The huge gas-filled aircraft were once a symbol of modernity used to burnish the image of the Nazis. Now a vast hangar near Rio de Janeiro is all that’s left

The last time a giant swastika flew above the Americas, it was on the zeppelins that pioneered commercial air travel across the Atlantic.

The Nazi symbol was emblazoned two storeys tall on the tail of the mammoth dirigibles – which are still the biggest flying machines ever created – in an effort to impress upon the world the scale of fascist ambitions.

Almost as big as the Titanic, the airships flew from Frankfurt to New Jersey – and also to Recife and Rio de Janeiro – in a service that started in the spirit of adventure and business, but ended in disaster and war.

Little of the huge infrastructure that supported that network survives, but in a quiet neighbourhood on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, a gargantuan reminder of the ill-fated project will mark its 80th anniversary on Monday.

Standing 58 metres tall, spanning the length of three football pitches and looking like something out of the classic 1920s film Metropolis, the world’s only remaining original zeppelin hangar dominates the landscape of Santa Cruz, which is about an hour’s drive from the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema.

“It is impossible to grasp the scale of this piece of living history until you are inside,” said Antônio Lopes, a sergeant in the Brazilian air force, which now uses the airfield. “In its day, this was the biggest hangar in the world. I’ve worked here for 36 years and I still find it fascinating.”

Built to house the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg, the immense structure dwarfs the fixed-wing military aircraft that are its current occupants.



The building was made in Oberhausen, Germany, then shipped, in parts, across the Atlantic, freighted to the site on a railway purpose-built by British engineers, and reassembled.



The Bartolomeu de Gusmão airfield was inaugurated on 26 December 1936 at a ceremony attended by Nazi officials and President Getúlio Vargas, who co-opted Brazil’s domestic fascist movement – Integralismo Brasileiro – on his way to imposing his own dictatorship in 1937.

From the archive, 8 May 1937: Hindenburg airship disaster leaves 33 dead Read more

It did not start as a political project. Brazil was chosen for the first commercial transatlantic flights in aviation history because the weather was less of a challenge than on routes to the US. The public were also considered enthusiastic because they had given a warm welcome to the Graf zeppelin during its groundbreaking circumnavigation of the globe in 1929, several years before Hitler took power.

The scheduled service for passengers and mail launched in 1931, initially from Frankfurt to Recife, but later extended to Rio.

By today’s standards, the four-day journey would have been tortuously slow, but the 60mph cruising speed was far faster than any ocean-going vessel of the time.

Passengers could also travel in considerable luxury in the gondola, which had beds, a dining room, a grand piano, and a glass-walled viewing area that allowed them to gaze down from less than 1,000 metres’ altitude at the land and seascapes.

The service to Rio lasted just six months and nine trips until May 1937, when the perils of flying just beneath 200,000 cubic metres of flammable hydrogen were made clear in the Hindenburg disaster. Thirty-six people were killed as the airship went down in a ball of flames during a botched landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

Up until then, the zeppelins had been seen as a symbol of the future. Older Rio residents still recall the thrill of watching the vast transports whirr slowly over Copacabana beach.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest José dos Santos, one of the last people still alive to set foot on the original zeppelins. Photograph: Jonathan Watts/The Guardian

José dos Santos, was just nine years old at the time, and got closer than most because his brother worked at the hangar. He said the zeppelins were so big they looked like “monsters” and appeared “drunk” as they descended. “I remember the sound – zoom, zoom, zoom,” he said.

Only the rich could afford the passage, but Santos snuck on board for a look at the elegant cabin, making him one of the last people still alive to have set foot on the original zeppelins.

Today, Santos – now 89 – works as a shopkeeper at the hangar. Although modern F-5 jets roar along the runway outside as we talk, he is more animated by reminiscences of the zeppelins. “The Hindenburg’s tail would stick out because this was built for the smaller Graf Zeppelin.”

Jürgen Bleibler of the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen said the swastikas were painted on the tails soon after Adolf Hitler took power.

“From 1933 onwards, the Nazi gave a lot of money to the zeppelin programme, especially the Hindenburg. In return they used it for propaganda. In Germany, the zeppelins flew over the Berlin Olympic Stadium and the Nuremberg rally. In Brazil, they hoped to appeal to the many German immigrants and bring them closer to the fatherland,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zeppelin hangar in Santa Cruz, Brazil. Photograph: Jonathan Watts/The Guardian

The airship business, which had already been curtailed by the Hindenburg disaster, was ended by war. Dirigibles were decommissioned because they were too vulnerable and slow. The Frankfurt hangar was dismantled, relocated, used for V2 rockets and cratered by allied bombing.

The original Zeppelin company still exists and recently resumed small-scale operations with tourist airship flights. But with the demolition of Zeppelin hangars in the US and Recife, this leaves Santa Cruz with the largest physical connection to that bygone age of air travel. The politics of the 1930s, however, are something that most people would rather forget.

Brazil eventually joined the war on the side of the allies in 1942. Since 1985, it has been a democracy, albeit an often troubled one. Perhaps for this reason, the base museum does not mention how the zeppelin program was appropriated by the Nazi government and not one of the photographs of the dirigibles shows the swastika on the tail.

There is certainly much to commemorate beyond the politics. Climb the rusting staircase up to the girders of the hangar, then look down from the vertiginous heights, and it is hard not to admire the engineers who once combed the exterior of the airships.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The zeppelin hangar in Santa Cruz is now used by the Brazilian air force. Photograph: Jonathan Watts/The Guardian

Known as “spiders”, the technicians would work from the roof down to examine every inch of the huge dirigibles with a giant glass, then use chalk to mark punctures or signs of stress that should be repaired. Given the size of the task, it must have been a little like checking for perforations in the walls of a cathedral.

Today – although partly Brazilianized with the addition of a brick barbecue on one wall – the structure, which is occasionally used for mass weddings, still carries a sense of grandeur and occasion. For some, it even has romance. This weekend, base officials say, 800 couples are due to be married here in a joint ceremony.

But it is also a place of reflection on a period of history when mankind took several reckless steps.

I ask the commander of the base, Carlos Roberto Ronconi, whether he would have been willing to fly in a zeppelin. The veteran F-5 pilot shakes his head and laughs with the wisdom of hindsight. “Oh no. It was much too dangerous.”