(First posted to Goodreads December 7, 2014)
When you look at a gun, you can admire the workmanship, the materials, its accuracy or its ease of operation, but at the end of all that admiration, that object is still made to do just one thing: kill efficiently.
I found the same type of situation with “Stalingrad, The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943” by Antony Beevor. It is a magnificently scholarly work, meticulously researched and flawlessly compiled. But the subject matter was so disturbing, it overshadowed the skill with which it was presented. That, however, could not be helped; when you write about history, you write about what the facts have told you. If the facts of the event are horrible, you still have to write them.
The book tells the story of the World War II German attack on Stalingrad, Russia, what led to it, the original defense of the city, the later encirclement of the German Sixth Army and what happened after. This is most definitely not a book for those with a low capacity for human suffering. Suffering seems to be not the theme, but the central shadow over the work. No one really won this engagement; locations changed hands time and time again throughout, but you could hardly describe an event that encompassed this scale of death and abuse and starvation and the fatal neglect and intentional destruction of the helpless as something as simple as a contest that was won or lost. Though many took credit and received blame, and continue to do so today, no one won this battle. There were only survivors.
No, I found the theme, if one can take a theme from a historical work, different and darker from what I read in this outstanding book. The political systems that generated these horrors, Nazi fascism and the Soviets’ brand of communism, have been largely destroyed and that’s a right thing. When political ideologies become the vehicle for systematic cruelty, they must be drastically changed or, better, replaced.
I take no comfort, however, from present-day news. Humans seem to learn little compassion from events such as Stalingrad, and instead use its facts to create new, destructive, and appalling means of compelling the dependent into horror. The names and the places might change, but nothing else seems to.
This book should be read, if for no other reason, than to remind us what the true fight and the vigilance and the concern and the discussion is meant for and what the stakes are if we fail. It is a brilliantly crafted treatise of what not to allow from our governments and ourselves.
But, please, don’t let your kids read it. Let them keep their innocence until they can’t anymore.
Until they’re old enough to vote, that is.
Whew. I’m really glad it’s Christmastime.
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