A Nation of Fliers

440 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE A Nation ofFliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination. By Peter Fritzsche. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. Pp. xii + 282; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $27.95. Not long ago I complained in the pages of this journal about the rarity of precisely the sort of work that Peter Fritzsche has written: the history of technology in German popular culture. A Nation ofFliers (a title derived from a Hermann Goering propaganda slogan of the 1930s) gives an impressionistic but stimulating survey of aviation’s role in German culture from 1908 to 1939. Fritzsche’s book is not a complete history of this topic; rather, it is a collection of five integrated essays on the links between technology, modernity, and nationalism in early-20th-century Germany. The first chapter covers the zeppelin craze from 1908 to the First World War. This fad began with the accidental destruction of the LZ4, producing the “miracle at Echterdingen”—an outpouring of massive popular support for the airship. Fritzsche sees this event as one of the first occasions where populist enthusiasm broke the bounds of a stuffy, aristocratic nationalism embodied in official imperial ceremo­ nies. Chapter 2 discusses the cult of the fighter ace during the Great War, beginning with Oswald Boelcke in 1915-16. The failure of the zeppelin as a war machine meant that heavier-than-air aviation supplanted the airship as the primary focus of the popular air-power cult. In the third chapter, Fritzsche details the history of the glider movement in the Weimar Republic, which came to symbolize national revival in the face of the onerous restrictions of the Versailles treaty. The next major section, “Modernist Visions, National Dreams,” also discusses Weimar aviation, but does not focus on one topic. Rather, it offers a selection of interesting cases where enthusiasm for modernity and technology intersected with nationalism and imperialism—for example, in the world flights of the new zeppelins and in the exploits of German fliers. Finally, in chapter 5, Fritzsche looks at how the Nazis exploited popular aviation enthusiasm for their own ends—in particular by using the threat of the bomber to bolster support for a militarized, totalitarian society. The result is an original and elegantly written survey with only occasional lapses into sentences ofTeutonic length. Clearly, A Nation of Fliers cannot pretend to be comprehensive; prewar heavier-than-air aviation, for example, is scarcely mentioned. The book also ends on the eve of World War II without providing any rationale. But in his chosen topics, Fritzsche makes comprehensive and subtle use of the media, literature, and art to illustrate the intersection of nationalism and modernity in the culture of German aviation. The book’s primary problem comes in the failure to confront directly the contradictory attitudes of interwar Germans to modernity (a term that is never explicitly defined). Fritzsche repeatedly emphasizes how popular enthusiasm for aviation expressed and reinforced the industrial, ur­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 441 ban, and bourgeois elements of German nationalism. The Weimar glider movement, however, mixed technological enthusiasm with antiurban , back-to-the-land sentiments. Jeffrey Herf’s Reactionary Mod­ ernism, (Cambridge, 1984) has dealt more effectively with these con­ tradictions, although only through a much narrower and a more traditional set of sources. A Nation of Fliers is also rather Germano­ centric. Comparisons with other nations are few and far between and Fritzsche misses many opportunities to employ Joseph Corn’s The Winged Gospel (New York, 1983) for a more thorough look at GermanAmerican contrasts, although he does mention the book. These com­ plaints are, however, overshadowed by Fritzsche’s accomplishments. He has written a graceful and significant work and has given impetus to the social and cultural history of German technology. Michael J. Neufeld Dr. Neufeld is a curator in the Aeronautics Department of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. He is currently completing a book, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemiinde and the German Army Guided Missile Program. Farther and Faster: Aviation’s Adventuring Years, 1909—1939. By Terry Gwynn-Jones. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Pp. xviii + 333; illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, in­ dex. $29.95. Terry Gwynn

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