Although I find war abhorrent, I have to admit it fascinates me. The decision to wage war has to rank among the most catastrophic that a civilization can make--so I think it's important to understand the reasons why we keep blundering into wars like blindfolded amnesiacs.
At the same time, I realize that pacifism is suicide. Throughout human history, any country that lacked a formidable army or an alliance with a stronger military power, soon lost its independence, along with great loss of life and property. Clearly the ability to wage war effectively is a sine qua non for the survival of any nation.
Yet I find this fact deeply depressing, especially since any realistic study of battle reveals a level and scale of suffering that most of us find hard to imagine.
Thus I approached Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942 – 1943 with both dread and fascination. Here were two evil and fanatical regimes, the world's most powerful at the time, locked in a death grip—and the victor would control the vast majority of Europe and Asia.
Beevor does a masterful job of conveying the sweep of the battle, both at a strategic level and at the level of the average soldier on both sides of the lines. The book starts out chronicling the German advance into Russia in 1941, reciting a never-ending tale of German atrocities. Before the invasion, the German high command specifically instructed every unit to ignore the Geneva Convention and to do their best to punish the enemy and its supporters. As a result, surrendering Russian soldiers were massacred; Jews were rounded up and handed over to the SS; entire families were stripped of their coats, blankets, and food and turned out in below zero weather to freeze to death; German soldiers conducted “target practice” with retreating lines of Russian prisoners; and on it goes. By the time the Germans reach Stalingrad you find yourself hoping that the Russians annihilate the entire German Army.
But you just as quickly realize that the Soviets are no better—maybe even worse. The Russian leaders seem to have viewed human life as next to worthless. The Stavka, or Russian high command, executed over 13,000 of its own soldiers during the Stalingrad campaign--labeling them deserters, cowards, and traitors. As chillingly depicted in the movie Enemy at the Gates, they sent their troops in waves over open ground, often without ammunition or weapons, and when they tried to retreat, machine-gunned them down. They took very few prisoners themselves and sent most on “death marches”; out of 55,000 prisoners force-marched to a single Russian camp after the German defeat at Stalingrad, 45,000 died en route from exhaustion, starvation, sickness, and cold. And the Russians treated their own people so badly, that nearly 200,000 Russians enlisted in the German army, including 55,000 front-line troops—most of them Ukranians who hated Stalin for having starved 1.2 million of their countrymen to death in the 1930s. Nearly all were captured when the German Sixth Army was defeated and were subsequently murdered by the NKVD.
So by the end of the book you actually begin to feel sorry for the surrounded Germans, who lost half a million soldiers in the campaign and whose suffering toward the end of the battle defies belief: thousands of German soldiers died from starvation or exhaustion; nearly all were frostbitten, sick with dysentery or typhus, and infested with lice. Desertion and suicide were commonplace. In the final month there were no medical supplies; amputations were performed without anesthesia, and the seriously wounded were left to bleed or freeze to death. If you wanted to find a place on earth that personified hell, it would have to be the city of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 – 1943.
So what did this book teach me? That the human race goes insane on a regular basis? That madness is lurking under the skull of the average person, just waiting for the right circumstances to unleash it? That ideology is the first step on the road to madness—that all-too-common distortion of the mind that sees anyone who doesn't believe what we do as a threat our existence? Perhaps I got all of all this from Stalingrad, and perhaps all of it is true.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Madness of Stalingrad
Come Closer at Your Own Risk
Closer is one of the most depressing movie I've ever seen--and one of the best. Strange as it sounds, it's not far off. The dialogue is brilliant, the acting is superb, the characters' lives are riveting, but it's depressing to watch these four smart, beautiful people abuse each other in almost every conceivable way--opening themselves up only to be clawed apart from the inside and then dealing the same amount of damage in return.
It reminds me of the advice given by the author of Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart, who says that any young person's education should include learning how to recognize people who will make you utterly miserable if you get too close to them. He also states that in any relationship what counts is what people DO and not what they say. People say all kinds of things, but much of it bears little resemblance to their actions. These four characters talk about love all the time but they ACT like they hate each other. They certainly understand passion and sex, but it's clear from their actions they know absolutely nothing about love.
I suppose a person should see this movie in the spirit of watching documentaries about AIDS or movies about the Holocaust--they give you a tour through the darkest regions of the human soul without having to make the journey yourself--so you can take away the lessons without the emotional scars. Beyond that, it's hard to find a reason to view Closer. Approach it with care; like any relationship, it's wise to know what you're getting into beforehand.
