After decades of war-related silence and shame, Germany proudly celebrated a military hero last night, rolling out the red carpet for “Red” Baron von Richthofen.

The new attitude was on display as stars and celebrities, including British actor Joseph Fiennes, were due to gather for the Berlin premiere of a new film about the Baron.

It is set to mark a new departure for German war films, which usually reflect on the extremism, suffering and even lunacy of the Nazi era ­ if they get made at all.

The Red Baron in contrast, portrays a brilliant and honourable military figure whose life and early death in combat Germans can celebrate without blush.

The film, which at £14 million is one of Germany’s most expensive productions, stars Matthias Schweighoefer as the renowned pilot thought to have shot down about 80 Allied airmen in World War One.

It is based on a biography of the pilot published last year, which opens with him engaged in a dogfight only to pull out when he sees his adversary’s gun jammed.

“Our task is to bring down airplanes, not men, we are sportsmen not butchers,” Baron von Richthofen says in the film.

That is just the kind of honourable wartime exploit so long overshadowed by the barbarity of Baron von Richthofen’s military successors in the Nazi regime.

German-made films – including Downfall, the big-screen production about Hitler’s final days – have become braver in tackling military themes.

But not even the forthcoming Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise as anti-Hitler plotter Claus von Stauffenberg, so unabashedly depicts a German as a wartime hero as the new Red Baron film.

“Historically there has been a reluctance, and there are strong voices in Germany still saying we’re not allowed to do this: a film about a German war hero,” said The Red Baron’s director, Nikolai Müllerschön.

But he insisted the film “makes a very clear statement against war”.

Indeed, even in the new film the “honourable” Baron von Richthofen is painted with a dark side, determined to strike terror in the hearts of his enemies and thrilling in the “hunt” to kill them.

Source: Telegraph