Introduction to The Life and Death of an Ace by Peter Kilduff, by MvR’s nephew Manfred
Event ID: 753
Categories:
01 June 2007
Source ID: 68
ISBN: 9780715328217
“In 1892, my uncle Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen came into the world in Breslau (Silesia). He served the last German Kaiser as an aviator and flew in the last year of the war until his death. The fame he attained among friend and foe alike during the war has meanwhile become a legend. The memory of Manfred von Richthofen remained even after World War Il, which otherwise obliterated everything else, so strong and alive that the democracy and the republic that emerged from the rubble of the illegal German state did not hesitate to give his good name as the official designation to a squadron of the Luftwaffe.
In World War Il, everything that was German was so tarnished by the Nazi leaders that even now we struggle for explanations for the incomprehensible, horrible deeds that were committed at the time.
But, for all that, the ‘Red Baron’ is for the succeeding generation abroad a concept that stands for flying skill, for bravery and also for gallantry. After Manfred von Richthofen fell, he was laid to rest with military honours by Germany’s enemies of World War I. The Headquarters of the British Royal Air Force sent to his formal funeral a wreath with a ribbon bearing the inscription: ‘To Captain von Richthofen, the brave and worthy opponent.’
There is an explanation for this discriminate attitude towards a military opponent: especially in war, with all of its unimaginable carnage, there is a need for an ultimate order of moral values. And there was the need for good examples that support these orders of moral values, figures that embody these moral values for friend and foe alike, role models to prevent millions of soldiers from becoming blind and berserk.
Likewise, the gallant combat flyer von Richthofen from World War I came to honours, both unexpectedly and singularly in Anglo-Saxon countries after World War Il. Perhaps here he also resonated the idea that carpet bombings such as in Dresden and the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which at the end were carried out against civilians, were not only senseless, but also upset the soldierly order of moral values.
What was reported to us about my uncle – his sense of duty, his comradeship, his gallantry and his courage in battle, his devotion to his mission, the necessity of which he was convinced, his patriotism and his moral sense of protecting his own homeland and countrymen — are also today components of responsible thinking civil conduct.
Only from the distance of many decades and the experiences that we had to accumulate did we come to the realization that seldom is a young life so richly fulfilled as that of Manfred von Richthofen, the great German aviator.
Manfred von Richthofen
Berlin, Germany
June 2007″
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