Enemy Ace: War in Heaven - Part 1 of 2

[espanolbot]

Enemy Ace was one of DC's numerous war comics back in the day, from when certain restrictions to the superhero genre in the mid-1960s lead to the creation of Sgt. Rock, the Losers, Johnny Cloud (Navajo Flying Ace) and others. However, unlike many of his contemporaries, Hans von Hammer's original series was based during the First World War, inspired by such historical figures as the Red Baron, and fitting the morally ambiguous nature of the conflict, he was depicted as a noble, if not good, man who ended up fighting in a war that didn't necessarily have a "right" side.

Skip forward a few decades, and Garth Ennis decided to revive the character and place an older Hans in the 1940s to see how the far less grey nature of the Second World War would effect the character... And this was what we got.






Hans ships out to an airfield outside of Leningrad, and due to his prior experience is automatically made a major. He easily slips back into the routine of being a fighter pilot, but his attitude causes some friction with colleague, Engels, who unlike Hans is very much a dyed in the wool Nazi.




Time passes and winter sets in, Hans has proven himself to be popular with his fellow pilots due to both his skill and the fact that he's manged to save their lives in one form or another since he re-enlisted. One day, after much keruffle, a letter arrives for Hans from Berlin.



Shortly after this, Hans is shot down over the Russian sector of Leningrad, much to Engels' amusement. Injured and freezing, Hans survives crashlanding his plane, and tries to make it back to the front line on foot, witnessing the regular civilians (including children) swarming the invading German armies, and a family reduced to cannibalism due to the lack of food avaliable.

Grimly, Hans realises that his country are the ones responsible for this. Predictably, when Hans inevitably is found by some Soviet soldiers, they promptly try to beat him to death... only for him to hallucinate his "black hound", leading to him beating all three men to death with his bare hands.

Time passes, and Hans' unit gets word that he's still alive.



Hand returns from sick leave, only for his unit to come under surprise attack by a division of the RAF that was moved to the Eastern Front to support their Soviet allies.

Comments

[thosefew]

"...and a family reduced to cannibalism due to the lack of foot avaliable."

Quite the typo.

[dcbanacek]

The Germans pulled back the majority of the Luftwaffe when the British and Americans started bombing the hell out of German cities. Thus allowing the Russians to actually control the air, which contributed to their success.

I find it hard to believe that someone who is known to be as skilled as Von Hammer would be kept on the Eastern Front instead of being sent back to protect the "Fatherland". Even if he was a flagrantly loud anti-Nazi... Hell, Goering kept a (rumored) Jewish Luftwaffe general on his staff, "I decide who is a Jew!" was his supposed response.

Or perhaps that is covered in the pages not included in this.

(on a side note, the British air forces sent to help, did so in September 1941... and their last operational flight was in October 1941... So Ennis might have just made an honest error in his story timeline... There was also a French Air unit who fought on the Eastern Front, but they stuck around until the end of the war, they flew Russian planes though.)

(on a further side note, does anyone have the Enemy Ace: War Idyll graphic novel... it features Von Hammer in 1969 discussing his experiences in WWI to a reporter who was in Vietnam)

[espanolbot]

Part two, which I'm just typing up now, does state that Von Hammer and his unit are transfered back to Germany pretty shortly after this due to the Allied bombings and the need for air support. :)

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

"A National Socialist would deem it inappropriate to joke at a subordinate's expense."

Is this historically accurate at all, or did Ennis just get confused by the word "socialist" and think dialogue appropriate for the aftermaths of the French and Russian revolutions would be appropriate here, too?

[espanolbot]

The Nazis were originally laid out as a "middle class" revolution with trappings designed to appeal to both the workers (by claiming to be socialists, and doing things like nationalising businesses) and the rich (by being anti-communist).

If it seems contradictory, that's because it was designed that way to appeal to as many people as possible. So yeah, it's possible for a Nazi to see an aristocrat making classist comments about his subordinate offensive. There was more than one kind of Nazi, due to its ideology being designed to cater to different people for different reasons.

Be they big business (due to its anti-communism), the poor (due to its employment schemes), or racists who think that the German people are descended from a lost race of superhumans that lived under the North Pole.

[sagrada]

Part of the appeal of Nazism was its superficial aping of meritocratic ideals. That included a sharp criticism and persecution of the wealthy elite ('cause they were totes mcgoats in league with The Jews), who coincidentally would have been the few able to resist Hitler and his cronies in the political sphere. Their brand of populism had some socialist-flavoured platitudes, to make the National Socialism bit of the name stick out more in impoverished, miserable and pride-wounded Germany.

EDIT: Said far better above.

[espanolbot]

Kind of darly amusing so many revolutions frame themselves as meritocracies, only to be swiftly become run on the basis of "knowing a guy who knows a guy". It was a problem in the USSR in the later days, as well as China after the Cultural Revolution and Iran after the Shah was overthrown.