How Little We Remember — Yesterday’s 70th Anniversary of the End of the Battle of Stalingrad — a Comment about the Inertia of Forgetfulness and Failed Gratitude

© 2013 Peter Free

 

03 February 2013

 

 

Six points — taken from the example of the Battle of Stalingrad, which ended 70 years ago, yesterday

 

From general to specific:

 

(1) Nationalism blinds us.

 

(2) Misremembered history hurts the nation, in that we overestimate national strength and underappreciate the contributions or impediments posed by others.

 

(3) Uncontrollable circumstances have far more control over personal success and failure — and life and death — than we are willing to admit.

 

(4) Temporarily remembering forgotten lives should remind us that personal sacrifice is almost never repaid.

 

(5) The combination of these insights represents the opportunity for spiritual opening.

 

 

Why speak of Stalingrad today?

 

Yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Stalingrad.  The only people who paid the anniversary significant and knowledgeable attention were the Russians.

 

The rest of the developed world seems to have forgotten, or never recognized, how important that Red Army and civilian effort was to its survival.

 

Our forgetfulness says something about the human condition, which percolates from History’s often only abstractly relevant meaning into more immediate personal spiritual consciousness.

 

 

Background — what happened at Stalingrad?

 

Beween 17 July 1942 and 02 February 1943, Germany’s World War II war machine ground to a halt at Stalingrad.  The Reich lost so much military mass there that Hitler’s defeat eventually proved inevitable.

 

Yet, the Soviet triumph during the siege was improbable and teetered on the brink of extinction for months.  Consequently, when Russians speak of the “Hero City of Stalingrad” (now Volgograd) they are not misusing the title.

 

 

Point 1 — Nationalism blinds us — the Battle of Stalingrad arguably turned World War II around to favor the Allies — but you would be hard pressed to find an American who knew it then, or remembers it now

 

It is probably safe to say that Americans think that the United States’ contribution won World War II.  But the historical reality is that the Soviet Union preponderantly did — sopping up Hitler’s attack on its geographic vastness, eventually repulsing it, and finally driving Stalin’s Red Army into the heart of Germany.

 

While the United States mostly puttered around the edges of the war, the Soviet Union choicelessly stayed locked to its core.

 

The Battle of Stalingrad represents the imbalance between the Allies’ contribution to the war effort.  In that one battle, the Soviet military probably lost about 1.1 to 1.2 million lives.  Germany, and its Axis partners, lost between 500,000 and 850,000.  In contrast, 406,000 Americans fell during the whole war, worldwide.

 

Stalingrad was so horrific that, even today, people are still searching for its war dead — most of whom remain unidentified, even when found.

 

See:

 

Tom Parfitt, Stalingrad anniversary: 70 years on, Russian city still gives up its WWII dead, The Telegraph (01 February 2013)

 

 

Point 2 — Misremembered history hurts the nation, in that we overestimate national strength and underappreciate the contributions or impediments posed by others

 

With the exception of the George H. W. Bush Administration (1989-1993), recent American leaders:

 

have consistently overestimated America’s ability to shape world affairs

 

and

 

undervalued the contributions or potential contributions of other nations.

 

Much of the American inclination toward bad geopolitical strategy is because we forget or misremember History.

 

Our lack of appreciation for the Soviet contribution to winning World War II is representative.  A distaste for other political systems, in addition to our typically characteristic jingoism, slants us toward demeaning the contributions that other people make.

 

This leads to an overreaching and often unsuccessful American arrogance in world affairs.

 

 

Point 3 — Uncontrollable circumstances have far more control over personal success and failure — and life and death — than we are willing to admit

 

We are often insignificant in the tumult of world affairs and even our own lives.

 

This argument is best illustrated by watching a documentary or two about Stalingrad.  The most accessible for English speakers might be Peter and Dan Snow’s Stalingrad segment in their 20th Century Battlefields series.

 

Ironically, the Snows’ treatment of Stalingrad is most conveniently found at Russia-Ukraine-Travel’s website.  Just clink on the below link, and scroll toward the bottom of the page, for the first part of that site’s 6-part segmentation of the Snows’ BBC documentary:

 

Peter and Dan Snow, 20th Century Battlefields — 1942 Stalingrad, BBC (2007) (scroll down toward the bottom of the page)

 

Encircled by Soviet troops, 305th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht) deputy chief quartermaster Karl Binder wrote home:

 

 

We are men who know how to bear everything. The main thing is that you and the children are all right.

 

Don’t worry about me; nothing can happen to me any longer. Today I have made my peace with God… I give you all my love and a thousand kisses – I love you to my last breath.

 

Affectionate kisses for the children. Be dear children and remember your father.

 

© 1996 Feldgrau German Armed Forces Research 1918-1945, Kriegsweihnachten: Reflections on German Christmas during WWII, feldgrau.com (1996)

 

 

It is doubtful that quartermaster Karl Binder had anything to do with starting the war, or with winding up in the hopeless situation that he did.  And I would imagine that he, and others, would have objected to Hitler’s intransigently stupid decision to attack and remain at Stalingrad, until all hope of success was lost.  It is also doubtful that his family was “all right.”

 

We do not control our destinies, much more often than we do.

 

 

Point 4 — Temporarily remembering forgotten lives should remind us that personal sacrifice is almost never repaid

 

The fighting at Stalingrad was so fierce that:

 

 

So great were Soviet losses that at times, the life expectancy of a newly arrived soldier was less than a day, and the life expectancy of a Soviet officer was three days.

 

Their sacrifice is immortalized by a soldier of General Rodimtsev, about to die, who scratched on the wall of the main railway station (which changed hands 15 times during the battle)

 

“Rodimtsev’s Guardsmen fought and died here for their Motherland.”

 

© Jewish Virtual Library, The Battle of Stalingrad, American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (2013) (at Aftermath, at the bottom of the webpage, third paragraph down) (paragraph split and reformatted)

 

Whoever he was probably incised those lines knowing that his life was going to end soon.

 

The Free World remains, but virtually no one remembers more than a few names of the people, who (most often without real choice) died saving it.

 

 

Point 5 — The combination of these insights represents the opportunity for spiritual opening

 

An opening that it is generally easier to squander than accept.