100 YEARS AGO (1918)
Great est German war hero or cold-blooded killer who took his passion for hunting to the skies?
WW1 pilot Manfred von Richthofen, known as The Red Baron, was shot down and killed over Vaux-surSomme in France.
Today Germany mourns one of its “good warriors” – a knight of the air untainted by the scourge of Nazism and unsullied by war crimes – who died exactly 100 years ago.
But the ceremony will be in the lowest of keys. No flags at half mast, no services in great cathedrals, no mass parades, no televised tribute from Angela Merkel.
Only in the small town of Wittmund will trumpets blow and fine words be spoken in honour of Manfred von Richthofen.
Because some, at least, are seeing the savage career of the Red Baron – the fighter legend of the First World War – in a completely different light
Gallant, dashing and brave, he exemplified, the legend goes, the ideal for which a generation of young men died.
He blasted 80 Allied planes out of the skies before he, the ultimate aerial predator, became the prey and was killed two weeks before his 26th birthday.
Wittmund, on the North Sea coast, is home to Germany’s Tactical Air Force Squadron 71– also known as the Richthofen Squadron – and it is they who will lead commemorations to a man of whom Germans were once openly proud.
But today the Richthofen legend faces accusations he was a coldblooded zealot who shot down mortally wounded Allied airman and kept bits of their charred planes as gruesome trophies.
Biographer Joachim Castan tells the Daily Mirror: “He hunted animals from 11, then he went on to hunt people. It’s what he did. And he was good at it.”
Dr Castan’s view of the Red Baron changed as he researched his life.
He says: “As I became immersed in the material I realised there was a well-maintained von Richthofen myth.
“It propagates the idea that he forced pilots to land. He shot down aircraft but he ensured – if possible – that the pilot survived. In this version, the whole encounter takes on the character of a sporting match to determine the better pilot and marksman.
“This turned out to be an image created by German propaganda in 1917.
“It needed a young, goodlooking radiant hero, a victor who could be served up to a demoralised society.
“This image of the lonely gentleman of the skies was then
I never get into a plane for fun... I aim for the head of the pilot VON RICHTHOFEN TELLS OF HIS DEADLY GOALS
taken up and further elaborated upon by the Americans, who wanted to sell a romantic notion of air combat “I discovered a totally
different man. Without doubt he was extremely courageous and extremely ambitious.
“But he was also cold-blooded. His goal was to shoot down as many aircraft as possible. He wrote quite openly: ‘I never get into an aircraft for fun
“‘I aim first for the head of the pilot, or at the head of the observer, if there is one.’”
Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen was born in 1892 a and brought up by his ariston cratic Prussian family in Breslau, then part of eastern G ermany, now the western Polish city of Wroclaw. He trained for the
army and when war broke out in 1914 served with the cavalry.
But in 1916 he became a fighter pilot in the fledging German air service.
And by the following year he had won Prussia’s highest order of gallantry, the Pour le Mérite – the vaunted Blue Max.
His red Fokker Dr.I triplane became a feared sight for Allied aviators.
Only a third of them survived contact with him.
Leading his “Flying Circus” of elite pilots in brightly coloured aircraft, he claimed 80 combat victories, more than any other Great War flier.
But after surviving a serious head wound in July 1917 he was killed by a single bullet over the Somme in Northern France.
His name has gone down in history, yet Dr Catsan doesn’t believe he saw himself as a hero.
He says: “I did not see heroic aims. He did his duty to defend his Fatherland. At the same time, he was satisfying his passion for hunting. He was already a passionate hunter at the age of 11 and was taken shooting by his father. “Aim, shoot, destroy...he took his passion for hunting to the skies, transposing it one-to-one. “He also reflected upon what he did. He wrote that he always felt terrible when he came off duty, locking himself in his room for hours and refusing to talk to anyone. “From mid-1917 he also realised that the war was probably lost. “For me he is a tragic figure, fighting remorselessly in a conflict that is lost. “He was a casualty of that war. In France, Britain and the US, hero cults still exist. In Germany, they ceased after 1945.” Not unnaturally, the Red Baron’s great nephew disagrees. Dr Hermann Freiherr von Richthofen, 85, German ambassador to the UK from 1989 to 1993, says: “It is true that he was the last gentleman in a terrible war, a man who displayed courage and heroism to the nth degree.
“His image was misused by the Nazis for propaganda but that was hardly his fault. He fought according to his principles and lost his life doing so.
“When I was ambassador to Britain it was my honour to defend him. Our family holds a reunion every two years when we all – around 140 of us – remember him.
“I will not be at Wittmund but a family representative will be there for us. I think it is important to remember such a man.”
People in Wittmund are indeed proud. The squadron has a red “R” is painted on its planes. Commanding officer Kai Ohlemacher says Richthofen is part of the fliers’ identities “standing for values such as comradeship and duty”.
He adds: “Beyond that, his air tactics are still a point of reference today.”
It is still not known who fired the shot that killed Richthofen after piercing his heart and lungs. Britain credited Royal Naval Air Service aviator Lt Arthur Roy Brown but it is now generally agreed the bullet was fired from the ground.
A number of historians have speculated that anti-aircraft gunner Sgt Cedric Popkin, with the Australian 24th Machine Gun Company, was the person most likely to have killed Richthofen.
Another documentary has argued that W J “Snowy” Evans, with the 53rd Battery, 14th Field Artillery Brigade, Royal Australian Artillery, fired the fatal bullet.
Whoever was responsible, his death left a gaping hole. Wilhelm “Willi” Reinhard survived just weeks in the job before a crash killed him.
And the man who took over the Flying Circus was 25-year-old fighter ace Hermann Goering, who went on to become one of Hitler’s chief war planners.
He was head of the Luftwaffe, founder of the Gestapo and gave the orders for the industrialisation of the Holocaust.
During the Third Reich Goering worked with Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels to keep the Red Baron myth alive.
It’s a myth Dr Castan has attempted to deconstruct.
But, as he says: “For many, von Richthofen is the only acceptable war hero we will ever have.”