Personal Life of Walter Oesau & Other Questions

[Ruy Horta]

Originally Posted by Perseus71

1. He's said to have liked to ride Bikes with no Helmets.
2. His personal life. Especially reagarding his marriage.
3. According to this link, there is a Quote from Major Hartmann Grasser

,

"At that time, the intellectual capacity and physical state of Oesau often exhausted by the missions of interception. Sure, its forces were already at the end. Several pilots and they were German leaders, like him, forced to fight without rest and I think this was one of the great mistakes of our leadership. "

As we are at it, I'll throw in a couple of cents as well.

Let me start with a basic fact: I can give the OP none of the answers.

Unless there some sexual innuendo involved with the first question, I don't think anyone could be offended by its inclusion in a short biography. Riding a bike (as in motorcycle) without a helmet gives us a certain "romantic" image of him as a biker that we can transpose to him as a soldier, fighter pilot and fighter leader. It establishes a character that we all recognise, even today.

The second question. There are so many ways to tackle this. Most biographies and autobiographies start with an introduction from early youth, sometimes parents and even grandparents get similar attention, school, military training, flight school and indeed a little romance etc. Lets be clear, in an autobiography it is what the writer wants to share with us, so we have little to argue here. If not written by a ghostwriter, or at least based on facts, every line gives us an insight into the character, if only by style. That leaves the biography.

Again, if well written and in proportion to the primary subject a personal background helps to establish the character in a way all people can recognise. In the case of biographies this context is (IMHO) made or broken by the style and the extend to which the author draws his subsequent conclusions. Make this part too elaborate and it detracts from the "military" biography.

On the one hand we have examples of character assassination, writing akin to a gossip columns, or simply hiding the fact that the author has too little (military) knowledge.

IMHO a biography of a military subject needs to focus on the military career, but that need not be a dogma. To name a recent example, Kurt Braatz has succeeded in painting a very broad picture of Moelders the man, without adhering to any such strict guidelines. On the other side are books that read like mission debriefs, certainly interesting, but those give very little contextual information, just combat.

When in doubt, keep it simple, keep it short, stay with the facts, don't draw any conclusions and move to the military career, the rest is icing.

Finally the Grasser quote, few can argue is unrelated to the primary subject at hand, it is even essential in the context of his death. According to resident member Franek Grabowski it is however not entirely correct, so perhaps he can fill in on this myth.

Note to Franek, I think it would be interesting to see this subject from a different angle, hence my request (nothing more and nothing less).