Free Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch by Sophie Jackson

overtly working on studying gliders, was really helping to redevelop the Luftwaffe with its research. Riedel was equally embroiled as he had taken up work as a commercial pilot for Lufthansa, the German civil aviation company, which was also serving as a front for training airmen and testing potential troop-carrying aircraft. Wolf Hirth went off on his own to form a glider company with Martin Schempp. Schempp-Hirth would go into business in 1935.
    Political undercurrents completely passed by Hanna. She was already busy preparing for a trip to Finland, another PR stunt to promote good relations with Germany and encourage gliding. The head of the expedition was a research scientist named Dr Joachim Küttner. In the years to come he would discover to his horror that he had a Jewish grandparent on both sides of his family tree.
    Hanna loved Finland and the Finnish, particularly the saunas, to which she attributed the Finns’ excellent health and fitness. The trip went down very well with the Reich Air Ministry, which offered Hanna a decoration. Such things meant very little to Hanna at that time and she asked instead for permission to enrol at the Civil Airways Training School in Stettin. This was by no means a simple request. Civil aviation was treated with very little difference to military aviation; strict discipline was maintained at Stettin, officers keeping the trainee pilots in line. Worse, it was an all-male institution and many of the older officers would find it absurd, if not offensive, to have a woman at the school.
    As illogical a desire as it seemed, Hanna had her reasons for wanting to go to Stettin. She still had only limited experience in motor-powered aircraft. At Stettin she would be taught and licensed to use a huge range of bigger and more powerful planes. Hanna had clearly impressed someone enough for the request to go through and she arrived at Stettin to looks of disapproval and amusement. Stettin confirmed Hanna’s often unrelenting opinion of male egotism and chauvinism. On one military-style parade she was berated for having a womanly chest, which affected the overall appearance of the line of trainees. At every turn she seemed to be picked on for her femininity. Naturally, she had no experience of military parades, so her early attempts were fraught with errors as she tried to copy those alongside her. She was mocked and ridiculed, forced to do extra drills and generally tormented, with the aim of sending her home in floods of tears. Hanna resisted the abuse and in time it began to ease. As she proved herself in the air, so her colleagues warmed to her and stopped seeing her as an intrusive girl but as another pilot. The commanding officer at Stettin, Colonel Pasewald, found her ‘a totally uncomplicated person … she had no particularly feminine charms and wiles, a very fine instinct for flying, and no sense of danger. When she flew, it was like anyone else going for a walk – she had mastered the medium.’
    She may have been unusual in Germany, but elsewhere female aviators were not such an anomaly. In Russia during the war whole units of female pilots were known and accepted. Admittedly, they too had a rough journey into aviation, often mocked and criticised, issued with men’s clothing which was far too big (Hanna complained of this at Stettin) and treated as inferior, until they started to prove themselves. But that was still several years away and Hanna had very little concern for what was going on in Russia.
    More worrying were political activities in Germany. By the time Hanna was finishing her course in 1935 it was very apparent that the Heinkel, Focke-Wulf and Junkers were not confining themselves to producing civil aircraft. Nor was there any point in prolonging the charade that Lufthansa was only training its pilots for civil flight – anyone noting the military-style training at Lufthansa schools would have questioned that anyway. Germany finally announced the rejuvenation of the