Oskar-Heinrich Bear

Major Heinz Bär (center) in front of a downed American Boeing B-17 F bomber near the Dutch border (1944)

Oskar-Heinrich Bär , also called Heinrich or Heinz ; (* May 25, 1913 in Sommerfeld ; † April 28, 1957 near Braunschweig ) was a German Air Force officer and fighter pilot .

It was received by right-wing and extreme right-wing media and writers in the post-war period up to the present.

Life

The son of a farmer learned to fly at a young age, but was not accepted as a pilot by Lufthansa .

Military training

In 1933, Bär volunteered for the Reichswehr motor force . In 1937 he joined the Air Force of the German Wehrmacht one. After training as a transporter pilot, he was promoted to sergeant . He was then trained as a fighter pilot.

Second World War

After completing his training, Bär was assigned to Jagdgeschwader 51 . He achieved his first aerial victory on the Western Front on September 25, 1939. Bear took part in the Battle of Britain and the Russian campaign. He was promoted first to lieutenant of the reserve and later to captain of the reserve and commanded various units. In 1942 Bär became the commander of the I. Group of Jagdgeschwader 77 , which was deployed from Sicily in the Africa campaign . After the withdrawal of his squadron from North Africa in May 1943, Bär contradicted the criticism of the Air Force Commander in Chief Hermann Göring . As a result, he was demoted to squadron captain for "cowardice in front of the enemy" and transferred to the fighter pilot supplement group in southern France, but later rehabilitated. In 1944, Bär became commodore of Jagdgeschwader 3 and, in 1945, commander of the Lechfeld supplementary group near Augsburg. He was appointed to the newly established Jagdverband 44 , which deployed the new Me-262 jet fighters. With the Me 262, Bär achieved 16 aerial victories, making him the second most successful jet fighter pilot of the war after Kurt Welter . Shortly before the end of the war he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and on April 22, 1945 the last commander of the hunting association.

With a total of 215 victories in more than 1000 missions, Bär was one of the most successful fighter pilots of the Second World War . Of these he scored 96 kills in the east, 45 in North Africa; 21 of the aircraft downed were four-engine bombers. He achieved his 100th victory in the air on May 19, 1942, his 200th on April 22, 1944. He was shot down several times, sometimes over enemy territory. For this, Bär received the highest awards of the Third Reich, including the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, which can be regarded as the third highest award given by the Wehrmacht.

post war period

After his release from British captivity , Bär settled in Braunschweig, where he continued to work in aviation. In 1950 he became chairman of the powered flight commission in the German Aero Club. During a flight demonstration with an LF1 Wren , Bär had a fatal accident on April 28, 1957 over the Braunschweig-Waggum airfield when his machine fell from a height of 50 meters due to a steep spin.

reception

The right-wing extremist National-Zeitung portrayed Bär in May 2000 in its series "Great German Soldiers - Immortal Heroes". The National-Zeitung glorified Bär's “reliability” and “bravado”; he was a "'devil guy' in the best sense of the word". In Jagdgeschwader 51 he had "quickly gained fame and honor through daring deeds"; after his total of 18 kills, he was "hardly treated, immediately back on the spot". In the series, only soldiers loyal to the Nazi regime were honored, sometimes using the linguistic formulas of the Wehrmacht and Nazi propaganda . The political scientist Fabian Virchow classifies the series in “the imagination of the extreme right of the men who are oriented towards the deed and who shape the course of events / history in the interest of the 'national' or ' folkish ' collective”. The characterizations referred “at the same time to a conceptualization of masculinity , the profile of which - very unified - would be marked by characteristics such as 'hardness', 'willingness to sacrifice', 'courage to death', 'bravery', 'tenacity', 'cutting' or 'standing qualities' ".

Web links

Commons : Oskar-Heinrich Bär - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b ^c ^d John C. Fredriksen: America's Military Adversaries. From Colonial Times to the Present. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2001, ISBN 1-57607-603-2 , pp. 35ff. Full text in Google Book Search
↑ National-Zeitung 20/2000 (May 12, 2000), p. 12. Quoted in: Fabian Virchow: Against civilism. International relations and the military in the political conceptions of the extreme right. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-15007-9 , p. 395.
↑ Virchow, civilism . P. 347.
↑ Virchow, civilism . P. 394.

personal data
SURNAME	Bear, Oskar-Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German air force officer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 25, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH	Summer field
DATE OF DEATH	April 28, 1957
Place of death	near Braunschweig

[Fredriksen-1] A ^b ^c ^d John C. Fredriksen: America's Military Adversaries. From Colonial Times to the Present. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2001, ISBN 1-57607-603-2 , pp. 35ff. Full text in Google Book Search

[2] National-Zeitung 20/2000 (May 12, 2000), p. 12. Quoted in: Fabian Virchow: Against civilism. International relations and the military in the political conceptions of the extreme right. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-15007-9 , p. 395.

[3] Virchow, civilism . P. 347.

[4] Virchow, civilism . P. 394.