Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: udet on November 17, 2003, 10:16:42 AM
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Stuka Pilot by Hans Ulrich Rudel
wow...he flew over 2000 operational sorties. That averages to more than one per day during the entire war!!!
Very gallant man, landed a bunch of times behind enemy lines to pick up downed airmen. A true hero IMO.
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Yeah, but he was also an ardent Nazi. They should've handed him and any other fanatical Nazi's to the Jews after the war and let them handle him.
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Yeah, for a committed Nazi he was a wonderful pilot I'm sure.
Similarly, Hitler may have a been a genocidal nutcase but he sure was handy with the moustache trimmers eh?! A true hero to admirers of facial hair everywhere.
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LOL! Great minds think alike, eh Dowding. Looks like we posted at the same time. :)
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Rudel was both.
He was a great pilot. Did things in an obsolete plane (the Stuka) that perhaps no one else could have. Flew with serious injuries and even sank a Russain warship IIRC. Scored several air-to-air victories in a dive bomber and blew up Lord only knows how many tanks.
And an ardent, unrepentant Nazi. To the day he died he was a true believer in Hitler and the Third Reich.
I guess you have to admire his accomplishments without admiring the man.
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He was a very odd duck, I only read the first few chapters. Wasn't he the one who broke his legs jumping off a roof?
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Originally posted by banana
Yeah, but he was also an ardent Nazi. They should've handed him and any other fanatical Nazi's to the Jews after the war and let them handle him.
yeah, without orders he divebombed the Warsaw Ghetto during the uprising for an entire month...
banana, Ron Jeremy's pennis is smarter than you :p
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Gallant schmallant.
Kinda like saying that Osama was the greatest terrorist ever.. and recomending his book.
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read it a few months back...incredible the things he did...
as for him being a "ardent nazi" im pretty damn sure he said quite clearly in the book that he didnt care one way or the other about any of that...he just wanted to fly
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I've read his book. To put it bluntly he seemed like an unrepentant Nazi and a psycho. I have no doubt that he was brave, but I am not too certain how much of what he wrote can be believed. He spent his post war years in Paraguay with other Nazis, part of it smuggling arms. Not my choice as an individual to admire.
Hooligan
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I just finished reading his book. He states clearly that he fought for Germany, and not for a political party. His views about the spread of communism have been proved by the next 50 years.
to Rudel.
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i find it hard to beleive you could make a surmise about a persons political status from a book that hardly says anything about the government or hell even his veiws on it
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Rudel's book relates numerous personal meetings with Hitler in his book. The tremendous respect and affection he feels for "the furher" comes out quite clearly in his writing. Somehow I have difficulty reconciling this with his statements about being just an apolitical soldier doing his duty.
What do you suppose Rudel and Eichmann talked about over coffee in Argentina?
Here are some websites which touch upon his post war career.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERrudel.htm
http://www.wssob.com/conclusion.html
http://www.mosquitonet.com/~prewett/bb175182.html
Hooligan
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sorry, I choose to believe his diary over your sources.
After all, history is written by winners, not losers.
Besides, Rudel's fight happened mainly against the Soviets, and being very succesful at that he holds a very special place in my heart, just like Erik Harman:)
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I thought this would be a thread about Saburo Sakai or Adolf Galland...
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Udet:
You named yourself after a Nazi official who commited suicide. Pardon me if your Infatuation with Rudel fails to either surprise or impress me.
Hooligan
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Originally posted by Hooligan
Udet:
You named yourself after a Nazi official who commited suicide. Pardon me if your Infatuation with Rudel fails to either surprise or impress me.
Hooligan
LOL. Udet was a tragic figure in the context of Nazi Germany, but also the socnd highest ranking ace in WW1.
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Originally posted by udet
LOL. Udet was a tragic figure in the context of Nazi Germany, but also the socnd highest ranking ace in WW1.
Wasnt Hitler also a hero in WW1?
:p
C'mon, admit it. You are a goosestepper.
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Originally posted by Animal
I thought this would be a thread about Saburo Sakai or Adolf Galland...
Both of whom were honorable and gallant men and great pilots. They were both examples of men fighting for their countries, not the politicsof their countries. They were our enemies, but they conducted themselves in such a fashion that when the war was over we could accept them as friends.
The same cannot be said of Rudel. Not in the slightest.
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Originally posted by udet
sorry, I choose to believe his diary over your sources.
After all, history is written by winners, not losers.
Besides, Rudel's fight happened mainly against the Soviets, and being very succesful at that he holds a very special place in my heart, just like Erik Harman:)
Ok then why are you reading history written by the loser?
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I got a few dozen pictures of the Nazi death camps if anyone wants to see 'em. Man, those SS dudes really knew their stuff. I bet they were the best prison guards EV-ER! :rolleyes:
Shuckins
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Werner Molders is the only true hero out of that entire regime.
He scored an amazing tally of victories in a few months spread and then went on to speak out against the third reich declaring it a heinous regime. He was also the most highly decorated Wehrmacht serviceman in November 1941, yet wore none of his medals because of his beliefs. He was on his way to Ernst Udet's funeral when the He111 he was in crashed near Breslau, this was just following his denouncement of the Nazi regime.
-SW
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how was rudel not honorable or gallant???im still trying to find where he in anyway supports the nazi party in stuka pilot...
mention politics at all...anyway anyone who can survive a war in a stuka (i know he finished in a 109...) deserves some respect...
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Vort,
The tales of wartime exploits related by ex-German/Nazi heroes should always be taken with a grain of salt. They were largely the product of the Nazi propaganda machine, which fabricated much of this drivel to perpetuate the myth of the Aryan superman. Thirty-four German aces are credited with scoring 150 or more kills in aerial combat. According to official records, they shot down 6,902 enemy aircraft. If memory serves, the Russians admit to losing 80,000 aircraft in combat on the Eastern Front. Thus, these 34 men shot down nearly 9% of all Russian aircraft destroyed in combat. The top 100 German aces are credited with shooting down an incredible 14,000 aircraft.
These outrageous claims are often transparent when compared to actual losses. A top German ace in North Africa, Hans Joachim Marseille I believe it was, once put in a claim of seventeen British aircraft shot down. Records for British losses on that day indicate that only eleven aircraft were lost, including a couple of Hurricanes, a type which he did not even put in a clain for. (Figures taken from Martin Caidin's book Me 109.).
Regards, Shuckins
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Originally posted by vorticon
how was rudel not honorable or gallant???im still trying to find where he in anyway supports the nazi party in stuka pilot...
mention politics at all...anyway anyone who can survive a war in a stuka (i know he finished in a 109...) deserves some respect...
he's right. Prove to me that Rudel took part in any war crimes. I'd say, he deserved to live through the war and prosper after it.
The same cannot be said about Robert Johnson, an American, fighter pilot, who in his book Thunderbolt nonchalantly admits shooting at a German pilot trying to bail out from his plane, just because the guy had put up a good fight. I prefer a 'Nazi' like Rudel to a red-blooded American 'hero' like Johnson any day!!!
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You are just a pc of **** then, basically.
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Robert S. Johnson killed a highly skilled German pilot because, as he explained it, he knew that pilot would undoubtedly shoot down (read kill) several more American or Allied planes. If he wasn't in his chute, he was fair game. It was WAR, Udet, with little room for chivalry when lives were at stake.
I'm sure some of these Luftwaffe pilots were honorable men. But the bottom line is this; their reputation is tarnished by the fact that they defended, quite often with few objections, and evil, murderous regime. Nothing positive is accomplished by heaping and inordinate amount of praise on them.
Shuckins
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Johnson killed a pilot trying to bail out.
Rudel bombed tanks, convoys, and strafed men.
Yeah, it balances out.
-SW
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It is not that there is no redemption for the persons who worked to extend the Evil of Hitler; just do not try and exculpiate them based upon their abilites.
They were wrong to do what they did, no matter what their skill. Many worked to make amends, some did not, Rudel among them.
I can admire his skill and detest his person, there is no dichotomy with that.
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rudel was nazi and he was proud of that
he had privilaes and look at enemy without respect, like on animals
is he write about strafing civilians on the road when they escaping?
How proud he was bombing civilians in warsaw?
are you so blinde to not notice , every his word have nazi propaganda background?
when he publice his book, many RAF combatants was angry
but cant do nothing against this knight in black armour.
He was good pilot? fine
he was scum, thats sure
ramzey
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I'm sure some of these Luftwaffe pilots were honorable men. But the bottom line is this; their reputation is tarnished by the fact that they defended, quite often with few objections, and evil, murderous regime. Nothing positive is accomplished by heaping and inordinate amount of praise on them.
from there point of veiw it wasnt evil...just a matter of perspective...as for chute shooting...well if your over deep enemy territory then its justified...if your over freindly or soon to be friendly...well its pretty stupid since there likely to get picked up by freindly troops...
sw...the primary role of the stuka was to bomb tanks and such...
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Originally posted by vorticon
sw...the primary role of the stuka was to bomb tanks and such...
The primary role of a fighter plane is to shoot down the enemy, and kill the pilot.
-SW
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Originally posted by vorticon
sw...the primary role of the stuka was to bomb tanks and such...
and? ;-)
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Originally posted by ramzey
rudel was nazi and he was proud of that
he had privilaes and look at enemy without respect, like on animals
is he write about strafing civilians on the road when they escaping?
How proud he was bombing civilians in warsaw?
are you so blinde to not notice , every his word have nazi propaganda background?
when he publice his book, many RAF combatants was angry
but cant do nothing against this knight in black armour.
He was good pilot? fine
he was scum, thats sure
ramzey
lol you believed what I wrote about him bombing Warsaw? that was supposed to be ironical. Never in his book does he mention something like this, yet you Ramzey believed it, based on the general opinion about the guy.
Of course all you sheltered ignorants fail to understand that his fight against the communism was entirely justified, and, as I said before, history proved him right, with half of Europe under tyrrany for 50 years under the same guys you Americans abetted against Germany and her allies.
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He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day.
So kill the sucker while you got the chance.
Say, I wonder if it's unsporting to shoot an enemy soldier if his gun is jammed?
By the way Vort, the evil of Hitler's regime was NOT just a matter of perspective. It was responsible for the deaths of 20 million Russians, 6 million Jews, and only God know how many others. Fliers like Rudel, who flew for years on the Russian front, HAD to know about the massacres that the SS units were committing. If Rudel is indeed an unrepentant Nazi, then he is unworthy of your respect, no matter how spectacular his war record may have been.
If you want a real war hero to admire, try Alvin York or Audey Murphy. They were on the side of the angels.
Shuckins
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Yeah, and they killed every Nazi mother****er they could.
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oops ... morning coffee less post.
please proceed to next post.
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bahh udet
1) rudel..nazi mofo...defntly deserved slow deth..
no way in hell he didnt knwo about the nazis and ss raping/murdering all in there path...
same with the rest..even the most honorable nazis( Galland-Dornitz)..if there is a such a thing..
um..55milion people died in ww2,,,,,,,,Germany caused this sht..
2) ya.great book..unbeleivebl he survived..
greatest pilto in ww2??!!! bulsheiite..
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Originally posted by Shuckins
But the bottom line is this; their reputation is tarnished by the fact that they defended, quite often with few objections, and evil, murderous regime. Nothing positive is accomplished by heaping and inordinate amount of praise on them.
Shuckins
Careful........ if that's the criteria you wish to use then the same argument could be used against any current US serviceman.
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Hate to say this, but alot of the pilots we 'idolize' were either complete failures in life or outright scum. There is nothing wrong with respecting some of their actions so long as we can also recognize and continue to fail to embrace their faults or complete lack of humanity.
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Originally posted by Kadesh
Careful........ if that's the criteria you wish to use then the same argument could be used against any current US serviceman.
:rofl
crack on sale this week?
Rudel was an arse. Though what he did with a stuka was cool.
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He was an effective pilot... i'm sure he have a good number of stories that he could share and that are worth reading.
Without reading the book i can't say it's worth/not worth reading.
Calling this guy a hero may be not that fortunate. I woldn't call him "hero" IF he was strafing cililians... following orders is another story...
Don't get me wrong, i'm not familiar with his history and actions.
If you call him nazi (maybe that's true) you should call the same most (probably not all) LW pilots that took his part into WW2.
All of them were serving a bad case, prolly for different reasons each.
History is pretty strange folks.
One of my grandpas were fighting with Germans, then was captured and prisoned (he was building and maintaining a Cracow LW airfiled). Other one was fighting with Soviets at 17.09.39 and got captured by them. After a year he was traded by Germans for some russian POW's and got transfered to Germany... to some village. He said he mat a lot of good men there and it waqsn't a bad time for him.
Then a father of my uncle (who was a Pole... silesian to be exact) got forced to serve in a Wermach in 39 and was fighting with Poles, then with Soviets... he had no other choice he said... and i believe him... After the war he spent most of his life in Poland but in the early 90's he moved to Germany and till now he's living there pretty good for the money he is getting every month as a kind of retirement found for his fighting in Wermacht!
History is really strange :)
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Originally posted by udet
Of course all you sheltered ignorants fail to understand that his fight against the communism was entirely justified, and, as I said before, history proved him right, with half of Europe under tyrrany for 50 years under the same guys you Americans abetted against Germany and her allies.
That is hands down the most retarded statement ever.
Who invaded who again?
Communism may have been bad, but in the fight between Nazism and Communism - its the lesser of two evils.
-SW
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I always wondered what would have happened if the war continued in 1945, with Germany fighting for the Allies against Communism.
I'd imagine that the supply lines would be stretched so thin it would be be a quagmire, intermingled with Atom bombs on strategic Russian targets.
Whole thought is depressing, but interesting.
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LOL!
Udet, stop while you're ahead. Or better yet, don't stop. I'm kind of enjoying you demonstrating your uninformed, immature, and ill-reasoned "understanding" of history.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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Germans had four great fairy-tale writers: Rudel, Hartmann and Grimm brothers.
If that guy was the one who indeed hit battleship Marat - I have to take off my hat for him. But if you look closely at Soviet data, you'll see that with his 500+ tanks blown up he is responsible for almost all Soviet tank losses from air attacks.
I also enjoyed a story about how he swimmed across Dniestr river. Not speaking about 8 (!!!) 37mm shells that hit his 87 in one flight.
Another "blonde knight" of dr. Goebbels's propaganda, adored so much in the West for fighting "asian hordes of Jewish bolsheviks".
It's even worse then Tolliver/Constable "historical work" about Hartmann.
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Originally posted by Crowwe
I always wondered what would have happened if the war continued in 1945, with Germany fighting for the Allies against Communism.
I'd imagine that the supply lines would be stretched so thin it would be be a quagmire, intermingled with Atom bombs on strategic Russian targets.
Whole thought is depressing, but interesting.
We have a national bestseller in Russia, book by Sergey Anisimov called "Variant Bis". It describes the war between "allies" plus Germans and Soviet Army.
In Anisimov's world USSR didn't have such a horrible 1941, Leningrad was not sieged and Stalingrad didn't happen. In Summer, 44, Soviet Army captures Koenigsberg and keeps on moving through Southern shore of Baltic sea, finally liberating Denmark. The oceanic task force consisting of battleship "Sovetskiy Soyuz", battlecruiser "Kronstadt" and light CV "Chapayev" breaks through Baltic straits when the American bombing of Soviet motorized convoy in Yugoslavia on Nov. 7th 1944 (BTW, a historical fact) becomes a "casus belli" for open hostilities between "allies" and Soviet Army. The war ends with "allies" getting a small part of Germany as "occupational zone", most of the Germany remains under Soviet control, Denmark keeps it's independance like Austria.
The main idea is that by 1990s we have the same situation as in our world. USSR broke apart, Europe hosts American troops, etc... The heroism on both sides, millions of lives lost are all for nothing.
http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/1479245/
It's much better then any Tom Clancey's books. Unfortunately, it will never be translated into English.
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boroda...even if he was lying about his kills...all pilots did it (how did you think those bull**** stories about destroying a panzer by bouncing .50s off the ground got started) and as i remember he didnt get hit by 8 37mm shells...i think it was only a direct hit by 1...of course his story about having a tree through his wing and returning safely is most likely complete bull****...
still a good book and a damn good pilot worthy of respect (and if hes the person he describes himself as in stuka pilot completly worthy of respect as a person not just a pilot)
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" pilot worthy of respect"
His "tally" warrants the raising of an eyebrow, no more.
I refuse to extend my respect or admiration to someone who so eagerly used his skills to support such an evil government and "cause."
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Wasn't it Gunther Rall who had to spend some prison time with Rudel afterthe war. Well, Rall said he was mad!
To pick out the greatest hero of WW2 aviation is tough. Mölders is a good candidate, so is Douglas Bader, and so many many more.
BTW, regarding chute killing, a former German Wing commander (now a hobby historian) told me an interesting fact.
German Pilots parachuting could expect to be shot by either Red army or US aircraft, but very rarely by the RAF. However, that did occur, but a close study on those matters lead to the stunning fact that in those cases the Pilot was almost always from Poland!
Well,I guess their blood was boiling, and they had a reason.
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In war, I'm killing every one of the enemy I can, I don't give a rats bellybutton if his is in a chute, laying on the ground or shooting at me. War=kill them or they kill you.
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Originally posted by Angus
BTW, regarding chute killing, a former German Wing commander (now a hobby historian) told me an interesting fact.
German Pilots parachuting could expect to be shot by either Red army or US aircraft, but very rarely by the RAF. However, that did occur, but a close study on those matters lead to the stunning fact that in those cases the Pilot was almost always from Poland!
Well,I guess their blood was boiling, and they had a reason.
gues who start it on sept 39 ;-)
Boroda,
Grimm brothers was not Dutch?
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There was a time when I was fascinated by accounts of the air war as seen through the eyes of Luftwaffe pilots. Their "exploits" do, indeed, make fascinating reading.
If Rudel actually did fight through the entire war on the Russian front, in a Stuka, and wasn't killed then he is the luckiest sob who ever lived. If you take his kill claims at face value, you have to believe that he wiped out enough Soviet tanks to equip an entire armored division. I've heard better lies told by old farts sitting around the fire at deer camp.
I am no longer gullible enough to believe all that guff.
I wonder how many of these "supermen" attacked to the west while on the eastern front.
Shuckins
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Originally posted by Shuckins
I wonder how many of these "supermen" attacked to the west while on the eastern front.
Shuckins
huh?
On topic...
I mean you can't really base your respect someone who fought for the germans based on some type of Nazi scale...Galland was ok because he was somehow more likeable and less nazi loving even when he was killing RAF pilots, but somehow Rudel wasn't cause he really (and openly) believed in the national socialist cause and hated the communists he killed?
Rudel served his country and for that I would hardly despise him...as for being a Nazi, well plenty of soldiers were fighting for plenty of causes....
Rommel was a fan of Hitler till late into his career but that doesn't tarnish his reputation.
Tronsky