German Film to Pay Homage to Red Baron

the_syco

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,164234,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl

Ninety years after von Richthofen's death, Germany is about to change all that. A film about the heroic Prussian pilot who shot down a record 80 British, Canadian and Australian airmen during the First World War, will be shown at cinemas across the country next month. It will be the first time since the Nazi era that Germany will portray one of its own military figures in film as a national hero. In Germany, The Red Baron, which has cost a record 18m (14m) to produce, is almost predestined to provoke a wave of anguished criticism, a batch of dreadful reviews and a prolonged bout of soul searching about the rights and wrongs of using German battlefield bravery and heroism as the subject for a popular feature film.

This is a pretty big thing, as the Germans don't like talking about the war, or anything that happened around that time.



Heck, they even stripped down anything to do with Nazi Germany from "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", a game which was based in Nazi Germany.

FiSe

Don't think it's entirely German, or is it?

This is what I've heard a few months ago:
****e hollywood style story about love triangle with the nurse, after Richthofen spent some time in the hospital when he was wounded flying Albatros...

And I have to say, will go and see it, it's incredible:

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=bJghJNAjc1k

ojewriej

I think the fact that he was active during WWI rather than WWII makes all the difference.

But I personally would like to see more films about German Army, so soem of the events from their point of view. People seem to forget that not all of them were Nazis. I think the stories of Otto Skorzenny, The T-Truppen, or even the whole blitzkrieg could be made into great films.

delos

While I'll almost certainly go and see (and probably enjoy) this film, if you are interested in WWI aerial warfare you should try and get your hands on Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis. I found him especially candid in his writing and it will certainly put to bed any lingering myth about "knights of the air".

Grizzly 45

Being half German,and having had a Grand parent serve in the Wehrmacht in the East front ,a mother and uncles who lived in Berlin in the 3rd Reich and A father who was US navy in the Pacfic fleet in ww2.And having done some of my schooling in Germany
I have a insight into the psyche of both sides.The Germans wont talk about it because if they do they are immediately reminded about who started it all,and 6million Jewish dead.Not to mind the immense destruction and suffering the German people sufferd and still the national shame that a great country who added alot to civilisation in it's history was duped and went along with an idiocy of an ideal called nationalism once in a century and then were duped again by an Austrian ,who gave them back their pride as a nation at a very horrible cost to them and the world.It is understandable they are not too up to talking about it.Learning history in a German school about that period is somthing totally opposite to how we learned it then in an Irish school.It is kind of dealt with very much kid gloves.