Download The Red Baron: The Life and Legacy of Manfred von Richthofen AudioBook Free
"Now I am within 30 back yards of him. He must land. The weapon pours out its blast of business lead. Then it jams. Then it reopens flame. That jam almost preserved his life." - The Red Baron Few participants in World Conflict I are usually more famous than Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron. A German known for victories in a war that his country lost, a cavalry official made famous as attached combat disappeared, and an aristocratic hero in a century dominated by democracy; Richthofen's superstar stands in stark compare to the age. Furthermore, World Conflict I is not remembered as a period where the move forward of technology empowered or emboldened individual humans, and it really did not support the old passionate image of the lone, skilled warrior. The terrible grinding electric power of Europe's first great professional war saw advances in gunnery and manufacturing plant creation that chewed up millions of teenagers and spit them out in fragments over the anonymous dirt of no man's land. A soldier was more likely to be killed by an artillery shell flung from half of a mile away than up close in combat, where his own skills might save his life, so there was little heroism and no glory to be found in the kinds of violence provided by the present day war machine. However, for the handful of men fighting with each other in the air, it was a different matter, because World Conflict I brought about the emergence of full-blooded aerial combat for the first time. Actually, airplanes were so international to past types of warfare that few military officers were sure of how to work with them at the start of the war.
