TY - BOOK AU - Mulley,Clare TI - The women who flew for Hitler : a true story of soaring ambition and searing rivalry SN - 9781250063670 (hardback) AV - D787 .M833 2017 U1 - 940.54/49430922 23 KW - Reitsch, Hanna. KW - Stauffenberg, Melitta, KW - World War, 1939-1945 KW - Aerial operations, German KW - Women KW - Germany KW - Air pilots, Military KW - Biography KW - Women air pilots KW - Aeronautical engineers KW - Iron Cross KW - Biographies KW - fast KW - lcgft N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages 435-453) and index; 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 -- Liberation and detention, 1945-1946 -- Reputations -- Epilogue: a time of contradictions N2 - "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"-- ER -