Eighty men tried, and eighty men died
August 20, 2018 3:30 AM   Subscribe

Nevertheless, it seems that up until 1960 or so, it was quite rare to call Richthofen the Red Baron. Conversely, from 1970 or so, it was almost impossible not to: I don't think I've found a single book about him from the last half-century which does not also have 'Red Baron' somewhere in the title.
Brett Holman asks the question: when was the Red Baron?
posted by MartinWisse (50 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
Spoiler: beagle rewrites history.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:27 AM on August 20, 2018 [31 favorites]


"Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" and it's follow-up, "Snoopy's Christmas," played in heavy rotation at our house. Even today, my sister or I can sing the line, "The Baron then offered a holiday toast" and the other will automatically make the champagne cork noise.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:27 AM on August 20, 2018 [7 favorites]


This reads like an author in search of a controversy. As the author acknowledges, there are sufficient pre-1960s print references to von Richthofen as the "Red Baron" to demonstrate that the term was known and in common usage prior to the explosion of interest caused by the Peanuts comic strip.

The throwaway reference in the article about Schulz getting the idea from his son's model plane-building hobby most likely refers to the Aurora model company's 1950s-era line of "Famous Fighters of WWI" model aircraft, which included the Sopwith Camel flown by Captain A. Roy Brown and the Fokker Triplane flown by "...the devil himself, 'Red Baron' Von Richtofen (who) had personally accounted for 80 Allied planes when he met Captain A. Roy Brown that fateful April day in 1918. In England's Sopwith Camel, the fleet Fokker had at last met its match. Short, deadly bursts from Brown's twin Vickers fired the German's fuel lines and down plummetted the Red Baron, never to rise again!"

Tl;dr: WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen was known as the "Red Knight" and the "Red Baron", but in the 60s he and the latter nickname became an enduring pop-culture reference, thanks to the "Peanuts" comic strip.
posted by Lunaloon at 5:26 AM on August 20, 2018 [21 favorites]


So in summary: The 'Red Baron' was rarely called that during his lifetime and even rarely afterwards. But he was called that. What is undisputed is the 'Red' part since he was known as the Red-something and his 1918 autobiography is called The Red Fighter Pilot. In the 1960's Snoopy picked up specifically on the 'Red Baron' nickname and that name is now used, leading many to believe that that was always the most popular nickname, which it was not.

He stops abruptly at the most interesting part. Where did Schulz get the name from?
On preview: Lunaloon fills this in for us a bit.
posted by vacapinta at 5:28 AM on August 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


Even today, my sister or I can sing the line, "The Baron then offered a holiday toast" and the other will automatically make the champagne cork noise.

The novelty single has fallen a long way since the 1970s
posted by thelonius at 5:38 AM on August 20, 2018 [14 favorites]


This is bringing back vivid memories of being a little kid sitting and puzzling and sitting and puzzling over how on earth you were supposed to pronounce "Sopwith."
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:42 AM on August 20, 2018 [8 favorites]


I had not heard the Red Baron song in absolutely years... but dang... After the turn of the century, in the clear blue skies over Germany. Like I was a kid again. Thanks! (Other songs that can do this... Tom T-Bone Steak's Existential Blues, and the one by Ray Steven about the Grand Mystic Royal Order of the Nobles of the AliBaba Temple of the Shrine.)
posted by which_chick at 5:45 AM on August 20, 2018 [5 favorites]


> This reads like an author in search of a controversy. As the author acknowledges, there are sufficient pre-1960s print references to von Richthofen as the "Red Baron" to demonstrate that the term was known and in common usage prior to the explosion of interest caused by the Peanuts comic strip.

This reads like a MeFite in search of snark. The author "acknowledges" that there are pre-1960s print references, but they are occasional mentions; he does not "acknowledge" that the term was in common usage, because it wasn't. He writes:
Nevertheless, it seems that up until 1960 or so, it was quite rare to call Richthofen the Red Baron. Conversely, from 1970 or so, it was almost impossible not to: I don't think I've found a single book about him from the last half-century which does not also have 'Red Baron' somewhere in the title.
If you want to disprove that, you're going to have to do a lot more work. Christ, I'm sick of the reflex "this sucks and is dumb" response to whatever somebody's taken the trouble to post. I thought it was a really interesting little piece of research, and I thank MartinWisse for posting it.
posted by languagehat at 5:49 AM on August 20, 2018 [24 favorites]


This led me off to track down Dogfight, which I loved. I certainly knew of von Richthofen, but I can't be sure it was before Peanuts.
I did, however put together Aurora models of the Fokker and the Sopwith in the 60's.
posted by MtDewd at 5:58 AM on August 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


W. E. Johns called him the Red Baron, and that’s good enough for me.
posted by pompomtom at 6:05 AM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]



                      XXXX
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          X    XXX      X        X               X  X X  X
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           =====**********  *     X                     )  !  )
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        =========**********       XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX



                                          CURSE  YOU  RED  BARON  ! !


                            COMPLIMENTS OF  DIGITAL'S  PDP-8/E  COMPUTER
— yes, I brought up SimH emulating a PDP-8 to run SNOOPY.BA just for this post.
posted by scruss at 6:13 AM on August 20, 2018 [75 favorites]


As an interesting aside: Richthofen Castle.
posted by evilDoug at 6:25 AM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


Pics (of the castle, I mean).
posted by evilDoug at 6:28 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


The novelty single has fallen a long way since the 1970s

But now we get a sexy cow song, that must count for something?
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:49 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I remember listening to that song on K-Tel’s “Goofy Greats” compilation as a kid. I’ve never been one for collecting vinyl but I might just have to pick that up.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:03 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


The novelty single has fallen a long way since the 1970s

Pressing vinyl was hella cheep during peak vinyl, so anything and everything was cut. Since they were more than bits, the ephemera has persisted.
posted by mikelieman at 7:08 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Also, I think the article in the OP is an excellent reminder that just because we know something now, does not mean it was always known.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:13 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


anything and everything was cut

Perhaps the cultural infrastructure of AM radio etc that could break a song like "King Tut" or "The Streak" is just gone, too....I'm not even sure I can remember any recent equivalents. The most recent song I can recall that I'd put in the same league is , what, "Who Let The Dogs Out?" (or whatever it was called)?
posted by thelonius at 7:26 AM on August 20, 2018


I did, however put together Aurora models of the Fokker and the Sopwith in the 60's.

They were still around in the seventies when I was building models.
posted by octothorpe at 7:32 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm not even sure I can remember any recent equivalents.

All on YouTube, now. *dances Gangnam Style*
posted by SPrintF at 7:32 AM on August 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


*dances Gangnam Style*
Right - that surely counts
posted by thelonius at 7:35 AM on August 20, 2018


"Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" and it's follow-up, "Snoopy's Christmas,"

The follow up was The Return of the Red Baron. Snoopy's Christmas was the third trip to the buffet table. Then there was Snoopy for President.

As with everything else on earth, there is a web site, and the odd write up for those who have any interest in the sixties.

(A quick check of German google doesn't turn up a Richthofen reference to Der Rote Baron prior to the sixties, nor any of the obvious variants. YMMV.)
posted by BWA at 8:00 AM on August 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


so would you guys say this is a "turns out" or a "turns out it doesn't turn out"
posted by entropicamericana at 8:04 AM on August 20, 2018


More than anything this tells me Wikipedia needs to shore up its articles. This would be great information to mention on that page.
posted by gucci mane at 8:13 AM on August 20, 2018


> More than anything this tells me Wikipedia needs to shore up its articles. This would be great information to mention on that page.

You realize you can fix that yourself, right? "Wikipedia" is all of us.
posted by languagehat at 8:15 AM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


Perhaps the cultural infrastructure of AM radio etc that could break a song like "King Tut" or "The Streak" is just gone, too....I'm not even sure I can remember any recent equivalents.

If "novelty songs" get less attention these days, it's probably because of the absence of a relatively small number of music companies and media outlets with a lock on the national attention span. The contemporary media landscape, otoh, is a constant churn of novelty songs, skits, jokes, memes, and moments that barely stick before the next one comes along. "Mooo!," "Gangnam Style," "All About That Bass," Rebecca Black's "Friday" are all some variety of novelty song.

(I feel like there's something to the idea that the "classic" novelty songs of the Dr Demento era tended to be more story-songs, while contemporary candidates are characterized more by a catchy tune or by a weird performance or backstory, but I'm not sure how far that distinction can be taken.)
posted by octobersurprise at 8:18 AM on August 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


I posted the link to Wordorigins.org, and Dave Wilton, who runs the site, said:
Fascinating. The data in BYU’s corpora back this up. Neither the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) or the Time magazine corpus have any hits for Red Baron prior to 1960. That means that Time didn’t use the phrase at all prior to that decade, and any use elsewhere was so rare that it doesn’t show up in COHA’s representative sample. (Note: Time didn’t start publishing until 1923, so it doesn’t cover the war years.)
So yes, the linked piece is correct.
posted by languagehat at 8:20 AM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


SOPWITH.EXE
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:30 AM on August 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


Sopwith.html
posted by Poldo at 8:33 AM on August 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


Snoopy and the Red Baron
posted by mwhybark at 8:46 AM on August 20, 2018


The novelty song seems to be alive and well when Pikotaro can be chosen by Shinzo Abe to sing for Donald Trump on the strength of one 45-second hit.
posted by mubba at 8:46 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Neither the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) or the Time magazine corpus have any hits for Red Baron prior to 1960.
A very cursory search of the NYT archives suggests the same thing. Through the war years and the twenties, Richthofen is usually referred to as Baron Von Richthofen and very occasionally as the "Red War Flier" or "the Red Ace." However, the first use by the NYT of the phrase "The Red Baron" in connection with Richthofen appears to be in a April 1967 profile of Charles Schulz by Barnaby Conrad.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:57 AM on August 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


The weirdest thing about the Red Baron naming story is why an American food company would market a frozen pizza based on the mystique of an enemy pilot who killed lots of allies.

The pizza brand is actually named after Italian WW I flying ace Baron Francesco Barraca who ironically preferred pesto sauces.





I am making all of this up.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:29 AM on August 20, 2018 [11 favorites]


The weirdest thing about the Red Baron naming story is why an American food company would market a frozen pizza based on the mystique of an enemy pilot who killed lots of allies.

Yes, well, after some period of time every enemy gets sanitized. We haven't gotten there yet with the Pearl Harbor attackers, but the Emperor Hirohito they worshipped was cleaned up by the Allies and allowed to reign on. (By February, 1946, only months after the end of WWII, Life Magazine published a photo essay called "Sunday at Hirohito's" with nice royal family snapshots.)

Napoleon, who inflicted more than a bit of death and destruction from Portugal to Moscow, and had to be exiled twice to be fully stopped, is regarded as more of a hero than villain these days. And he's a food brand, just like the Red Baron.
posted by beagle at 9:48 AM on August 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


beagle: Yes, well, after some period of time every enemy gets sanitized.

Snoopy-like typing detected.
posted by clawsoon at 9:58 AM on August 20, 2018 [7 favorites]


> Napoleon, who inflicted more than a bit of death and destruction from Portugal to Moscow, and had to be exiled twice to be fully stopped, is regarded as more of a hero than villain these days.

That was true even at the time—maybe not "more of" in general, but there were lots and lots of people, even Germans and Russians, who started hero-worshiping him right away and were excited by his escape and attempt to regain power. I don't understand hero-worship, but it's definitely a thing, and for those who are into it, Boney was as heroic a hero as they come. (Note: Heroes always get lots of people killed.)
posted by languagehat at 10:08 AM on August 20, 2018 [4 favorites]


MetaFilter: a MeFite in search of snark.
posted by bryon at 10:39 AM on August 20, 2018


Charles Schulz could have done it more often, but he had a unique way of making us look at some we thought we knew very differently, whether "The Red Baron", Woodstock, or Grief.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:44 AM on August 20, 2018


Yes, well, after some period of time every enemy gets sanitized....Napoleon, who inflicted more than a bit of death and destruction from Portugal to Moscow, and had to be exiled twice to be fully stopped, is regarded as more of a hero than villain these days. And he's a food brand, just like the Red Baron.

So you're saying that Trump Steaks were really just ahead of their time and should be poised for a big comeback sometime around 2050.
posted by briank at 11:30 AM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


All on YouTube, now. *dances Gangnam Style*

I'll see you and raise you:
Ma-Ya-Hi
Ma-Ya-Hu
Ma-Ya-Ho
Ma-Ya-Ha Ha


Which had its own very special fandom...

Basically as long as we have mass media we'll have people doing silly songs.
posted by happyroach at 11:33 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Not much. Sopwith you?
posted by kirkaracha at 11:57 AM on August 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


languagehat: You realize you can fix that yourself, right? "Wikipedia" is all of us.

Hmm, while I know that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, I’ve always been under the impression that a lot of articles on there were typically guarded closely by a few select editors who basically manage that page, so that if I went on there to make a sudden, drastic change, citing the information posted here, it would most likely be deleated unless I somehow petitioned or argued for it to be posted. I haven’t personally edited articles on there in many, many years because I always ran into a wall when it came to adding or editing information, even if I had it cited properly and everything.
posted by gucci mane at 12:03 PM on August 20, 2018 [5 favorites]


Huh, I'm sorry you had that experience but I don't think it's all that common. Certainly there are editors with a strong and unwarranted proprietorial attitude toward "their" pages, and I've run into a few over the years, but the vast number of my edits have been unchallenged and unreverted. I would be surprised if your edit, backed by a reference (and I always put "with ref" in my edit explanation just to reassure anyone who looks at it), ran into problems. Not promising anything, obviously, just speaking as someone with a long edit history.
posted by languagehat at 12:40 PM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


Looking up the French press circa 1918, there's indeed no mention of Manfred von Richthofen being called le Baron Rouge or any other nickname during WW1. There's no shortage of articles about him and he's always called Richthofen, or Capitaine or Capitaine Baron von Richthofen , except in this headline about his funeral, where he's called the "Corsaire Rouge" (perhaps a reference to the French title of Fenimore Cooper's The Red Rover). Richthofen's memoir Der Rote Kampflieger was translated as L'aviateur rouge. But no Richthofen Baron Rouge before Snoopy (the nickname was used for many other people though).
posted by elgilito at 2:12 PM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


… the vast number of my edits have been unchallenged and unreverted
       … just speaking as someone with a long edit history.


You very likely wouldn't see that. If you've got a long edit history, your edits tend to stay. But try adding the same information with the same level of citation logged in as an apparent novice user, and the big-boy editors will flatten your contributions before you know it.
posted by scruss at 7:13 PM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


So there's an elaborate shaggy dog story, which I don't fully remember, about an egyptologist who accidently translates something that turns out to be a curse. Worried, they send a message to their colleague, part of the message is a rebus that translates to "Will curse I read bear fruit?"

The reply is a single image:
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             ====*         *     X               !  !   )XXXXX
        =========**********       XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX



posted by otherchaz at 9:37 PM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


I just love that I am not the only person ever who heard of the Snoopy vs. the Red Baron holiday songs. I always felt like I was the only one who knew of this stuff! So many here know!
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:50 PM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yes, well, after some period of time every enemy gets sanitized.

Darth Vader, even.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:04 AM on August 21, 2018


Ha. Well in addition to the facts described in the OP I've learned something else new. I'd vaguely heard of the Red Baron but had no idea he was associated with Snoopy. The lines:
"Not the Red Baron
Not Charlie Brown
Think I got the message figured
Another pilot down"

in Tori Amos's Not the Red Baron now make a different kind of half sense. I'd always been confused that Charlie Brown got mentioned twice in that song but never thought there might be an explanation.
posted by *becca* at 2:47 AM on August 21, 2018


Snoopy and the Red Baron in San Francisco Bay.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:31 AM on August 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


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