the red baron hero or villern
- Thread starter drychlick
- Start date
He had nightmares after his 1st Britisher, saw his face in bad dream. That should answer your question.
Mainly British authors have painted him as a cold blooded killer, but it's fiction bs. He was the enemy, so they treated him as such. Not exactly honest journalism, Townsend Bickers the worst of the lot, ( I have had written correspondence with him & pointed out some of his errors). Recent books have been more even & accurate. His own pilots said he was a very patient teacher & always had time to answer questions, no matter how silly or basic they may have been. He always made time for you.
Even gave away some kills to his junior pilots, which somewhat kills the notion he was only in it for his personal glory.
Mainly British authors have painted him as a cold blooded killer, but it's fiction bs. He was the enemy, so they treated him as such. Not exactly honest journalism, Townsend Bickers the worst of the lot, ( I have had written correspondence with him & pointed out some of his errors). Recent books have been more even & accurate. His own pilots said he was a very patient teacher & always had time to answer questions, no matter how silly or basic they may have been. He always made time for you.
Even gave away some kills to his junior pilots, which somewhat kills the notion he was only in it for his personal glory.
Thespeckledkiwi
Vice Admiral
World War I is such a funny war. In truth, in my opinion there was no clear cut enemy like World War II...well I guess the Turks. But they've been assholes for a while.
Like most military, he was just a man doing his job as well as possible. He is only painted as a villian because he did it very well and then his side lost. If Germany had won then men like René Fonck (top allied ace from France), Britain's (canada actually) Billy Bishop and American flyer Eddie Rickenbacker would be the villian.
small trivia - how many know that Von Richthofen's younger brother Luther was Germany's fourth highest scoring ace with 40 kills?
small trivia - how many know that Von Richthofen's younger brother Luther was Germany's fourth highest scoring ace with 40 kills?
The Red Baron is often painted as a villain just because he fought for Germany, and World War I-era Germany tends to get lumped in with World War II-era Germany because they both fought against the Entente/Allies. In reality, World War I-era Germany wasn't all that much worse than their contemporaries in Great Britain and France. They were all imperialist screwheads back then. 
I did!
The Red Baron is often painted as a villain just because he fought for Germany, and World War I-era Germany tends to get lumped in with World War II-era Germany because they both fought against the Entente/Allies. In reality, World War I-era Germany wasn't all that much worse than their contemporaries in Great Britain and France. They were all imperialist screwheads back then.
I make no distinction between WWI and WW2 Germany, or between Germany and anyone else in the wars. All nations were quite appalling in their actions, but then they were all younger societies then, weren't they? Also, this never reflects on individuals caught up in it. The Red Baron, in my opinion, is no more a villain than any other military man with the misfortune to live through the war.
an honourable villain, i'd say.
The Australian Flying Corps personnel responsible for his burial respected him a great deal (as did most airmen of the era) and gave him a full military funeral. Whatever later attitudes might have crept in, his opponents of the day generally thought of him as a worthy and admirable adversary.
In response to the OP's question, I see nothing particularly "villainous" or "heroic" about his actions over and above that of any other soldier serving his country honorably that doesn't do something to stand out one way or the other in those categories (like say slaughtering prisoners of war or rescuing wounded amidst a hail of gunfire). He was exceptional at his particular task certainly, and a brilliant tactician, but there wasn't anything really heroic about what he did. It was about killing the other guy(s) before he/they killed you.
I'm not an expert on WWI, but I've heard that he was admired by his own people and respected by his enemies. He served his country, despite opportunities to keep himself out of danger both before and after he was hurt. I don't know of him doing anything villainous, so I'd lean toward considering him heroic.
In reality, World War I-era Germany wasn't all that much worse than their contemporaries in Great Britain and France. They were all imperialist screwheads back then.
I am always astonished when I hear people saying things like this, almost fifty years after the publication of Germany's Aims in the First World War by Fritz Fischer.
But I've learned that there is no point in trying to change people's minds on the subject. For some people, history is like religion: they'll believe whatever they want to believe, the evidence be damned; "it's all just interpretation," don't you know.
So I'll only say this: the idea that every country in World War I was "equally to blame" or "just as bad" became popular in the 1920s, when disillusionment with the war and its results was widespread, and conservative German propagandists were working assiduously to rehabilitate their country's image.
But this school of thought began to fall out of favour with professional historians beginning in the 1950s, with the publication of Luigi Albertini's magisterial three-volume work on the origins of the war. As a work of pure diplomatic history, Albertini's work has never been bettered, and it raised serious questions both about Germany's conduct, and the "they were all equally bad" interpretation of the war.
This school of thought was finally discredited by the work of Fritz Fischer--a German historian. By the time I attended university as an undergraduate, in the late 1980s, the Fischer Controversy was over, and Fischer and his supporters had won the debate.
Germany (along with Austria-Hungary) started World War I, and Germany (along with Austria-Hungary) was to blame for the destruction and loss of life that resulted from the war. The German government had been planning war for years, and seized the July Crisis as its opportunity to wage the war it had been planning.
It was Germany that declared war on Russia and France, and which then attacked France, turning a local war in the Balkans into a general war in Europe. The war began when Germany (and its ally Austria-Hungary) attacked its neighbours, including neutral Belgium. When it did so, the government of Italy protested (quite rightly) that Germany and Austria-Hungary were waging aggressive war, and that Italy was not bound by the terms of their alliance to join in.
In almost every case that I can think of, it was Germany that was the first to violate the laws and customs of war, by their shooting massacres of hostages in Belgium, by their use of poison gas and unsrestricted submarine warfare, and by their bombardment of cities from the air. What is more, it was primarily the German government's war aims (as embodied in documents like the September programme) that prevented a negotiated peace. The war lasted only as long as Germany kept fighting--and Germany kept fighting only as long as its government thought they could win.
And those who would argue that there was no difference between the war aims of the different combatants would do well to reflect on the actual terms imposed by each side on their defeated enemies. The terms imposed by the Germans on the defeated Russians by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk were brutal: Germany annexed a huge swath of Russian territory, which it planned to govern much like it governed its colonies in Africa; indeed, the man appointed to govern the region of the Baltic states had been a colonial governor, in Africa.
The Paris Peace Settlement, by contrast, annulled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, transferred only small slices of German territory to other countries, and confirmed the results of the eastern-European revolutions of 1918-19, which had created independent nation-states out of the territory of the Eastern Empires. Germany's second great aggressive war, in 1939-45, began with a campaign to regain these comparatively small territorial losses, and to destroy two of these free nations--the Czechs and the Poles.
Someone farther up the thread singled out the Turks for criticism. Ironically, it was only in their treatment of the Turks that the Western Allies really deserve to be lumped in with their enemies. The Treaty of Sevres reflected their plans to partition the Ottoman Empire in much the same way they had partitioned Africa. But the war had left them too weak to pursue these imperialist goals in the face of Turkish nationalist resistance. Ultimately, they were forced to recognize the new Turkish Republic by signing the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
Close to fifty years after Fritz Fischer published Germany's Aims in the First World War, only the biased and the uninformed would try to claim that the combatants in that conflict were somehow "all the same." That is a myth--perhaps not on the same level as Holocaust denial, but tending in the same direction.
As for the Red Baron--he was a courageous and skillful fighter pilot. His courage and skill deserved a better cause than the one he served.
Red Baron was not a villain, although I prefer Tony's and California Pizza Kitchen when I'm hungry.
whoever starts the war is usually the bad guy in my book.
Saddam started it in 1991. al-Qaeda started it in 1993. Germany started WWII and WWI.
hrm, that makes the Isrealis the bad guys in the invasion of Lebanon. oh, wait, they invaded, of COURSE they're the bad guys.
in WWI, the Germans were the bad guys but our generals were complete dicks.
Saddam started it in 1991. al-Qaeda started it in 1993. Germany started WWII and WWI.
hrm, that makes the Isrealis the bad guys in the invasion of Lebanon. oh, wait, they invaded, of COURSE they're the bad guys.
in WWI, the Germans were the bad guys but our generals were complete dicks.
In reality, World War I-era Germany wasn't all that much worse than their contemporaries in Great Britain and France. They were all imperialist screwheads back then.
I am always astonished when I hear people saying things like this, almost fifty years after the publication of Germany's Aims in the First World War by Fritz Fischer.
But I've learned that there is no point in trying to change people's minds on the subject. For some people, history is like religion: they'll believe whatever they want to believe, the evidence be damned; "it's all just interpretation," don't you know.
In almost every case that I can think of, it was Germany that was the first to violate the laws and customs of war
Close to fifty years after Fritz Fischer published Germany's Aims in the First World War, only the biased and the uninformed would try to claim that the combatants in that conflict were somehow "all the same." That is a myth--perhaps not on the same level as Holocaust denial, but tending in the same direction.
Without meaning to be offensive, I think I must explain my meaning. Every nation in these wars treated its young men like cattle, their lives meaningless and their role to serve others by being maimed, traumatized or killed on the behalf of those others. As a young man, if I had been alive and my current age in any of the countries involved at the time, I would have been forced into servitude or conditioned and brainwashed into thinking my highest purpose was to submit to that servitude. They're all the same from where I'm standing. As for "laws and customs of war", this holds no meaning for me, as these are meaningless anyway. War is not a game. Giving it rules is a foolish thing to do. Give it rules and you justify or diminish it. War should be experienced in its full, stark horror or else we make a mockery of those who suffer through it. Setting us straight on matters of historical fact is one thing, but to suggest Germany was worse for violating these customs and laws is a moral argument, not an historical one. It is therefore subjective, and if we're making subjective comments you really can't complain when I or anyone else view all the participating nations as equally "bad". You misunderstood my meaning anyway, it appears.
Speaking of "tending in the same direction as holocaust denial", again with respect: this is what you are doing in my eyes; ignoring every nation's appalling actions in the treatment of its young males and justifying the attitude that their lives are less important than anyone elses due to "the laws and customs of war". Those "laws and customs" are why millions of young men suffered and died, their lives considered less important than anyone elses. How was Germany any worse than the others in this regard? It seems to me you are ignoring other nation's mistreatment of their young males, with respect something far closer to "holocaust denial" than anything else posted on this thread. "My people"- young males- were enslaved and murdered in their millions by all sides. You seem to be dismissing that. I don't quite understand your comment on holocaust denial in light of this.
I apologise if I come across too aggressive, but I felt the need to clarify this.
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drychlick, do you use firefox? If so, there's a very helpful spell check add on you can add.
He is a definite villain. I saw this documentary once where to throw off the Germans America had a cute little beagle fly one of its planes. And the Red Baron actually still went ahead and shot down the little dog. Luckily he was able to bail out and survive, but he spent many days crawling back to safety behind enemy lines.
In reality, World War I-era Germany wasn't all that much worse than their contemporaries in Great Britain and France. They were all imperialist screwheads back then.
I am always astonished when I hear people saying things like this, almost fifty years after the publication of Germany's Aims in the First World War by Fritz Fischer.
snip
I am honestly curious about all you've said and wouldn't know where to begin looking up what I am about to ask, so I hope you don't mind explaining something to me.
I am by far no historian so all I go by is my general knowledge. When I was in school I learned that even though Germany started the war, many more nations were building up to it; especially Britain and Germany were having some sort of race concerning their marine military. Aggressions, I was told, were fueled from both sides; this is not to say that the blame should be shifted away from Germany but at least it doesn't make it look as if the other nations were having peace in mind.
Is there anything to it? This came from a teacher who I think of as intelligent and well-informed, but it might be that she studied at a time in which the debate you mentioned was not settled.
I'd be grateful if you could elaborate.
Edit: To stay on topic, I wasn't even aware the Red Baron was painted as a villain. I've only heard about him in neutral terms.
The red baron's job was to kill people. He was in no way a "hero."
I'll say villain, because of the way he kept shooting Snoopy down.
But, not a really bad villain, because at least he did give Snoopy a break on Christmas.
But, not a really bad villain, because at least he did give Snoopy a break on Christmas.
