Hanna Reitsch

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Hanna Reitsch : biography

29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979

Career in Ghana and relations with Nkrumah

A particularly interesting part of her postwar career, though one relatively little known in the west, was her work in Ghanaian aviation. Kwame Nkrumah invited Reitsch to Ghana after reading of her work in India. A gliding school was developed at Afienya, and she worked closely with the government and the armed forces. Support was received from the West German government.Jean Allman, "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing", American Historical Review, vol. 118 no. 1 (Feb. 2013) p. 108. The project was evidently of great importance to Nkrumah, and has been interpreted as part of a "modernist" development ideology.Allman, "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing", American Historical Review, vol. 118 no. 1 (Feb. 2013) p. 116

Reitsch’s attitudes to race underwent a change. "Earlier in my life, it would never have occurred to me to treat a black person as a friend or partner…" She now experienced guilt at her earlier "presumptuousness and arrogance".Reitsch, Ich flog fuer Kwame Nkrumah (I flew for Kwame Nkrumah), pp. 29-30, quoted in Allman, "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing", American Historical Review, vol. 118 no. 1 (Feb. 2013) p. 114

She became close to Nkrumah. The details of their relationship are now unclear due to the destruction of documents, but some surviving letters are intimate in tone and it has been suggested that they may have been lovers.Allman, "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing", American Historical Review, vol. 118 no. 1 (Feb. 2013) p. 124-6

In Ghana, some African-Americans were disturbed by the prominence of a person with Reitsch’s past, but Shirley Graham Du Bois, a noted African-American writer who had emigrated to Ghana and was friendly towards Reitsch, agreed with Nkrumah that Reitsch was extremely naive politically.Shirley Graham Du Bois to Nkrumah, 28 June 1965, box 3 file 57, Nkrumah Papers, quoted in Allman, "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing", American Historical Review, vol. 118 no. 1 (Feb. 2013) p. 122.

Contemporary Ghanaian press reports seem to show a lack of interest in her past.Allman, "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing", American Historical Review, vol. 118 no. 1 (Feb. 2013) pp. 104-5.