Josie Le Blond
@jleblond.bsky.social
Author based in Berlin, Germany. Working on a book for Bodleian Library Press. Subscribe below for the forgotten story of Hitler's airport. https://tempelhof.substack.com/ https://www.josieleblond.com/
Leonhard Adler opened the meeting with grim determination. The survival of his pet project, Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, rested on its outcome. But the timing of his pitch to shareholders could not have been worse.
When Tempelhof Airport ran out of runway
The Wall Street Crash threw Tempelhof Airport into a bitter fight for survival.
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Dawn crept over the Tempelhofer Feld, picking out a rag-tag group of pilots as they made final flight preparations. Minutes later, a cheer rose as their planes took off into the darker sky to the west. The Deutschlandflug, a Germany-wide air race, had begun.
Veteran war pilots race to fame at Tempelhof
In the 1920s, Berlin's cash-strapped new airport turned to celebrity warriors to stay afloat.
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War-weary and half-starved, a crowd of 30,000 gathered on the Tempelhofer Feld, shivering and stamping their feet against the cold. German revolutionaries had driven the Kaiser from his throne. Now they were here to claim his playground.
Revolution sweeps the Tempelhofer Feld
Revolutionaries quickly evicted the defeated German army from the Tempelhofer Feld.
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Clouds gathered over the red-brick district command complex as the first volunteers arrived on the Tempelhofer Feld to sign up. A rush of patriotic fervour had seized Berlin at the news: Germany was at war with Russia.
War Breaks Out at Tempelhof
Hearing Germany was at war, Berliners rushed to Tempelhofer Feld to sign up to fight.
open.substack.com
General Tunner peered out through the windshield into the soup of dark clouds. At nearly two months old, the Berlin Airlift had settled into a smooth rhythm. But this Friday 13, US pilots faced what was for them a new challenge: the treacherous German weather. tempelhof.substack.com/p/redeeming-...
Redeeming Tempelhof: Black Friday to the Easter Parade
Tempelhof's vital role in the Berlin Airlift recast Hitler's airport as a symbol of freedom.
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Berliner Heinz Weber got a nasty shock when he arrived at work on the morning of 20 June, 1948. He had barely stepped inside the door when his boss appeared and fired him and the rest of the staff on the spot. Within days, he had a new job - unloading coal at Tempelhof Airport.
Unsung heroes of the Berlin Airlift
Thousands of Berliners worked backbreaking shifts at Tempelhof Airport unloading coal during the Soviet blockade.
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Jack O. Bennett knew Tempelhof Airport before the war. In 1945, as a commercial pilot based in Frankfurt, he often flew into what was now a US airbase. The Berlin he knew was gone. Many of his pre-war friends were dead. It seemed like Tempelhof Airport, though badly damaged, was all that was left.
Tempelhof: A bastion in Berlin’s bleakest winter
In 1945, a US pilot returned to Berlin's Tempelhof Airport to find the city he knew in ruins. Then, during a harsh winter, he launched a desperate search for his ex.
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The diplomats were glued to their windows. A Red Air Force escort zoomed around the fleet as it descended through the haze over the still-smouldering ruins of Berlin. After a victory lap, the planes lined up for the final approach into Tempelhof Airport.
'We saw Berlin:' The West meets Russia at Tempelhof
A Western delegation brought the Nazi high command to Berlin to sign the official surrender agreement that ended WWII. The Soviets had a surprise planned.
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Air traffic slowed to a trickle as frontline approached Tempelhof Airport in April 1945. But one last flight dared the approach into the ruins of the Nazi capital. On board, a Jewish representative on a top secret mission.
The last flight: A Jewish leader's top secret mission to Berlin
In the dying days of the Second World War, a representative of the World Jewish Council met with Heinrich Himmler in a bid to save thousands of lives.
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In September 1939, former flying ace Ernst Udet was already badly out of his depth. Promoted beyond his capabilities to lead the Luftwaffe’s Office of Air Armament, he was struggling in his role overseeing German aircraft production. Then war broke out.
Bombing the bombers: Tempelhof as a target
During the war, Tempelhof Airport transformed into a production plant for the Luftwaffe’s much-feared aircraft. It wasn’t long before it, too, became a target.
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We will never know the names of the Jewish forced labourers that worked for Lufthansa at Tempelhof Airport during the Second World War.
What happened to the Jewish people forced to work at Tempelhof?
When is an airport not an airport? When it is an armaments factory run on enslaved labour.
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Officially in Berlin to study aircraft construction, young American Jack O. Bennett spent his year abroad surrounded by military secrets.
Plane talking: When Jack met Adolf
On the eve of war, American exchange student Jack O. Bennett somehow got his hands on Germany's top-secret fighter planes. Hitler wanted to know what he thought.
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Ernst Udet’s death was passed off as an accident in the press. The truth was more complicated – and more embarrassing for the Nazi leadership.
The death of the ’Devil’s General’
Seeking power and fortune, celebrity flying ace Ernst Udet threw his lot in with the Nazis. They broke him.
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Surrounded by swastika flags and festive wreaths, Hermann Göring laid out his vision to a shivering crowd. Looming behind him, the shell of a gigantic departures hall – the centrepiece of the largest and most advanced airport facility Europe had ever seen.
Damned designs: Tempelhof is transformed
The Nazi-era terminal was planned with war in mind.
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The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games was a carefully orchestrated propaganda spectacle designed to boost the domestic and international prestige of the Nazi regime. But behind the scenes, an even darker story was playing out.
Tempelhof's aviators wage a secret war
The deadly intrigue behind the scenes at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
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Jack O. Bennett was a young student in Berlin before the war. But was he also a spy?
An American spy at Tempelhof?
On the eve of WWII, American pilot Jack O. Bennett landed a Rockefeller stipend to study aircraft construction at Berlin's Technical University. Then he had to convince the Germans he wasn't a spy.
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Berlin owes Dr. Leonhard Adler a great deal. In the 1920s, he founded both Tempelhof Airport and the BVG, the body that still runs the city’s public transport a century later. This is the story of how Hitler ran him out of town. tempelhof.substack.com/p/losing-tem...
Losing Tempelhof: How Hitler broke Adler's wings
Tempelhof Airport's forgotten Jewish founder was chased out of Germany by the Nazis.
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"One of my chefs mentioned that if they could cook the steak on the grill they could get it right the first time. This is not an acceptable attitude in the microwave era." www.colincornaby.me/2025/08/in-t...
In the Future All Food Will Be Cooked in a Microwave, and if You Can’t Deal With That Then You Need to Get Out of the Kitchen
As a restaurant owner – I’m astounded at the rate of progress since microwaves were released a few short years ago. Today’s microwave can cook a frozen burrito. Tomorrow’s m…
colincornaby.me
Celebrity pilot Ernst Udet's lavish lifestyle kept him chronically in debt. When approached by Hermann Göring, he simply named his price. open.substack.com/pub/tempelho...
‘Join the Nazis? How much do they pay?’
Celebrity pilot Ernst Udet was quick to see the military potential of American planes. Then he sold out to the Nazi war machine.
open.substack.com
Delighted to share that my book, Tempelhof: the Untold Story of Hitler’s Airport, will be published by Bodleian Library Press in the UK and the US in 2028. Last week I was invited to trawl the archive at Oxford University. Pics from a tour to the oldest part of the Bodleian Library.
British Ambassador Sir Horace Rumbold helped normalise relations between former enemies Germany and Britain between the wars. Within a few short years his hopes were dashed.
Hopes of peace dashed at Tempelhof
Between the wars, British Ambassador Horace Rumbold brought Germany in from the cold. Then, one day at Tempelhof, he glimpsed the awful truth.
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In 1933, Lufthansa boss Erhard Milch agreed to help the Nazis build an air force to decimate Germany’s opponents in the already looming future war.
Lufthansa to Luftwaffe: How Milch turned sour
When Adolf Hitler took power in January 1933, the head of Germany’s Tempelhof-based flag carrier agreed to help the Nazis prepare for war.
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Adolf Hitler decreed that Tempelhof would be rebuilt as a fascistic “world airport” to serve Germania, his megalomaniac re-imagining of the German capital. Sagebiel - experienced, loyal, ambitious, and malleable - was to translate this vision into reality.
The Nazi architect that created Tempelhof
No, it wasn't that one... Ernst Sagebiel was already a rising star in the Nazi civil service when he landed the biggest assignment of his career.
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Disillusioned SS guard Hans Bächle found a mentor among the prisoners at the notorious concentration camp on the edge of Tempelhofer Feld. Their thoughts soon turned to escape.
A daring escape from Columbiahaus
How a teen SS guard busted prisoners out of a notorious concentration camp on Tempelhofer Feld.
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The KZ Columbia on Tempelhofer Feld was a constant headache for the Nazi regime. Regular exposés in the international press and persistent rumours of inmate deaths at the hands of overzealous guards kept embarrassing the Nazi leadership as it strove to consolidate its power both at home and abroad.
Tempelhof's school of violence
Tempelhofer Feld was the site of Berlin’s only SS-run official concentration camp, a place of death and torture that served as a training ground for some of the Third Reich’s worst criminals.
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They came for Kurt Hiller one rainy lunchtime in high summer. Hours later, he found himself in the courtyard of a crumbling red-brick building on the edge of Tempelhofer Feld. This hellhole was to be his home for the next fourteen weeks. open.substack.com/pub/tempelho...
Tortured at Tempelhof for Writing Against a War
Author Kurt Hiller was an early victim of Columbiahaus, a site of death and torture on Tempelhofer Feld.
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Berlin, 1933. The May Day that wasn't. How the new regime used spectacle to subjugate the organised labour movement. tempelhof.substack.com/p/may-1-1933...
May 1, 1933: A Nazi rally on Tempelhofer Feld
The new Nazi regime used Tempelhof to crush Berlin's organised workers' movement.
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The N*azis and Tempelhof’s aviators formed a pact that lasted until the dying days of World War Two. tempelhof.substack.com/p/how-the-na...
How the Nazis came to Tempelhof
Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring was a penniless, recovering morphine addict when he first set foot in Tempelhof Airport. He would go on to make it a central cog in the Nazi war machine.
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Desperate for fame and recognition, Lufthansa's desk-bound clerk was adamant. He would succeed, or die trying. tempelhof.substack.com/p/the-bored-...
The bored Tempelhof staffer who risked death for glory
The story of the rogue Lufthansa employee who gambled life and livelihood for five minutes of fame.
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