Flughafen Hermann Göring is the international airport serving Berlin’s international traffic and a recurring threshold in Xavier March’s investigation. Its polished modernity and official symbols frame both his tightly controlled departure for Switzerland and his return under the gaze of the state, making the airport more than a transport hub: it is where movement across borders becomes a matter of political permission and monitoring.

Setting and Design

The airport stands in the northwestern suburbs, while Tempelhof, near the city center, handles short-haul domestic flights. International travelers arrive at long, low terminal buildings of marble and glass designed by Albert Speer. The contrast between the two airports divides local movement from travel beyond the Reich, while the monumental terminal gives international passage an unmistakably official setting.

The runways display the new generation of passenger jets: blue-and-white Pan American Boeings alongside Lufthansa Junkers marked with the swastika. Outside the arrivals hall, a statue of Hanna Reitsch, identified as Germany’s leading aviatrix, is made from melted-down British aircraft. Behind it, a welcome sign announces Berlin as the capital of the Greater German Reich in five languages. International aviation is presented as modern and cosmopolitan, but its symbols are arranged to assert the regime’s authority and triumph.

March’s Departure and the Politics of Permission

When Nebe authorizes March to travel to Switzerland, the permission is sharply limited. He arranges a twenty-four-hour exit visa, valid from six that evening until six the following evening, and warns that Swiss police will watch March from the moment he leaves the aircraft until he boards again. March is expected to return to Berlin and report what he has discovered; escape or a journey to a foreign embassy is presented as futile.

March books a room and plane seat, then receives his passport with the visa stamped inside. The duration of an exit visa reflects the applicant’s political reliability: Party bosses can receive ten years, Party members five, and citizens with unblemished records one year, while camp prisoners receive none. March, judged politically unreliable, gets only a day outside the country. The airport thus marks a temporary exception granted by the state, not freedom of movement.

Departures, Returns, and Surveillance

March’s passage through the airport is rendered in concrete contrasts: Pan American aircraft beside Lufthansa’s swastika-decked Junkers, and the fuel-filled runways giving way to a soundproofed departure terminal. The automated doors close behind him as he enters the controlled interior. His journey begins in a space built to make international travel appear efficient and modern, but the terms of his visa and Nebe’s warning remain attached to every step.

On his return with Charlotte Maguire, the Junkers lands shortly before two o’clock in a light drizzle. At passport control, travelers face separate lines: one for German and European Community nationals and another for the rest of the world. March and Maguire part there, with March handing back the case he had carried for her. The airport’s administrative divisions turn a personal separation into a visible border between categories of belonging.

The airport’s wider role in the novel’s surveillance system is made explicit when Krebs explains that information about Martin Luther’s planned meeting with an American journalist came not from an embassy tip but from a wiretap. He produces a hurriedly delivered secret state document from the Forschungsamt. The document’s appearance connects intercepted communications to the state’s capacity to act on private plans, extending the logic of controlled passage beyond passport desks and into the travelers’ conversations and intended movements.

Narrative Significance

Flughafen Hermann Göring brings the novel’s competing images of the Reich into a single place. Marble, glass, international airlines, and modern passenger jets suggest openness; the regime’s symbols, political visa rules, divided passport lines, and surveillance reveal how conditional that openness is. March can cross the border only on terms set by the authorities, and his return places him back within their reach. The airport makes the state’s power over movement legible at the precise point where departure and homecoming meet.