This man is Werner Baumbach (27 December 1916 – 20 October 1953), a German pilot of the Luftwaffe in World War II. He was in the Hitler Youth as a child. Baumbach was decorated for his bombing missions against allied shipping and warships and received an appointment to the Luftwaffe High Command.

After the war he was tried for war crimes and and released with too little evidence. He became an advisor to Harvard historian Bruce C Hopper on his studies of World War II. He then became and advisor to the Argentine Air Force.

He wrote several books. One, The Life and Death of the Luftwaffe (1967 Ballantine Books) was critical of the German High Command. In particular he cited the leaderships failure to listen to the intelligence officers warnings of the way events were unfolding for the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe never recovered from it’s beating and Baumbach believed this was one of the causes of the German loss in WWII.

Baumbach died in 1953, crashing while testing a British Lancaster bomber in Argentina.

This man is Mark David Chapman (born May 10, 1955). Chapman’s father was a US Air Force staff sergeant. Mark worked as YMCA children’s counselor and at two refugee centers. He was a fan of the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by JD Salinger. He had an emotional breakdown and moved to Hawaii. It has been noted that he struggled with mental health problems for most of his life, including psychosis and depression. He is said to have considered suicide on several occasions.

On the 8th of December, 1980 Chapman shot and killed John Lennon of The Beatles. Hard to start a race war with all those darn peace loving hippie types running around. Insulting the gods of the High Command had got him programmed to be a sacrificial assassin. Chances are they thought he’d be executed for the crime and they could take him back to Mordor.

Related:

• Catcher in the Rye
• How ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ Is Linked to JFK, John Lennon and Rebecca Schaeffer – Rare