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Chargement... The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalrypar Clare Mulley
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. In this parallel history of two German aviatrix, the notorious Hannah Reitsch and the less well-known Melitta von Stauffenberg, one essentially has a meditation on the limits of patriotism. While both started out wanting to build a new Germany after the Great War Reitsch believed until the end of her life in the Nazi dream of one land and one people, wherein those who did not belong to that people were edited out of the picture; this is not news. Stauffenberg is the more interesting case as she was the sister-in-law of Claus von Stauffenberg and so was associated with the July 20th Plot. Further, while Reitsch appears to have been the better natural pilot Stauffenberg was a full-fledged engineer working in the German aviation industry until the point where her taint of Jewish ancestry caught up with her; but not before she received the Iron Cross for her work. In the end, while Reitsch lived long enough to be reviled, Stauffenberg died in the waning days of the war trying to assure the survival of her husband. Mulley ends on the note that whatever else the lives of these women demonstrate they illustrate the short-sighted and stupid limitations of the Nazi worldview. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
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"Despite Hitler's dictates on women's place being in the home, two fiercely defiant female pilots were awarded the Iron Cross during the Second World War. Other than this unique distinction and a passion for flying that bordered on addiction, these women could not have been less alike. One was Aryan Nazi poster-girl Hanna Reitsch, an unsurpassed pilot, who is now best-known for being the last person to fly into Berlin-under-siege in April 1945, in order to beg Hitler to let her save him. He refused and killed himself two days later. The other pilot was her antithesis, a brilliant aeronautical engineer and test-pilot Melitta Schenk Grafin von Stauffenberg who was part Jewish. She used her value to the Luftwaffe as a means to protect her family. When her brother-in-law, Claus von Stauffenberg, planned the Valkyrie attack to assassinate the Fuehrer, she agreed to provide the transport. Both women repeatedly risked their lives to change the history of the Third Reich--one in support of and the other in opposition. Mulley shows, through dazzling film-like scenes suffused in glamour and danger, that their interwoven dramas are a powerful forgotten story of conformity and resistance and the very strength of women at the heart of the Second World War"-- Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)940.54History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- Military History Of World War IIClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Both women were motivated by patriotism and loyalty; but those motivations expressed themselves very differently. Melitta von Stauffenberg, as I said, was from the Junker class: she considered herself a patriot, but that was towards Germany first and to a political creed very much second. Towards the war's end, when her brother-in-law Claus attempted the assassination of Hitler, Melitta's loyalties went through a re-prioritisation. Although potentially (if very tangentially) implicated in the plot, she switched her loyalties towards her extended family first of all, and used her position to try to alleviate their conditions, without seeking special privileges or trying to intercede for them.
Hanna Reitsch, on the other hand, started out by being politically naïve, but that naivety morphed into fully-blown Nazism. Despite occasional instances where she interceded for Jewish colleagues in minor ways, she embraced Nazi racism and its ideology, and persisted in Holocaust denial to the end of her life, even when faced with direct evidence.
The book has a lot of detail and paints a clear picture of German aviation in the years following the Versailles Treaty. It also includes some interesting side details of those who met either Reitsch or von Stauffenberg, including the famous British test pilot Eric 'Winkle' Brown and Sidney Cotton. Both women had professional relationships with many of the key figures in German aviation and the Nazi regime, and these are reflected in accounts of the Nazi leadership as well as German aviation figures such as Ernst Udet and Robert von Greim. There is also a concise account of Claus von Stauffenberg's assassination plot and its aftermath.
The tragedy of Melitta von Stauffenberg's death in the closing days of the war (shot down by a USAAF Thunderbolt whilst trying to fly a Bücker Bestmann to reach her imprisoned husband) is contrasted by Hanna Reitsch's post-war career, which involved on the one hand, international recognition of her gliding achievements and on the other, her continued support for Nazi legacy groups. The author draws some wide-ranging and relevant conclusions from these two parallel lives about the nature of patriotism and its implications in an ideological regime. In particular, she also quotes Melitta's nephew Berthold, who says of wartime Germany that "not every Party member was a Nazi, and not every non-Party member wasn't". In the end, this should serve as a useful reminder to anyone looking at European politics today; trying to fit the politics of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland or the Ukraine into our own definitions of 'liberal' or 'authoritarian', 'left' or 'right' is going to stumble over what seems to us like contradictions.
A minor demerit to this book is the presentation and packaging. Footnotes are marked with an asterisk, which is printed so small as to be almost indistinguishable from quotation marks. And I took issue with the book's actual packaging: the title suggests something far more black-and-white than the story of these two remarkable women actually is; whilst the sub-title, The true story of Hitler's Valkyries goes further and suggests outright direct operational military flying, which was not the case. Hanna Reitsch was, at one point, described as a Valkyrie by a senior Nazi; this could never be, and was never applied to Melitta von Stauffenberg. ( )