The Women Who Flew for Hitler, Clare Mulley
The Women Who Flew for Hitler, Clare Mulley
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The Women Who Flew for Hitler
A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry

Author: Clare Mulley

Narrator: Christa Lewis

Unabridged: 15 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/08/2017


Synopsis

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.

About Clare Mulley

Clare Mulley is the author of The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, which won the Daily Mail Biographers' Club Prize. She is a contributor to The Arvon Book of Life Writing and is a seasoned public speaker. She has written for History Today, the Express, and the Church Times.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jean on September 11, 2017

This is a duel biography of two women aviators, Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979) and Countess Melitta Schiller Schenk Gafin von Stauffenberg (1903-1945). Hanna had Aryan looks and Melitta was a brunette from Prussian aristocracy. These women became brilliant pilots in the 1930s when few women were allowed......more

Goodreads review by Al on March 20, 2019

A very good tale of these two very different women, Hanna Reitsch and Melitta Von Stauffenberg. Both test pilots in German, Melitta the more educated who was also an engineer and their rivalry. Hanna the die hard Nazi who at the end even flies into the Fuhrerenbunker with Ritter Von Griem, trying to......more

Goodreads review by Eleanor on November 17, 2019

Biographer Clare Mulley dazzles splendid insight into the lives of two pilots deeply affected by Adolf Hitler. A bold glider and a brilliant aeronautical engineer each deal with the Fuhrer in opposite ways – one by denial, the other daring. Some history books help us understand our past. Mulley’s wo......more

Goodreads review by Dick on November 26, 2017

This is a splendid book about the role of two exceptional woman aviators during the aftermath of WWI and the oncoming disaster of Germany’s actions in WWII. Hanna Reitsch was a middle class, vivacious Aryan and her flying was mostly in gliders. She loved to soar, enjoying the quiet and freedom. She......more

Goodreads review by Mary on January 18, 2018

Great dual biography This dual biography is excellent, really well balanced and researched. I had never heard of Melitta von Stauffenberg before. She was truly amazing. Part Jewish, but she tests and flies military planes in Nazi Germany. She had a strong sense of family, and was so resourceful. She......more