The women who flew for Hitler
Subtitle: a true story of soaring ambition and searing rivalry
By: Clare Mulley
Edition: First U.S. edition.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 470
ISBN-13: 9781250063670
Subjects: German Aerial operations; Military Air pilots; Iron Cross; World War, 1939-1945; Women air pilots; Aeronautical engineers; Biography; Women
Description: "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"--
Notes: "First published in Great Britain by Macmillan"--Title-page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 435-453) and index.
Table of contents: title: Preface: Truth And Lives; title: LONGING FOR FREEDOM, 1903-1932; title: SEARCHING FOR THE FABULOUS, 1912-1933; title: PUBLIC RELATIONS, 1933-1936; title: PUBLIC APPOINTMENTS, 1936-1937; title: HOVERING, 1938; title: DESCENT, 1938-1939; title: WOMEN AT WAR, 1939-1941; title: DEFYING GRAVITY, 1942-1943; title: UNDER ATTACK, 1943; title: OPERATION SELF-SACRIFICE, 1943-1944; title: OPERATION VALKYRIE, 1944; title: IN THE CAMPS, 1944; title: IN THE BUNKER, 1945; title: FINAL FLIGHT; title: LIBERATION AND DETENTION, 1945-1946; title: REPUTATIONS; title: Epilogue: A Time of Contradictions.