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I’ve got just a short little piece for today (actually, late tonight). I wrote about The Red Baron back in April, but he wasn’t the only famous member of the von Richthofen family. His younger brother Lothar was also an ace in WWI, though he downed only half the number of his sibling’s 80 emeny aircraft…and Lothar survived the War.
There was also another..Wolfram von Richthofen, who died on this day in 1945. A distant relative to the Richthofen brothers, he also was a WWI pilot, and shot down 8 aircraft, 3 more than required to be called an ace. He survived the War as well, and went on to much bigger roles. Wolfram was a commander in the Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War, where the Germans cut their teeth on many of the battle tactics they’d use to such great effect in the first half of World War II.
When the Second World War began, our subject was there, in Poland, the Battle of Britain, and the Mediterranean. When Operation Barbarrossa began, Wolfram was a General, where he managed parts of the air campaigns against Moscow in 1941 and, in late 1942, worked to supply Paulus’ beleaguered troops in Stalingrad.
Wolfram received a very rare (for a Luftwaffe officer) promotion to Field Marshal in February of 1943. His promotion carries some irony with it as, just weeks before, Hitler had promoted Friedrich Paulus to Field Marshal, assuming he would commit suicide rather than be captured in Stalingrad. After Paulus’ surrender, Hitler vowed to never promote another officer to Field Marshal again.
The remainder of the war saw Richthofen’s men pretty much on the defensive, but by 1944, health problems were beginning to take their toll, and he was retired late in the year. He was captured by the Americans in 1945, which was pretty fortunate for him in light of how the Russians often treated their prisoners, but died of his illness (brain cancer) on July 12, 1945.
Recommended Reading: Barbarossa – The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-45 – Another great (and pretty comprehensive) overview that’s immensely readable.
