Quoting Christian Goeschel’s Suicide in Nazi Germany, pages 147–8:

In March 1945, when [Axis] defeat was certain, Hitler agreed with Goebbels’s plan to send 300 fighter planes on suicide missions against Allied bomber planes. Eventually, Goebbels himself was disappointed with the failure of this mission.¹³² There is some evidence that the Luftwaffe flew self‐sacrifice missions against Soviet bridges across the River Oder in April 1945.

Thirty‐five pilots of the Leonidas squadron, based in Jüterbog, near Berlin, allegedly died after destroying two bridges. Before their mission, pilots reportedly signed a declaration, saying ‘I am above all clear that the mission will end in my death.’¹³³

Indeed, many of these pilots were [Fascist] fanatics who had volunteered for the self‐sacrifice mission.¹³⁴ The concept of self‐sacrifice (Selbstaufopferung) fundamentally differed from Selbstmord, which the [Fascists] condemned as a cowardly action, as noted earlier. Dying a soldier’s death was more dignified than negotiating for peace, the [Axis] thought.¹³⁵

Events that happened today (August 24):

1903: Karl Hanke, Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, was sadly born.
1937: The Basque Army surrendered to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie following the Santoña Agreement. Meanwhile, the Sovereign Council of Asturias and León was proclaimed in Gijón.
1938: An Imperial warplane shot down the Kweilin, a Chinese civilian airliner, killing fourteen people. It was the first recorded instance of somebody shooting down a civilian airliner.
1941: The Third Reich’s Chancellery ordered the cessation of its systematic T4 euthanasia programme of the mentally ill and the handicapped due to protests, but killings continue for the remainder of the war.
1942: The Axis aircraft carrier Ryūjō sunk during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, with the loss of seven officers and 113 crewmen (but the Yankee carrier USS Enterprise was still heavily damaged).
1944: The Allies began their assault on Axis‐occupied Paris.
1949: The treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization went into effect.
1979: Hanna Reitsch, Axis aviator and test pilot (hence today’s subject matter), expired.