You can watch the entire movie about the Red Baron on this page. I don't know for how long. It is a really great movie, the very best fighter pilot movie I have seen.
Count von Rosen was the nephew of Hermann Goering, I
discovered yesterday that Hermann Goerring took over the Flying Circus
in July 1918, 3 months after its original leader the Red Baron was shot
down and killed.
A quote from von Rosen, which is on these pages: he said that
they never killed any civilians, only soldiers. What is interesting is
that the Red Baron had 80 kills, knocked down 80 planes, and wrote a
book. He became increasingly disillusioned with what he was doing,
discovering that the only people he could really relate to were other
pilots who were trying
to kill him (an Australian soldier got him from the ground in the end).
Goering was a complicated man. Opportunist. Clearly a pilot: hyperactive,
narcissistic and self-absorbed.
What fascinated me is that Sweden
remained neutral in World War 2 when Norway and Denmark did not. Goering was
the number 2 man in Germany. He had a very close relationship with von
Rosen and the von Rosen family who took care of him when he was ill
(their common relative, who was an in-law, died in 1931); I am wondering
if that relationship is what saved Sweden.
Fighter pilots are
all kids, because they have a short half life. The Red Baron had been
flying for less than 2 years when he was killed. He was 25. Germany had
the same problem Biafra had: they ran out of planes, they ran out of
pilots. August Okpe was one of the few left, and after he flew the last bombing flight of the Biafran-Nigerian civil war, he was only 26 and had a long life stretched out in front of him.
He did well, better by far than Goering, embracing the model of a man who has continued to play high-stakes games, but not murderous games.
