The Women Who Flew For Hitler
World War Two
•
25m
Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg were two talented, courageous, and strikingly attractive women who fought convention to become the only female test pilots in Hitler’s Germany – eventually being awarded the Iron Cross for their services to the Luftwaffe. Both were brilliant pilots, both were great patriots, and both had a strong sense of honour and duty – but in every other respect they could not have been more different. Despite often being the only two women in the Aero Club who weren’t wives, the women’s backgrounds and ideologies ensured that they came to despise each other. While Hanna tried to save Hitler's life, begging him to let her fly him to safety in April 1945, Melitta covertly supported the most famous attempt to assassinate the Führer and would fly over the Buchenwald Concentration Camp to bring hope to the people interned there. In this fascinating interview, acclaimed biographer Clare Mulley explores some of the astonishing details of these women’s experiences – both those that are remarkably parallel, and those that couldn’t have been more different. Their interwoven lives provide vivid insight into gender and technology, but also coercion, consent and resistance in Nazi Germany.
Up Next in World War Two
-
Walking With Churchill with Andrew Ro...
Andrew Roberts shares a selection of items from his Winston Churchill collection, documenting the fascinating life of one of Britain's most iconic figures.
-
Warbirds of World War Two: A Tour of ...
Of all the chapters of the Second World War, none are as daring, nor as intriguing, as the Air War. In the skies over Europe, some of the most iconic aircraft to ever take flight, did battle in a life or death struggle for supremacy. Today most of these aircraft are gone, but at the Royal Air For...
-
Dover Castle at War
Peter Snow explores the part Dover Castle played in Operation Dynamo in 1940, the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk.