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.