Ok this is kind of a what if scenario, so I appologize in advance:
As I’m sure some of us know, Jasta 11 was a group of pilots under the command of Manfred von Richthofen, otherwise known as the Red Baron. After his death, Hermann Goering took control of Jasta 11. So what I’m getting at is if Richthofen had not been killed, do you think that he would have eventually become the Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe during World War 2 instead of Herman Goering?
I think Herman Goering was given the position because he was close to Hitler. I’m sure at the time there were many others more qualified but because of his postion in the Nazi party he was given the job. So even if the Red Baron was around I doubt he would have been given the position.
I see. That’s not a bad point 
I voted ‘No’, but it should really be ‘Maybe’ - it would depend on his politics after the war.
Richtofen was a nobleman, and in general the Nazis were deeply suspicious of the German peerage so I doubt that he would have risen as high as Goering.
I have considered that Richtofen would have ended up somewhere in Reichsluftfahrtministerium with Erhard Milch and Ernst Udet by the time of Hitler’s rise.
Richthofen’s was of Nobility, so I would imagine that he wouldn’t be too popular with the Nazis. Or maybe the Third Reich would’ve glorified him as their great hero. A lot could have happened.
Another question is whether the old peerage would have been happy working with the Nazis, I seem to recall that at least one attempted putsh (sp?) was organised by Prussian nobles within the Wehrmacht who were unhappy with the Nazi upstarts. It must be said that there were not many senior Party figures with von in their names.
When you look at the example of England it is often assumed that because Oswald Mosely was a baronet the rest of the peerage had right-wing leanings, however the opposite seems to have been the case with many senior peers being opposed to him. The Marquess of Anglesey for example (descendant of Uxbridge, Wellington’s cavalry commander at Waterloo) made a number of films lampooning the Blackshirts, Nancy Mitford might have been smitten by Mosely but her sister married Andrew Cavendish (the late Duke of Devonshire) whose family was also anti-fascist as were the Churchills, Grovsners and a number of others.
Wdited to correct the stupid mistake of substituting left for right. :roll:
The Wehrmacht never quite went a 100% with the Nazi’s hence Hitler’s mistrust. Quite a few of the generals had a plan to over-through Hitler and were ready to spring in to action once he was assassinated by Von Stauffenberg (That of course never happened). Hitler much rather the Waffen SS than any branch of the Wehrmacht.
There is a slight possibility that von Richtofen would have “turned nazi” as Udet and Göring- both aces in WW I…
If you consider thaqt if he hadn’t of died and was went on to fight in WW2 think of how the war could have changed!
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: He was shot down by an Australian machine Gunner. i have an image of three Australian Officers holding his machine-guns.
Afraid not. RAF Captain Roy Brown, a Canadian, is officially credited with the death of Manfred von Richthoften.He was however fired at by Austrailian Machine Gunners, though that’s probably not the reason that he went down.
well if it seems that way then im just going to have to agree with you.
“Afraid not. RAF Captain Roy Brown, a Canadian, is officially credited with the death of Manfred von Richthoften.He was however fired at by Austrailian Machine Gunners, though that’s probably not the reason that he went down.”
It’s actually widely accepted by most WW1 aviation scholars and writers that MvR was indeed brought down by Australian machine gun fire and not Roy Brown as believed in popular lore. This is just copied from Wikipedia but any number of recent WW1 aviation books say the same thing:
“It is now considered all but certain by historians, doctors, and ballistics experts that von Richthofen was killed by an anti-aircraft (AA) machine gunner, as the wound through his body indicated that it had been caused by a bullet moving in an upward motion, providing ample evidence for a shot coming from the ground. Many experts believe that the shot probably came from Sergeant Cedric Popkin of the Australian 24th Machine Gun Company.[1] Popkin is the only ground-based machine gunner known to have fired at Richthofen from the right, immediately before he landed. Many Australian riflemen were also shooting at the baron at the time, so one of them may well have fired the fatal shot. The Royal Air Force gave official credit to Brown. However, it has been calculated that Richthofen would have lived for only 20-30 seconds after he was hit — due to the severity of his wound — and Brown did not fire at him within that time frame. It was reported that a spent .303 bullet was found inside Richthofen’s clothing, which would also support a low velocity shot from a long distance.”
I’m a WW1 aviation enthusiast and I have to say I’m always a bit glad that many of the great German aces never lived to see the Nazi era, like Richtofen, Voss, etc… so in that way they dont have any stain of the nazi era on their record. I’m also a fan of Udet’s WW1 exploits, so the fact that he was a part of the nazi era is kind of a bummer.
Yeah I remember seeing on the History Channel that the bullet could not have come from behind (i.e. a shot from another airplane) and the only logical angle would be from the AA machine gunner.