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The women who flew for Hitler : a true story of soaring ambition and searing rivalry / Clare Mulley.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : St. Martin's Press, 2017Copyright date: ©2017Edition: First U.S. editionDescription: xxiii, 470 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781250063670
  • 1250063671
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Preface: Truth and lives -- Longing for freedom, 1903-1932 -- Searching for the fabulous, 1912-1933 -- Public relations, 1933-1936 -- Public appointments, 1936-1937 -- Hovering, 1938 -- Descent, 1938-1939 -- Women at war, 1939-1941 -- Defying gravity, 1942-1943 -- Under attack, 1943 -- Operation Self-Sacrifice, 1943-1944 -- Operation Valkyrie, 1944 -- In the camps, 1944 -- In the bunker, 1945 -- Final flight, 1945 -- Liberation and detention, 1945-1946 -- Reputations -- Epilogue: A time of contradictions.
Scope and content: "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"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 940.5449 M958 Available 33111008798593
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Biographers' Club Prize-winner Clare Mulley's The Women Who Flew for Hitler --a dual biography of Nazi Germany's most highly decorated women pilots.

Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg were talented, courageous, and strikingly attractive women who fought convention to make their names in the male-dominated field of flight in 1930s Germany. With the war, both became pioneering test pilots and were awarded the Iron Cross for service to the Third Reich. But they could not have been more different and neither woman had a good word to say for the other.

Hanna was middle-class, vivacious, and distinctly Aryan, while the darker, more self-effacing Melitta came from an aristocratic Prussian family. Both were driven by deeply held convictions about honor and patriotism; but ultimately, 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. Their interwoven lives provide vivid insight into Nazi Germany and its attitudes toward women, class, and race.

Acclaimed biographer Clare Mulley gets under the skin of these two distinctive and unconventional women, giving a full--and as yet largely unknown--account of their contrasting yet strangely parallel lives, against a changing backdrop of the 1936 Olympics, the Eastern Front, the Berlin Air Club, and Hitler's bunker. Told with brio and great narrative flair, The Women Who Flew for Hitler is an extraordinary true story, with all the excitement and color of the best fiction.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [435]-453) and index.

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Preface: Truth and lives -- Longing for freedom, 1903-1932 -- Searching for the fabulous, 1912-1933 -- Public relations, 1933-1936 -- Public appointments, 1936-1937 -- Hovering, 1938 -- Descent, 1938-1939 -- Women at war, 1939-1941 -- Defying gravity, 1942-1943 -- Under attack, 1943 -- Operation Self-Sacrifice, 1943-1944 -- Operation Valkyrie, 1944 -- In the camps, 1944 -- In the bunker, 1945 -- Final flight, 1945 -- Liberation and detention, 1945-1946 -- Reputations -- Epilogue: A time of contradictions.

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