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loyalty was misplaced. Hanna lived partly in a world of imagination; escaping into the skies was part of that. When something penetrated that happy sphere she was shaken and uncomfortable, she would turn away and dig her head into the figurative sand. Hanna did not want to know about the world of politics. It was too complicated, too frightful and it would destroy her brave dreams of loyalty, honour and hope. These were her exact feelings when she befriended a group of workers near Staaken. Every now and then the workers would launch into arguments over politics:
In the whole gang there were hardly two who belonged to the same party and with horror I realised how people who otherwise get on well together can become bitter and fanatical opponents as soon as politics are mentioned. It was all new to me … one day so fierce an argument developed between them that they almost came to blows. Then, depressed and thoughtful, I left them, for our happy atmosphere seemed now finally to have been destroyed.
    This was Hanna’s attitude throughout the war. Politics to her was something distasteful that brought out the worst in people, but she tried to retain a quiet loyalty to Germany without judgement. This unfortunately meant loyalty to Hitler and all the horrors such misplaced, foolish, honour would bring.

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    A N EW W ORLD
    Hanna was determined to ignore German politics because it made her uncomfortable, but politics was not ignoring Germany: 1932 saw the end of Prussian power as Reich president Paul von Hindenburg chose to collaborate with the Nazi Party and demolish the old republican system. It all led to the carefully orchestrated ‘Bloody Sunday’ of 17 July. The Nazis staged a provocative march in Altona, a busy harbour in the Prussian province of Holstein, riling up tempers in the working-class district with the result that eighteen were killed and 100 wounded. It was the culmination of many days of street fighting between the SA and the Communists, a bloody turf war that ruined faith in the Prussian system of government. The Prussian government was declared to have failed to keep the peace in its territory and an emergency decree deposed the Prussian minister-president Otto Braun and his ministers. It might not have been so easy had not the Prussian authorities resigned themselves to their fate, thus opening the door for Hitler’s period of tyranny.
    Hitler came to power in 1933 as Hanna was working with Wolf Hirth on a book concerning the theory behind flying in thermals. As much as Hanna chose to distance herself from the reality of politics in her country, she could not change the distance of her hometown from the epicentre of Nazi power. Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) was only an hour and a half away from Hirschberg by car and in 1932 it had become the strongest support base for the Nazis – 44 per cent of the city’s vote was National Socialist. Immediately after he came to power Hitler began to persecute the city’s Polish and Jewish population. Breslau had the largest Jewish community outside of Berlin, many of whom were thoroughly integrated into the city’s society – not the stereotypical Eastern European Jew that propaganda sought to vilify. Fewer than half were even practising their religion, but this would not save them from the blood lust Hitler had sparked.
    Jewish-Marxist books were burned in huge bonfires. Jewish businesses were boycotted and Jews were forced to give the Nazi salute to passing SA troops. Boys from the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) flooded the streets, singing ‘Set fire to the synagogues’. Ordinary citizens felt pressure to exclude Jewish friends from their lives. Already relationships between Jews and non-Jews were banned. Many Breslau citizens, who would otherwise have considered themselves good people, cut Jewish ties, quietly expunging Jewish friends from their lives and disowning former relationships.
    The Gestapo moved in to seek out ‘undesirables’, and these included