Who was the only woman to win the Iron Cross during World War II?

SiegeTank55

Hanna Reitsch, a German Aviator, is the only woman to get the Iron Cross first class. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Cross#Post-World_War_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanna_Reitsch May 19 10, 9:10 PM

star_gazer

During the last days of the war, in light of Herman Goering's dismissal as head of the Luftwaffe for what Hitler saw as an act of treason, he appointed Colonel-General Robert Ritter von Greim as head of the Luftwaffe. To enable him to meet Hitler, von Greim asked Reitsch to fly him into embattled Berlin. Red Army troops were already in the downtown area when Reitsch and von Greim arrived on 26 April in a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch. With her long experience at low altitude flying over Berlin and having already surveyed the road as an escape route with Hitler's personal pilot Hans Baur, Reitsch landed on an improvised airstrip in the Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate (Greim was wounded in the leg when Red Army soldiers fired at the light aircraft during its approach). They made their way to the Führerbunker where Hitler promoted von Greim to Hermann Göring's former command of a now wholly defunct Luftwaffe. During the intense Russian bombardment, Hitler gave Reitsch a vial of poison for herself and another for von Greim. She accepted the vial willingly, fully prepared to die alongside her Führer.[2] On Hitler's orders, she escaped from Berlin with von Greim during the evening of 28 April, flying the last German plane out of Berlin shortly before the fall of the city by climbing through heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire. Hitler had ordered them to rendezvous with Karl Dönitz, who Hitler was convinced was rallying troops for a counter-attack. May 19 10, 10:13 PM

star_gazer

Although she kept a low profile after the war, toward the end of her life she was interviewed and photographed several times in the 1970s by US photo-journalist Ron Laytner. At the end of her last interview she told Laytner: “ And what have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But today in all Germany you can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power... Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share - that we lost. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanna_Reitsch May 19 10, 10:15 PM