Reitsch promptly formed a Suicide Group, and was herself the first person to take the pledge: “I hereby… voluntarily apply to be enrolled in the suicide group as a pilot of a human glider-bomb. I fully understand that employment in this capacity will entail my own death.”
Some Christians are convinced that anyone who does not believe in an after-life cannot really feel that his or her life is meaningful. When you die– that’s it. There is no transcendent, eternal purpose to what you have been and what you have accomplished.
So why would a Nazi like Hanna Reitsch offer to kill herself on behalf of the most jaded ideology to ever see the light of day? What’s in it for her?
The trouble is, Hanna was not that unusual. At least one study (sorry– can’t remember where I read about it– probably NY Times website) has come to the conclusion that many “Islamic” suicide bombers are not necessarily devout Moslems, and many of them do not believe they are really going to ascend to heaven at the instant of death to be greeted by 47 beautiful virgins. What they do have in common is little prospect of any kind of meaningful, long-term employment or prosperity. Many are poorly educated (hence, gullible, I suppose). They are all young– how many 38-year-old suicide bombers do you remember hearing about? Hence gullible, again. Hence passionate. Hence foolish.
The same equation always applies, to old white Republicans or old Arab Imans: impotent, self-aggrandizing old men send impressionable young men and women off to die for their causes.
It is amazing how many young people find these old men convincing, when the overwhelming fact staring them right in the face is that none of the old men are going to volunteer to do it. They are not going to lead by example.
Hanna Reitsch was a beautiful, petite blonde and Hitler’s favorite test pilot. When they were working on the V-1 rocket and having great difficulty calibrating the navigation system, she volunteered to fly one. I am not making this up. She climbed inside, and it was launched from a bomber, and she landed it. The data she accumulated during this test flight proved crucial to the eventual “success” of the weapon. At least– now that I think about it– that’s what they told Hanna.
She also flew an airplane into Berlin during the last days of the war, and then flew one out. She said she realized then that the Fuehrer was a little whacko. Really? What tipped you off? Did you really think that at the time, or after the war, when it suited your own post-Nazi narrative?
Way after the war, John Kennedy invited her to the White House. If you think she might have explained to him how smart, daring, devoted people like herself were duped by Hitler into supporting a vicious political ideology, and a lost cause, think again. Towards the end of her life, she told a journalist, after questioning the manhood of German men in the post-war era, “Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don’t explain the real guilt we share – that we lost.”
Her lover, the last Field Marshall appointed by Hitler, Robert Ritter Von Greim, committed suicide rather than allow himself to be turned over to the Soviets.
When she was young, Hannah wanted to be a flying missionary doctor. That didn’t work out, so she became a Nazi test pilot instead. I’ll bet a lot of missionaries have secret ambitions of becoming Nazi test pilots….
“We should all kneel down in reverence and prayer before the altar of the Fatherland.” Hanna Reitsch.
She clarified this to mean “why, the Fuhrer’s bunker!”.
