[HN Gopher] Reading Grossman's "Stalingrad" and "Life and Fate"
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Reading Grossman's "Stalingrad" and "Life and Fate"
Author : mathgenius
Score : 88 points
Date : 2021-06-20 09:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (adamtooze.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (adamtooze.substack.com)
| GCA10 wrote:
| Fascinating essay about a landmark pair of books. Thanks for
| posting. I'll argue another option on one key quote, though.
|
| > What Stalingrad demonstrated was precisely that the unfreedom
| of the Soviet Union, as terrible as it was, was different from
| that of Nazi Germany or for that matter of the West precisely
| because it was more historically generative, more potent. >
|
| Not quite. What Stalingrad demonstrated is that people faced with
| annihilation on their own soil will fight harder than a supposed
| conquering army more than 1,000 miles beyond its legitimate
| national boundaries.
|
| This lesson keeps being retaught -- somewhere in the world --
| every decade or so. Perhaps even more often.
| danielodievich wrote:
| I have long wanted to read this, and am glad to see this as a
| prompt to finally buy the book. Thanks for posting this great
| article.
|
| My grandfather was a teen during the war, spending most of it
| under the occupation as a cow herder in Grodno, a small-ish city
| that is now on the westmost edge of Belarus. For him, war rolled
| over really quick one way over that town and then rolled over the
| other way, and in the middle was lots of hunger and keeping your
| head down.
|
| I took my girlfriend to visit with them back in early oughts and
| we were walking around through the Grodno old town and she was
| asking about a certain part of town that seemed to her to be in a
| really poor upkeep and he answered - well this is where the
| ghetto was situated, near synagogue, and nobody really wanted to
| do much with that part of town after all the jews were
| "liquidated" in 43. I am sad to say that even though I spent
| every summer in that town, I never really noticed until then. She
| told me it was really the first time the war became truly real to
| her.
|
| For me it was when I was little, I remember working in the garage
| with my family and this one older guy, we were painting
| something, and it was hot, so he took off his shirt. Underneath,
| he was completely covered by this elaborate criss-cross pattern
| of scars all over his body. I asked him what it was and he said
| he was in infantry retreating in summer of 1941 and their
| battalion was taking shelter in a burned out village where only
| the central stoves of the houses were left (wood outside, brick
| inside) and people were hiding behind the stoves and the tanks
| opened up with heavy machine guns, exploding the bricks and
| cutting people up with the sharp clay pieces. He said he was one
| of just few survivors because he hid inside one of the stoves,
| everyone else got cut to pieces on the outside.
| neves wrote:
| > "The war could only be fought through freedom, through the
| willingness of millions of ordinary men and women to abandon
| life. Ordinary heroism drove the Red Army, as it drove the
| Wehrmacht"
|
| Nice article. I'm always impressed with accounts of what were in
| the minds of Soviet soldiers. I'd also recommend Nobel's Laureate
| Svetlana Alexievich book "The unwomanly face of war", a book of
| interviews with women that fought the war.
| dash2 wrote:
| Yeah, the Alexievich book really stays with you. The teenage
| girl going to the front line and packing a suitcase full of
| chocolate. And the squad in the swamp, with a woman and her
| baby, and what she had to do when it started crying at a bad
| moment. Oosh.
| dash2 wrote:
| As well as Grossman, can I recommend Adam Tooze. He's a historian
| who studied economics. He wrote the best account of the 2008
| financial crisis and its aftermath. He's a g _d_ mn leftie but
| exceedingly thoughtful and well-informed. Chartbook is worth a
| subscription.
| dahjkol wrote:
| Stalingrad was such hell on earth.
|
| Mentioning it to my grandfather would break him and he would just
| walk away.
|
| He stabbed dead Germans and fellow Russians with his bayonet to
| make sure they were dead. It's messed up.
| forinti wrote:
| Post-war USSR must have had an enormous mental health problem
| (along with those who were physically handicapped).
| romwell wrote:
| In many ways, Russia is still recovering from the PTSD of the
| Revolution, Stalin, and the War.
|
| Just to give one example: the male/female ratio post-war was
| 3:4, and has never exceeded 9:10 ever since. It had a
| profound effect on gender dynamics, which persists to this
| day.
|
| That's one of the reasons mail-order brides often hail from
| ex-USSR countries: it's to escape not only the economic
| conditions, but the social ones too.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Germany, France and Britain in WW1, and Germany in
| particular in WW2, suffered catastrophic losses of young
| men.
| sparsely wrote:
| Life and Fate is a truly incredible book - readable, thought
| provoking and deeply moving. Wildly underappreciated.
|
| There's also an excellent translation with light commentary of
| Grossman's journalistic notes and articles from the war, "A
| Writer At War". Something that separates him from even certain
| more modern commentators is an intense concern for the experience
| of the ordinary soldiers, not just the cut and thrust of grand
| strategy and leadership.
| vbtemp wrote:
| "A Writer at War" - the translation of his diary from 41-45 -
| is truly the most moving, most horrifying book I have ever
| read. After reading the account of the uprising at Treblinka, I
| was changed forever. I think it goes to show what an incredible
| man Grossman was, as just weeks after liberating the death
| camps, he resolutely chronicles the mass rape and murder of
| German civilians by his own forces.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Agreed, great book. If you haven't read Anthony Beevor's
| Stalingrad as a 'non-fiction' take I can also highly recommend.
| I presume he must have been heavily influenced by Grossman.
| sparsely wrote:
| He was! He worked on "A Writer at War", and if you check the
| quotes and references in Stalingrad a huge number are from
| Grossman or Ehrenburg
| myth_drannon wrote:
| There is another famous book by also an embedded war journalist.
| Volokolamsk_Highway by Alexander Bek.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volokolamsk_Highway
|
| It's much shorter book and an easier read but still an important
| account of a specific part of war that Grossman also briefly
| touched. That is a retreating army and what happens to soldiers
| and the leadership. The leadership skills are an important
| learning part. How to inspire and lead a completely demoralized,
| tired and hungry group of people.
| globuous wrote:
| I'm currently half way through life and fate (just finished the
| famous chapter where Liss has a conversation with Mostovskoi on
| the similarities between the USSR and Nazi germany). It's truly
| an incredible book. In the first chapters, he details the inner
| working of nazi camps, I did not know about Kapos[1], absolutely
| horrifying. Long read, but definitely check it out if a War and
| Peace about WWII is something that sounds interesting to you!!
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapo
| borroka wrote:
| Kapo by Gillo Pontecorvo is a must see
| trutannus wrote:
| Kapos were not always prisoners, sometimes the term was applied
| to POW camp guards. There were also "men of confidence", who
| were always POWs. Their role was to basically act as ambassador
| for the guards to the prisoners. There were cases where the MoC
| had to pick between outing folks attempting to escape, or allow
| their entire unit to be killed in retaliation.
|
| This podcast episode is an interesting story about an escape in
| WWII from an illegal labor camp (Geneva Convention prohibits
| slave labor for PoWs) by several American POWs. Covers a lot
| about the way the camps worked too:
| https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3MnBvZGNhc3QubGl...
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| There were generally three "tiers" at the camps. The SS were
| at the top, in command. At most camps there were very few of
| them, a couple of dozen. Below them were the Trawnikis/Hiwis,
| the soviet "helpers" who largely consisted of POW's who
| "volunteered" for guard duty. In German they held the title
| of Wachmann, watchman. They made up the majority of the
| guards. Then there were the prisoner workers and leaders, the
| kapos and sonderkommandos. They did most of the actual work
| of the camps.
| the_af wrote:
| The Trawnikis are revolting, I just cannot wrap my head
| around their existence. Yes, they were anticommunist so
| that was one reason to help the Nazis, but beyond that,
| they weren't ideological, they just were brutal and
| genocidal -- above and beyond mere survival, they committed
| the worst atrocities without any ideological allegiance to
| Hitler, I guess they just enjoyed their work and were
| willing to do anything -- murder, torture and rape -- in
| exchange for warm clothes, gear and food, and the feeling
| of importance you must get when you can freely terrorize
| other people.
|
| I'm not naive, I understand a man can break and tell on his
| friends under duress. But to commit actual rape and murder
| without a second thought, that makes you the worst of the
| worst, a stain on the planet.
| watwut wrote:
| People in brutal conditions become brutal. That part is
| fairly universal. And it is pretty easy to make them even
| more brutal by right training. All you have to do is to
| reward aggression and to redirect their resentment toward
| weaker victim. Moreover, people who had pre-existing
| tendency to be brutal are overrepresented in units like
| that.
|
| Second, antisemitism itself is not nazi invention. It was
| pre-existing in Eastern Europe, Ukraine and so on.
|
| Third, "might is right" was strong aspect of nazi
| ideology where stronger have no responsibility toward
| weaker. So was "empathy is feminine weakness" and "manly
| men suppress these emotions and are brutal". Once you
| indoctrinated people into this, it does not matter
| whether they are Germans or Ukranians, they are more
| likely to be ok with committing atrocities.
|
| > in exchange for warm clothes, gear and food, and the
| feeling of importance you must get when you can freely
| terrorize other people
|
| It also needs to be acknowledged that lack of warm
| clothes means death and so does lack of food. We are not
| talking here about slight discomfort due to somewhat
| malnutrition. We are talking about no food full stop.
| Neither of those will make you nicer well empathetic
| person. Instead, they will make you focus on survival and
| loose whatever empathy you was previously capable of.
| the_af wrote:
| I get what you're saying but the Trawniki were not
| collaborators doing what they could to survive. They were
| sadistic bastards, fully into what they were doing while
| at the same time "ideology-less" (beyond a basic
| anticommunist background).
|
| Put it this way: say an alien race enslaves humanity,
| you're first a starved POW, later given some privileges
| for good conduct, and later put in charge of some tasks
| on behalf of the aliens, which you must do in order to
| keep your privileges.
|
| In this thought experiment, do you see betraying your
| fellow humans? I want to think I wouldn't, but maybe I
| would. Telling on people, maybe even shooting some? Sure,
| it's possible. But you must remember the Trawnikis
| enacted much of the Holocaust. They raped and murdered
| women and children, and did so of their own free will. Do
| you see yourself raping a mother and murdering her
| children for the sake of keeping your privileges with the
| alien overlords?
|
| I don't. The Trawniki embraced this with willingness.
| They are the worst of the worst, unforgivable human scum.
|
| > _People in brutal conditions become brutal._
|
| I reject this. People with the potential for brutality
| fully unleash this under brutal conditions. But there are
| decent people too, people you can break with brutality
| but which will never descend into it, they won't pillage,
| torture and rape no matter what you do to them -- and
| examples of this abound!
| watwut wrote:
| As for first paragraph, the two are in no way in
| opposition. One can be both at the same time. And joining
| these units in the first place was one of survival
| tactic. Then you become part.
|
| Also, literally all armies raped, some more then others.
| Rape is horrible, but it went on in wars a lot. Germans
| raped, some units really very much a lot. Russian
| soldiers raped. Both on the way to Germany and then a lot
| inside Germany. American soldiers raped (less then
| Germans and Russians). You are bringing it up and it is
| horrible, but it was not unique to these units at all.
|
| Second, I have no idea how I would acted. I think I would
| die, because I am sickly in general. Which absolve me of
| moral choices I guess.No one of us knows how he would
| really act in such situation. Ressentment and hunger and
| genrally violence make people ok with things they are not
| normally.
|
| Go even read that comic about Elan school someone posted
| on HN. Exact same dynamic in nutshel.
|
| Third, the more I read about history, prisons, wars,
| genocides and cults and such, the more I became convinced
| of this. When you create brutal environment, people in it
| will become brutal gradually. Some more then others and
| yet others will be victims. But that is what happens
| every single time.
| the_af wrote:
| I'm sorry, I reject the idea that there's a set of brutal
| conditions that would have led me to rape, and murder
| even children in cold blood like the Trawniki did.
|
| The scale and horror that Nazism and their willing
| lackeys inflicted upon the (modern) world is terrifying.
| No, under no set of conditions I would have behaved like
| the Trawniki. You say that every army raped, and this is
| true, but
|
| > _You are bringing it up and it is horrible, but it was
| not unique to these units at all._
|
| I'm sorry, but again read what the Trawniki did and tell
| me it's of the same order of magnitude than what other
| armies "regularly" did. You can't, because it's not.
| Nazism enabled them, and these men, out of their own free
| will, went above and beyond the "call of duty", embraced
| it and rejoiced in this monstrous behavior. In many cases
| they weren't frontline units -- so their savagery upon
| civilians cannot be excused by saying "they were numbed
| and desperate by combat, and their prisoners suffered
| because of it" -- they conducted reprisals on civilians
| and served as guards in extermination camps, and were a
| key part of the Holocaust. They were reasonably well fed
| and clothed, and they chose to murder women and children.
| What's their excuse then?
|
| I've read a lot about history, and know of men and women
| that perished because they refused to behave like
| savages, to know this is not the only possible course of
| action.
|
| The Trawniki were really scum and there's no excuse for
| what they did.
| watwut wrote:
| When you askes "why" I thought it is about analyzing why.
| Now it seems to me that there is zero interest in "why".
|
| > I'm sorry, but again read what the Trawniki did and
| tell me it's of the same order of magnitude than what
| other armies "regularly" did
|
| Germans had units composed of criminals run by rapist.
| Like, literally guy convinced of that. It was largely
| uncontrolable body, not that anyone tried to controlled
| the rape away.
|
| The history of armies and wars are people exactly like
| that. There were multiple genocides in history and it
| involves killing children each time. ISIS included. Rape
| included.
| the_af wrote:
| I never asked "why", so you must be confusing me with
| someone else from this thread. That said, "why" is an
| interesting question that can be explored, but "why" is
| not the same as "everyone would do this".
|
| > _The history of armies and wars are people exactly like
| that. There were multiple genocides in history and it
| involves killing children each time. ISIS included. Rape
| included._
|
| In recent history very little resembles WWII in scale,
| savagery and murder. Things in Africa in more recent
| history, I guess, and the Armenian genocide that even
| Hitler paid attention to. But WWII's scale of bloodshed
| and ethnic cleansing is unmatched, as is the _systematic_
| , planned nature of said cleansing.
|
| > _There were multiple genocides in history and it
| involves killing children each time._
|
| I'm not even sure what you're arguing here. Maybe that
| because killing of children happened before and after,
| that the Trawniki weren't monsters to be singled out and
| repudiate every time they are mentioned? I disagree. They
| were monsters, the worst of the worst. Notice I didn't
| claim the Trawniki _invented_ ethnic cleansing or rape
| though. If you mention some other army that killed
| children, maybe hacked them to pieces using machetes
| during one of Africa 's stomach churning conflicts, I'm
| ready to call them monsters too. Are you?
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| If you haven't read Ordinary Men
| (https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-
| Soluti...) by Christopher Browning I think you would like
| it, the book is about who follows appalling orders, why
| they do, and what does (and doesn't) happen to them if
| they don't.
|
| I think that most of us like to think we would be the
| moral exception, it offers some mental comfort, but it's
| far more likely that we won't.
| the_af wrote:
| I'm familiar with _Ordinary Men_ and also with _Hitler 's
| Willing Executioners_ and I think they prove my point.
|
| > _what does (and doesn 't) happen to them if they don't_
|
| This is _key_. What happens if they didn 't follow
| orders? It turns out that... pretty much nothing. You
| could get away with not following orders. So those who
| did anyway, murdered, tortured and raped, are monsters in
| my eyes. Their lives weren't even in immediate danger!
|
| > _I think that most of us like to think we would be the
| moral exception, it offers some mental comfort, but it 's
| far more likely that we won't._
|
| If you think you would break down and commit rape,
| torture and murder, then I'm sorry for you. I'm nothing
| like you then, and most decent people aren't either.
|
| I'm not naive: I know there's a lot of behavior people
| will engage in under extreme conditions -- I can admit
| cannibalism, robbery, violence and lots of things
| unacceptable in normal society -- but there IS a line,
| and torture and rape are way beyond that line. I'm
| willing to admit under exceptional duress I'd betray my
| country and my friends. I can see myself being forced to
| shoot another human being "or else". What I cannot
| absolutely accept from you or anybody else is to claim
| "well, if I'm threatened with torture or death then I can
| break and be willing to rape women and crush their
| babies". I'm sorry but I cannot, and if you think you
| would, I hope I never meet you in person: you terrify me.
|
| If it comes to a point where someone tells me "unless you
| rape this child, I'll do the same to your children" then
| I might as well accept we're all doomed and it's beyond
| anything I can do. I won't commit rape, period.
|
| Note we're discussing the Trawniki men in this context.
| Read about what they did before claiming everyone in
| their position would do the same. These were really scum,
| the worst of the worst.
| watwut wrote:
| The newer introduction from Richard J. Evans ia
| interesting tho. These were not entirely ordinary men as
| in representing ordinary Germans.
|
| They were righ-wing supporters and their political
| convictions made them ok with those orders. They
| perceived Reich as free long after everyone else was
| persecuted, after synagoges were burned etc.
| the_af wrote:
| This is an important distinction!
|
| Since not all of us are right-wing supporters,
| antisemites, or believe in the racial superiority and the
| innate right to rule of this or that race, this means
| it's not true that all of us would happily engage in rape
| and ethnic cleansing just because we're told by some
| authority figure that it's right to do so.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| My understanding is that a lot of the Trawnikis were
| simply trying to stay alive, at least the ones who
| started as POW's at the time they volunteered for the
| training. The vast majority of Soviet POW's in Wehrmacht
| hands were starved to death which is something that
| doesn't get talked about enough in my opinion - it
| absolutely shreds any "clean Wehrmacht" revisionist
| nonsense. I tend to view collaborators as requiring less
| explanation in general, did some jump on the opportunity
| to unleash their inner sadist? Undoubtedly, but I think
| most were simply trying to survive the task of navigating
| the conflict between two brutal regimes and I believe
| their motivations and reasoning were individual and
| covered a whole spectrum of rationale. The people I think
| require the most explanation are the highly educated,
| well off volunteers of organizations like the SS and
| NKVD. People who had a choice and chose the secret
| police.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| AFAIK, highly educated, well off people who are a bit
| lost in the world provide the bulk of cult/extremist
| members in this era.
| the_af wrote:
| > _My understanding is that a lot of the Trawnikis were
| simply trying to stay alive_
|
| My understanding was different. These were willing
| participants, going above and beyond the mere instinct to
| survive. See my other replies. At the behest of their
| Nazi masters, the Trawniki enacted key parts of the
| Holocaust and of Generalplan Ost -- the plan to
| exterminate most of the Slavic population of Eastern
| Europe.
|
| I urge everyone commenting here to read what the Trawniki
| actually did. These weren't mere collaborators!
| watwut wrote:
| > The people I think require the most explanation are the
| highly educated, well off volunteers of organizations
| like the SS and NKVD. People who had a choice and chose
| the secret police.
|
| They believed they are doing the right thing or simply
| the job. They were convinced they are the good ones. Tho,
| these two are massively different organizations. SS were
| not secret police, they were basically army doing a lot
| of actual combat.
|
| Gestapo would be closer equivalent of NKVD.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| If you remove the Waffen SS I think the comparison holds,
| both Allgemeine SS and NKVD were overarching internal
| security / police type organizations. Like a lot of Nazi
| organizations the SS had somewhat nebulous duty
| boundaries that overlapped some other groups and evolved
| over time.
| the_af wrote:
| There were also NKVD combat units, most famously one
| which did a lot of heavy fighting in Stalingrad. (Actual
| desperate fighting against Germans, not the scene from
| the awful "Enemy at the Gates" where they fire on
| retreating Soviet troops -- that's mostly made up for the
| movie).
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > they were basically army doing a lot of actual combat
|
| This was mainly the Waffen-SS which was only built up
| during the war, the SS as a whole was responsible for the
| worst atrocities in the occupied areas and within Germany
| (for instance running the extermination camps).
|
| (also, Himmler was both head of the SS and Gestapo by
| 1934, I guess there wasn't much of a distinction between
| the two organizations)
| watwut wrote:
| SS was responsible for camps and extermination, but they
| were also elite combat body. They were given
| responsibility for camps because they were supposed to be
| better soldiers then army itself. SS were also willing to
| take more risk and more losses then army would normally
| do. Mostly because they were eager to prove themselves
| uber soldiers they believed themselves to be.
|
| The army itself had ethnic cleansing as one of the goals
| too. I mention this mostly because after war there was
| tendency to blame everything on SSand create myth of
| "clean" Wehrmacht. Because that felt better to Germans.
|
| Gestapo was literally professional police. They were
| people who did criminal inveatigations prior and
| repurposed many of the same tactic. That is massive
| difference.
| detaro wrote:
| Gestapo did run camps (and had the power to put people in
| camps without courts being involved), oversaw forced
| labor, hunted resistance in occupied territories and
| tortured and murdered prisoners, sometimes in cooperation
| or under shared orders with the SS, sometimes as parallel
| structures with different primary victim groups.
| "Professional police" alright...
| watwut wrote:
| None of it makes it not professional police tho. Police
| does not mean "hollywood movie good guys". It just mean
| police and in authoritarion setups it means more violence
| then in liberal setups. Police tortures people all around
| the world, both now and in the past.
|
| You never seen them at battlefield. It was organized,
| effective, produced bureaucracy. They were police force.
|
| They did not run camps, tho they could send people there.
| detaro wrote:
| > _They did not run camps_
|
| They did, keyword "AEL". Plenty Gestapo were SS-members
| too. Yes, there were some differences, but in many areas
| they did plenty of the same things, and were different
| parts of overall the same system.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Well the "clean Wehrmacht" was a convenient post-war myth
| in Western Germany when the Bundeswehr was created, but I
| think in the last 20..30 years that myth has been
| thoroughly debunked.
| trutannus wrote:
| If you're interested in more strategic myth making by
| former Wehrmacht/Nazi officials, check out the debunking
| of Albert Speer's "Good Nazi" persona. Very interesting
| how long he got away with essentially lying through his
| teeth about being involved in Jewish deportations.
|
| Article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer#The_Speer_myth
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's an extraordinary historical event; a while ago I read
| Beevor's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_(Beevor_book)
| and it left a profound impression on me of the sheer meatgrinder
| of humanity, both German and Russian, that the battle was. Like
| the siege of Leningrad, a huge number of people were starved to
| death.
| algo_trader wrote:
| +1 for Stalingrad by Beevor
|
| A soul shaking book. It changed my outlook on
| bureaucracy/society/humanity.
| the_af wrote:
| What I don't like so much about Beevor's Stalingrad is the
| narrative he weaves. He gets into the minds of his subjects
| and "tells" the reader what they were thinking, which is
| effectively impossible.
|
| This is a narrative flourish meant to grab the reader's
| attention, but it's also an inadmissible interference by the
| author, and one where he inserts his own bias. I find
| Beevor's style very hard to take, since I don't enjoy being
| told what to think.
|
| Contrast this with someone more dispassionate, such as David
| Glantz. He will tell you about the Eastern Front with more
| dry facts and less "going inside the minds" of generals or
| ordinary soldiers (UNLESS there is a reference that supports
| this). The resulting account is both more factual, with less
| author's ideology seeping through, but also drier and harder
| to read. Boring at times, even.
|
| So Beevor is "more fun" to read than Glantz, but also way
| less impartial and more concerned about telling the reader
| what to think, and I really dislike that.
| algo_trader wrote:
| Artistic license, and so forth
|
| Do u have an opinion on Peter Zeihan? Horribly
| entertaining, but is it speculative analysis or pure
| fiction?
| fifilura wrote:
| I read that book in bed with a pretty bad flu.
|
| It certainly added an extra dimension to be shivering from
| fever while reading about those poor cold souls.
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