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Deutsche Luft Hansa

IATA ICAO Call sign - - -
Founded	6 January 1926; 100 years ago (1926-01-06)
Commenced operations	6 April 1926; 99 years ago (1926-04-06)
Ceased operations	22 April 1945; 80 years ago (1945-04-22)
Hubs	Berlin–Tempelhof
Secondary hubs	Cologne–Butzweilerhof Frankfurt Leipzig/Halle Hamburg Munich–Oberwiesenfeld
Headquarters	Berlin, Germany
Key people	Kurt Weigelt

Deutsche Luft HansaA.G. (from 1933 styled asDeutsche Lufthansa and also known asLuft Hansa,Lufthansa, orDLH) was a German airline, established in 1926. It served as theflag carrier of the country during the later years of theWeimar Republic and throughout the era ofNazi Germany, when it had close links to theNazi Party. It ceased operations in April 1945, in the final stages of theSecond World War.

Although Deutsche Luft Hansa was the forerunner of modern German airlineLufthansa (founded in 1953) and both airlines share the same logo, there is no legal connection between the two. However, the new Lufthansa took over staff from the old airline^[1] and claims DLH's legacy. For this reason it is controversial in the historical reappraisal to what extent the modern Lufthansa should confess to crimes committed by the old airline.^[2][3][4]

Deutsche Luft Hansa was founded on 6 January 1926 inBerlin. The name of the company means "German Hansa of the Air". The Hansa orHanseatic League dominated maritime trade in the Baltic Sea area for hundreds of years, and is well regarded in Germany to this day. The airline was created by the merger ofDeutsche Luft-Reederei andJunkers Luftverkehr in 1926.^[5] The two companies, Germany's largest airlines at the time, were forced to merge by the German government, while all other airlines were shut down. This reorganization was intended to reduce the amount of financial support the government provided to the airline industry. Like many other countries, Germany subsidized the airlines, which also gave the German government control over them.

The stylised flyingcrane symbol predates Luft Hansa and had been used byDLR and Deutscher Aero Lloyd.

The foundation of the airline coincided with the lifting of restrictions on commercial air operations imposed on Germany by theTreaty of Versailles.^{[citation needed]} This allowed the route network to be quickly expanded to cover major European cities. The initial fleet consisted of 162 aircraft, nearly all of them outdatedWorld War I types, and the company had 1,527 staff. The most important airfield for DLH wasBerlin Tempelhof. From there aFokker F.II took off on 6 April 1926 for the first scheduled flight toZürich viaHalle,Erfurt andStuttgart. In the same year,Deutsche Luft Hansa acquired a stake inDeruluft, a joint German-Soviet airline, and launched non-stop flights from Berlin toMoscow, which was then regarded as an exceptionally long distance. Shortly after that, flights toParis were commenced.Deutsche Luft Hansa was one of the first airlines to operate night flights, the first of which connected Berlin withKönigsberg usingJunkers G 24 aircraft. This route proved so successful that the night train connection was discontinued some years later.^{[citation needed]}During its first year, the airline operated more than six million flight kilometres, transporting a total of 56,268 passengers and 560 tons of freight and mail.

Over the following years, the domestic network grew to cover all the important cities and towns of Germany. More international routes were added through co-operation agreements. With the newly foundedIberia inSpain its longest scheduled route was 2,100 kilometres from Berlin toMadrid (though with several stopovers). The establishment ofSyndicato Condor inBrazil served the airline's interests in South America where there were important German minorities at that time.The first east–west crossing of the North Atlantic Ocean (fromBaldonnel Aerodrome inIreland toGreenly Island, Canada) was made by the Luft Hansa pilotHermann Köhl,Ehrenfried Günther Freiherr von Hünefeld and the Irish pilotJames Fitzmaurice using theJunkers W 33 aircraftBremen in April 1928. The airline launched scheduled multi-leg flights toTokyo. AHeinkel HE 12 aircraft was launched (bycatapult) off the NDL linerBremen during her maiden voyage crossing the Atlantic in 1929, shortening the mail delivery time between Europe and North America. Both the Bremen and her sister shipEuropa launched mail planes on their scheduled North Atlantic crossings until 1935.

Even though the early years of the decade saw a difficult financial situation due to theGreat Depression, Deutsche Luft Hansa further expanded its international route network in South America, and launched scheduled flights from Germany to the Middle East. Politically, the company leaders were linked to the risingNazi Party; an aircraft was made available toAdolf Hitler for his campaign for the1932 presidential election free of any charge. The Nazi party used footage of those flights for their propaganda efforts and gained an advantage in being able to hold events featuring Hitler in different places in far quicker succession than other parties which relied largely on rail transport.Erhard Milch, who had served as head of the airline since 1926, was appointed byHermann Göring to be head of theAviation Ministry when Hitler came to power in 1933;^[6] Milch had been a member of the Nazi party since 1929, and was later convicted of war crimes.^[7][8] According to a leading scholar of the history of German aviation, from this point, "Lufthansa served as a front organization for armament, which took place secretly until 1935 – it was an air force in disguise."^[6] The historianNorman Longmate reported that during its peacetime flights in the 1930s, the airline had secretly photographed the entire British coastline as preparation for a possible invasion.^[9]

A key interest of Deutsche Luft Hansa at that time was the reduction of mail delivery times. In 1930, theEurasia Corporation was established as ajoint-venture with theChinese transport ministry, granting Luft Hansa a monopoly position for mail transport between Germany and China, as well as access to the Chinese market. To this end, theShanghai-Nanjing-Beijing route was launched in the following year usingJunkers W 34 specially deployed there. A record was set in 1930 when the mail route fromVienna toIstanbul (with stopovers inBudapest,Belgrad andSofia) was completed in only 24 hours. By comparison, the first transatlantic passenger flight by the airline (fromWarnemünde toNew York City using aDornierWalflying boat) took roughly one week.

After several years of testing, a scheduled postal route between Europe and South America was inaugurated in 1934. This was the first regularly scheduled airline service across an ocean in the world.Wal flying boats were used, catapult launched for the trans-Atlantic leg^[10] These were replaced by theDornier Do 18 in 1936 making operations in non-visual conditions possible. The European network saw the introduction of theJunkers G.38 (at that time the largest passenger aircraft in the world) on the Berlin-London route viaAmsterdam, as well as theJunkers Ju 52/3m andHeinkel He 70, which allowed for faster air travel. This was promoted by so-called "Blitz Services" (German:Blitzstrecken) betweenBerlin,Hamburg,Cologne andFrankfurt. In 1935, the first aircraft not manufactured in Germany were introduced into the Luft Hansa fleet: twoBoeing 247s and oneDouglas DC-2.

The grip on the domestic South American markets was further tightened in 1937, when theSociedad Ecuatoriana de Transportes Aéreos (SEDTA)^[11] andLufthansa Perú were founded as Luft Hansa co-operations inEcuador andPeru respectively, operatingJunkers W 34 aircraft. The Middle Eastern network was expanded with the launch of the Berlin-Baghdad-Tehran route in the same year. In 1938 theFocke-Wulf Fw 200 long range aircraft was introduced making it possible to fly non-stop between Berlin and New York and from Berlin to Tokyo with only one intermediate stopover. This last year prior to the outbreak ofWorld War II turned out to be the most successful one in the history of the airline, with 19.3 million flight kilometres on the scheduled European routes and a total of 254,713 passengers and 5,288 tons of mail transported.

From 1936, Deutsche Luft Hansa carried out route proving flights to carry mail across the North Atlantic. This service was intended to replace the mail planes launched by catapult from trans-Atlantic steamers. However this never materialized, as German planes were denied the right to carry mail into the country by the United States for political reasons.

On 1 April 1939, Deutsche Luft Hansa launched scheduled transatlantic flights toNatal, Rio Grande do Norte andSantiago de Chile using Fw 200 aircraft, a route which had previously been operated bySyndicato Condor. WithBangkok,Hanoi andTaipei, further Asian destinations were added to the route network.

During the 1930s, Luft Hansa aircraft were deployed on a number of experimental and survey missions, most notably for developing the best airborne crossing of the South Atlantic. During theGerman Antarctic Expedition (1938–1939) (Antarctica expedition), two Dornier Wal aircraft performed a photographic survey of 350,000 square kilometres, an area which became known asNew Swabia.

With the outbreak ofWWII on 1 September 1939, all civilian flight operations of Luft Hansa came to an end, and the aircraft fleet came under command of theLuftwaffe, along with most staff. The company focused on aircraft maintenance and repair. There were still scheduled passenger flights within Germany and to occupied or neutral countries, but bookings were restricted and served the demands of warfare. During the later years of the war, most passenger aircraft were converted to military freighters.

The Luft Hansa co-operations in foreign countries were gradually dismantled:Deruluft ceased to exist in March 1940, and by November of that year, the Eurasia Corporation had to be shut down following an intervention by theChinese government.Syndicato Condor was nationalised and renamedCruzeiro do Sul in 1943, in an attempt to erase its German roots.

The last scheduled flight of Deutsche Luft Hansa – from Berlin toMunich took place on 21 April 1945, but the aircraft crashed^[12] shortly before the planned arrival, killing all 21 aboard. Another (non-scheduled) flight was performed the next day, from Berlin toWarnemünde, which marked the end of flight operations. Following the surrender of Germany and the ensuingAllied occupation of Germany, all aircraft in the country were seized and Deutsche Luft Hansa was dissolved. The remaining assets were liquidated on 1 January 1951.

During World War II, Deutsche Luft Hansa employed more than 10,000 forced laborers, including many children, from occupied countries; forced Jewish labor was particularly used from 1940 to 1942.^[13][14][15] Forced laborers were used to install and maintain radar systems and to assemble, repair, and maintain aircraft, including military aircraft.^[16][15] Forced laborers were lodged in barracks run by Luft Hansa on the Tempelhof site and elsewhere in Berlin. They were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by authorities with machine guns; sanitation in these camps was poor, as was the level of medical care and nutrition.^[16][15] In 2012, a team of archaeologists excavated the site of the camp run by Luft Hansa on Tempelhof airport.^[16]

Lufthansa, today's Germanflag carrier, acquired the name and logo of the 1926–1945 airline upon its foundation in 1953 and claims DLH's history as its own. However, there is no legal link between the two companies. Between 1955 and 1963, the newly foundedEast German national airline operatedunder the same name but, having lost a lawsuit with theWest German company, it was liquidated and replaced byInterflug.

From 1926 until the outbreak ofWorld War II in 1939, Deutsche Luft Hansa built up an extensive network centred on its base atBerlin Tempelhof Airport covering many German cities and towns, as well as the major European cities. There were earlyinterline agreements which granted Luft Hansa passengers access to the flight network of leading European airlines of that time and vice versa. The agreements were with air lines includingAerotransport,Ad Astra Aero,Adria Aerolloyd,Aero Oy,Air Union,Balair,CIDNA,CSA,DDL,Imperial Airways,KLM,Lignes Aeriennes Latécoère,LOT,ÖLAG,Malert,SABENA,SANA,SGTA, andUkrpovitroshliakh, as well asSyndicato Condor fromBrazil andSCADTA fromColombia.

During that period, the following European destinations saw scheduled passenger flights:^[17][18]

Due to the war and the de facto end of commercial air transport in Germany, Luft Hansa operated scheduled passenger flights only on some domestic trunk routes and international services on a limited number of routes to occupied orAxis-affiliated countries. These routes deteriorated during the war as Germany came closer to defeat.

As of 1940/41, the following destinations were served. At that time, interline agreements were in force withIberia,Aeroflot,Malert,LARES (Romania),Aero Oy (Finland),DDL (occupied Denmark),ABA (Sweden), andCSA (occupied Czechoslovakia).

Additionally, there were scheduledsea plane flights along theNorwegian coast (fromTrondheim toKirkenes), which was then part of theAtlantic Wall.

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Over the years of its existence, Deutsche Luft Hansa operated the following aircraft types:

This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(June 2011)

• Cooksley, Peter (September–October 1996). "Celestial Coaches: Dornier's Record Breaking Komet and Merkur".Air Enthusiast (65):20–24.ISSN 0143-5450.
• Joachim Wachtel, Günter Ott:Im Zeichen des Kranichs. Die Geschichte der Lufthansa von den Anfängen bis 1945. Piper, München 2016,ISBN 978-3-492-05788-2.
• Lutz Budraß [de]:Adler und Kranich. Die Lufthansa und ihre Geschichte 1926-1955. Blessing, München 2016,ISBN 978-3-89667-481-4.

• Airlines established in 1926
• Airlines disestablished in 1945
• Defunct airlines of Germany
• Defunct seaplane operators
• Lufthansa
• Companies involved in the Holocaust

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