A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination - Hardcover

An excellent book, beautifully written...There is really nothing quite like it in the field...Its combination of solid scholarship, appealing writing, and provocative thought makes it an important contribution to our understanding of modern German military history.--Edward Homze "Air Power History " Peter Fritzsche's unusual and enthralling history is about the most pervasive of [Germany's] dreams, the national dream of an empire of the air.--Martin Pawley "The Guardian " This book illuminates a significant event-the human acquisition of powers of flight...The first chapter, on the zeppelin craze, is a splendid evocation of the popular enthusiasm that flooded the channels of official patriotism and disturbed the princes jostled by the masses coming to witness the flyby or landing of zeppelin...and this book becomes an informative and useful essay on the German experience of aviation in the first three decades of the twentieth century...Its strengths become obvious as it turns to the phenomenon of human flight in its German incarnation, recognizing the broad-spectrum appeal of flight and the peculiar relations between fliers and the masses it engenders...This work is useful and well worth reading. It promises a fuller, more detailed continuation of the project of understanding the role flight plays in making us different from our ancestors.--Eric Leed "Journal of Modern History " A fascinating tale that provides a refreshing perspective on the history of early twentieth-century Germany, and Peter Fritzsche has told it with flair, passion, and an array of evidence taken from a wide range of little-known sources.--Robert Wohl "German Politics and Society " A fundamental breakthrough in the development of an understanding of how technology fed a Faustian vision of modernism in which nationalism and industrial society became ever more compatible and ever more popular...A model in its insight into the correlation of technology and the popular imagination in the twentieth century.--Ronald Warloski "American Historical Review " Peter Fritzsche presents a remarkable blend of technological, social, and cultural history in his study of the popular German reaction to early aviation...His findings have sizable implications for all scholars of twentieth-century Germany.--Norman W. Goda "German Studies Review " "Peter Fritzsche's unusual and enthralling history is about the most pervasive of [Germany's] dreams, the national dream of an empire of the air." --Martin Pawley, "The Guardian" "An important, thought-provoking study." --"Dissent" "An excellent book, beautifully written...There is really nothing quite like it in the field...Its combination of solid scholarship, appealing writing, and provocative thought makes it an important contribution to our understanding of modern German military history." --Edward Homze, "Air Power History" "A fascinating tale that provides a refreshing perspective on the history of early twentieth-century Germany, and Peter Fritzsche has told it with flair, passion, and an array of evidence taken from a wide range of little-known sources." --Robert Wohl, "German Politics and Society" "A fundamental breakthrough in the development of an understanding of how technology fed a Faustian vision of modernism in which nationalism and industrial society became ever more compatible and ever more popular...A model in its insight into the correlation of technology and the popular imagination in the twentieth century." --Ronald Warloski, "American Historical Review" "Peter Fritzsche presents a remarkable blend of technological, social, and cultural history in his study of the popular German reaction to early aviation...His findings have sizable implications for all scholars of twentieth-century Germany." --Norman W. Goda, "German Studies Review"

Gigantic, fragile airships hovering in a vast sky, war aces obsessed with death and destruction, daring young men launching their handbuilt gliders, schoolchildren wearing gas masks during air-raid drills - the bright idealism of flight and its darker service in total war come to life in this book about Germany's perilous romance with aviation. From the Kaiser's Second Reich to Hitler's Third Reich, machine dreams mingled with imperial dreams and mastery over the natural world held the promise of mastery over the political world. This is popular history of the modern era. From the crowds in the shadow of Graf Zeppelin's hugely popular airships, to the myths surrounding the chivalrous fighter pilots of World War I, and finally to the global reach of airplanes in the 1920s, Fritzsche aims to show flight to be a rich symbol for vitality and modernism. But German aviation was more that an exuberant story of technical accomplishment; it became a dark tale about nationalism and conquest. Even before the Nazis, fliers embodied a new breed of men and women who stood ready to restore German power. The book concludes with an exploration of the troubled intersection of modern technology and National Socialism. By drawing from numerous private archives, including those of Lufthansa, the Zeppelin Company, the German Aero Club, and the papers of "the father of gliding", Oskar Ursinus, as well as by analyzing popular poems, songs, and patriotic appeals, Fritzshe parades through his story such heroes of aviation as Graf Zeppelin, Manfred von Richthofen, Oswald Boelcke, and Marga von Etzdorf. In doing so he traces the fascination with aviation of Weimar writers from Bertolt Brecht to Ernst Junger, dramatizes the grand twentieth-century spectacle of masses and machines, and seeks to provide a striking picture of the German imagination in a dangerous age of technological achievement and nationalist passion.