Tens of thousands throng the runways and hangars of the EADS (Airbus) plant at Manching in southern Germany enjoying the July sun. Employees, family members, guests, all invited to the "family day" at the military systems division of the European aerospace giant. They stroll around the ground display, the children's activity center and fast-food stands, but all are waiting for the central event, the air show.
The Me 262, the most advanced aircraft of the period, was designed by Willy Messerschmitt. Hitler saw in him the embodiment of German genius.
Photo: Anshel Pfeffer
The flight program begins with two Eurofighters, the latest combat plane developed jointly by four European nations, tearing through the sky. After them appears other modern fighters, helicopters and transport planes, but the best is still to come. With a dull roar of propellers, the lovingly restored World War II fighters take to the air. The crowd, though, is waiting for something special this time. A strange high-pitched whine begins, slowly intensifying, and for the first time in more than 60 years, the Messerschmitt 262 takes off into the skies of Bavaria to a rapturous round of applause.
The crowd watches spellbound. Those older than 70 still remember how, in the closing days of the war, they bicycled to an airfield hoping to catch a glimpse of the secret weapon. They remember their astonishment upon seeing a plane with no propeller, its power coming from two strange pipes slung under the wings. This was the miracle weapon that was supposed to save the Third Reich, clear the skies of the Allied bombers that were sowing destruction throughout Germany. The first jet plane to enter production.
Just like those Luftwaffe fighters, this Me 262 is painted in gray camouflage. It has only one external difference - instead of the big swastika on the tail, a small flag of Germany. Technically, this isn't a German plane, but an exact replica painstakingly recreated by a group of American enthusiasts over eight years, then dismantled, flown across the Atlantic in a cargo plane and reassembled here in Manching. But the crowd doesn't care - as far as it is concerned this was Germany's technological pride, at last flying again above its birthplace.
All the remaining specimens are housed in museums around the world. One is proudly displayed at the Deutsche Museum in Munich, a proud example of Germany's industrial greatness. Other Me 262s are on exhibition in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington and the Royal Air Force Museum in London. In the US, a group of retired aerospace engineers, all admirers of the plane, are building five flyable Me 262s.
But nowhere is the plane's full history told.
The gates of Mauthausen. The biggest industrial complex using slave labor was the network of 49 camps throughout Austria managed from headquarters here.
Photo: Anshel Pfeffer
The replica cost the Messerschmitt Foundation in Munich more than $2 million and EADS spent additional funds on maintenance and modern avionics, but it is worth every penny. The Franco-German conglomerate is proud of its heritage and over the next month at the Berlin Air Show, the Me 262 was the star attraction, along with the company's latest product, Airbus 380, the largest airliner in the world.
Messerschmitt, Germany's biggest airplane manufacturer of World War II went through many changes over the last six decades until it became part of the world's second largest aerospace corporation, but EADS, especially its German branch, sees a clear connection between the Me 262 and the Airbus 380: Both exhibit the technological cutting edge of their generations.
The minor detail that almost all the Me 262s that actually went into service with the Luftwaffe were built in one of the most horrendous concentration camps of the Nazi regime goes unmentioned. The fact that an unknown number of slave laborers, estimated at between 35,000 and 50,000, were murdered or died of malnutrition, disease, freezing and work accidents while building the Me 262 doesn't fit in with the corporate heritage.
THREE HOURS' drive down the autobahn from Manching, nestled between the low hills of Upper Austria on a tributary of the Danube, are two small picturesque villages, St. Georgen and Gusen. Like thousands of similar villages throughout central Europe, St. Georgen consists of a church and a few dozen old houses by the river, surrounded by a couple of hundred modern houses.
In the center of the village is the Heimat Haus, the local museum, dedicated to the various arts, crafts and industries that sustained life there. Between a 19th-century weaving loom and a display of old steam engines, there is a room that tells the story of the huge underground munitions plants built by the Germans beneath St. Georgen during World War II. The museum's curator, Martha Gammer, belongs to the Gusen Memorial Committee, a small group of local residents that collects information on the village's part in the Nazi war machine. The display includes details on life in the camp, working conditions and its main product.
When the tide had already turned against the Reich, the Nazi leadership began carrying out its well-laid plans to transfer the main arms factories to secret fortified locations, out of easy range of the Allied bombers that were wreaking havoc on industrial areas. The transfer had another purpose: To solve the personnel shortage in the munitions factories, the SS had come up with a simple solution - use the millions of prisoners in its vast network of camps. Soviet POWs, political prisoners, captured resistance fighters and Jews all became a commodity hired out to German companies for a daily fee. In many cases, the SS set up financial companies within the camps which became a major source of income for the organization. The biggest industrial complex was the network of 49 camps throughout Austria managed from headquarters at Mauthausen.
The Gusen camp, a few kilometers down the road from Mauthausen, was the biggest. The camp was set up in May 1940 to operate the local stone quarries using slave laborers. The original intention was to supply material for the grandiose building plans at Linz, 20 kilometers away. Adolf Hitler lived in Linz as a teenager and young man and planned after the war to transform it into the Reich's second capital, with a huge art museum. He had even selected the paintings. SS commander Heinrich Himmler had set up DEST, the SS-owned German Stone and Sand Company, which took ownership of the area's famed quarries.
