Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot Read online

  Meanwhile, I continued with my studies at Rosenheim grammar school, just as generations of pupils have done before and since. For we were still just schoolboys at heart, and not above playing silly pranks on our teachers. One particular bit of tomfoolery was at the expense of our form master, Professor Michel. It was a warm day and my friend Hansi, who was usually the instigator of such antics, suggested that just before the lesson was about to begin we should all climb out of the windows (our classroom was up on the first floor) and crouch down out of sight on the wide ledge that ran beneath them. The corner window was partially covered by a curtain and one of our number was chosen to keep watch behind this and carefully note Michel’s reaction. Punctually at the start of the lesson the door opened. Our victim took three steps into the room and came to a dead stop. He looked at his watch, went back outside to check the number on the door, came back in again, took another look at his watch, shook his head in bafflement and disappeared.

  As soon as he had closed the door behind him we quickly clambered back inside and took our places at our desks. A few minutes later Michel returned with the headmaster, Dr. Reich. Our form master strode into the room with an indignant look on his face, and again stopped as if rooted to the spot. “Well, what seems to be the problem, Herr Professor?” the headmaster queried, “They are all here as far as I can see.” “But there wasn’t a soul present just now,” Michel spluttered in total bewilderment. Dr. Reich turned to the class prefect, “What’s this all about, Häckl?” “I’m afraid I have no idea, Herr Oberstudiendirektor. Everyone was here waiting for the lesson to begin when Herr Professor Michel walked into the room, glanced at his watch and walked out again.” Michel was about to explode, but the headmaster simply said, “Let’s leave things for now, Herr Professor. Come and see me after the lesson.” Dr. Reich must have guessed what had been going on, and presumably persuaded our form master to let the matter drop.

  Minor insubordinations became increasingly frequent as the political situation began to make itself felt even in the enclosed world of our grammar school. The demands made upon our time by Hitler Youth activities were encroaching more and more on our normal school hours. Short-sightedly, we of course much preferred the exciting diversions offered by the Hitler Youth to the boring business of studying. On occasion we would even deliberately provoke such ‘clashes of interest’, secure in the knowledge that it was nearly always the school authorities that had to give way.

  The private political leanings of the teaching staff were also coming under scrutiny. This was brought home to us when one of the form masters, the kindly old ‘Poodle’ Pedell, was replaced by a young man wearing a party badge, who–I now firmly believe–was put in place to report on the other teachers. One of these, ‘Papa’ Fink, who taught Latin to the first and second formers, was rumoured to have left-wing tendencies, although he never admitted as much. Another, Professor Ruckdeschel, a somewhat awkward and clumsy individual, was an unashamedly committed follower of Hitler. He would bring the Völkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the Nazi party, into class with him and read one or two of the day’s articles out aloud to us. Our mathematics teacher Professor Hämmerlein, who had fought in the Great War, was more circumspect. He was the only one to pour cold water on our high spirits. “Just wait,” he warned us, “when the guns start going off you’ll soon start singing a different tune.”

  But his words fell on deaf ears. There was too much to see and to do. It was not long after this that our small Flieger-HJ group was given the chance to play a part in the 1936 ‘Deutschlandflug’, the annual competitive air rally that toured almost every part of Germany. We jumped at the offer and were taken to nearby Prien airfield, close to Lake Chiem, which was one of the stops on the Bavarian leg of the competition. The small grass field was packed with dozens of light aircraft of every kind. We had never seen so many machines in one place before. Our duties were purely menial, of course. We washed windscreens and cabin windows, cleaned the floors of the cockpits and helped push those aircraft making an overnight stop into the hangar.

  But the experience whetted our appetites for the world of flying even more–this no doubt being the whole object of the exercise–and, as an added bonus, we got to see some of the leading sports pilots of the day: people like Hanna Reitsch, Elly Beinhorn and the head of the National Socialist Flying Corps, General Friedrich Christiansen. Before leaving Prien each of us was presented with a large oval plaque inscribed Deutschlandflug 1936 in recognition of our efforts.

  1936 was an altogether eventful year for the Fischer family. We moved into our new house in Rosenheim and father went to work in South Africa. The plot of land in Rosenheim was much smaller than the one we were leaving behind at Thansau, although by today’s standards it was still large, measuring a good 3,000 square metres. The house itself was amply big enough for the four of us. Surrounded by greenery, it was within easy walking distance of the town centre. It offered far less scope for outdoor activities than we had become accustomed to at Thansau. But this was no longer quite so important. Our childish games of cowboys and Indians had by this time given way to more grown-up pursuits.

  Father’s trip to Africa came about as a direct result of the political climate we were living in. The Schlossmanns, the Jewish family who owned the farm estate next door to us at Thansau, had become good friends. They had four children, two boys and two girls, of whom the elder of each was about the same age as my sister and myself. Helmut, the oldest boy, was in the class below me at school. His sister Edith attended the secondary modern school in Rosenheim. Sometimes, on warm sunny days, their maternal grandmother, Frau Bondy, would arrange for her chauffeur to pick us all up from school and drive us out to Lake Sims to go swimming. Sitting in the back of Frau Bondy’s large limousine, which the uniformed chauffeur was allowed to drive no faster than fifty kilometres per hour, we two Fischer children felt as if we had finally arrived in high society.

  But, unlike many, the Schlossmann/Bondys were astute enough to see the writing on the wall. They decided to get out of Germany while there was still time and in 1936 father helped them to emigrate to England, where Herr Schlossmann obtained a position as a lecturer at a Cambridge college. Having sold their farm in Thansau–no doubt much below its market value–the Schlossmanns used the money to purchase the ‘Hubertus’ farm estate in the Northern Transvaal province of South Africa. This farm produced fast-growing eucalyptus trees, whose timber was used for pit props in the region’s gold and iron-ore mines. The problem for the Schlossmanns was that the farm did not come with a resident manager. They were unqualified to do the job themselves, and did not have the time to go out and find someone suitable to fill the position.

  The answer was right on their doorstep. Father’s study of business administration, his time as manager of the Miesbach saw-mill, his fluent command of the English language, and his colonial days in Cameroon and German Southwest Africa before the Great War, made him the obvious candidate. Herr Schlossmann suggested that he take on the job of running the farm for two years, during which period he could find and train a suitable successor. Apparently father was all for it–even if it did mean leaving his family for a considerable length of time and later having to face the possible political consequences of offering support to Jews.

  But all went smoothly. We children certainly didn’t notice anything untoward. It wasn’t until much later that I truly began to appreciate just how my parents must have been feeling during those two years and what conflicts of conscience they had no doubt had to suffer. Father wrote home regularly and his letters always arrived intact. Even local South African newspapers, sent quite openly as ‘printed matter’ and often containing political cartoons of a distinctly anti-German flavour, got through without being subject to any kind of control.

  It was late in September 1937, midway through father’s ‘expedition’ to darkest Africa, that I got my one and only close-up glimpse of Hitler–and not just Hitler, but Mussolini too. It happened at Kufstein
railway station on the German-Austrian frontier, where Hitler was waiting to welcome the Italian dictator, who was coming to Munich on a state visit. Led by our French teacher Dr. Brünner–who, despite his inexplicable nickname of ‘King Kong’, was a gentle and understanding soul, much liked by us all–we were returning from a school trip to the Kaisergebirge mountains and, quite by chance, pulled in to Kufstein station at almost exactly the same time as the train carrying the Duce. Unexpectedly given a grandstand view of the reception ceremony, we spontaneously raised our right arms and bellowed “Heil Hitler” with youthful enthusiasm. I was only dimly aware that Dr. Brünner was not joining in the general euphoria. He neither extended his arm, nor did he utter a word.

  Father’s letters from the Transvaal, postmarked ‘Politsi/Duivelskloof’, continued to arrive with regularity. They were long chatty missives, full of interesting facts, and often mentioned the Messing family, who owned the farm adjoining the Schlossmann’s Hubertus property. He was still in South Africa at the time of the Austrian Anschluss in March 1938 and wrote home approving wholeheartedly of the course Hitler had taken. In the summer holidays of that year two friends and I decided to make a cycle tour of Austria–or the ‘Ostmark’, as this recent addition to the Greater German Reich was now officially known.

  From Rosenheim we pedalled our way through the Salzkammergut to Linz, where we hitched a ride aboard a Danube barge down to Vienna. From there it was over the Semmering to Graz, and thence via Klagenfurt, Villach, and Spittal–where we had to load our bikes on to a train for the trip through the Tauern tunnel–to Bad Gastein, Salzburg and back home to Rosenheim. At night we would either stay in youth hostels, or pitch our tents on farms where, without exception, we boarded for free. The whole tour cost me the princely sum of forty-seven Reichsmarks. From the people we spoke to we got the impression that the vast majority of Austrians had welcomed the Anschluss with Germany, but that many–maybe even most–would have preferred it not to have been under Hitler.

  Shortly before our cycle tour, in May 1938, mother had left for South Africa, where she planned to spend two months with father before they voyaged home together. During her stay out there the Messing family kindly showed my parents the local sights. Among my mother’s most enduring memories were her visits to the Kruger National Park and the beaches of Mozambique.

  My parents returned home at the time of the Munich Agreement, which ceded the Sudetenland territories of Czechoslovakia to Germany. My father did not greet this latest development with as much enthusiasm as he had the Anschluss with Austria. And many people in Germany, especially those of the older generation, shared his feelings. While they welcomed the move as a further repudiation of the still-open wound of the detested Treaty of Versailles, they were fearful of how the major European powers might react–“I hope this doesn’t mean war”, was a phrase that was often heard.

  But when the Poles and the Hungarians also seized back the territories that they had lost to Czechoslovakia in 1919 without provoking the slightest military response from the west, it became clear that the Czechs had been left to their fate. We ‘youngsters’ were delighted at the turn of events. We fully shared the emotions of our teacher, Professor Ruckdeschel, as he stood in front of the class moved to tears of patriotic pride by the passages he was reading aloud from the Völkischer Beobachter.

  If father had been ambivalent about the wisdom of Hitler’s pushing through the Munich Agreement, an event that occurred just over a month later finally brought to an end his longstanding love-hate relationship with the Nazi Party. ‘Kristallnacht’, so called because of the sound of breaking glass, was an orchestrated assault on Jewish citizens and Jewish property throughout the Reich that took place on 9 November 1938. Although there was no open violence on the streets of Rosenheim, two burly SA party members stood outside the entrance of the town’s only Jewish-owned shop, Westheimers the outfitters. They did not physically prevent anyone from going in, but ostentatiously noted the identity of those brave few who dared to do so.

  Father was outraged when he learned what was happening. He immediately donned his uniform–he was by this time a Hauptmann in the reserves–went into town and marched straight into Westheimers. The two SA thugs were at a loss how to react. In the presence of an officer they had automatically stiffened to attention. But father’s act of defiance had finally put him beyond the pale in the eyes of the party; he was already on the suspect list on account of our earlier close association with the Schlossmann family. Well aware of this, he addressed a thoroughly rude and disrespectful letter direct to the ‘Brown House’, the party’s headquarters in Munich, cancelling his membership, stating that he had no wish to belong to a band of murderers!

  But, like any old soldier worth his salt, father had made sure that his back was covered. One of his comrades from the Great War, Oskar von Ginkel, had elected to remain in the military. He had joined the small ‘100,000-man army’ that the allies had permitted the Weimar government to maintain in the immediate post-war years, and had since risen to the rank of General and now commanded the Munich military base district. His office was responsible for the induction and placement of all conscripts and reserves in the Munich area. He quickly rushed through father’s call-up to active service as a ‘supplementary staff officer’, at the same time promoting him to the rank of Major and appointing him to be his adjutant.

  Father was thus safeguarded from any political reprisals, for during military service existing party membership automatically lapsed (likewise, no serving member of the armed forces could apply to join the party–an edict that remained in place until the attempt on Hitler’s life by a group of army officers in July 1944). The Westheimers, by the way, later succeeded in emigrating to the United States. Their son had been in my class at school, but after the family’s departure none of us ever heard a word from him again.

  We may have been living in momentous times, but in that late autumn, early winter of 1938 all my attention was focussed on finally gaining those prized A and B gliding certificates. I had long ago mastered the take-off procedure: perching uncomfortably on the tiny seat of the Grunau G9, trying to peer past the wooden strut close in front of my face without going cross-eyed, while two of my comrades clung tightly to the tail of the glider and the rest charged off down the slope in two teams, pulling the wide ‘vee’ of the rubber bungee cord to the limit. At the shouted command “Release!” I no longer simply slid down the hill bumping and jolting on the ‘skull-splitter’s’ single skid, but actually took to the air.

  Papa Seitz coached me carefully for the A certificate, which required the pilot to fly a straight course for all of twenty seconds. He told me to keep my eyes firmly fixed on the tower of the church in the village below, and not to let myself be distracted by anything to left or right of that–especially that large steaming dung-heap in the farmyard at the foot of the hill. I must admit to being far too keyed up to remember much about those straightforward early hops that earned me the A certificate. But while practising for the more advanced B, which demanded that the glider be kept in the air for a full minute and that an S-course be flown, it was an absolute revelation to find myself being able to soar above the ground like a bird.

  By the time I gained my B certificate our Grunau G9 had been fitted with an open plywood nacelle. Its aerodynamic benefit was minimal, but at least it offered some small psychological comfort to the pilot, who no longer had to stare down between his feet into nothingness. I also flew the Zögling 33, a basic glider very similar to the G9 but without the latter’s notorious front strut, before progressing to the more advanced Grunau Baby early in 1939. I now had high hopes of attaining the C certificate, but at the end of 1938 father had dropped a bombshell. While in South Africa he had, as a precaution, made all the necessary arrangements with the local authorities for the entire family to move out there. We would be leaving for the Northern Transvaal in the spring.

  In the event these plans came to naught. The rising tensions in Europe, culm
inating in the final dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, had resulted in a blanket ban on emigration being imposed on all German citizens. We were caught in a trap. Personally, I wasn’t all that sorry not to be going to South Africa. I wanted to join the Luftwaffe and become a fighter pilot. I had already been pre-programmed towards this end by my time in the Flieger-HJ. And of late my ambition had been given an added impetus by the sleek new Messerschmitt Me 109 fighters based at nearby Bad Aibling, which I saw almost daily as they climbed away over Rosenheim after take-off.

  Father had no objection whatsoever to my volunteering for the armed forces–but did it have to be as a ‘necktie soldier’? This was the derogatory term applied to the Luftwaffe, whose uniform included a collar and tie, by members of the army, who still wore the traditional tunic buttoned high at the neck. As a dyed-in-the-wool infantryman–during the Great War he had served in the 11th Regensburg Infantry Regiment–father deplored such ‘modern’ innovations.

  Two women give the Nazi salute as they walk past the martyrs’ memorial on the side of the Feldherrnhalle building. The author’s father did his utmost to avoid this particular corner of Munich.

  What he loathed above all else, however, was the raised arm ‘Heil Hitler’ salute used by members of the SA and SS. I can recall visiting him on one occasion, it must have been in the late spring of 1939, at his office in Munich’s Seidlstrasse. Afterwards, in the street outside and much to the amusement of the passersby, he proceeded to tear an enormous strip off a pair of unfortunate SS men who had had the effrontery to salute him with raised arms. Such was his profound dislike of this form of salute that, when in civilian clothes, he would always make a special point of walking down the narrow alley at the back of Munich’s imposing Feldherrnhalle. This meant that he did not have to pass the memorial plaque commemorating those party members killed in Hitler’s abortive putsch of 23 November 1923, which was affixed to the wall on the other side of the building. A permanent SS honour guard flanked this shrine to the movement’s first martyrs, and everybody who walked past was expected to salute it. When in uniform father could, of course, put his hand to his cap in regular military fashion. But even this he tried to avoid as much as possible by taking the alternative route through the Viscardigasse.