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.

 

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 7 - Nazi Mysticism

The spread of romantic ideas contributed to a new political worldview among the Germans, who lived until the beginning of the 19th century in small principalities ruled by towering castles on top of hills and fought each other. The natural desire was to unite under a broader roof.

The Second German Reich, 1918-1871, was created by Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, who began to unite the German principalities gradually under Prussia, the largest and most powerful principality of all from the northern plains, in a process that came to an end only by dictatorial means after Hitler came to power.

As part of the process, Germany became a constitutional monarchy. The emperor was an influential symbol, uniting all the ends of the nation.

The actual control was in the hands of Bismarck. But after the demise of Bismarck, no political leader was found with a stature that would constitute a counterweight to the emperor. As a result, Germany was ruled in the early twentieth century by a powerful but capricious emperor with few skills to run a modern giant state.

The fall of the great European monarchies in Europe after the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and the German Empire, created a huge political vacuum in Europe. It was a continuation of the political crisis following the French Revolution.

Monarchy is the practical embodiment of the dream of flight. It is the head of the vertical axis. For many generations the people looked up and saw their kings there in their glory, symbolizing all the sublime, dynamic qualities, as a symbol of heroism, wealth and splendor. This hierarchy was a form of social and mental order.

The Christian Church has completed the work of creating this order. The collapse of the monarchies accelerated the disengagement of religion from everyday life, a process that took place during the Enlightenment period. Thus the gap that was opened was even larger.

This was the culture in which the Jews played a role, sometimes symbolic and sometimes practical, as mediators between the people and the emperor and as religious symbols. In the new social order they did not find themselves. They were seemingly redundant. They were identified with the old regime, the reaction.

The natural fillers of space were the independent European states, which set themselves the goal of replacing the monarchies with the rule of the people, that is, democracy. But democracy, in which everyone is equal, produce horizontal dialectic. The tangible vertical dimension disappears in it.

In the embarrassment, which was great anyway from the very change of regimes, there was an urgent need also for substitutes for the vertical aspect of society.

The bourgeois society, which was the main factor behind the change of regimes, could not be content with domestic values ​​while it had to run a state composed of different interests. There was a need for unifying factors, which would generalize the disagreements and elevate them to higher levels. In addition, the new democracies found themselves in a confrontation with each other and had to train strong armies. Companies became conscripted and military development became a central value.

Aviation was the ultimate solution. The solution was created by public opinion and in the media. It was a mesmerizing combination of will and necessity. It was the fulfillment of the human dream. But it was necessary to turn aviation into a comprehensive social and military system. The practice of mysticism and the connection to pagan, popular and national foundations on the one hand, together with extremist nationalism and anti-Semitism on the other, provided the basis for the vital totality. They provided a new, extreme definition of the self, more suited to survival in the new age.

It is the diversity and the unique scope of the origins of Nazi ideology that indicate above all that the reasons for its popularity are extraordinary. Philosophically it is a reinvention of the wheel. Creating out of nothing. This diabolical ideology was used to hastily meet needs previously unknown to the human race. This is because the reality of life has added a significant new component, which required human adaptation to it.

The political inspiration for the Nazis was provided by a number of thinkers, who linked the material need to the spiritual need. They processed the movement towards the skies into a method of action for modern Germany. They developed the German Superman theory, who controls the world from the air by force using the airplane and develops living space. But the spiritual flight and aviation organically identified with it are at the center of human interest and action, as a central symbol of human freedom wherever it is. The Nazi attempt to expropriate them for control and occupation acted like a boomerang.

During the Second Reich, a broad popular romantic-nationalist movement developed in Germany, the pan-German movement, which identified with the irrational belief in everything that was "German". The pan-German organizations were a vocal and influential political pressure group, proliferating with declarations of intent and mobilizing public support. They advocated modern paganism, which offered an alternative to institutionalized religion through appropriate rituals and texts.

Hitler and the rest of the leaders of the Nazi movement began their careers in the "Tula" and "Vril" associations. These were tiny cults for the development of consciousness, which drew their inspiration from famous spiritualist figures in the 19th century, among them the Englishman with the ability to hover Douglas Hume and his mystical disciple Madame Belvatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society.

Hitler certainly did not acquire his speech and writing skills before the war and certainly not during its time. He had to make the leap between 1919-1924. Between these years, after he ''Tula'' Association, he joined the German Workers Party and then was his imprisonment at Landsberg Prison, where he wrote ''Mein Kampf''.

The Nazi mysticism described in ''Mein Kampf'' became a kind of religion for the German people. It included a combination of Nazism with occultism, manipulation of history for political purposes, neo-paganism and of course racism. It attributed religious significance to the character of Adolf Hitler.

When the Nazis came to power they sought to change the cultural and religious base of Germany. Heinrich Himmler was the one who enthusiastically embraced the new direction, nurturing it until it became the destiny of the SS, Nazi party and Germany.

Heinrich Himmler rose up in the Nazi party from a pale and ridiculous figure to the head of the huge SS empire thanks to his organizational skills. He had a diploma in agriculture and was interested in animal hybridization and fertilizers, which brought him closer to racial theory. He was drawn to the theory of raising an Aryan race of tall and blond people and selected the SS recruits by appearance. He required them to marry girls with Aryan credentials.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 6 - Fascist Italy the Homeland of Nazism

German Nazism was inspired and was a follower of the Italian fascism that preceded it. This was the case in ideology, politic, personality and military.

Ideologically, the poet and philosopher Gabriel D'Ancio wrote the constitutional platform adopted by Benito Mussolini. Thomaso Marinetti and the Futurism movement he founded created the fascist subculture that advocated youth, violence, speed, and aviation, whose Nazi counterpart was similar. Giulio Douhet wrote the military theory that advocated relentless bombing of population centers in order to reach a quick decision in the war, which the Nazis adopted.

Politically the Nazi regime was an almost reflection of the Italian fascist regime because of its centralization, reliance on conservative capitalists, recruitment of the population to the needs of the state, aggressive colonialist policies and more. Hitler resembled Mussolini in personality and behavioral characteristics. Both were glorified by their propaganda mechanisms to the rank of almighty leader. Italy also had Italo Balbo, a colorful and enthusiastic air marshal who, like Herman Goering, developed the Air Force into a leading international force.

Like Germany, Italy also used the airplanes it developed and manufactured to create air control that would decide the battle quickly and with relentless force, initially in the colonies it had occupied in Africa and later as a key component in its military might. As in Germany, there was a very considerable gap between planning and reality, which led to the defeat in World War II.

The famous playwright Gabriel D'Ancio, the father of modern Italian plays writing and the father of fascism too, was an avid aviation enthusiast. In World War I he volunteered to be a fighter pilot, a move that made him even more famous. The war strengthened his extremist nationalist views and he publicly demanded Italy's return to a first-class status. In September 1919, because he was furious about the agreement at the Paris Conference to return the port city of Fioma to Serbia, he entered it as the head of two thousand armed militia volunteers and expelled the multinational force stationed there.

The complex ritual system of fascism was formulated by D'Anoncio in Fioma, in which he declared himself a dictator bearing the title of "Duche". It included the balcony speeches of the ruler, who conducted a dramatic and rhetorical dialogue with the disciplined crowd, who responded to him with a fascist salute and organized cheers, combined with street parades and mass demonstrations, using religious symbols in a new secular setting.

On a more practical level, D'Anonzio's "gospel" included the dictatorship government, centralized economy, violent militia, strong hand international policy and immediate response, assassination of political opponents and widespread use of propaganda and political deception. D'Anonzio was a source of inspiration to Mussolini and is known as "the father of Italian fascism" both ideologically and practically.

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that arose in Italy in the early 20th century. It was predominantly Italian, but there were parallel movements in Russia, England and many other countries. D'Anoncio's character inspired it in the beginning. Futurism appealed to the emotions of modern man and his experience in the advanced and rapid means of production, communication and transportation, from the airplane to the telephone, from cinema to fast food. These are expressions of progress that change everyday life and in this way change the artist's mode of expression.

The founder of Futurism and the most prominent figure in it was the Italian writer Filippo Thomaso Marinetti. Marinetti founded the movement with the writing of the "Futurist Manifesto" in 1905. He was soon joined by young Italian artists. Marinetti expressed intense disgust for everything that was old and especially for the political and artistic tradition. Futurists adored speed, technology, youth, and violence. They loved the car, the airplane and the industrial city. All of these represented for them the victory of human technology over nature. They were equally ardent nationalists. They denied the culture of the past and any culture of imitation and praised originality for its sake, even if it was bold and violent.

Marinetti founded, as early as 1918, a Futurist party which only one year later merged with Benito Mussolini's party, making Marinetti one of its first supporters and members. In 1919 he participated in the essay "The Fascist Manifesto", which was the original manifesto of the Italian fascist movement.

Futurists have created in many fields of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theater, cinema, fashion, literature, music, architecture and gastronomy. Futurists distinguished themselves from the rest of modern art styles by virtue of the desire that influenced their works. They argued that art needs drama, movement and the clash of psychic forces, similar to what happens in nature.

There were many parallel lines between Nazism and Futurism: love of the future and youth, love of modernization, technology, violence, nationalism, war and more. Like the Nazis, Futurists often engaged in technology in general and military technology in particular.

Therefore the practice of aviation gradually became central to the movement, as flight became accessible to more people. The airplane became a major actor in the futuristic drama. Aerial painting is considered the pinnacle of futurism and is typical of the last stage of the movement's development, in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Giulio Douhet [1865-1930] was an Italian general and theorist of air power. He was a key supporter of the bombing strategy from the air as a crucial factor in the war. In 1911, Italy went to war against the Ottoman Empire for control of Libya. In this war the first aerial bombardment in history was carried out on November 1, 1911 by an Italian pilot. Although it was a seemingly marginal war, it was a significant factor in the outbreak of World War I, as the Balkan peoples saw how the Ottoman Empire, which was Italy's enemy in this war, could be easily defeated. Douhet wrote a report on the aviation lessons learned from this war. He recommended high-altitude bombing as the main function of the miliary airplane.

With the outbreak of World War I, Douhet called on the Italian government to begin building significant military air power. He said that: "Air control means making the enemy helpless''. He proposed building a force of 600 bombers that would be capable of dropping 125 tons of bombs every day, but the decision-makers in Italy ignored him. Douhet continued to write about air power, finished novel on the subject and sent memos to government ministers about a huge fleet of airplanes. In 1921 he completed a research paper called "Air Control", which had a huge impact on aerial bombardment theory.

Douhet stated in this essay that aerial power is a revolution, since it operates in the third dimension. Aircraft are capable of flying above the surface, thereby lowering the importance of ground forces to a secondary degree. The vast sky make protection from airplanes almost impossible. For this reason the attack is the epitome of air power. The only good defense is the offense. An air force capable of gaining control of the air through a preemptive strike by the enemy's air force and destroying it, will then decide the entire fate of the enemy state through constant bombardment.

Douhet believed in the moral effects of the aerial bombardment. Air power is capable of breaking the will power of the citizens, through the destruction of the vital centers of the country. Land and sea armies become redundant as the airplane can fly over them and attack vital government, military and industrial centers without being hit.

In 1920 Benito Mussolini took flight lessons. He survived a crash after 18 hours of solo flights. In 1922 he came to power in Italy, after his loyalists marched to Rome. Mussolini soon placed aviation at the top of his regime's priorities. He preached for the construction of a modern air force, hosted air demonstrations and record-breaking flights and promoted the production of advanced airplanes. His aviation minister Italo Balbo, led Italian aviation to international status after leading, in early 1933, a squadron of 25 naval airplanes on a transatlantic flight from Italy to the United States. Mussolini's two sons were bombers pilots, who took part in operational activities throughout the wars of fascist Italy.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 5 - Friedrich Nietzsche The Philosopher of Flight

After World War I, defeated Germany experienced a sense of falling from the summit into the abyss. The fear of falling has become attribute of the masses. The fear of falling is one of the strongest and earliest in man since the dawn of humanity. The fear of falling is fixed in mankind through an undeniable psychological reality and create a mental impression that leaves indelible traces. But metaphors concerning fall are far fewer than the metaphors of ascent. The fall is a limited subject. The imaginary fall very quickly becomes nausea, weakness and sickness.

The official philosopher of the Nazi movement was Friedrich Nietzsche. In Nietzsche the poet explains the thinker. He is the prototype of the vertical poet, the poet ascending to the peaks. Nietzsche clearly represents the complex of heights. Everything that moves in the air is expected to make its mark. It's an ongoing preference for anything that comes up. He invested all his energy in making the earthly universe aerial. Prominent in his work and in particular in "Thus Said Zarathustra", the following themes: the air as freedom, the psychological imaginary fall, the dialectical play between vertigo and victory, the courage to live at heights, verticality versus gravity, cold fire and the healing value of rising and growth.

At the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy is the idea of ​​the dialectic between the high and the low. The vertical movement tear man from inside and in this way place both the upper and the lower within him. Superman must experience this inner tension. This is the source of the feeling of supremacy that Nietzsche encourages. Superman finds his way to greatness by uniting the peaks and abysses.

Nietzsche's main conclusion is: to will and to fly are the same. The end result of this longing is moral ambiguity. The sentence that sums up Nietzsche's ideas is: "The upper is the winner''.

Every philosophical doctrine is an attempt to understand and solve the problems of the hour. During the period in which Nietzsche wrote, the hot air balloons carved new paths in the skies of Europe, redefined the limitations of man and created a revolution in his worldview. An in-depth reading of Nietzsche's descriptions of "God's death" clearly reveals the reason for his original approach: Man killed God because he soared to his realms in the skies and took his place. Land's cables were unchained.

Nietzsche gave his ideas a poetic and eloquent attire. His recommendations are given different interpretations and thus found an echo in the hearts of the Nazis. The denial of existing morality, the desire for power, the "supreme man", the sanctification of war and the contempt for peace, all of these were expressed in their teachings while distorting his original ideas about human freedom. His writings about the aerial psyche gave a cohesive character to their worldview.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 4 - Nationalism and Militarism in Germany

The collapse following the First World War of the Austrian, Russian and German empires was the result of the "Nations Spring" in Europe, which began following the French Revolution.

The monarchy is a national embodiment of the dream of flight. The king was the head of the social pyramid. The Christian Church has completed the work of creating this order. The collapse of the monarchies occurred along with the rise of secularism. The resulting political gap was very large.

The natural fillers of space were the independent European states, which set themselves the goal of replacing the monarchy with the rule of the people, that is, democracy. But democracy, in which everyone is equal, lacks hierarchical symbols. The tangible vertical dimension disappear in it.

There is a need for unifying factors that will generalize national disagreements and elevate them to higher levels. In addition, the new democracies found themselves in a confrontation with each other and had to train strong armies. Society became conscripted and military development became a central value.

Aviation was the ultimate solution. It was a mesmerizing combination of will and necessity. It was the fulfillment of the human dream. The practice of mysticism and the connection to pagan, popular and national sources on the one hand, plus isolation and anti-Semitism, provided the basis for the new totality. They provided a new, extreme definition of the "Me".

In the new social order the Jews did not find themselves. They were seemingly useless. They were identified with the old regime, in which they played a role as mediators between the people and the emperor and as religious symbols.

The German Romantic-National Movement identified with the zeal, irrational belief in everything that was "German''. Although a vocal and influential political pressure group in the early twentieth century, they lacked focus and fervor, contenting themselves with statements of intent and mobilizing public support. The energy that made them active and assertive was provided by the Nazi movement.

From below, out of the embarrassment in which Germany was after the defeat in World War I, came the need for a pragmatic order. Each such order, built from different elements at first, unite into a single central political issue. In the case before us, the entire German political spectrum, eventually united, in different ways, under the figure of the Nietzschean Superman. In Germany "order is order" and the Nazis provided it.

The father of the Nazi political party was Rudolf Sabotendorf, a German who practiced occultism, was greatly influenced by Sufi Islamic mysticism and other Oriental philosophies. He developed the idea of ​​reviving the German myth, assuming the coming of the historical moment when, according to his theory, the Aryan race would return to its ancient glory, through the emergence of the upper human race. Hitler was able to write "Mein Kampf" thanks to the spiritual progress he made in the Sabotendorf movement, between 1919-1924.

The Nazi mysticism described in "Mein Kampf" became a kind of religion for the German people. It included a combination of occultism and naturalistic pursuits, illegitimate manipulation of history, neo-paganism and of course racism. It attributed religious significance to the character of Adolf Hitler.

The founder of official Hitlerite esotericism was SS Commander Heinrich Himmler, who was fascinated by Aryan racism and the paganism of God Odin. Himmler claimed to be the spiritual successor and reincarnation of Heinrich "The Bird Hunter", one of the German pagan tribes leaders and the founder of the German Empire in the Middle Ages. Hitler was perceived in this fantasy as the incarnation of Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire.

The diversity and unique scope of the sources of Nazi ideology are exceptional. Philosophically it is a reinvention of the wheel and the creation of something out of nothing. This diabolical ideology was used to hastily meet needs previously unknown to the human race. This is because to the reality of life was added a significant new component, aviation, which required human adaptation to it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 2 - The Importance of Aviation for Humanity

Flight is a major symbol of the human spirit and freedom. Aviation is, naturally, identified with spiritual flight. The development of aviation is at the center of human interest and action. Therefore, it can serve as a touchstone for a series of phenomena and allow for a bold, short and accurate historical explanation.

The impact of transportation in general on human existence is enormous and the impact of aviation on modern history is accordingly. The airplane is a means of transportation that provide physical movement of people and goods from place to place, overcoming all physical obstacles. This means a complete change in the balance of power between the nations. Thus the twentieth century was characterized by the most difficult wars in human history. 

There is a chronological connection between developments in the field of aviation and important historical events in the modern era: the French Revolution took place less then  ten years after the invention of the hot air balloon. World War I broke out about ten years after the flight of the first airplane. World War II began at the ''golden age of aviation'' era, in a time when the airplane was established as the only safe air transport.

The airplane is the ideal means of transportation for an isolated country. Germany is a continental country isolated by natural obstacles. It has a small navy. As a result, its colonies were small.

The airplane was imported from the United States to Germany as a technological innovation a few years after its invention. Germany was then at the beginning of its rapid industrialization process and the airplane created a strong incentive for the adoption and development of new technologies.

Germany lost in World War I, but the Germans felt betrayed. The main reason for this was their feeling that in the prestigious air campaign they were close to winning. They had better airplanes and pilots. The famous Flying Circus Squadron, of which Hermann Goering was the last commander, was very successful and popular.

The Treaty of Versailles forbade the Germans to build needed airplanes and they felt deprived of the opportunity to defend themselves and develop the economy and society. Under the guise of civilian gliding clubs that were actually military pilot schools, the Germans continued to develop their Air Force.

Philosophical thinkers and politicians linked the material need to the spiritual need. They processed the movement toward the skies into a method of action. They provided the obedient and militaristic German people with the consciousness essential to the fulfillment of the upward command.

During the Nazi regime, the process of integrating aviation into the life of the country was complete. Aviation, instead of integrating organically, has become a leader in the economy and society. Between the years 1933-1939 the number of workers in this industry grew from three thousand to two million. At its peak, during World War II, the aviation industry was about forty percent of the national budget.

Four key figures in Nazi regime were fighter pilots and also dominant in the initiative and execution of the final solution: Hitler's two deputies, Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess, who were his companions from the beginning, were professional pilots, whose skills in this field were the main lever for their personal advancement in the Nazi party. Goering and Hess were key activists in enacting and enforcing racial laws and in the chain of orders that led to the final solution. Another member of their squadron, Arthur Greiser, was one of the most prominent figures in the Nazi Party and the Third Reich Administration. As the Nazi mayor of Danzig he called for war on Poland. During the war he was governor of West Poland, making it a model for enforcing the final solution. Reinhard Heydrich was a fighter pilot, who combined a pilot career which he began at a relatively late age, with being Himmler's deputy. His most important role in the SS was being the commander of the Gestapo. He was the planner and direct commander of the Final Solution.

The scale of the aviation industry in Nazi Germany and the role of senior pilots in planning the final solution are enough to explain the rise and fall of the Third Reich and the Holocaust altogether. All the various explanations given so far for the extermination of the Jews in Europe ignore these facts.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 1 - Gaston Bachelard and his book "Air and Dreams"

Like every revolution in transportation that preceded it, from the wheel to the steam locomotive, the airplane gave those who controlled it the tool to conquer the world. But unlike land and sea, which are the cradle of human activity, air is a whole new field of action and life. Mankind lacks the cultural background to relate to the imaginary flight, central to the development of the mind, in the context of practical aviation activities. 

The impact of aviation on human existence is intense, but the dialectic between spiritual flight of the soul and physical flight in aircraft is vague and destructive. The problematic connection between flight and aviation is very noticeable against the background of the Nazis' efforts to become world rulers while accelerating the development of aviation.

The famous French philosopher Gaston Bechelard [1884-1962], in his book "Air and Dreams" [1942], described the world of philosophical and psychological concepts of the experience of flight. This is done using the tools for imagination research that he developed and especially the concept of 'dynamic imagination', a concept that is valuable to anyone interested in developing his creative abilities. 

According to Bechelard, the imagination is created through some movement. The human desire is to fit into the movement and the thought is to find a way how to do it in practice. A philosopher who seeks to understand man must concentrate on the study of poets.

Bechelard pointed out the benefits of imagination as a result of union with a particular substance. A material element is a good conductor by nature, which gives continuity to the imagining soul. The world of phenomena thus offers lessons in change and preliminary movement. An object is not real, but is a good conductor of what is real. The practical end required by the organism due to the urgent need for immediate needs, also corresponds to the end of poems that take place in the body as a potential.

Every element that the physical imagination enthusiastically adopts prepares a special purification, a characteristic transcendence. Aerial purification is of the purest type. It carries on with a light dialectical refinement. The flying creature appears to be moving beyond the exact atmosphere in which it is flying. There is always room for further transcendence and the absolute is the final stage of the consciousness of freedom created in this way. The title most linked to the word ''air'' is ''free''. Natural air is free air.

The aerial phenomena are those whose stages are the most obvious and regular. They give us very important guidelines for the psychological sensations of: erection, rise, growth, ascent, flight and purification. These feelings are the basic principles of psychology that can be called: Flight Psychology.

At the heart of every mental phenomenon is a true sense of verticality. This verticality is not an empty rhetoric. It is a principle of order, a scale along which a person can experience the different degrees of his emotions. The life of the soul, all the delicate and latent emotions, the hopes and fears, the moral forces involved in our future, have a vertical differential, in the full geometric meaning of the word. Particularly prominent are the images and thoughts involved in the basic values ​​of the mind: freedom, gaiety, lightness.

Elevation, depth, rise, fall and the like, are axiomatic metaphors par excellance. Nothing explains them and they explain everything. In simpler language, if a person is interested in living them, feeling them and above all comparing them to the reality of his life, he understands that they are both of primary quality and most natural. It is impossible to express moral values ​​without reference to the vertical axis. Every nerve that shapes the body transmits verticality. The imaginary air is a mental growth hormone for man.

Because the aerial imagination affects the whole entity, then after we have reached with the help of the air so far and high, we will surely find ourselves in a state of open imagination.

Images of freedom present a problem if their various stages have not been tried one by one, and the same difficulty arises with truths delivered with the free air, or the liberating air movement. In the infinite air dimensions are erased and we come into contact with a dimensionless matter 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 as a whole will double any impression by adding a new image to it. 

In this transformation, the imagination expresses one of its ambiguous flowers, which obscures the colors of good and evil and violates the most stable laws governed by the values ​​of humanity. The end result of this longing may be moral ambiguity.

Things are indeed growing. The tendendcy of energies, in imagination and in reality, is to progress too far. The reveries of the desire for power are the reveries of the desire to be omnipotent. Superman has no equal opponents. He is doomed, with no ability to return, to a full-fledged existence in the pantheon of legendary heroes, though he may never admit it, even to himself. It is an internal hygiene, almost as practical as the external hygiene.

Man-made aerial objects and especially airplanes, have too much attractive presence to be simply integrated into the human needs hierarchy. The airplane is easily humanized, a characteristic which is one of the most prevalent phenomena in human culture. The airplane is very similar to a bird, an angel, man spreading his hands, or flying scales. It resemble the Christian  religous cross. The Nazi armament with airplanes was also an opportunity for them to appear more human and not just  technologically advanced.

Images that seem meaningless have all the benefits to the life of the soul when their origins are revealed, beside in abstract concepts or material objects, also in the ancient legends. Folklore blends well with the images of flight. Moreover, important terrestrial images hidden within it suddenly take on wings, blossoming into new, vast meanings.

German legends collected by the Grimm brothers were a factor in the development of German nationalism in the nineteenth century. In this spirit of the Romantic period, the Germans took the legends monstrosity as model for good behavior. As a result, they embraced the Nazi regime, in a strict conspiracy of silence that enveloped the German society.

The pilot as a superhero in Israeli cinema

The Israeli fighter pilot as a superhero

The slogan "the best for pilots" still has significance in the State of Israel. Most of the public attach great prestige and importance to the pilot. World War II immortalized the pilot as a mythological figure. The stories of the "Battle of Britain" heroically described him. Winston Churchill said: "Never before have so many owed so few''. Ezer Weizmann, who served as a pilot in the British Air Force during World War II and served for about 8 years as commander of the Israeli Air Force, has become the most significant symbol of the Israeli pilot. He created the local slogan. It attests to excellence and implies that whoever flies is good.

The main historical factor in the development of this myth in Israel are the many wars that have been decided by its air power. Operation Kadesh in 1956 was relatively successful for the Air Force, but did not significantly dispel the myth. During the Six Day War, the Air Force's achievements were set and the documentaries about it highlighted the Israeli pilot myth. After that, when the Air Force was automatically associated with successes and abortions, there was a huge increase in the number of volunteers for a pilot course. Self-confidence was high and the pilots were wrapped in a lot of love.

The image of the almighty hero pilot remained in the minds of civilians even during the Yom Kippur War. Despite the low morale it brought with it, the Air Force was portrayed in this war as the main defensive wall. The pilot stereotype was perpetuated in it as the perfect hero, who is also a "sacrifing savior'', willing to risk his life and sacrifice his life for the State of Israel.

After the Yom Kippur War the pilots boasted less of the wings. This happened mostly to the young. But even if there was a slight respite in public admiration for pilots, they were able to regain the aura, thanks to successful operations such as "Entebbe" and "Attack of the Reactor in Iraq." These operations had a style that gave the Israeli pilot a Hollywood touch.

Today, the army is no longer a top value in Israeli society and it is permissible to criticize it, including the Air Force. Still, the image of the fighter pilot in public is better than that of other military personnel. Today the society is individual and the pilot expresses exactly that value. If you add to this elements like quick reaction, decisiveness, courage, challenge, self-control and accuracy, you come to the conclusion that this is the character of the popular hero.

An interesting question is in what direction will the pilot figure develop in the future, where the war will be largely waged using unmanned aerial vehicles, which require different characteristics and population segments.

In this context it is worth mentioning that the film industry was, from the beginning, an important source of employment for Air Force personnel around the world, after being discharged from military service. They have been integrated into this industry in all fields and levels. It was these people who shaped the character of the "Knightty Fighter Pilot" in popular culture.

The myth of aviation in the visual media in the State of Israel

Central to the approach that explores aviation as a comprehensive phenomenon is the practice of the terms "aerial awareness" and "aerial consciousness". The difference between them is, in short, is like the difference between the terms "artist" and "artisan".

The term "aerial awareness" explains the enthusiasm of individuals for the flying machine, which accumulates for independent creation and voluntary activity of creating traditions and symbols on the subject.

In Western powers, such as the United States, England, and France, aerial awareness puts the independent individual interested in aviation at the center. It is dominant and accordingly the character of the pilot is shaped as a lone hero, with a sensitive mind. He operates a highly complex machine while constantly physically moving in three-dimensional reality. He experiences and makes decisions that are not the property of the common man, who lives in a two-dimensional environment. The fighter pilot is therefore an "artist".

The term "air consciousness" means the intelligent use of aviation to create a comprehensive national and social identity and accordingly the pilot is part of the social system and does not question it. In World War II, there were four countries that controlled the "air consciousness", in what can be called the "air dictatorship". These countries are: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan and the Communist Soviet Union. Because in these countries the emphasis in training was on quantity versus quality, the title appropriate for the pilot in them is "artisan".

In the middle are the countries that do not clearly belong to one of the two blocs, including Israel, which has created a unique aviation culture. Apart from being part of the myth and saga of the "best air force in the world", the images of the Israeli fighter pilot as a superhero also feed on Israel's ties with the United States, including American popular culture, with its superhero culture. Contrary to the image of the "wild west man", defense needs also contributed to the design of an Israeli fighter pilot with political views and social criticism, in films and in reality, as in the case of Yiftach Spector, who became one of the critics of Israeli defense policy.

Real American aviation events in the last half century have influenced Israeli society through television, which covered them as prominent and fascinating media events. For example, the "first Gulf War" that took place in the years 1990-1991. During it, American precision bombing videos were given extended screen time each evening. Feature aviation films, including "top Gun" (1986), illustrate the close connection between the American Air Force and the Israeli Air Force, thanks to the social background and similar ideals, the use of identical aircraft and the training and common goals.

The most important aviation-television event to date is the first landing on the moon, in July 1969. As in the rest of the world, Israel too watched with anxiety and excitement the miraculous journey of three Apollo 11 pilots: Reporters were sent to NASA space center,  TV and radio coverage of the event was from every possible angle and commentators and scholars have debated the question of the historical, scientific and spiritual significance of the landing. The Apollo 11 astronauts have gained the status of cultural heroes in the local media and entiresupplements have been devoted to their experiences.

The popular culture in the United States greatly reinforces the myth of aviation, but at the same time the image of the pilot as an individual with personal needs. ''Star Wars'' movie series, in which the figure of the pilot stands out as a superhero, can be analyzed as a biblical text about the cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil and the desire to survive with the help of God - "the force". There are Jewish scholars who challenge the ideological separation between popular culture and religious life and link episodes in the saga to Jewish religion and history. The saga allows for a local critical discussion of various issues, such as feminism and gender, government and minorities, psyche and personality, quality of life and environment and more. "Star Wars" also has practical importance for Israel militarily, as synonymous with space warfare and as a source for learning military strategies.

Feature films about the fighter pilot in the State of Israel

Compared to the extensive place that the Air Force has in Israeli society and the many books written about it, few feature films have been made in the country about the subject of the fighter pilot. In the few films made in the State of Israel, the icon gradually became from national to personal, and in the meantime he is also exposed to social criticism.

The film "Sinaia" (1961) is a unique feature film in Israeli cinema, the plot of which takes place during Kadesh operation. It star is an Israeli fighter pilot, Yiftach Spector, who was loaned to a film from the Air Force and later became one of its top pilots and commanders. The film was made while he was still a young pilot. It is generally based on a real event. Spector plays himself as an Israeli pilot, whose Mister jet crashed near a Bedouin encampment in Sinai. He manages to take control of an Egyptian Piper plane, fixes it in a tent and takes off with the wounded Bedouin baby Sinaia and her mother. The plane crashes and the pilot dies. Sinia survives and is picked up by another Israeli officer, who was left to wait for rescue. Spector's character adds a mythological dimension to the film, as he plays the character of the legendary Sabre.

Early feature films, such as "Sinaia" and "Eight after One" (1964), perpetuate the fighter pilot myth as a local superhero. The later films are more critical. There are Israeli aviation films that use this myth to present criticism of national policy, or self-criticism of the character of the personal pilot as a superhero. In feature films such as "Way of the Eagle" (1990) and "Armand's Kites" (2011), the protagonist pilot character is subject to self-criticism and external criticism.

An example from the recent period is the film "Adventure in the Sky" (2019), which combines computerized visual content scenes. An aviation-loving boy and girl find scraps of an antique Air Force "Messerschmidt" plane. They decide to renovate the plane and fly it in the Independence Day demonstration. Throughout the film one can find a close affinity with the First Air Force Fighter Squadron, but comedic antagonistic sub-characters, who display the arrogance sometimes identified with the pilot profession, manage to maintain the critical character.

Between the character of the pilot as a national hero and the criticism of him lies the private personality. The Israeli fighter pilot walks on a taut rope, which is intertwined with both his profession and his conscience. The result, for the most part, sharpens self-criticism, which is also a key tool in his ability to improve performance, as part of the "best air force in the world."

The film "Every Bastard is a King" (1968)

The discussion of the values ​​of the pilot character rises another step in Uri Zohar's feature film "Every Bastard is a King" (1968), for which the script was written by Eli Tavor and produced by Avraham Deshe. The film was a huge success. The film is dedicated to the IDF forces that operated during the Six Day War. It is a hybrid, as it include long documentary footage. Hybridity is also an artistic means of illustrating the main message of the film, as will be described below. It is a film that can be fully understood and analyzed as an aviation film, as the protagonist represents the character of the pilot as a superhero, even though he is a private pilot, acting for personal motives. The film tells the true story of Abie Nathan and his peace flight.

The film consists of three plots naratives: The first deals with the peace pilot Rafi Cohen (Oded Kotler) whose character is modeled after Abie Natan. The second deals with the character of his driver Yehoram (Yehoram Gaon) who becomes a brave warrior in the war. The third deals with an American journalist, Roy Hemings (William Berger), who came to cover the upcoming war with his wife Eileen (Pierre Angeli).

Abie Nathan, a restaurant owner and peace activist, took off privately on a light private plane to Egypt in February 1966, in an attempt to talk to Nasser. The film gives his flight a human and representative meaning that goes beyond its historical impact. He is crowned as an alternate superhero pilot. A key sentence at the end of the film is: "If you want to live - you must learn to fly".

The film begins with a small convoy of cars, in which Yehoram is driving the leading car, with Rafi sitting next to him. Along with them in the car is the widow Eileen. They drive to the airport in Lod. The convoy pass between the planes, parking and loading onto a large passenger plane a coffin wrapped in the United States flag, in which lie Roy Hemings' dead body. At that time, the airport and air transport were considered another expression of Israeli air superiority. The scene herald the reality of today, where flying in passenger planes has become massy and tedious.

Then begins the chronological narrative, which opens with a description recorded by Roy, of the situation in the country on the eve of the war: ''Israel is a systematic and messy collection of paradoxes, which somehow have some logic, which can not be explained. Everything you say about the Israelis is the opposite''. His words are heard against the background of a picture of a gleaming El Al plane taking off with its coffin.

The mystical-religious dimension is integrated, with Rafi leading seven demonstrators, who are marching to Jerusalem for peace. They tell Roy that if the politicians did not bring peace, maybe Rafi will succeed. Yehoram says that Rafi's courage stems from despair. He once saved Rafi's life at a rooftop party, where he walked on the railing to impress a girl and almost fell into an abyss. The story is told against the background of a flashback scene, of Yehoram the paratrooper and his friends jumping from a large military plane. Yehoram says that parachuting is the best thing in the world, but getting off the plane is scary.

Hemings reveals the aspirations of the collective war of the Arabs. You can see in the flashback the incident where Rafi walked on the roof railing, told again by Rafi himself, to Eileen with whom he develops an affair. Rafi has an instinct for self-destruction. He may be interested in being a "sacrifing savior''. Even the  mental dialectic, the culmination of which is the idea of ​​love, is incapable of solving his problems.

Hemings resents that Yehoram took a female soldier as a hitchhiker, but Yehoram says he is "free as a bird" and works to live. Hemings repeats the sentence as he records the experiences of the day. The romantic entanglement expands in Yehoram's event with Eileen.

Roy gets a phone call from Rafi, who wants to talk to him about a return flight to Egypt. Rafi tells Roy that he is flying not because of what he is, which is meaningless to him, but despite who he is.

Rafi tells Roy about the flight to Egypt. The flight scenes appears in full: preparations for takeoff, flight, spontaneous reactions in public. For a moment, Hemings and Rafi return to a disco hall. Hemings is trying to understand the incident as a "miracle''. Rafi answers him that if he wants to understand, "he must fly''. Afterwards scenes are: Landing in El Arish, Egyptian soldiers surround Rafi who says he wants to talk to Nasser about peace, a conversation with the local Egyptian governor about the rights of the people of Israel over the Land of Israel, the flight back to Tel Aviv, the welcome reception, mass and imaginary in part, to a hero carried on hands.

After the conversation between Roy and Rafi, we hear from the disco hall a radio announcer, who tells about a village where a dragon threatens its inhabitants. Out of nowhere a hero arrives with the aim of killing him and succeeds using a paper sword. In a tragic turn, the villagers kill the hero, as they no longer need him. The real "hero journey" is not done by someone who aspires to be a hero, but is shaped in retrospect by the masses.

Yehoram receives a military draft order. The war begins, with lengthy documentary scenes, which perpetuate the historical events, even though they seem seemingly irrelevant to the plot. The tanks go into action, in a battle scene of occupying Rafah. A small bird standing on a branch shaking in the wind is combined between this sections. The plot soundtrack is replaced by voices from the military radio instruments. The scenes of the charging tanks are combined with the scenes of the fighting and wounded warriors and especially with the heroic story of the warrior Yossi, which is the dramatic climax of the film. Although the air force does not appear in the war scenes, this does not detract from its triumphant aura.

At the end of the film, at six after the war, Roy accidentally walks to a minefield. Despite Rafi's warnings, he steps on a mine and is killed. Before his death, Rafi's sentence resonates in his mind: '' Do you want to understand? Fly''. Then his early recording from the beginning of the film about the paradoxical situation in Israel is heard again. Is is heard against the background of the passenger plane taking off with the coffin. In the last scene, Yehoram and Rafi say goodbye to each other in the terminal.

"Every Bastard is a King" puts a mirror in front of Israeli society on the eve of the Six Day War. It present a fascinating correlation between the spirit of the period and the character of the individual pilot. The film explore aerial consciousness versus aerial awareness. The first state of consciousness is that of Rafi, who sees in aviation the appearance of everything. The second is that of Roy, who sees aviation as a non-binding awareness. Yehoram presents the critical intermediate figure.

At the same time, the film explores two types of dialectics: horizontal and vertical. The horizontal dialectic seeks, out of an existential habit for what is on the surface, the earthly. The vertical dialectic strives, from a line of ideological assumptions, upwards, to the sublime. There are scenes in the film that highlight the gap between the two types of dialectics. For example, Eileen, who has no true national identity, has relationships with the three men. The personal scenes can also be defined as "prelimimary" and show an indistinguishable duration. In contrast, the aviation and war scenes are "symbolic", as they present awareness and order.

The film create a deconstruction of the Israeli reality. It dismantles and challenges the structural structure on which the state is based. The film glorify the aviation myth, which allows each person independent spiritual clarity, regardless of the stereotype of the knighty fighter pilot.

George Lucas and the Star Wars movies series

Throughout his life George Lucas had a number of major interests in addition to cinema: anthropology, politics, history, mythology, adventure stories and speed. He connected all of this to liberation from the conventions typical of the Sixties and to liberation from gravity in outer space. He began to convert into space fantasy concepts and symbols he had planned to use in "Apocalypse Now" [1979], a protest film about the Vietnam War, which was eventually created by his partner Francis Ford Coppola.

Lucas imagined a large technological and fascist space empire haunting a small group of freedom fighters. He began by a two-page handwritten idea, telling the story of a revered Jedi warrior, as told by his apprentice. A more advanced ten-page script, entitled "Star Wars," dated May 1973, is based on Akira Kurosawa's film, ''The Hidden Fortress'' (1958). This film had a huge impact on him. Lucas had no basic plot, and he used the bond that appears in this film between the samurai and his apprentice. Kurosawa also influenced him visually, through duels in swords, epic battle scenes and quick editing. The martial arts of the Jedi in "Star Wars" led to a wave of film productions with superheroes in this category in the 1980s, for example "American Ninja" (1985) produced by Menachem Golan.

Throughout 1973 and 1974, Lucas worked on the script, writing and living most of the time alone. He tried to create a classic genre picture of an adventure movie. As a result he sought to connect to the collective unconscious that exists in legends. Among the scholars who influenced him were Bruno Bettelheim and Carlos Castaneda, but the most important was Joseph Campbell.

Lucas completed the rough draft in May 1974. It is a wide-ranging story, featuring many elements that will appear in subsequent drafts: the Jedi vs. the Sith, two lovable robots, Princess Lia, Han Solo. But nothing is yet in its final form. Lucas finished the first draft in July 1974.

The initial script version Lucas wrote includes many scenes with maneuvers of spaceships battles. He wanted to sell the script to the studios, but did not know how to visually illustrate it to them. The solution was to hire artists who created illustrations and production models, which would provide a basis for budget estimates. The artist chosen, in November 1974, was Ralph Macquarie, a former illustrator at Boeing. Macquarie painted a series of eye-catching drawings of stars, spaceships, characters and scenes, in collaboration with Lucas. Later, along with other illustrators, the first drawings for the visual product known today evolved. In this way, the script and the characters also developed.

The ''Star Wars'' movie series is mostly based on the pattern of superheroes in the stories of mythology. As part of this film series, nine sequels have been released, which constitute the canon of the series as a feature epic. The first film in the series, "New Hope", was released in 1977. The last, "The Rise of Skywalker", was released in late 2019. 

The series gained unprecedented popularity. So important was the series at the time that the National Museum of Aviation and Space in Washington dedicated a special exhibition to it, showcasing the mythical message of Luke Skywalker's "Hero's Journey."

There are three main factors for the initial success of the ''Star Wars'' series: a. The structure of the narrative. George Lucas and his fellow creators of the series have been influenced by many sources of inspiration. Prominent among them was Joseph Campbell and his book on the theory of monomyth. B. The order of magnitude of the epic. Today we are inundated with similar, high-budget science fiction films and blockbusters. At the time of the production of the first trilogy in the "Star Wars" series, no similar productions had yet been made. C. "Star Wars" was a product of its time, the mid-1970s. It resonated with the spirit of the time. It touched on the anxieties and tensions of the public consciousness at that time and in particular on the issues of the Cold War and the Vietnam War. 

The series was regarded as redefining cinema, as it create an imaginary universe rich in details. It is known in almost every home in the world and has gained millions of devout fans, including at the level of religious believers, who see it as a modern expression of the biblical struggle between good and evil.

The nine-film canon consists of three trilogies, which represent the parts of the human psyche and its development, according to id, ego, super ego. The Disney company, which acquired the franchise for the brand from Lucas, also develops it through anthology films, complexes in theme parks, TV series, animated series, computer games, books, comic books, clothing and toys. In this way the brand reaches every person in the most appropriate way, according to the latest branding and marketing approaches and the plan for the future is to continue to develop it intensively.

Prof. Joseph Campbell is considered a world expert in mythology and follower of Carl Jung. Campbell researched and found that in all cultures of the world there are myths with the same characteristics, all of which together can be called "monomyth". His books have been a major source of inspiration for George Lucas. His main book is "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". This book presents the constant characteristics of the superhero character, which are preserved behind its many incarnations in different cultures and periods.

The ''Star Wars'' movie series is based entirely on this concept. The films include a gallery of archetypal characters typical of the world of mythology, such as the superhero, the mentor, the distressed young lady, the trickster, the evil hero, the omnipotent magician, the binary duo, the extended family of close friends and more. At the same time, the superhero goes through in the films of the series a journey, known in terminology as "The Hero's Journey. This journey includes many stages of development, which are well characterized in the stories of superheroes from all cultures.

George Lucas spoke at a conference in honor of Professor George Campbell in 1985, to which Campbell responded. Much can be learned from the exchanges between them regarding the "Star Wars" series. 

Lucas told the conference that about ten years ago he intended to write a screenplay for a children's film and had an idea to create a modern fairy tale. This is despite the opposition of his friends, who thought he should do something more important and socially relevant. Lucas began research and writing and a year passed without progressing, then he encountered the book ""The Hero with a Thousand Faces '', read it and began to focus. He found in this study parallels to his intuitive writing and answers to many questions that came to his mind. He continued reading Campbell's books and at the same time writing the script, in a process that lasted several years and ended in a script of hundreds of pages.

Campbell replied in his speech that he had not seen movies for many years, as he was engrossed in research. He came as a blank page to the estate of Lucas, who invited him to be a guest and watch the three first films. He was thrilled with admiration. Lucas was in his eyes a man who understood the use of metaphor. The lack of use of metaphors was in his eyes a built-in weakness of American art. What he saw were things that were in his books, but were presented in terms of a modern problem, which is man and the machine: Is the machine going to serve human life, or is it going to be the master and dictate. The definition of "machine" also includes the totalitarian state, whether fascist or communist and also includes things that happen in the United States, such as the bureaucrat phenomenon that is the man-machine.

In the twentieth century the character of the superhero was often identified with the pioneers of flying in airplanes and spaceships and a very important secondary superhero in the series is Han Solo, the photogenic and cynical pilot who is a loyal friend of Luke Skywalker, the idealistic boy who is the superhero of the series. Han's ''Millennium Falcon'' spacecraft, which has a double bow, is the fastest in the galaxy. It is the object most identified with the series, except for Luke's Light Sword. In the series complex at the Disney theme parks, the full-scale spacecraft is the main attraction.

The importance of Han Solo's character is great, as aviation is linked in the series to the superhero skills. Anakin Skywalker and his sun Luke are described as the best pilots of the galaxy, before they become Jedi warriors. Harrison Ford, who plays the character in the series, has earned superstar status and played the role of other fictional heroes in cinema, including Indiana Jones. Along with the rough identity of the cowboy-pilot character, Han is also undergoing a moral awakening. The process of his development into a superhero continues after his death, through his son Ben, who turns from being Darth Vader's successor into a positive character. 

A second significant connection between aviation and the "Star Wars" is the space battles, which are a key element in the series. Lucas drew inspiration for them from World War II aviation films, which he watched during the long years of writing the script versions.  A collection of aerial combats scenes in old aviation films, which he filmed and edited in a 16mm format, were an integral part of the presentation concept and later the main source for the spaceships battles scenes. The flight scenes in the series are always a spectacular show, accompanied by pyrotechnic displays of firing and spaceships crashes, which reinforce a sense of alchemical connection of the human figures with the metallic objects.

In order to produce these scenes, Lucas set up a special company to deal with the subject of special visual effects. The company is ILM (Industrial Light and Magic). Following the success of "New Hope", ILM became one of the most successful companies in the industry. All the films of the ''Star Wars'' saga were filmed by it and in addition the special visual effects of many other successful film series.

There are similarities between the ''Star Wars'' films and the Nazi aviation films on several levels: A. Emphasis on the photogenicity of the aircraft and the multiplicity of aviation scenes. B. The aviation films of the Nazi regime developed the character of a fighter pilot for propaganda purposes and in this way they also contributed to the developing of the pilot character in the "Star Wars" series. C. The wicked characters Palpatine and Darth Vader are reminiscent of Hitler and Himmler. D. The uniforms of the warriors of the evil empire are similar to the Nazi uniform and so are the mass gatherings. E. The most popular films in the Nazi regime were aviation dramas, in which the romantic scenes are between flight scences during a war and in this too they are similar to the "Star Wars" films.

The "Star Wars" saga can be analyzed as a biblical text about the cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil and the desire to survive with the help of God - "the power" in trhe series. There are Jewish scholars who challenge the ideological separation between popular culture and religious life and link episodes in the saga to Jewish religion and history. The saga allows for a critical discussion of various issues, such as feminism and gender, government and minorities, psyche and personality, quality of life, environment and more. 

"Star Wars" also has practical importance for Israel. Militarily, it is synonymous with space warfare and is a source for learning military strategies. From the Israeli society point of view, the popular culture in the United States greatly reinforces the myth of aviation, but at the same time also the image of the pilot as a private person with personal doubts, which are also expressed in the Israeli feature cinema.