Peter Fritzsche's A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination

...The horror of air warfare was hammered into the German psyche through mass drills and propaganda campaigns until it became a self-fulfilling prophecy when the Nazis began to "preempt" these dangers by destroying any cities within their reach...

...Fritzsche shows how the idealistic and creative impulses of German youth, intertwined with nationalist sentiment from the beginning, were twisted further in that direction by the Nazis...

...Radicals have never felt quite comfortable going beyond their tradition's standard explanations as to the causes of war...

...Fritzsche's discussion of the glider movement does much to explain how Nazism captured the minds of young Germans...

...Tennyson in 1842 presciently posed the dilemma between the possibilities of science and technology and their potential for destruction: Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales...

...Just as Germans could hear the message of their superiority broadcast constantly over the radio, so too could they look to the heavens for signs of German greatness and the reaffirmation of German power...

...Each Fascist country, whether black, red, or brown, used aviation as a symbol of its new world...

...The soaring, magical field of aviation 394 • DISSENT offered images to which everyone in Germany could respond—socialists as well as Nazis...

...There were even Jews and women prominent in the gliding movement...

...Could Hitler have succeeded without his mastery over the radio waves...

...Having looked up as a child in Akron, Ohio and seen giant dirigibles such as the Akron and the Macon floating in the sky, it is not difficult for me to understand how such airships could capture the public imagination...

...at the same time its appeal was strongly nationalistic in that it was a symbol of how, despite great difficulties, Germany would rise again to its rightful place in the world...

...But, as Fritzsche shows, this pastime—which drew on individualism, personal initiative, and small-group cooperation—became the basis of the new Luftwaffe when the Nazis, upon their seizure of power, channeled these initial strivings into rigid, centralized, totalitarian organizations...

...It is well known that German youth across the political spectrum embraced mystical and romantic beliefs in the period between the wars...

...By tracing the history of German aviation from its innocent beginnings in the work of brave and creative inventors to the death and destruction that rained from the skies, Fritzsche has given us an important, thought-provoking study...

...In several ways the Nazis' use of aviation paralleled their use of radio...

...It is not only an interesting book but a profound one...

...How, for example, have technological advances shaped popular attitudes toward war...

...Its appeal was not limited to the right: socialist working-class youth also played an important role...

...Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there reigned a ghastly dew From the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue Aviation, of course, was only one of the areas of popular culture on which the Nazis put their stamp...

...But, for the Nazis to succeed, they had to go beyond the appeal of blood and soil, the demonization of the Jews, and the call to avenge their defeat in World War I. They did this in part by showing that technology could help Germany reassert its leadership in the world...

...This mythology—a modern version of the hand-to-hand combat of the old warrior class— provided a new romantic hero who could transcend the agonies of trench warfare...

...Through skillful propaganda, the Nazis persuaded Germans that they were vulnerable to air attack from all sides — including, though it is hard to believe, Czechoslovakia...

...But in Fritzsche's hands it becomes a sort of magnifying glass on the Nazi manipulation of the German mind...

...This new icon was nowhere more celebrated than in Germany, where a monster like Goering, who was a popular aviation war hero, could become one of the leading figures of Nazism...

...What is often forgotten is that the Italian futurists, with their mechanical orientation, were also predecessors of the Fascist movement, and that Mussolini preached a corrupted version of syndicalism in order to appeal to the Italian working class...

...Conventional historical emphasis has dealt extensively with the effects of the economic crisis of the Weimar Republic and the impact of totalitarian philosophy on working- and middle-class Germans...

...The Nazis prepared a nation for war in part by uniting the classes around symbols of aggression...

...One might have thought, however, that the movement that embraced technology would have had a primarily leftist base—after all, the idealization of the industrial worker, the smokestack, and the tractor is considered to be a hallmark of the Old Left...

...But the accepted wisdom—that capitalism and imperialism inherently lead to war—sheds little light on how dominant groups foster ideological hatred within their societies...

...A Nation of Fliers examines the rise of aviation in Germany, from its beginnings through the eve of World War II, to illuminate the relationship between technology and culture during the Nazi period...

...One could not romanticize a tank, but the soaring gliders and airplanes in the heavens could engage a spectrum of feelings—foremost among them, nationalistic pride—and serve as a most effective form of weaponry at the same time...

...The Nazis were the most accomplished in this, because they tapped the deepest springs, and because their appeal reached a wide constituency across class lines.The beginnings of aviation in this century brought not only the airplane and the glider but the distinctly German giant dirigible, which captured the imagination of Germany...

...After all, the cross has been turned into a bloody hatchet throughout history in religious wars...

...But it was the Nazis who seized the moment to forever change the character of mass destruction...

...Many idealistic, hobby-driven young men of post—World War I Germany, cut off from the use of airplanes by Allied restrictions, turned to the art of gliding to keep aviation alive in that battered country...

...The appropriation of idealistic and noble aspirations by Fascism need not come as a surprise...

...In the 1920s, in Europe as in America, pulp magazines were filled with the derring-do of the World War I aces, those cavaliers of the sky who, with daring, skill, and chivalry, shot down their enemies...

...The Nazis also pointed to the new technology to evoke fears among the population—fears that SUMMER • 1993 • 395 technology could then allay...

...We take it for granted that technology is somehow the base of modern society, yet insufficient attention has been paid to how technology shapes our society and culture...

...In its early days, gliding combined individualist strivings with the camaraderie of the youth nature movement then popular in Germany...

...Peter Fritzsche, a historian at the University of Illinois, presents a case study in the manipulation of popular culture...