jewish doctors' rights. Their registration in the German health system was initially denied, which was in effect an economic sentence. They were then required to hang a Star of David on the office sign and to use the middle name "Israel" to identify themselves as Jewish. They were allowed to treat only Jewish patients. About 9,000 Jewish doctors lost thetr career. Most of them left Germany. Very few have succeeded in re-establishing themselves. The ban on engaging in their profession pushed many of them into desperate acts of suicide. Others were murdered at the extermination facilities. Established and profitable clinics of Jewish physicians were taken by non-Jews and became "Arian", as it was called.

Among many Nazi doctors there were some whose teachers, students, colleagues, friends and even family members were Jews. Physicians, more than any other sector of the population, could and did appreciate the intellectual and human level of the Jews and their importance to Germany. They became criminals, as they gained a huge direct profit when they took the place of the many Jewish doctors.

Dr. Eugen Fischer was one of the founders of the race theory and the founder of the Genetic Institute in Berlin in 1927. Fischer was in the life sciences for the Nazis what Carl Haushofer was in the social sciences. Fisher gave the Nazis the appearance of scientific legitimacy. Fischer's writings were incorporated into "Main Kampf" and he was quoted by Hitler in many of his speeches, already the world authority on the subject.

Dr. Karl Brandt was Hitler's personal physician, who was asked by him to run the "euthanasia" program in the period before World War II. What began as solutions to the plight of a few citizens who had severly disabled family members, became an industry in which hundreds of thousands of patients were murdered on the basis of superficial judgment. The methods and teams employed under this program were transferred during the war to the extermination facilities of the Jews.

Dr. Josef Mengele, who conducted experiments on humans, stood for about two years, almost daily, on the ramp in Auschwitz and classified those who came to "right - left" according to their ability to work. He is the embodiment of the monster in man, which is the inevitable development of race theory.

After the war, senior members of Nazi medicine were tried in what became known as the "Doctors' Trial" in Nuremberg, which was conducted after the better-known "Nuremberg trials" of senior Nazi officials and in the same courtroom. A total of 23 doctors were on trial, six of them from the Nazi Air Force. The Minister of Health of the Reich, K.Venetti, committed suicide before the trial in his cell in Nuremberg. During the trial, the full scope of the role of physicians in the Holocaust was revealed. The aversion to them led to the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws on Medical Ethics.

This is what the chief prosecutor in the trail, Talford Taylor, said about the defendants' responsibility: ''Doctors were pioneers who paved the way for the Holocaust. They defined the ''Jewish race'' and they wrote the racial reports that sent Jews to the extermination camps. Doctors stood on the platform in Auschwitz and selected twins, dwarves and others, for medical experiments. They tore up families. Everyone had to appear before a doctor. Children under the age of 14, all women and the elderly, were immediately sent to the gas chambers. The test lasted 2-3 seconds, then the doctor pointed his thumb. Doctors implemented the fanatical racial policy of the Nazis, whether as their executors or as executioners. Doctors determined the lethal gas dose. Doctors monitored the killing process. Doctors ordered the stripping of the bodies and the search for gold fillings in the teeth. Doctors were masters of life and death, co-responsible for the murder of millions. Some may have been sadists who killed and tortured for pleasure. But not everyone. They are not ignorant people. Most are skilled doctors and some are respected scientists. We must clearly state the ideas and motives that motivated the defendants to treat humans as inferiors to animals. The distorted thoughts and distorted perceptions that caused these atrocities did not perish. Cannot be killed by force of arms. The distorted thoughts and distorted perceptions that led to the trial did not develop in neighborhood bars, but in well-known scientific institutions.''

The verdict in the trial of the Nazi doctors was given on 20/8/1947. The execution of six of them, led by Brandt, took place on June 2, 1948. The prosecution does not appear to have succeeded in clarifying the motives of the Nazi doctors. Despite the clear proof of their crimes, in the face of the firm determination about the quality of their personality and sanity, their motives have remained a mystery so far. Similar to what happened to Rudolf Hess, Nazi doctors became one of the symbols of neo-Nazi Germany. They, too, became an unsolved riddle. The human imagination failed to unite their personalities with their exploits and they remained a '‘fascinating riddle'’. The only explanation is that they arrived with the help of the air so far and high, that their mind was carried on uncontrollably.

The Nazi regime had two systems of operations. There were two types of orders and directives: the official and accepted and the ideological and voluntary. The official system behaved according to the accepted norms of cultural society, the rule of law, individual freedom and the like. The unofficial system did not recognize any norms or laws. It was arbitrary and uncontrolled, untidy. The two systems overlapped, and acted side by side. This means that in the official system the norms gradually became invalid and at the same time, in the unofficial system a normal-looking code of laws was built. Anyone who was interested in improving his socio-economic status volunteered for the informal system.

Joseph Mengele was the epitome of the satanic evil of the Nazi regime. Mengele's conscience acted as a scientist. He was a scientist who justified what he did by thinking that purpose sanctifies means. His split personality is the individual end of the process that began with Nazi ideological dualism and continued with the splitting of the implementation systems in the regime. The absence of a humanity has become his only certainty. The irony is that while modern-day genetics researchers are trying to find the genes that causes schizophrenia, the most prominent schizophrenics in human history have been genetics researchers with pagan moral hygiene.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 17 - Albert Speer and the Architecture of Distance

Albert Speer was the second most important figure in Nazi Germany during World War II. He was the spearhead of Hitler. Unlike the rest of the fanatical bunch, Speer was a rational and as a result a more significant figure. He gave the Nazis a semblance of sanity, moderation and practical logic.

Speer was an architect, who joined the Nazi party in 1930, after hearing Hitler speak at a mass rally. After successfully performing a number of professional tasks in Rudolf Hess's offices, he was appointed Chief Architect of the Nazi Party in 1934.

Hitler's political mission and passion for architecture were inseparable. This combination was reflected in him as early as 1925, when he designed, as an amateur painter, two megalomanial structures: the Dome of Victory and the Victory Gate in Berlin. This was at a time when his political career was at a low ebb.

At the beginning of the Nazi regime Speer, as the official architect, became a close friend of Hitler and formulated with him the aesthetic conception of the Nazis. In parallel with the Nazi physicians in the life sciences and Karl Haushofer in the social sciences, Speer designed the unique design style that allowed the Nazis cultural visibility. The visual style is familiar to all, to a large extent, through Lenny Riefenstahl's documentaries. This is a modern version, in bold lines, of neoclassicism.

Speer was the one who, through his education and skills as an architect, would streamline Hitler's initial images of the Nazi model of action, in the reality of modern society. Inspired by them, he created a megalomanial setting for the crowd. Early in his career he designed the mass marches and demonstrations. He later designed the buildings, boulevards and cities, which were the focus of Hitler's interest.

Hitler valued the closeness of artists most of all. He saw Albert Speer as his closest friend, who provided his abstract ideas with a perfect practical expression, design, planning and organization alike. Without him, his vision would not have come true. He thanked him at every opportunity. Speer received a private residence in the Oberselzberg compound in the Alps. It was an expression of appreciation and a sign of closeness, apart from him only Goering, Himmler and Martin Borman received.

According to Speer, before the outbreak of the war Hitler was swept away by a building fever, which swept away all the heads of the Nazi regime and upset their mental balance. He describes how all the district chiefs were busy erecting magnificent public buildings, usually in a grandiose neoclassical style, which was the hallmark of the Nazis. They came to Berlin with detailed plans and construction specifications that required expensive raw materials, such as marble and steel. The war plots were concocted, in his opinion, for the purpose of financing public construction in Germany.

During the war, Speer was appointed Minister of Armed Forces. His talents in the field of organization led to the extension of the war by two years. They directly affected all areas of life in Germany and included the use of forced labor. Speer thus became the de facto ruler of Germany.

In February 1942, Speer redesigned the structure of the arms industry. He created a spiral scheme, according to which each component of production was given a separate place in the ascending rank. In the traditional German industry each product was made, with all its components, in one factory, by professionals who were experts in separate fields. The transition was to an industry where each factory specializes in one of the components and the complete product is obtained only at the assembly stage. This was the beginning of the modern industry that is known today. The reorganization was very successful and led to an dramatic increase output of weapons.

Speer elaborate the bearings industry in this context. When he took office, each weapons factory was responsible for creating all the components it needed and was producing the bearings. For example, car bearings were manufactured in car factories, aircraft bearings were manufactured in aircraft factories and so on. Speer united the production of bearings in a single factory, which was located in one city, Nuremberg. This plant created all the bearings required in the various industries. Other examples of specialty manufacturing were indicators and monitors factories. This was done for each of the many components required for the manufacture of modern technological weapons. The many different components were sent to the original factory, where the weapon was designed, for the purpose of assembling the final product.

The weakness of the method was that paralysis of one of the important production links was able to paralyze the whole of German industry. Speer claims that if the Allies had focused their aerial bombardment on the bearings plant in Nuremberg, they would have been able to bring the war to an end within a few weeks. But the Allies did not know that this was a weak link. They carried out thousands of bombing raids, with hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs, on many factories that were known to them as producing finished products, instead of focusing on the weak link. Speer adds that they had to systematically bomb the same factory every few weeks, without paying attention to the results of each separate raid, in order not to allow it to recover.

When the Allied air forces of Britain and the United States began bombing from the air, it greatly affected the Nazi industrial poroduction. Beyond the direct damage to industry and morale, it forced the Nazis to allocate enormous resources to air defense and damage repair. These massive bombings continued until the end of the war and forced Speer to devote the best of his energy to them. The Air Defense Force was greatly intensified and was equipped with thousands of  large and sophisticated cannons against aircraft, which were deployed throughout Germany and consumed enormous resources. Restoration of damage to ground structures was carried out very quickly, efficiently and cheaply. Speer has organized a stockpile of raw materials for construction, such as steel, stones and cement, near vital bridges and other important structures. In this way, after a bomb had hit, all the required stock of raw materials for rapid restoration was available attached to the site.

Albert Speer was sentenced at the Nuremberg trials to ten years in prison. After his release, he set up, together with his sons, a prestigious and prosperous architecture firm. Speer wrote, while in prison, the most comprehensive confessional document on the Third Reich, written by a man from the Nazi elite. His book, "Inside the Third Reich", was published in the late 1960s and is the cornerstone for documenting the period.

The book is built around the gap between internal and external. The inside was his personal closeness to Hitler and the close artistic collaboration between them, described in many chapters. Speer fed Hitler's artistic soul with the constant fire of classical architecture. Their close personal relationships found expression in the book in detailed descriptions of Hitler's daily life.

On an almost symmetrical scale the outside is depicted. This was Speer's activity as Minister of Armed Forces, which focused on responsibility for all the technical and organizational issues involved in German armaments. This, too, in close contact with Hitler, who outlined and approved every move. These issues included: organizing the German infrastructure for a war economy, managing the industrial-military production, responsibility for developing modern weapons including ballistic missiles, dealing with Allied air bombs and advising on strategic military moves. A large part of his duties were taken from Herman Goering, after his failures.

The preoccupation with two different areas created a dramatic psychological gap, which Speer was unable to bridge. The gap creatred for him a constant legitimacy for the perception of distance and detachment from guilt. Speer, in all his descriptions, is like someone who watches from a distance what is happening, indifferent and objective, uninvolved, cool-headed even when it comes to the main thing. Such a psychological gap, common in a technocratic society, existed in most of the people close to Hitler.

Speer claimed that he did not know about the Holocaust, as a result of the sophisticated means of communication available to Hitler, which led to direct orders from the Supreme Command to the level of execution, in all government bodies. According to him, an extreme compartmentalization was created, in which only the topmost leadership knew everything that was happening, while all those subordinate to them and he among them, knew only what was ordered to be done.

But the Nazis never hid the racist vision that was their real goal. On the contrary, they have announced it publicly countless times and implemented it in constitutional, administrative and practical steps. It was impossible not to understand what their ultimate goal was.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 16 - Hitler's Air Force secretary

 

Nicholas Von Bilow was by Hitler's side, sa military secretrary of the Air Force, from 1937 until his last days in a bunker in Berlin in 1945. He was a witness to all the upheavals that Hitler went through and one of the last to see him alive. He began his career as a twenty-nine-year-old pilot, who was recommended for the job by Goering. He was with Hitler at every stage of the planning and occurrence of World War II. His diary is a first-rate source of information. Von Bilow was close to Hitler day and night, along with his other two military secretaries, the Army and Navy and the limited office staff. His diary describes all the events from Hitler's point of view. He states that Hitler headed the hierarchy of command so rigidly that the Nazi state was Hitler and Hitler was the Nazi state.

It can be understood from the diary, published as a book, that the development of military aviation was a major priority for Hitler. He acted during the war on the assumption that the German Air Force would be the force that would win it. This was reflected in the campaigns on all fronts, which were always conducted on the notion that a new Nazi plane would tilt the face of the battle, similar to what happened in the First World War. Thus, for example, the battle for Britain began immediately after the medium-speed bomber Yonkers-88, whose development was completed on the eve of the war, reached in a sufficiently large numbers for the squadrons. Similarly, the Messerschmidt 109 and the Shtoka were aircraft that gave Germany a sense of air superiority and led to the decision to open World War II.

Poland had excellent pilots and a very large air force. But the German planes were of a more advanced generation and easily defeated the Polish Air Force. The Polish pilots who fled to Britain set up squadrons with Spitfire planes, which were of better quality than the Germans. Thanks to their daring and skill they won the battle over Britain.

The sense of air superiority was created among decision-makers and the general public by an extensive discourse on the set of concepts involved in the ever-expanding aviation world, which undermined the peaceful agenda. The discourse included justification for the aggression against anyone according to Nietzsche's Superman philosophy. The sense of superiority permeated all levels. It undermined Hitler's uniqueness and gave him a personal reason to go to war, in addition to the ongoing threat of air strikes by Germany's enemies, which were also surprisingly intensifing.

Von Bilow gives an in-depth description of the motives for the invasions of Poland, France, Russia and the rest of Europe. He describes how Hitler reacted to the US joining the war against him and in particular to aerial bombardment. His point of view is clearly pro-Nazi in the early stages of the war and in particular regarding the invasion of Poland, which he describes as a result of the Poles' harassment of the German minority in the Danzig enclave. His enthusiasm continues with the invasions of Norway, the Low Countries, France, the Balkans and North Africa. The invasions are described by him with satisfaction as a military man, as military successes whose very success justifies them. His enthusiasm waned towards the invasion of the Soviet Union and from that passage in the diary he became increasingly skeptical about Hitler and increasingly depressed about the fate of the war and Germany.

Von Bilow's testimony is crucial for describing Hitler's motives in the second phase of the war, when it was clear to him that the order of forces and the course of the war guaranteed a decisive victory to the Allies and a crushing defeat of Germany. He explains and describes in details how Hitler put his trust in the development of the jet fighter.

The phrase that prevailed in Hitler's command circle in 1944 was: "The key word is airplanes." The concept of "airplanes" became a medium and a message, similar to the other key concepts of the Nazis, which advocated abbreviated semantics. The Nazis wanted to catch up with the 1940 backlog, in which Hitler made the decisions to give priority to resources to ground forces ahead of the invasion of Russia.

In 1944 Germany was constantly bombed from the air by bombers and Hitler was mainly concerned with air defense. There was an urgent need for a fast interceptor to stop the bombers. At the same time Hitler predicted the imminent Allied invasion of Germany. He therefore ordered the re-development of the revolutionary jet interceptor M-262, a light and agile aircraft, which was the first jet fighter in the world and the top product of the Nazi aviation industry. This instruction critically delayed the production of the aircraft, as significant changes had to be made in its design in order for it to be able to carry heavy bombs under its wings. On June 6, 1944, when Hitler was mainly focused on the technical problems that arose in the plane, which began to enter the battle in large numbers, Allied forces invaded Normandy and began to advance mile after mile towards Germany. The M-262 was ineffective in assisting ground forces. The design changes made to it greatly reduced its capabilities in air battles as well.

Hitler was very fond of Von Bilow, who appreciated him and became his young friend. There is no doubt that the friendship made Hitler invest more in aviation. Von Bilow was closer to Hitler than anyone else during the war, except for Martin Bormann, his personal secretary. He was much closer than Albert Sapir, who had rarely met with Hitler, and Goering, who had hardly seen Hitler since the outbreak of the war.

Von Bilow writes that he was impressed by Hitler's personality, and by his power to make the right decisions, often contrary to the opinion of experts. He was portrayed as a determined man, with normal and healthy impulses, who overcame his passions out of devotion to purpose. Hitler also became his family friend, an uncle to his children. In the same breath he confirms that the decision to exterminate the Jews was at the heart of Hitler's plans. It was not a spontaneous decision. It had existed in him in one version or another since the beginning of his reign.

That is why Hitler's personality is the main explanation for the Holocaust. He claimed to be the "ideological man" type, with Icarus and Napoleon complexes, who by the power of leaning on ideology, reinvented himself. The charcter, similar to that of members of fundamentalist terrorist organizations, permeated his commands at all levels. Every terrorist is a privately likable person, but what makes him meaningful is the rigid ideology.

One of the consequences of ideological rigidity versus private kindness was that in the Nazi regime, fickleness was a major character trait. Hitler excelled at it while writing "Mein Kampf" as a mixture of black and white, clean and dirty, and it became his "trademark". This fickleness permeated all levels of command and society and allowed for double personal morality. Von-Bilow had to be a "little head" in one area, and a "big head" in another, without admitting to himself the internal contradiction. He identified himself with the success and stayed away from failure, as long as it served him. It was a personal complexity similar to that of Udin, the senior god in Norse mythology, in whom wisdom and madness resided.

Plans to exterminate the Jews can be compared to the military development of airplanes, which is cleary an area of ​​start-ups. Initially these were projects on paper, which received experimental budgets and some of them progressed in this way further. A few of them ended up being used in the war. If they entered the battle and succeeded, they gained momentum and created a change in the balance of power. They have become a self-fulfilling prophecy and created a new strategic reality, which has given them many additional budgets and inspiration for supportive activities from other sectors. What seems, in retrospect, to be an elaborate mechanism,was actually created step by step, in a systematic but fickle process of trial and error.

Air force failures, which have caused severe political defeats, are a widespread phenomenon in 20th century history. The decisive air confrontations take place for a few hours or days, but it takes many years and huge capital to build a serious air force. This is at a time when there is no definite information about the strength of the enemy. The gap between victory and failure is often the result of a tiny technological advantage. Air intelligence is crucial for the existence of any country.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 15 - Reinhard Heydrich Planner of the Final Solution

Reinhard Heydrich was the chief planner of the Holocaust, Eichmann's direct commander and chairman of the Wannsee Conference. He began his career as an officer in the Nazi secret police and managed to be accepted into the Air Force at a relatively old age to become a fighter pilot, combining the pilot's career with being Hitler's most vicious executioner, who saw him as his possible successor. 

At the beginning of the war he was regularly on the line between his squadron at the front and his offices in Berlin. In his role as Deputy Himmler, he controlled all the German secret police, led by the Gestapo. In addition, at the end of 1941, he was also appointed the cruel governor of Czechoslovakia, a position he managed to perform by regularly skipping between Berlin and Prague in a light airplane which was at his disposal and flying it himself.

Despite his excellence, Heydrich was characterless and complicated, stuttering and nervous, quick-reacting, lacking in social skills, who felt like a wolf in a pack of wolves. He saw obedience to command as a supreme value and combined it with intoxication of power and lust for promotion. He was haunted by employment and excellence, in part because of his Jewish background which he sought to hide. He had medals of heroism in battle along with medals for sporting achievements. In addition, he was an obsessive violinist and a talented pen man who wrote a regular column in an important magazine. His arrogance was at odds with him and he was killed in Prague in the open limousine he used for dily transportation, in the spring of 1942.

The boy Heydrich was a member of one of the many militias that operated in Germany after the First World War. In 1922 he enlisted to the Navy. Early in his military career he was a signaling officer on ships. He joined the Nazi party in 1931. Himmler asked him to be the head of his SS intelligence office. 

At the time it was still an insignificant mechanism and Himmler was preparing to make it a major organization. Heydrich became his partner. They succeeded and when the Nazis came to power in 1933, the SS gradually took over the German police. In 1935 the young General Heydrich commanded all areas of the huge secret police service in Nazi Germany. Heydrich and his office were officially subordinate to Himmler. But in practice, from the beginning of the collaboration among them, he was more dominant.

He wanted to develop himself and advance in other areas. That same year, through Goering, he was transferred to the Air Force Reserve Corps and in time received the rank of Major. He arranged for himself a position in a combat squadron outside Berlin. By the beginning of World War II he had became, despite his age, one of the excellent pilots in the German Air Force. He acquired his skills as a pilot by leaving his home in the summer at four in the morning, driving at high speed in his official car to his fighter squadron and training hour after hour before the others woke up. He then returned to the Central Ministry of Defense.

The personalities of Goering and Heydrich had many common lines, which enabled cooperation between them. They were the heads of the most prestigious mechanisms that created extremist Nazism, the Luftwaffe and the SS. Both were powerful and influential, but constantly feared for the loss of their prestige and status. They strived for a common leadership and realized that in order to do so they had to expand their popular support base in the party, by radicalizing positions on racial and anti-Semitic policies. The dynamics of their relationship played an important role in the creation of the Holocaust. The reader between the short lines of the infamous order from Goering to Heydrich, sees that it was based on previous understandings between two people who thought and acted similarly.

Heydrich played a multidisciplinary role in the short campaign against Poland. He concocted the intelligence plots that preceded it, commanded the SS storm units that brutally took over the population on the front lines, flew fighter airplanes in numerous operational sorties and organized the implementation of racial policy.

For Heydrich, the shift from peace to war was also significant as the number one expert on the secret police apparatus. On September 27, 1939, Hitler signed the decree defining the tasks of the "Central Office of the Reich Security" headed by Heydrich. The office integrated the Gestapo, the secret police, and the intelligence system of the Nazi party. Heydrich first appeared in the eyes of the German public as a central figure, with a position equivalent to that of a minister in the government.

On January 30, 1940, Heydrich convened a staff meeting of the Central Office of the Reich Security. Eichmann was the chief technical adviser at the meeting. Heydrich gave sharp, quick and clear instructions that another four hundred thousand Jews should be expelled from western Poland, in as short a time as possible. The expulsions, death marches and mass killings in gunfire, immediately went into high gear.

In September 1941, immediately after he was appointed governor of Czechoslovakia, Heydrich sent 60,000 Jews to his colleague Arthur Greiser, governor of southwestern Poland. It was followed by a letter to Greiser from Heinrich Himmler, their joint commander, stating: '' The Fuhrer wants the territories annexed to the Reich to be clean and purified of Jews, as soon as possible. As a first step I will try to send this year as much as I can, all the Jews from the Old Reich and its protected countries first to the territories in the East which were annexed in 1939. This spring, they will send them further east to Russia. "

Greiser ordered to deal with the "overcrowding''. He obtained Himmler's consent to the extermination of all Jews incapable of forced labor. His commands began to address the problem by experimenting with mass extermination by gas trucks, at a facility in the town of Chelmno near Lodz, which became the first mass extermination facility as part of the final solution.

Heydrich continued to be an active pilot. As governor of Czechoslovakia, he began daily flights between Berlin and Prague every forty-eight hours, using two light airplanes made available to him. On January 20, 1942, he summoned all the representatives of the relevant government ministries to outline the "Final Solution" plan at Wanssee conference. On the morning of the conference he flew from Prague to Berlin, a distance of 280 kilometers, in about two hours.

The Japanese airstrike on Pearl Harbor, a few weeks earlier, considered one of the greatest and most successful in history, was for him a source of inspiration at just the right time. It was a great opportunity for him as a pilot to boast and enforce his personality. Heydrich's main goal at the conference was to ensure the commitment of the various authorities in Germany regarding the final solution plan. The second reason was running a show off his arrogance.

At the beginning of the conference he mentioned the authority that Goering had delegated to him and went on to say that, as part of the final solution, the Jews should be transferred, without geographical restrictions and under proper management, to labor units in the East. Those who will be able to work will be led in long marching columns to work. As a result, a large portion of them will be eliminated because of natural reasons. Those who will eventually survive will die after a short period of hard labor.

Most of those present in the sitting room agreed to his plan without hesitation. The representative of the Ministry of Justice even transferred the punitive powers of the Jews from his office to Heydrich. In doing so, the Jews lost all meaning in terms of the law. The sitting in the presence of Heydrich lasted only nineteen minutes. He then left the place. The remaining attendees continued to chat and process the details.

The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague was carried out on May 27, 1941 by a squad of the Czech underground. It was a few days before Battle of Midway, the aerial-naval battle in the Pacific Ocean between the United States and Japan, which was another important turning point in the war. Most of his activity as the planner of the "Final Solution" took place during the six months between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway.

Hitler and Himmler received the news of his assassination as a direct hit on them. They initiated an unprecedented response action on a large scale. It was named, after him,  "Operation Reinhard".  The construction of the extermination facilities in Treblinka, Belzec, Majdanek and Sobibor, which had progressed slowly till then, gained immediate momentum. Most of the Jews of Poland were murdered in these facilities, between the spring and autumn of 1942.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 14 - Arthur Greiser, Governor of Western Poland

During World War I, Arthur Greiser was a pilot and officer in the German Air Force. He was promoted to the rank of Air Force Squadron Commander. Greiser served in Hermann Goering's  wing during the final stages of the war, when the "Flying Circus" assimilated the remains of the squadrons that still remained in service, for concentrated activity on the Western Front. He was awarded the Iron Cross first and second degree, the Medal rfor the Wounded and other medals of honor.

From 1919 to 1921 he belonged to one of the army veterans' militias held by the Weimar government and fought in the Baltic states against Soviet invasion.

In the early 1920s he lived in the port city of Danzig, as one of the leaders of an extremist militia. Danzig was a city under joint Polish-German rule, within western Poland.

Greiser joined the Nazi Party in 1928. He gained great party prestige as the hot-tempered mayor of Danzig, between 1935-1939.

In this position he was directly responsible for the escalating tensions with the Polish Republic, which were the main cause of the outbreak of World War II.

After the occupation of Poland, in October 1939, western Poland was annexed to Nazi Germany and divided into two districts. Greiser was appointed head of the party administration and governor of the Reich in the southern region, whose capital was the city of Lodz.

As an extremist racist, he enthusiastically implemented a "ethnic cleansing" program designed to remove from the area all Poles and put Germans in it. In all, he replaced about 600,000 Poles he had expelled, with about 600,000 ethnic Germans.

His anti-Polish policy was been implemented in various spheres, such as property confiscation, restrictions on education and culture, the massacre of Polish orphans and the campaign against the Catholic religion and its clergy. Mass executions were the norm.

Greiser turned the district in which he ruled for example of Nazification to the rest of Europe's Nazi-occupied areas. The Nazification and later the Lodz ghetto and the extermination of the Jews, were the first of their kind in the occupied territories of Poland. They became a reality and a model for the pattern of action throughout the Reich. This was the model by which the final solution was carried out.

The largest ghetto in Poland operated in Lodz. Its inhabitants justified their existence in the eyes of the Nazi regime thanks to the extensive industry in which they worked, which contributed to the German war effort.

Despite this, Greiser refused to respond to requests to improve the food rations of the Jews in the ghetto and his extremist anti-Jewish stance guided his subordinates in this spirit.

Greiser was active in Holocaust planning. In the area of ​​his rule, the first extermination facility was established in Chelmno. Many attempts were made at the facility until it became effective. Later lessons were learned from its operation in all extermination facilities. During the war, about 320,000 people were killed in this facility, 98 percent of them Jews.

The first Jews sent to Chelmno came from Czechoslovakia, under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, the governor of this country.

Graiser praised the members of the Nazi unit who operated the facility. In a letter to Himmler, during the extermination operation, he suggested using the same method for Poles infected with tuberculosis and endangering the health of the Germans.

Grazer knew how to get the support of the top officials at the Chancellor's Office in Berlin. He was the most prominent and influential of all the many dozens of governors of the Nazi districts, most of whom were Flavian and even ridiculous figures. He belonged to the military elite along with Goering, Hess and Heydrich. In 1942 he was promoted to the rank of General in the SS. He may also have been marked as Heydrich's successor after his liquidation.

At the end of the war, Greiser was the victim of intrigue among the regime's leaders in Berlin and received conflicting orders regarding the defense from the approaching Soviets. As a result he was sent to Bavaria. At the end of the war he was captured by the Americans in the Alps and extradited to Poland. He was tried for war crimes. He claimed to have carried out orders, but the ample evidence against him clarified his character and motives. He was convicted of genocide and other counts, sentenced to death and was hanged in public.

Greiser is a clear example of a Nazi criminal, a militant nationalist from the border region, who acted mercilessly and out of hatred. A look at his picture shows an amazing resemblance to Goering, which is the result of cultivation no less than a natural resemblance. Like Goering, they both had bright, large, bold, watery and cold shark eyes, a plump but firm face and a love for fancy military uniforms. They were also similar in character traits: ambition, composure, cruelty, intrigue and love for risk-taking. They were both greedy and loved a life of luxury. What saved some of the Jews of the Lodz ghetto was his greediness.