Stupid Luck and Happenstance.
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
It Can be quite difficult to get the Message across. Often kids wants to make their parents proud even if the parents just want them to find their own passion.
The Graf However was at the other end of the spectrum.
Actually I suspect the old boy has a grudging pride in Albert by now. The boy made his own way. Preferable if he had joined his father's old service (though up to Manfred the most distinguished von Richthofens were diplomats not soldiers ). He will be hearing at the Herrenklub that Albert is doing well and not replying on the family name to open doors for him either. Protege of the Grand Admiral too. The boy has more to him than he realised.
Helene? Well her wartime service was good even if against his wishes and while she may have married a New Man she has at least married a rising man who is a brave soldier and not without influential connections of his own. At least the girl didn't marry a nightclub owner or an actor like old von X or von Y's daughters! And has given him grandchildren.
No his children haven't done just what he visualized but then whose do? Only Lothar though has truly disappointed him.
I wonder if at a time when Germany needed experienced pilots for bombers, transports, and instructors did Lothar used his name and connections to be exempted as an "Ennsential Civilian Personnel" ?
If so, no wonder why his father was disappointed with him, compare and contrast that to his other son Albrecht who has already as an academic made a name for himself, joining the KLM, not with a direct commission but by going in at the bottom doing the same training that other officer candidates are going thru.
Albrecht has by now has earned the respect of his superiors and subordinates with his own achievements and not once trading on his own connections.
The funeral is going to interesting with Graf von Richthofen looking out and see some of the other mourners in their uniforms, Hans who has been shown to use his brains in fighting the insurgency in South Africa is not the lumox he thought was, his daughter wearing the medals and awards she earned, Albrecht who is now on the staff of the Grand Admiral, making his own way in life.
If so, no wonder why his father was disappointed with him, compare and contrast that to his other son Albrecht who has already as an academic made a name for himself, joining the KLM, not with a direct commission but by going in at the bottom doing the same training that other officer candidates are going thru.
Albrecht has by now has earned the respect of his superiors and subordinates with his own achievements and not once trading on his own connections.
The funeral is going to interesting with Graf von Richthofen looking out and see some of the other mourners in their uniforms, Hans who has been shown to use his brains in fighting the insurgency in South Africa is not the lumox he thought was, his daughter wearing the medals and awards she earned, Albrecht who is now on the staff of the Grand Admiral, making his own way in life.
That's an interesting take on Lothar's lack of military service.
{searches}
Here we go:
Part 34, Chapter 414
Four Hundred Fourteen
9th September 1944
Berlin
While Manfred von Richthofen was unhappy about his oldest son Lothar going to work for Lufthansa, Lothar had still flown combat missions over Spain.
So he didn't avoid military service, and each civilian pilot flying civilians around is another pilot that's not on the Luftwaffe payroll.Four Hundred Fourteen
9th September 1944
Berlin
While Manfred von Richthofen was unhappy about his oldest son Lothar going to work for Lufthansa, Lothar had still flown combat missions over Spain.
You are right, and I knew about his service in Spain, I made the mistake of thinking that everybody else who is following this timeline also knew, so thank you for helping anyone who has not followed this timeline thoroughly.
There is a part of me that is thinking of this timeline as some sort of a clubhouse when it is not the case.
But back to Lothar, his avoidance of his service in the war after the experience he gained in Spain must have been a big reason for his father's disappointment with him, and I don't know if Lothar was still eligible to recalled back to service, if that was the case then there must have been a lot of strings pulled with his father's name being used and without his father knowing about it until after the fact.
Mayby its was just his age that kept from being called up. When the war with Russia started he was already in his late twenties. Too old for flying / not enough rank for an command position.
Might even be simpler than that. Possibly he was just a mediocre pilot, who wasn't able to advance, and they weren't desperate enough to pull him off of civil service.
FBKampfer
Banned
It seems like Germany never had the manpower crunch it did IOTL.
Simple mediocrity might very well have kept one out of the service, especially if one was sufficiently useful/possessed uncommon skills (such as being a pilot).
However I feel quite bad for Lothar. He wasn't a bad fellow, and for all his doubtlessly numerous faults, he didn't deserve his father's ire, and certainly hadn't earned his fate.
Simple mediocrity might very well have kept one out of the service, especially if one was sufficiently useful/possessed uncommon skills (such as being a pilot).
However I feel quite bad for Lothar. He wasn't a bad fellow, and for all his doubtlessly numerous faults, he didn't deserve his father's ire, and certainly hadn't earned his fate.
He was a Junker or at least he was supposed to be, which means his eligibility for calling to the colours ends after he is buried. Not that any 'true' Junker ever waited for a call up notice to rejoin the regiment. At least that was the standard that the von Richthofen held themselves and their family.
With Honesty? I think that it wasn't Manfred's disappointment what was driving Lothar into a downward spiral. It was EVERYTHING around him.
Think in the sheer WEIGHT that for an individual without great ambitions like Lothar held each day to have the surname of Richthofen, the same of one of the greatest living legends of the the Great War next to Von Wovolge.
He may not have said anything, but after retiring from the Luftwaffe after Spain, it would have been an enduring experience.....each day, each meeting, being judged and compared to the image larger than life of his father or his uncle and namesake, and being looked either with disguised scorn or pity, how he failed utterly to amount to anything worth to match the reputation of his House.
The Second Great War only would have worsened things even more if he didn't return to Active Service, and likely he would have to contend with constant whispers and disgusted faces of "Here goes the Failure/Shame/Coward of the Richthofen Clan".....And the shame of amounting even Less than HIS SISTER, the same sister that had the Balls to keep directing the Aerial defense of Berlin even if the region where she was was under attack of the Soviet Air Force...where he refused his duty to Country and Kaiser.
Then, the crowning details....his Little Brother passing from being a shut in nerd, into joining the scientific effort, then being recruited as an Officer Candidate then being a student under the most legendary Admiral of the Kaiserliche Marine and being commented as having a bright future. And the Marriage of his Sister to a War Hero, brother of the legendary Crimson Baroness, and a respectable man even if of commoner origins and also now Graf Von Minscher, and she also giving Grandchildren to her father.
And Lothar....Lothar the Quitter....Lothar the Coward....Lothar the Shame...Lothar the Eldest and Heir of the Richthofen Name, Money and Lands, that yet amounted to NOTHING compared to his younger siblings......
Its a wonder then that he finally broke downwards by this time?
......And in ANOTHER tangent......the problem now its for Albrecht.......now that Lothar became Train Roadkill.....Albrecht has to deal with the fact that when his father dies, HE will inherit the title of his father and all the related stuff.....something that he even't remotely contemplated.......
Think in the sheer WEIGHT that for an individual without great ambitions like Lothar held each day to have the surname of Richthofen, the same of one of the greatest living legends of the the Great War next to Von Wovolge.
He may not have said anything, but after retiring from the Luftwaffe after Spain, it would have been an enduring experience.....each day, each meeting, being judged and compared to the image larger than life of his father or his uncle and namesake, and being looked either with disguised scorn or pity, how he failed utterly to amount to anything worth to match the reputation of his House.
The Second Great War only would have worsened things even more if he didn't return to Active Service, and likely he would have to contend with constant whispers and disgusted faces of "Here goes the Failure/Shame/Coward of the Richthofen Clan".....And the shame of amounting even Less than HIS SISTER, the same sister that had the Balls to keep directing the Aerial defense of Berlin even if the region where she was was under attack of the Soviet Air Force...where he refused his duty to Country and Kaiser.
Then, the crowning details....his Little Brother passing from being a shut in nerd, into joining the scientific effort, then being recruited as an Officer Candidate then being a student under the most legendary Admiral of the Kaiserliche Marine and being commented as having a bright future. And the Marriage of his Sister to a War Hero, brother of the legendary Crimson Baroness, and a respectable man even if of commoner origins and also now Graf Von Minscher, and she also giving Grandchildren to her father.
And Lothar....Lothar the Quitter....Lothar the Coward....Lothar the Shame...Lothar the Eldest and Heir of the Richthofen Name, Money and Lands, that yet amounted to NOTHING compared to his younger siblings......
Its a wonder then that he finally broke downwards by this time?
......And in ANOTHER tangent......the problem now its for Albrecht.......now that Lothar became Train Roadkill.....Albrecht has to deal with the fact that when his father dies, HE will inherit the title of his father and all the related stuff.....something that he even't remotely contemplated.......
That was a point I was going to make, what must have been galling to the "Red Baron" is when the house that has been in his family for generations was destroyed by the advancing Soviets, his son was off being a "glorified bus driver".
Even if Lothar was a mediocre pilot, there was other ways he could have contributed to the war effort as a staff officer, training cadre instructor among other things.
You are right, he did it before the Soviets could use it.
I was using it as an example on what may have been going thru von Richthoffen's mind about his son.
Part 55, Chapter 763
Chapter Seven Hundred Sixty-Three
16th October 1949
Kleinburg, Silesia
Even in death Lothar had found a way to irk Manfred. He would have been eligible to be buried with military honors and Lothar had left express instructions that he was declining that. Instead he was to be buried in the family plot next to his namesake Uncle with a simple memorial service and only immediate family present. The night before Manfred had sat in his office for hours thinking about the fraught relationships he had with his children, particularly with his oldest son. Lothar had flown bomber missions over Spain but after that war ended his heart was no longer in it. He was given the option of returning to active service in the Second World War but as an airline pilot flying the critical Berlin to Sydney route and his age meant it was just that, optional. Manfred had suspected that Lothar might not have been able to meet the physical requirements with his bad knees, but pride had kept Lothar silent on the subject. He’d also just assumed that Lothar would keep doing what he’d done for the prior decade. The self-destructive path that Lothar was on and thought of death by misadventure had never occurred to Manfred until it happened.
Of his entire family, only Helene had seemed to have understood Lothar, the two of them being the closest in age. Unlike Lothar, Helene had the courage to get up in his face and tell him that he needed to stop interfering with her life when she was nineteen. Albrecht had eventually followed his sister’s lead in doing that, then he’d joined the Navy. That last part still gave Manfred heartburn. If only Lothar had stood up him like that, things might have been different. If Manfred had to name the problem that Lothar had, it was that he had tended to just accept things, even when he shouldn’t have.
Manfred could see Albrecht from where he was sitting. His Naval uniform was a bit out of place here. He’d earned a few medals, a couple for Fleet actions and a couple more for his work in the sciences that Manfred couldn’t pretend to understand. Grand Admiral von Schmidt was a man who Manfred had never liked or trusted and had been relieved years earlier when von Schmidt had been sent to the Pacific. He knew that the Admiral was up to something, but no one had any idea what that might be. Recently, he had received word through the grapevine that Albrecht was angling to go into the Fleet Air Command. There were all sorts of worrying possibilities if Albrecht did that. This also made Albrecht the one who would carry the family’s legacy forward. The implications of that had not yet sunk in with Albrecht, something else that gave Manfred heartburn.
Helene was wearing a black dress and was sitting with her husband with her daughter asleep in her arms. She was still pursuing her goal of becoming a school teacher, laudable but not exactly what Manfred might have imagined Helene doing. He understood that that Helene had also become friends with Sophie Scholl, while that woman wasn’t a bomb throwing anarchist it had been Augustus Lang who’d introduced them. Manfred knew that Lang seldom did anything out of the goodness of his heart and there had to be a political angle that he couldn’t see just yet.
Manfred still considered Hans von Mischner something of a lummox. Today, he had seen that Hans had a Commander’s Cross, Order of Hohenzollern with swords in ring that he’d earned in South Africa. The swords in ring meant that he’d won different lesser versions of that award on prior occasions. It was something that Hans had in common with his mentor, Generaloberst Walter von Horst. That suggested where the OKH was expecting Hans’ career to go. A thirty-year-old on the verge of being promoted to Oberstlieutenant was eventually going to lead a Division.
Then there were Hans’ younger sisters. Katherine was still suspect from his perspective, stubborn and secretive. She wasn’t nearly as clever as she liked to think. Earlier she’d handed him a slip of paper with a phone number in Jena that could only be one person, the psychiatrist brother of Emil von Holz, and told him to think about calling it if he needed any help. Wouldn’t that be a laugh riot.
Ilse on the other hand was at least receptive to learning new things and had a love of nature that Manfred could relate to. Manfred’s sister had pointed out that they had a bit more in common than just the same first name and that in many respects Ilse was what he wished his youngest daughters were like. She was holding little Manfred. The boy was way too young to understand what was happening and was fidgeting while his aunt did her best to keep him from being disruptive. She’d gone out of her way to help Helene while Hans had been in South Africa. It was a small gesture, but no one had needed to ask her to do it.
Then there was Sonje Louise and Caecilia. They were making a big show of weeping and looking distraught, but they had hardly known Lothar and Manfred wished they would cut it out already. At twenty-one and twenty-three the two of them came across like they were years younger than that. He might not have approved of Helene’s joining of the Luftwaffe Auxiliaries at the time but now he could see that it had given her a bit of a grounding as opposed to the rebellious pain in the ass she had been before that. It was ironic that when Helene was younger he’d wished she were more like his youngest daughters. Now he had to admit that he might have gotten that wrong, just never aloud.
16th October 1949
Kleinburg, Silesia
Even in death Lothar had found a way to irk Manfred. He would have been eligible to be buried with military honors and Lothar had left express instructions that he was declining that. Instead he was to be buried in the family plot next to his namesake Uncle with a simple memorial service and only immediate family present. The night before Manfred had sat in his office for hours thinking about the fraught relationships he had with his children, particularly with his oldest son. Lothar had flown bomber missions over Spain but after that war ended his heart was no longer in it. He was given the option of returning to active service in the Second World War but as an airline pilot flying the critical Berlin to Sydney route and his age meant it was just that, optional. Manfred had suspected that Lothar might not have been able to meet the physical requirements with his bad knees, but pride had kept Lothar silent on the subject. He’d also just assumed that Lothar would keep doing what he’d done for the prior decade. The self-destructive path that Lothar was on and thought of death by misadventure had never occurred to Manfred until it happened.
Of his entire family, only Helene had seemed to have understood Lothar, the two of them being the closest in age. Unlike Lothar, Helene had the courage to get up in his face and tell him that he needed to stop interfering with her life when she was nineteen. Albrecht had eventually followed his sister’s lead in doing that, then he’d joined the Navy. That last part still gave Manfred heartburn. If only Lothar had stood up him like that, things might have been different. If Manfred had to name the problem that Lothar had, it was that he had tended to just accept things, even when he shouldn’t have.
Manfred could see Albrecht from where he was sitting. His Naval uniform was a bit out of place here. He’d earned a few medals, a couple for Fleet actions and a couple more for his work in the sciences that Manfred couldn’t pretend to understand. Grand Admiral von Schmidt was a man who Manfred had never liked or trusted and had been relieved years earlier when von Schmidt had been sent to the Pacific. He knew that the Admiral was up to something, but no one had any idea what that might be. Recently, he had received word through the grapevine that Albrecht was angling to go into the Fleet Air Command. There were all sorts of worrying possibilities if Albrecht did that. This also made Albrecht the one who would carry the family’s legacy forward. The implications of that had not yet sunk in with Albrecht, something else that gave Manfred heartburn.
Helene was wearing a black dress and was sitting with her husband with her daughter asleep in her arms. She was still pursuing her goal of becoming a school teacher, laudable but not exactly what Manfred might have imagined Helene doing. He understood that that Helene had also become friends with Sophie Scholl, while that woman wasn’t a bomb throwing anarchist it had been Augustus Lang who’d introduced them. Manfred knew that Lang seldom did anything out of the goodness of his heart and there had to be a political angle that he couldn’t see just yet.
Manfred still considered Hans von Mischner something of a lummox. Today, he had seen that Hans had a Commander’s Cross, Order of Hohenzollern with swords in ring that he’d earned in South Africa. The swords in ring meant that he’d won different lesser versions of that award on prior occasions. It was something that Hans had in common with his mentor, Generaloberst Walter von Horst. That suggested where the OKH was expecting Hans’ career to go. A thirty-year-old on the verge of being promoted to Oberstlieutenant was eventually going to lead a Division.
Then there were Hans’ younger sisters. Katherine was still suspect from his perspective, stubborn and secretive. She wasn’t nearly as clever as she liked to think. Earlier she’d handed him a slip of paper with a phone number in Jena that could only be one person, the psychiatrist brother of Emil von Holz, and told him to think about calling it if he needed any help. Wouldn’t that be a laugh riot.
Ilse on the other hand was at least receptive to learning new things and had a love of nature that Manfred could relate to. Manfred’s sister had pointed out that they had a bit more in common than just the same first name and that in many respects Ilse was what he wished his youngest daughters were like. She was holding little Manfred. The boy was way too young to understand what was happening and was fidgeting while his aunt did her best to keep him from being disruptive. She’d gone out of her way to help Helene while Hans had been in South Africa. It was a small gesture, but no one had needed to ask her to do it.
Then there was Sonje Louise and Caecilia. They were making a big show of weeping and looking distraught, but they had hardly known Lothar and Manfred wished they would cut it out already. At twenty-one and twenty-three the two of them came across like they were years younger than that. He might not have approved of Helene’s joining of the Luftwaffe Auxiliaries at the time but now he could see that it had given her a bit of a grounding as opposed to the rebellious pain in the ass she had been before that. It was ironic that when Helene was younger he’d wished she were more like his youngest daughters. Now he had to admit that he might have gotten that wrong, just never aloud.
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In this timeline I've no idea what Charles "Sparky" Schultz would be up to. In OTL he was in Saint Paul, MN at this point working on creating a comic strip based off previous work that would become Peanuts.