A new children’s book has just been published about the Hindenburg disaster.
The publisher was very concerned about getting the facts right and the contents are scrupulously accurate. Most of all, the book does not repeat any of the nonsense so often found in books about the Hindenburg (e.g., the United States wouldn’t sell helium to the Nazis; the ship’s fabric covering was highly flammable; etc.).
But there was one thing the publisher didn’t consult with me about: the title!
We made sure to avoid any use of the word “explosion” in the content and always referred to the ship “catching fire” or “bursting into flame,” so you can imagine my surprise when I saw the published book! But that aside, it’s a great little book that explains the basics of the Hindenburg disaster to children, and also mentions other ships such as Graf Zeppelin, Akron, and R.101.
Regarding Harold Ickes, Hugo Eckener is quoted in an address as follows on 9 July 1938, in celebration of the 100th birthday of Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin:
“One cabinet member now has suddenly given the opinion that the helium promised us last year has military importance and therefore cannot be delivered. This seems a joke, for this gentleman is the secretary of the interior, while military experts of War and Navy Departments denied its military importance. The last word, however, has not been spoken, as President Roosevelt has assured me. There is no doubt that we shall get helium, becasue the refusal hits American airship interests, which are dependent on collaboration with us. Peculiar maneuvers are common in America during election years.”
Unfortunately, Eckener didn’t know the influence Ickes had over Roosevelt, and the determination and utter vitriol he expressed in his own diaries…
Well, the full story is a little more complicated than I described in my first post. John Duggan, in LZ129 Hindenburg (Zep Study Group, 2002), p. 194, says: “By late 1937, there was little prospect of helium’s monopoly producer, the USA, exporting helium to Germany. True, in the wake of the Lakehurst catastrophe, Americans had shown a willingness to amend their legislation to permit the export and sale of the gas, and matters had progressed so far as to permit the signing of a sales contract between the US government and the DZR, with the latter having arranged for gas cylinders to be shipped to Houston for filling and shipment to Germany where storage and purification facilities had been established at Frankfurt. However, as ratification of the contract and the delivery dates drew near, Interior Secretary Ickes declined to approve the deal and give his required approval for the contract to proceed.…The final result was that Germany did not get its helium.†(An even more detailed blow-by-blow is offered in Manfred Bauer & John Duggan: The LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin and the End of Commercial Airship Travel. FDH: Zep Museum, 1996.)
Book titles are quite often selected by the publisher and not by the author, so there’s often a risk that the book title is dramatized.
Regarding the Helium Control Act: The sale of helium required a government permission which the DZR almost got *after* the fire of the LZ 129 (and that was indeed canceled due to the aggressive politics of Germany). The situation before the disaster is not clear to me — I haven’t read of any decision before 1938 that gave an explicit no to helium sale. On the other hand the LZ 129 didn’t use the full lifting capacity of hydrogen during her first year, which does indicate to me that someone expected her to be filled with helium quite soon. (Or maybe they just wanted more tolerances for ballast and fuel during evaluation?)
Re “the nonsense so often found in books about the Hindenburg (e.g.the United States wouldn’t sell helium to the Nazis…” You don’t say why this is “nonsense.” The U.S. would not in fact sell helium to he Nazis, and the reason they wouldn’t is that the Helium Control Act of 1927 prohibited export of helium. That included export to the Nazis. Further, following the Anschluss (Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938), U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes regarded Germany as a potential enemy and for that reason would not make an exception to the Act in the case of the Nazis. So for two reasons, the U.S. would not sell helium to the Nazis.