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.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 13 - Rudolf Hess the Solo Pilot

Rudolf Hess was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt. From an early age he understood the iron connection between militarism and imperialism. He dreamed that Germany would emulate the model of expansion of the British Empire, based on a combination of industrial progress, military power and colonial expansion.

Hess excelled as a infantry fighter in the battles of World War I, was wounded several times, won medals of heroism and was promoted to the rank of junior officer. Lying in a hospital after one of his injuries, he became enthusiastic about the stories of the German flight champions' air battles and asked to be accepted to a pilot's course. Hess completed the course in October 1918. He joined the Flying Circus Squadron on the Western Front. It was already clear that the German Empire had lost, and the pilots' mood was low. Nevertheless he flew operational flights and took part in the last air battles of the war.

Germany's surrender, which took place in stark contrast to the uplifting mood of 1914, was accepted by him personally and created a mental crisis. It led to the elimination of all his plans for the future. He felt the humiliation completely. Bitterness, frustration, hatred and a sense of revenge accumulated in him. They found expression in the words of his squadron commander, Herman Goering, who addressed his soldiers after receiving the surrender order: "Our day is yet to come!"

His political view was formulated by geography professor Karl Haushofer, his teacher and friend at the University of Munich, where he began studying after the war. Haushoffer's sons, Albert and Heinz, became Hess' best friends. Albert had advanced degrees in geography and a senior academic position from the University of Berlin. The brothers helped Hess in Berlin in the critical days before Hitler came to power and later during Nazi rule.

Two other figures who influenced Hess at the time were Dietrich Eckert, who was the spiritual teacher of Hitler, and Ernest Roham, commander of the ''Brown Shirts''. Through them he got to know Hitler. He joined the Nazi Party in May 1920, after hearing Hitler speak and get excited about it. Hess was fascinated by the metamorphosis he envisioned. The content of the speech, which ranged from hatred of the Jews, through the supremacy of the Aryan race to the re-establishment of Germany as a power, was very appealing to his ears. There is no doubt, based on his personality, that Hess was also influenced by Hitler's suggestive powers.

Hess, who was the No. 16 member of the Nazi party, began assisting in activities, including personal assistance to Hitler. Hitler greatly appreciated Hess and liked to hang out with him. They were a cute duo. Hess was tall, masculine, and energetic, with an ascetic face and fanatical eyes, very restrained compared to Hitler, who insisted on being the center of social attention everywhere.

He decided without hesitation to accept Hitler's offer to be his political secretary. He believed in his ability to combine his military and intellectual skills and thought he could exert influence in different directions. It was suitable for him to serve as a connection between the people and the educated circles and at the same time between the party and the institutions of government. This subject has become his area of ​​expertise.

Hess linked Hitler's ideas to those of Haushofer. He estimated that the two would find a common language. He invited Haushofer to Hitler's speech and thus began a close relationship between them.

After the putsch in Munich in 1923 Hess was imprisoned along with Hitler. Between the thick walls, Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf." Haushofer visited them several times in prison and formulated the spiritual and scientific infrastructure. In light of the fact that Hitler was inexperienced in writing books, it seems that Haushofer and Hess were full partners in writing and at least the brains behind it.

Hess was by nature an ardent idealist with no social skills and saw in the figure of Hitler his social messenger. Hitler, after appointing Hess as his personal secretary, could devote himself to public appearances. Hess was a regular speaker at the openings before Hitler's speeches. Beyond that he ran the Nazi party on a daily basis. Hess became one of the main influences on the path of the Nazi party and its "idealist" figure.

Hess had a strong card he used to strengthen his position in the party and undo the contempt he recieved due to his overt subservience to Hitler. He remained an active pilot, a fact which gave him great prestige in the public.

Hess continued to be one of the few active German pilots during the post-war recession period in Germany. He had several missions as a pilot in a legitimate militia organization. He participated as a pilot in the suppression of the Spartacist revolt in the Ruhr Valley.

Some time after Charles Lindbergh's historic flight from New York to Paris in 1927, Hess planned a parallel flight in the opposite direction. Had the flight been carried out, it would have compared his political status to that of Hitler.

Following the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 1929, Germany held another round of elections. The meaning of it was clear: the vote would determine whether Germany would abide by the Versailles Agreements and meet its debt repayments, or turn its back on the Allies and develop an independent policy, as the Nazis wanted. 

The political left organized a huge demonstration in Munich of war veterans. Hess took off in a light aircraft painted with Nazi slogans and flew at low altitude in circles for about three hours above the crowd, disrupting and distracting the public through propeller noise and low flight. The noise was so loud that the speakers' voices were not heard. Eventually the demonstration dispersed with a sense of failure for the organizers. In the election a month later, the Nazi party soared to second place in the Reichstag, with a fifth of the electorate.

Hess continued to hone his flying skills. In 1932 he finished second in the German air race "around the summit of Mount Zugspitze". In 1934 he won the prestigious race.

At the center of his political pursuits during the period of the Nazi Party's growth was the question of the party's economic direction, socialist or capitalist. Hess had no doubt. He came from a capitalist background. The party clung to the great capital tycoons, the owners of industrial enterprises depended on cheap labor, who enslaved the German people.

Goering at that time began to be the most prominent and popular figure in German politics. The Hess-Goering coalition and their comrades from the military, academia and the economy had no problem controlling its will. This coalition became the leading factor in the party, which at the time was about to disintegrate. They linked Hitler to the tycoons and obtained the funding needed to propel the party wheels. They gave the party its new, reactionary image. They understood that Hitler controlled the the broad popular base of the party and at this stage did not openly undermined it.

Hess and Goering riped the fruits from the election results in which the Nazi party came to power. They maneuvered their men to the central positions of control and created the SS empire. Hess' junior aide, Himmler, was the commander of the SS, who until that elections had been just Hitler's small personal guard. 

Himmler and Hess had similar psychological needs in a strong leader and an interest in which they could invest themselves. Both adhered to the anti-Semitic, anti-communist and anti-Catholic, anti-democratic, anti-humanist party platform and the mission of the noble Nordic race. Unlike the introverted Hess, Himmler was a determined political animal and took on every task he was asked to do. He enlisted Hess to the SS as an honorary general. Inspired by Hess, Himmler became the cultivator of official Nazi esotericism.

Hitler appointed Rudolf Hess as his second deputy, along with Goering. Hess' status as Fuhrer deputy included the role he had held since 1925, as Hitler's secretary and head of the party organization. His duties were defined as overseeing that the party would fulfill the tasks assigned to it by the Fuhrer, presenting the party's demends to state bodies and in the field of law enforcement and ensuring that Nazis claims will become a reality. In addition to that he also served as a super commissioner for public complaints.

For these ends, Hess built an organization similar to the government offices in Berlin and in some cases carried out their tasks from the outside. For example, the "Ribbentrop Office" he held in Berlin was a shadow of the official Foreign Ministry and competed with it. Ribbentrop, his protégé, would later become Foreign Minister.

Hess showed a special interest in foreign relations both because of the intelligence aspect, and also because of his origins as a German from abroad. He personally felt as a representative of Germany's interests abroad. He and Karl Haushofer were appointed presidents of another special foreign organization, which under cover as a cultural organization established the Nazi base among German minorities in neighboring countries. Through this organization, Hess established exclusive intelligence mechanisms outside Germany. As a cabinet member he made a crucial contribution through them in making decisions about the invasions of Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland.

His ''Homeland Affairs'' organization had offices for public law, art, culture, journalism, employment, finance, technology and organization. He had a total of about twenty offices by 1939. His vast empire was headed by Martin Bormann, later Hitler's personal secretary. His varied activities were the basis for many mechanisms that grew rapidly and a springboard for many senior members of the Nazi party.

The main issue he dealt with was the rewording of German law. It was a concept of "revolutionary justice" that came from his Ministry of Law and crushed the traditional law of state authorities. This allowed Himmler to create the secret terrorist state shaped like a triangle: political police - concentration camps - SS, while bypassing all legal processes. This was the cooncept according to which Himmler ran the concentration camps. Himmler's authority rested on Hitler's will. However, it was Rudolf Hess's law enforcement officers who interpreted the law so that Himmler could create the system.

Hess had an important office for "public health" with two sub-ministries, one for "blood proximity research" and the other for "race policy".

In the Ministry of Blood Research Hess created the mechanisms, recruited the ardent supporters and mostly removed the medical inhibitions by gradually transferring the medical ethical responsibility from the doctor to the state. This was the beginning of totalitarian medicine and as such the beginning of the process that ended in Auschwitz, Treblinka and the other death camps. His officials founded the "Hereditary Health Courts'', which secretly ruled who to sterilize. He was involved in all the medical controversies, methods and processes designed to examine family origins of "Jewish blood''.

At the same time, the Ministry of Race Policy outlined the issue of the colonial question and the idea of ​​race. The working paper dealt mainly with "proper leadership for various peoples". The most important goal of the white race was defined as: "to function as a race of masters." 

Rudolf Hess decided to fly to England alone, in order to talk about it with Winston Churchill. Ribbentrop, who had been ambassador to England before being appointed foreign minister, led the "English policy" already referred to by Hitler and Hess in "Main Kampf" as such that would liberate Germany for search of living space in the East. The ''English policy'' made the grand opening of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin possible. Hess expected to find in England people like him in their thinking, embodying the arrogant aerial psyche, who think of the British Empire as the Nazis thought of Russia. But among most English politicians there was no such approch.

Hess was convinced of the necessity of the idea of ​​his famous peace flight to England, as a dramatic gesture that suited his romantic and unstable character. It might have put him back in line with Hitler, in the sense of: "Hitler conquered France and I made peace with England''. Hess acted mostly out of a sense of self-conviction. He felt he was fulfilling the Fuhrer's wish, without talking to him. He will bring peace with Britain, prevent war between two fronts, and gain personal prestige and promotion after his return. All of these had no basis in reality. It was not preceded by comprehensive consultations, discretion and decision-making cooperation.

The sense of self-conviction that was central to Hess's decision-making process eliminates the need to delve into whether he had collaborators. Flight experts claim that no professional pilot would have dared to fly in an area as crowded with radar and anti-aircraft fire protection as the shores of England were in those days. Hess would not have hesitated anyway. He believed in the Supreme Providence and the higher the degree of risk, the greater the reward  was considered for him.

He took off on his flight on Saturday May 10, 1941. Hitler was like a madman and completely surprised when he learned of the flight. The announcement he made for publication on German radio was as follows: ''Party member Hess, who was explicitly banned by the Fuhrer from using airplanes due to an illness that has worsened in recent years, managed to place his hands on a plane recently contrary to this order. The letter he left behind shows, unfortunately, Unfortunately, signs of mental disorder, which justify the fear that he was a victim of hallucinations. " In view of this reaction of Hitler no senior English government official agreed to talk to him and Hess was sent to an isolated prison. 

In England, psychological experts drew Hess' personality profile. He was described as having a pale personality, a dubious moral character, to whom the nickname "the first lady of the country" and other feminine nicknames stuck. Hess was described by them as quite peaceful, but a little unbalanced. He turned and turned in his mind on his own initiative until it became a madness for one thing. Hess used flight to reinforce his weak character traits. He convinced himself that Germany would win the war, but at a heavy cost and after a long time. He thought that if he he would only succeed in convincing the English people that there was a basis for peace, this would bring an end to the war and avoid unnecessary suffering.

Hess had periods of ups and downs in his mental state. There were times when he was as normal as one would expect an inmate in solitary confinement. When he learned of the deterioration of Germany's situation and that he would be tried as a war criminal, gloomy moods struck him. He had fits of rage in which he shouted at himself and severe forgetfulness attacks in which he forgot what happened five minutes ago. When his memory returned to him, he was re-attacked with tantrums, paranoid hallucinations centered on "Jewish conspiracies'', neglected his outward appearance and made failed suicide attempts.

Hess was sent to trial in Nuremberg on October 8, 1945 and experienced a drastic decline in his living conditions. When the psychiatrists visited him, he forgot every detail of his previous life. It seems that with the suicide of Hitler, most of his personality was also erased. He had to be told where he was born. Hess took an interest and tried to cooperate, but without success. Even when they met him with Goering he did not remember anything. He did not remember the putsch in Munich nor the flight to England. They met him with Haushofer and a host of other senior Nazis in prison, but failed to evoke his memory.

Psychiatrists were united in their views that the basis of amnesia was his hysterical tendencies, which may have originated in the traumas he experienced in World War I and perhaps earlier, in his childhood and adolescence. His psychiatrists determined: 1. Hess is sane and responsible. 2. Hess is a fundamentally neurotic and hysterical type. His amnesia stems from a mixture of autosuggestion and a conscious onset of a hysterical personality.

Hess, who had a split personality, became one of the symbols of Germany's geographical split during his lifetime. This combination of personal and geographical division prevented world public opinion from properly condemning Nazi crimes. He died in 1987 at the age of 93 in Shepandau Prison, after many years of deteriorating health. The circumstances of his death, apparently in the wake of a suicide that finally succeeded, became a political event in the vanity fire of the media. His death provoked general unrest in Germany, which eventually led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, three years later.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 12 - Herman Goering the Emperor of the Air

Herman Goering was a celebrated fighter pilot, "Ace" who took down twenty-two enemy airplanes  in the First World War. He was the successor of Manfred von Richthofen "the Red Baron", perhaps the greatest pilot ever, who fell in battle after being credited with taking down of about 300 of Allied airplanes. The Richthofen Squadron was called the "Flying Circus" and was an elite unit of the German Air Force and Army.

The clause in the Versailles Agreements in which the Germans were required to hand over to the Allies all the advanced D-7 poker planes with which Goering fought, was a major factor in the German protest against the agreement. Goering ordered his pilots to take all of the squadron's planes and destroy them.

He met Hitler in 1922. Hitler immediately noticed Goering's value as a famous commander and pilot. Goering was impressed by Hitler's political skills. A fruitful collaboration began between them, which lasted until the defeat of the Nazis. It was a partnership and a personal friendship.

For Goering the ambitious Hitler was an extraordinary political opportunity. As a young man with a relatively junior rank he could not fit into a high rank in any of the other parties. The ideas of the Nazi party matched his views. What was left for him was to shift this party course so that it would fit in with his plans to advance aviation and to lead the party and Germany in this way.

In 1932 Goering became President of the German Parliament. He also served as the political ambassador of the Nazis. Involved and best known of all, he became the number one electoral asset, the most popular figure in Germany. He linked the Nazi Party to the leaders of the conservative parties, who wanted nothing to do with Hitler.

In 1933, when the first Nazi-led government was formed, Goering was appointed to hold three ministerial portfolios: Prussia's interior minister - in this capacity he brought about the unification of all German federal police into one force under Himmler's command. Minister of Aviation - a position that was tailor-made for him and pointed out the importance of the issue. Minister of the Environment - Goering was the first Minister of the Environment in the world. He was an ardent supporter of the subject, which was one of the most important in the platform of the neo-pagan Nazi party.

In 1934, Goering actually took over the Nazi party on "Night of the Long Knives," in which Ernest Roham and his men, who were his friends with whom he had built a popular large militia, were murdered. The Nazi party finally became a jealous dictatorship, dominated by the black color of SS clothes. The world was shocked, but moved on to the agenda.

In 1935 Goering strated the rapid establishment of the new Air Force. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were: if the Allies discovered that the Germans were developing fighter airplanes they had the right to attack. But Goering's charismatic personality played a key role in convincing the entire world that no evil would happen. The British were silent when he announced that he was going to develop a large air force. The German Air Force quickly became the central player of international politics and later brought the Nazis victories without bloodshed. At the same time, the airforce was used for the purpose of identifying the Nazi movement with the most modern and spectacular military branch.

In parliament that year, Goering passed the Nuremberg Laws. The laws forbade marriage or extramarital relations between Jews and citizens of the Reich of German descent. The decision was unanimous. Goering has signed all of these laws as Speaker of Parliament.

In 1936, the Rhine area was conquered, mainly through an air force demonstration. Goering was also appointed to the very important position of Commissioner of the Four-Year Economic Plan. In fact he became the head of the German economy. Nazism began as a struggle of the lower classes, but soon made Germany ruled by a small group of industrialists with huge factories. Goering made a crucial contribution to this. His original intention was slightly different, to nationalize the industry.

Goering took advantage of this role: He ransfered unlimited budgets to the aviation sector. He  nationalize factories in a systematic program, particularly in the occupied countries. He established an economic empire under his control and name, centered on all the steel production of the Reich. His factories began employing forced laborers. 

Goering, who had economic thinking, was against any waste. He therefore opposed the elimination of the skilled labor force in the occupied lands, in which countless factories operated. His economic trademark was maximum use of resources. His orders to the SS were always combined with a warning: "Do not waste anything of what is usable''.

In 1938, after "Kristallnacht", Goering enthusiastically created the legal system for the theft of Jewish property, a model that Eichmann later used in Vienna. Goering ordered that all resources in the occupied lands be confiscated and that the population be left with only the minimum necessary for subsistence. He thought of looting as the normal way of waging war. This approach shaped the final solution. The sorting of the Jews for life and death was done on the basis of the economic calculation of their usefulness. From the bodies of the murdered everything that was valuable was taken.

In 1939, World War II broke out, in fast wars the Germans conquered Poland, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium and France. The Nazi Air Force was the deciding factor in these victories. Following the victories in the air, the mobile ground forces and the "assault units" of the SS at their head, advanced rapidly, killing systematicly all the Jews and others who were on their way.

In 1940 the battle for Britain began and the German Air Force lost about a third of its power in a stubborn and continuous attack on the island, which was protected by air defense radar, a method that Goering underestimated the information about. The airforce has not recovered from this damage.

One week after the beginning of the invasion of Russia, on June 29, 1941, Hitler officially appointed Goering as his successor. These were the heydays of him and of Nazi regime in general. A month later, on July 31, 1941, on the eve of the date  of Tisha B'Av in the Jewish calendar, Goering signed the "Final Solution" order.

Many people, ideas and events in Nazi Germany pushed directly and indirectly for the final solution. In the end, it was an initiated and calculated decision by Goering, the most powerful man in the Reich. This was in the capacity of his position as "the commissioner of Jewish Affairs''. As early as May 1941, he issued an order banning the emigration of Jews from the Reich.

During the spring of 1941 Goering lost a lot of prestige and status, as a result of various and cumulative failures: On May 10, 1941, Rudolf Hess took off for his solo flight to England, thus beginning an endless saga of defection and betrayal. The flight was a huge blow to Goering's prestige, also because it took place at the end of the Battle of Britain, in which he lost a third of his airplanes. At the end of May 1941 another problem was discovered which cast a heavy shadow over all his plans. Ernest Udet, a close friend of him from the Flying Circus, was appointed by him, although lacking administrative skills, to be in charge of the fighting airplanes production. Udet and his friends have turned the Air Force's armament plan into chaos. He forged reports on the manufacturing and presented numbers that were much higher than reality. In all, Goering was suddenly missing about 3,000 aircraft, compared to his original design. This is according to the following calculation: about 1500 as a result of Udet's fabrications, about 1,200 that he lost in the battle over Britain and about 300 that he lost in the battle over Crete that ended in those days. He had just over 2,000 aircraft left, ahead of the war in Russia and the continuation of the war in other fronts. In addition, following the omissions of Udet, who committed suicide, he lost control of the aviation industry, which was handed over to Albert Spir, the Minister of Armament.

The entanglement into which Goering had to go had to be resolved immediately. He was an action man, with an iron will. He knew that he was starting to lose control. He had to take a decisive counter-action. Why then, he thought, not to act against the Jews. Goering thought that in this way he would create a renewed dynamic, in which the totality of the ups and downs would be balanced. He will compensate for the loss of the airplanes with the extermination of Jews, precisely according to Nietzsche's vertical dialectics. He thought that in way he would continue to hold on to everything.

On the evening of Tisha B'Av, July 31, 1941, Goering sent a letter to Reinhard Heydrich instructing him to begin preparations for a solution to the problem of European Jewry. This was the main order for the complete extermination of the Jews. It was a fateful moment, which marked a decisive turn in the fate of the Jewish people, who experienced throughout history the heights of calamity on this fateful date. The order created a chain reaction in the Nazi domination hierarchy. At the Vanza conference, a few months later, Heydrich planned the practical steps for its implementation.

The order, which symbolizes the peak of humiliation, did not help Gering re-establish himself. In 1942 his status finally waned, after failing to fulfill his promise of air supplies to the besieged Sixth Army in Stalingrad. Hitler increasingly took over the various fields of aviation, from the development of wonder weapons to the management of air defense. Goering found himself outside the circle he had established. He lost control of his drug addiction and spent a lot of time in his estate with the private nature reserve. He became notorious for looting art works for his private collection. His official status remained the same, as Hitler continued to rely on his coolness in times of crisis and saw in him the person he would have wanted by his side at such a time.

The senior status of Goering in the Nazi regime is undisputed. Yet he is often seen as a secondary figure to Hitler. This is not the case and he was the actual leader of Nazi Germany most of the time. Given the importance of militarism in Germany, Goering, the party's most senior officer, actually dictated many events. He sought, with the help of other young pilot officers who belonged to his circle, such as Hess and Heydrich, to become Hitler's successor. He strengthened his political status through his connections with the nobility and the capitalists. His status in the eyes of the far right front of the party was reinforced by his extreme antisemitic measures, culminating in the final solution order.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 11 - Adolf Hitler and the High Mountains

Hitler was an ordinary boy, who was developed into a man who had to experience spiritual records non-stop. His feelings of deterioration and hopelessness began in his youth as an unlucky artist and continued until after the defeat of Germany in World War I. To change for upward direction he was constantly looking for new records.

Hitler was a lone, brave and lucky soldier. He came out unscathed. In many cases, after moving from one place to another a few minutes before a bomb or shell fell there. In one battle between his unit and British and Belgian forces, 2,500 of the unit's 3,000 soldiers were killed. His daring testifies to the constant need for adrenaline and mental highs, which are used not for promotion but for inner purification.

At the same time, Hitler tried to calm his spirit through art. But in confronting his impulses the result was frustration and going beyond extreme values.

In October 1918, following a British gas attack, Hitler suffered from temporary blindness and was sent to a military hospital for treatment. His mental state deteriorated further. Temporary blindness is the most prominent form of vertigo. Hitler entered a state of pure neural terror, which created a clear distortion in the psyche that had long been saturated in the fear of imaginary fall.

Hitler chose, in a combination of necessity and opportunity, the threshold of the realization of the aerial soul. His model was Nietzsche's supreme human ideal. The realization of the model was in all areas of life. When he reached a certain peak, he could not be satisfied with it. He was afraid of falling from it. The fear of falling motivated him to continue as a madman. Hitler became the clear prototype of a man who constantly lived in fear of falling.

Anti-Semitism was a psychological shield against the fear of falling from the heights he was trying to climb. The Jews were shaped in Hitler's mind as a stereotypical concept. He did not know much about them and did not want to know. What he knew was invented mostly through the protocols of the Elders of Zion. Their ancient figure suited to be a victim of the horror of his fall.

The feeling of hatred towards those who were perceived as responsible for the defeat was not unusual among Germans after the war, in which many adopted the view that it was not Germany that lost. The politicians, the traitors, the Marxists and the Jews, were all "November criminals" who caused a defeat. The humiliation of Germany under the Treaty of Versailles was salt on their wounds. Like an entire generation of World War I graduates, Hitler also felt that Germany could not return to its former status without punishing the "traitors''.

Just as one can talk about the fall, one can talk about the energy of the ascent. Every search for power, like the search made by Hitler, finds its logical conclusions in the human struggle against gravity. Hitler was drawn to the ideas of the small, pro-militarist and anti-Semitic national party that preceded the Nazi party. From the moment he joined the party, in 1919, when he was already 30 years old, he began to work hard to ensure its success. He began recruiting new members by posting invitations to party conferences. Gradually, more and more people came to the party gatherings. After discovering his great talent for speech, Hitler, thanks to his charismatic stage personality, became the party's main attraction.

Hitler proposed a method of treating depression for the German people: invent an imaginary weight for him, Jews who might drop the sky on them. Then gradually release them from that weight. This is a psychiatric treatment method. There is a simple psychological transfer here. In its depths, the mind needs a guide. Man stumbles in the first step towards his inner hell and has no power to understand his secrets. A series of images is also required to take him out of his daily routine and fly him to new, aerial districts.

The decision-making process in a person is always a result of how language is used. Hitler's Nazi language took the form of reaching the point of no return. As much as he enthralled the masses, the misuse, excessive and outspoken use of language, led to inappropriate thinking and decisions.

Hitler was the epitome of Germany, by virtue of the "Fuhrer principle". He shaped the Nazi party so that it would respond immediately and fully to his wishes. His moods were also reflected in the day-to-day life of the Nazi state. "The state is me" is a concept that is more true of him than any ruler in history. Therefore the whole period of his reign is a reflection of the diseases, medicines and treatments he received. 

The psychological flight that Hitler adopted for himself was that of a drug addict. He was in constant euphoria and could hallucinate himself as Nietzsche's Superman. Excessive optimism served as a basis for many of the wrong decisions he made. His poor decision-making process was described by his associates, who did not understand the logic behind it, because they knew nothing about his health condition.

Hitler as the image of the ruler, after the transformation to which he was shaped by Nazi propaganda, was portrayed to the German people as the figure of the alpine Aryan warrior, a shepherd  overlooking his flock from the top of the mountain. From the beginning it was a distant figure, in the air of cold and clear peaks, full of lofty ideas. He was portrayed as a mythical magician, who bridged between his loyal hero pilots of the First world War and the common people.

Hitler stayed at his official residence "Berghof" in the Alps more than anywhere else during his entire reign. Had another prime minister in his time established his main residence and headquarters in distant mountains, he would have been portrayed as eccentric. The frequent mention of the place proves that it took over the consciousness of the Nazis. Everyone was fascinated by the place, even though the idea is so absurd that it seems like out of several legends. This place created the Nazi consciousness. It is the epitome of Nazi rule and one of its clear symbols.

In Berghoff, Hitler also convened his crucial military meetings and made his fatal decisions. Among them was probably the decision on the "final solution". Germany looks very clean and picturesque from the top of the mountain. The landscape is an ideal that should be unquestionably implemented elsewhere. From the heights all human beings seem to dwarf. This is the action of vertical arrogance. Whoever contemplates the world from the heights may think that he is an "eagle", a lone hero breathing "pure air" and all those below are like insects.

As partners in the "Berghof Experience", it was easy for German citizens to accept the rumor that "Jews traveled east to labor camps" and not delve into the subject, even if there were many inconsistent facts.

The Nazi army established by Hitler was developed following this line of thought. Many war professions whose field of action are between earth to the sky became his hallmarks. This is a huge intermediate field that has spread everywhere: the Nazi land army relied on parachute operations before faast attacks, the Air Defense Corps became very large and sophisticated and the like.

During the war, Hitler also took under hs command the German Air Force and the aviation industry. The total investment in weapons in the land and sea armies, as in tanks and submarines, was minimal compared to that in the field of aviation.

Some of the most revolutionary aerial weapons of the twentieth century, considered innovative even today, were invented in Nazi Germany. Famous ones include: the ballistic missile, the jet fighter, the cruise missle, the helicopter and the ground-to-air missile.

Under the circumstances Hitler developed the psychological symptoms of the Napoleonic complex. The Napoleon complex has a distinct vertical dimension. It develop in people who feel tiny and helpless in the face of the huge world that threatens them and as a result develop social aggression, which is expressed in a deep desire for control and oppression of others.Those who are dominated by the Napoleonic complex lacks the sense of wholeness. One of its features is photographic  memory and it is only pure facts that delight its soul. Human society is perceived by the owners of the Napoleonic complex as a machine built with perfect logical precision. In such a society there is no sense of naturalness or belonging and there are a huge number of competing souls.

Renowned psychoanalyst Henry Murray analyzed, in 1943, Hitler's personality for the American intelligence. Murray coined the term "Icarus complex" to describe a person with an alpha personality who does not recognize his limitations as a result of mental complexes, which cause an imbalance between his desire to succeed and the ability to achieve goals he has set. Such a person strives for a kind of overcompensation. Because of feelings of inferiority, he formulates grandiose aspirations for future achievement. He often exhibits elitism, driven by hubris and detachment from social reality. The massive ego of some celebrities is a type of such distortion, which can be called a malignant ego. They appear as a supernova star, which explodes after shining brightly for a short time. Politicians may demonstrate the same qualities and in extreme cases they have even reached their status thanks to them. Adolf Hitler is a historical example, for which this diagnosis is literally valid.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 10 - Carl Haushofer and the Doctrine of Living Space

The most influential and yet most secretive intellectual among the Axis countries was Professor Karl Haushofer. He taught Hitler to be a statesman, shaped his alliances and dictated foreign policy. He was the man in the dark who held many strings, drawn to geopolitics and mysticism. Haushofer's influence was so great that he was sometimes referred to as "Hitler's Merlin". A great sorcerer and strategist, he built Nazi Germany as the great and arrogant Babylon, before the mad ruler smashed it.

Haushofer was a professional soldier in the Artillery Corps. His talents were soon recognized by the German General Staff and he was appointed in 1908 a military attaché in Tokyo, who followed the reorganization of the Japanese army. It was a fateful journey, as he was greatly influenced there by the Japanese esoteric philosophical teachings that nurtured the samurai culture.

Haushofer fought on the Western Front in World War I and was promoted to the rank of senior general. His personal passion for the "samurai spirit" was not enough to bring Germany to victory in the war. It made him feel bitter and with a sense of betrayal following the defeat. He retired from the army, accusing the Communists and Jews of the defeat.

During the First World War, Haushofer became known as a man with hidden powers, who could see into the future and know in advance what was about to happen. He used the occult vision to find out where the enemy forces would attack and was able to point out on which areas the artillery fire would land. After the war, in 1919, he founded in Berlin the "Brotherhood of Vril", which preceded the mystical fraternity in which Hitler was educated. He was hailed as "the greatest sorcerer in Germany".

Haushofer got a job at the University of Munich, where his travels to the Far East made him a perfect geography teacher. His doctorate was on a new conception of international relations, which he called "Geopolitics''. The basis of the doctrine was a term derived from the first lecture he gave at the University of Munich: "The living space''.

Dr. Carl Haushofer developed and distributed the theory. He argued that the state has the right to physical expansion in order to economize its population at the expense of less developed countries. It was a theory that had already been widely applied by the Western powers, England, France and the United States, within the framework of colonialism and imperialism. Haushofer's innovation was in the pretense of developing an objective scientific model, based on his arrogant mastery of facts and analysis. Haushofer's theories have become very popular in Germany and around the world. American scholars were also greatly influenced by him.

The state, as Haushofer taught, is not an objective scientific concept, but a subject from the realm of occultism. At the heart of his teachings is the idea that the state is similar to a natural organism, a cosmic tree with the practical right to grow and spread. The natural order of things is that the strong will take advantage of the weak. Absolutism is essential to the developing country. The idea reduces the status of the citizen to a particle from the state and gives legitimacy to the denial of the rights and freedoms of the individual.

There is no doubt that Haushofer was aware of aviation as an important factor in the development of living space. British imperialism developed in the wake of the invention of the steam engine, locomotive and ship and Haushofer must have thought of the development of the Internal combustion engine and the  car and aircraft in a similar context for Germany. The geography professor's theory was nothing more than an incentive for a new political strategy: maritime transport lost its premiere, because land and sea distances and obstacles could be overcome by train, car and aircraft, which were state-of-the-art technology invented partly Germany. Haushofer formed an alliance between Germany, Russia, China, India and Japan against the naval colonial power of England, France and the United States.

Haushofer longed for the return of Germany's imperial power and claimed authority to bring about it through his teachings. He justified the spread at the expense of neighboring countries by virtue of cultural superiority. He therefore wanted to unite all German minorities in these countries under one flag.

One of his students was Rudolf Hess, later Hitler's deputy. Haushofer took an interest in the young pilot, who occasionally invited him to sightseeing flights over southern Germany. Haushofer offered Hess to be his academic assistant. At the same time Adolf Hitler also offered Hess to be his secretary. Hess did not hesitate and chose the second job, but he initiated a connection between Haushofer and Hitler. After Hitler and Hess were imprisoned together in the wake of the "putsch in the beer cellar", Haushofer visited them several times, and helped writing "Mein Kampf".

At the beginning of the Nazi rise to power, Rudolf Hess and Karl Haushofer were appointed presidents of a foreign relations organization, which under cover as a cultural organization established the Nazi base among German minorities in neighboring countries. The notion that all Germans should be united in neighboring countries under the banner of Nazism bore fruit during the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia and during the Second World War in the other occupied countries.

Under various pretexts and tricks, Haushofer bent Versailles treaty, built the power of Nazi Germany and began to organize support for it. The alliance that Haushofer later formed between Germany-Russia-Japan, against the Western powers, was nicknamed the "Block". Haushofer was responsible for an agreement under which German troops were sent to secret training in Russia and German aircraft planners were sent to Japan. The Axis Pact, the document that bound Germany, Italy and Japan together, was written by him.

After Germany's invasion of Russia, Haushofer's vision of the Euro-Asian alliance collapsed. Like many others in the Nazi regime he sought a solution to the situation. After the defeat at Stalingrad it was clear that the Reich was collapsing. Haushofer became active in an organization that conspired to assassinate Hitler and his son Albert joined him. The conspirators wanted Hitler to die and to form a civilian government. They were active in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, in his operations bunker on the Russian front. They were suspected of collaborating and imprisoned until the end of the war. In 1946, at the age of 75, Haushofer ended his life by committing suicide in the spirit of samurai customs.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 9 - Oswald Spengler and his book "Decline of the West"

  

Oswald Spengler [1880-1936] was a German professor of classical languages, history and political science. His extensive and famous book is "Decline of the West", which was published in the years 1918-1921. He develops in the book the idea that every independent culture goes through cycles of growth and decline, similar to the cycle of human life. This is in contrast to the prevailing belief, according to which there is a constant positive development of civilizations, based on the conception of moral eternity.

Analysis of Western society occupy a central place in the book. This is the society where Spengler lived and the whole book is actually focused on it. Western society was born in the forests of Central Europe about a thousand years ago. It reached its peak between the 15th and 18th centuries, between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Now, at the beginning of the 20th century, it has degenerated and to the final stages of decline, awaiting rebirth.

The most significant sign of Western society is the energies, dynamism and activism of its people, which led to its extraordinary technological and cultural flourishing. It is a culture that strives both physically and spiritually, in devotion, out and up. An early physical and cultural sign of this aspiration is the many cathedrals built at the beginning of the "period".

Western European man has created a new religion, in which Mary mother of Jesus is the Queen of Heaven. She is superior to Jesus her son. Belief in Mary is a very important development, as Jesus represents the connection to the early severe Jewish morality, while Mary is much more forgiving and pagan. At the same time, a strong belief developed in the presence of Satan.

These two ideas have been adopted by Christian believers so seriously that it is impossible to exaggerate. As a result man is perceived as walking regularly along an abyss. Black Mary, Mary of the Fall from Heaven, is an integral part of this belief. Because of this belief, Spengler expressed "hope" that the "tragic perception" of life has not yet disappeared.

"Decline of the West" is written in a unique literary style. The central motif that Spengler repeats, as a composer of a musical symphony, is the life cycles of any familiar culture: birth, maturity, decline. They are parallel to takeoff, flight, landing. It describes the dialectic between the upper and lower classes, as it has occurred in history. Thus it has a hypnotic intellectual power, which dulls the criticism towards it.

The book became popular and influential. It was the main bestseller in the post-World War I era, particularly in Germany. Today it is still considered an important research and a significant contribution to the study of social theories.

Spengler was deeply influenced by Nietzsche. His work was intended to serve as a tool for adapting Nietzsche's  aerial ideals for the use of modern, technological and cynical society. He took Nietzsche's ideas about the "desire for power" to the climax: he thought that in history power is what wins and not morality and truth. Man is a beast of prey, and dictatorship is the best form of government. Democracy is nothing but a stop on the way.

Spengler wrote: ''The forces that will affect the future will not be different from the forces of the past. These are: the will of the strong, the healthy instincts, the race, the desire for property and power. On the other hand, justice, happiness and peace are nothing but dreams, and will remain so, floating ineffectively."

Spengler was the main intellectual opponent of the Weimar Republic. He was intensely involved in politics, with the aim of replacing democracy in Germany with a dictatorship of generals and industrialists.

He directly influenced the Nazis. Goebbels copied his radical anti-Jewish ideas from the epilogue of "Decline of the West'', the title of the decisive struggle between the power of wealth and the power of blood.

The citizens of Germany consistently supported Hitler and the Nazi Party, as they presented ideas that were close to those of Spengler, who was considered the prophet of the modern age, who praised the beauty of the chimneys of factories towering into the sky.

Spengler was constantly striving for World War II. He wrote in the 1930th: ''This age is great, but the people in it are very weak. They can no longer bear tragedies, on stage or in life itself. But the fate that brought them to this period will now grip them by their collars, and will do to them what should be done, whether they like it or not ... The tragic world view is not dead yet. It will bloom again in the future as it flourished in the First World War."

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 8 - The Nazi Aerial Consciousness

Of all the impressive inventions of the 20th century, none has had such a strong and lasting impact on the human imagination as the airplane. The aircraft has inspired the creative observation of many artists and intellectuals. It attracted a great deal of public attention by presenting a popular authentic image of the nation and at the same time challenging it to adapt to the modern world. The airplanes passed swiftly over the mountain tops and crossed the continents and in this way changed the traditional perceptions of time and space. 

Along with these physical changes, aviation created new symbols and images that glorified the experiences of speed and movement, created and transmitted new meanings of power, quality, authority and belonging and forever enriched the range of human expression. IT helped most of all the sobriety and development of nations. It created the modern sensitivity, the core of modern life. 

This is also because military intensification in the field of aviation is a multi-year and very complex process, which may stand the test against the enemy within a very short period of confrontation. For this reason air forces often fail. The general sense of failure has, as a result, became one of the salient features of postmodern society.

Of course the airplane is not the only cultural symbol of the period. It is in a list with other technologies such as the car, radio and cinema. But it serve as a representative of human control over the forces of nature and characterize progress unmatched compared to the other symbols of culture and technology that combine the medium and the message. 

"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan and means that a physical means also imprints itself in consciousness as having meaningful content through its characteristics, while creating a value relationship with a person not through the purposes for which it was created.

The danger is that a medium that has become a medium will be distracting. The airplane has no content like a book has, but it has a social impact as it redefines space. As a result, the content itself is of secondary importance. A crime committed using an airplane gets less attention compared to the airplane. People tend to focus on content, but during the transfer of information to them a large part of the content is lost because of the complex physical means in which it is involved.

Once society's values ​​and ways of doing things change due to technology, we understand the social significance of the medium. These changes may seem indirect as a secondary derivative of the hustle and bustle of everyday life of which we are unaware, but in retrospect they are often direct and touch on the principles of culture, religion and historical precedents.

At the heart of the psyche is the experience of flying. Aviation was initially seen as a revolutionary symbol of personal renewal in the style of the French Revolution. Later it was adopted by modern countries as having unparalleled technological and economic leverage. It eventually became a means of expression for national heroism through fighter pilots. It is not surprising that about the plane there is an extensive work that explores and depicts the image from every possible angle.

Central to the approach that explores the aircraft as a comprehensive phenomenon is the practice of the terms "aerial awareness" and "aerial consciousness". The term "aerial awareness" was coined by American researchers to explain the American nation's initial enthusiasm for the flying machine. Following this, historians began to use the term to describe the interest of a nation, group or individual, in everything related to aviation. The term originally refers to enthusiasm for flying in flying machines, but its use also refers to all the traditions and symbols that make up the approach to the subject, as well as the diverse practical pursuits of it. The term "aerial consciousness" means the intelligent use of aerial awareness to create a complete worldview. Simply put, this is a unique culture based on the concepts of aviation.

A comprehensive study of aviation culture has been conducted regarding Russia. Numerous studies on Russian and Soviet aviation point to its great economic and technological importance. But in Russia the airplane played a much more important role, as part of the broadest conception of national development. The personal and public treatment of the aircraft, air and space crafts in this nation was as a whole culture. Generations of Russian and Soviet leaders understood it that way. They promoted images and symbols and in this way realized their political vision.

Russia is a touchstone on this issue, which is researched in depth in the book "The Dictatorship of Aviation". About Russia There are many studies that deal with aviation as a national economic, technological, and military product. They thus describe an extensive air awareness, which was a practical activity stemming from the needs of the hour. But from them one can also identify broader and more comprehensive cultural and political conditions that contributed to the creation of Russian air consciousness.

20th century Western culture, American and European alike, from the outset combined the practical with the symbolic in their reference to the world of aviation. Aviation researchers expressed their views from a combination of the technological and the mythological. The legend of Icarus and Daedalus served as a connecting thread in this context. The evolution of the aircraft symbolized the eternal and Sisyphean struggle against gravity.

It so happened that the Russians tried to rewrite history as if they were the first in the world to make proven attempts at aviation. These attempts are documented in Russian folklore, but their scope and significance are subjective. Every other nation, whether it be the French or the English, the Spanish or the Italian, the Americans or the Chinese, boasts a similar folklore.

Attempts in Russia to take advantage of the amateurish and one-time efforts of peasants and monks were intended to give Russia its priority in aviation affairs. They reveal the main motivation in the Russian aviation culture, which is the claim to differentiation and thus to the ability to compete against the West. This aspiration for differentiation and prominence was integrated with the Russians' broad aspirations for imperial expansion, Slavic theories and communist ideology.

Russian statesmen and citizens measured themselves according to advanced European standards, but they sought to bridge them with Russian national identity. This ambiguity promoted a unique vision of the nation and its future. As the central feature of the 20th century, the aircraft clarified more than anything else the connection between national aspirations and technological progress. Because it promised a military advantage along with control of gravity, the aircraft has become the clearest, best and most effective standard of all for personal, social and national success. As a result, the aircraft in Russia and other aviation dictatorships of the 20th century, Germany, Italy and Japan, became more than just a flying machine. Compared to statesmen from the Western powers, who saw the airplane as a key technological component and a measure of progress only, the Russians also attributed to it symbolic qualities as the forerunner of national pride.

In Russia, the plane became almost a religious icon of the Russian-Orthodox religion. It represented God and the salvation of man as incarnation of Jesus. The airplane was designed to free the Russian nation from the shackles of the past, where most Russians were poor and slaves of the emperor and nobility. The elite society used it to expect a rapid transition to the most advanced and powerful nation in the world.

The Russians were indeed very successful in their achievements in the field of aviation, but these were also characterized by the inefficiency and injustice of the Soviet authoritarian regime. Ironically, during the crushing industrialization of the 1930s that led to most of the technological achievements of the Soviet Union, an outdated culture was also established there, based on hostility and a struggle between the individual and the government where all means are kosher. The petty citizen who did not get enough of his needs did not in any way stopped trying to achieve his needs, while the state resorted to unprecedented punitive measures to achieve social order. The result was a continued Russian dependence on the more dynamic, creative and productive West, on advanced technology issues. The dictatorship of aviation that Soviet leaders sought to create collapsed and became a monumental human tragedy.

Peter Fritsche [1955-] is a professor of modern history, specializing in the history of Germany in the 20th century in general and during the Third Reich in particular. He has written several books on these subjects, focusing mainly on the analysis of the social forces operating in Germany. In addition, Fritsche wrote a book about the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and other books dealing with social processes in modern history.

The first of his books on Germany deals with the social processes in the Weimar Republic that contributed to the phenomenon of Nazism. The second is called: "Germany - a nation of pilots". This book describes the Germans' obsessive preoccupation with aviation, from the beginning of the 20th century with the Zeppelin to the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship, which was an aviation dictatorship in which aviation became a major tool in mobilizing the masses for the regime's needs. Fritsche did not continue his research into the years after the Nazis came to power. The book "Holocaust and Aviation" was created to fill in the gaps.