RAeS Lecture: The Third Reich in the Making
July 11, 2024
Royal Aeronautical Society Headquarters
speech
Registration time: 18:00 - 18:30
Lecture time: 18:30 - 19:30
The National Socialist Flying Corps (NSFK) provided instruction in all aspects of aviation to "Aviation Hitler Youth" boys and other aspiring pilots in Nazi Germany. Designed to be a preparatory school for future Luftwaffe personnel, the organization provided these eager young pilots with theoretical and practical aviation training. More sinisterly, however, they also intertwined their instruction with virulent Nazi ideology and propaganda. This lecture examines how the NSFK attempted to entice German youth to fly for the Führer and the Fatherland. Given that a significant portion of Luftwaffe personnel were either managed or instructed by the NSFK, the lecture argues that avoiding the study of this flying corps would simplify our understanding of the military and political makeup of Germany's major air forces during the Third Reich.
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Speaker Details
Dr Victoria Taylor
Dr Victoria Taylor is an award-winning aviation historian who completed her PhD on the Luftwaffe and National Socialism in the Third Reich at the University of Hull and Sheffield Hallam University. Her main historical research focus is British and German aviation in the interwar period and during World War II. In recognition of her doctoral research, she was awarded the 2020 RAF Museum Doctoral Academic Award in 2021. She also completed an MRes in Historical Research (MRes) at Hull on Britain’s wartime and post-war mythologisation of Operation CHASTISE (better known as Operation Dam Bombing), for which she was awarded the RAF Museum’s RAF Centenary MRes Academic Award in 2019.
Victoria is on the Editorial Board of the Royal Aeronautical Society's Journal of Aviation History and a member of its Aviation Heritage Expert Group. She is on the Advisory Committee of the House of Lords' Cross-Party Spitfire AA810 Restoration Project and lectures on Air Power to Junior RAF Officers on the Joint Services Command and Staff College Course at the Defence Academy, Shrivenham. She is a Fellow of the Freeman Institute for Aerospace Studies at the School of Security Studies, King's College London and an Ambassador for the National Spitfire Project and the RAF Charitable Trust.
Place
Royal Aeronautical Society Headquarters
4 Hamilton Place, London W1J 7BQ
