In less than ten years, aeronautical technology has finally given man the means to realize his most ambitious dreams. On June 28, 1939, a Boeing seaplane transported passengers from Port-Washington to Marseilles, but for two years the Clippers had carried 2,000 over the Pacific. In the summer of 1935, a Martin China Clipper — a beautiful giant aircraft with a slender hull — had joined San Francisco in the Philippines in five days.
The plane is now everywhere. It even becomes a tool:it sows, spreads insecticides, fights forest fires and, like a giant paintbrush, inscribes advertising slogans in letters of smoke. "Writing on the sky... The poetic act par excellence!" exclaims Blaise Cendrars enthusiastically.
The plane is once again becoming an instrument of direct diplomacy. Neville Chamberlain, an old gentleman full of illusions, climbs, umbrella in hand, into a cabin for the first time in his life. He wants to convince “Mr. Hitler” not to go to war. At the Munich conference, the presence of Hermann Goering is no coincidence. Behind the large silhouette of the air marshal gleam the hoods of Stukas and Messerschmitts. A threat that will weigh heavily in the negotiations. France would oppose Germany with good fighters like the Dewoitine-520, the Morane-151, effective bombers like the Leo45 or the Amiot-145, but in insufficient quantities. "If there was a war...", sighed General Vuillemin, the commander-in-chief of our air force.
We are worried. The wings weave a fraternal garland around the nations, but their shadows could be those of death. In September 1939, we understand that the queen of battles is no longer the infantry, but the air force. As the air squadrons pass, the guns are silent, the tanks jump, the battleships capsize, hell, from the sky, descends on the cities.
"The plane is a machine, no doubt , but what an analytical tool! wrote Saint-Exupéry in 1938 in Terre des hommes. We need this great solitary voice to reassure ourselves and convince ourselves that beyond the flames and the ruins, aviation will experience a new peaceful boom. From the end of the conflict, we sense that, the conquest of the globe completed, his daughter, astronautics, will open the doors of space to us.
During the Second World War, the most important head of German state security encouraged the creation of Nazi brothels inside the concentration camps. By Rainer Sousa At the height of Nazism, several scientific studies were encouraged in order to prove the superiority of the Aryan race over other p