Another Churchill Quote

Of the Germans:

“They are carnivorous sheep.

Totally unfair of course, but then there was that affair of the Third Reich.

From this little article.

History as Cinema

Doesn't really work. Plots are too unbelievable. Matt Yglesias cites Robert Farley who cites ... this guy named Scott [this is similar to the manuscript tradition beloved among medieval historians].

So Doctor Who is not a complete loss. But then there are some shows that go completely beyond the pale of enjoyability, until they become nothing more than overwritten collections of tropes impossible to watch without groaning.

I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called "World War II".

Let's start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Show allSecret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn't look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apoplectic rage when he doesn't get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.

I wouldn't even mind the lack of originality if they weren't so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Real people just aren't that evil. And that's not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese.

Not that the good guys are much better. Their leader, Churchill, appeared in a grand total of one episode before, where he was a bumbling general who suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Ottomans of all people in the Battle of Gallipoli. Now, all of a sudden, he's not only Prime Minister, he's not only a brilliant military commander, he's not only the greatest orator of the twentieth century who can convince the British to keep going against all odds, he's also a natural wit who is able to pull out hilarious one-liners practically on demand. I know he's supposed to be the hero, but it's not realistic unless you keep the guy at least vaguely human.

And this goes on and on, managing to be both hilarious and instructive. Never dismiss an historical story on the grounds of plausibility. There are usually other reasons.

BUT, this brings up a SERIOUS QUESTION for all you Sci-Fi fans out there! In the late 60s or early 70s I remember reading a story in either IF or ANALOG magazines (I think) written as if it were a scholarly paper by an historian completely debunking the 'myth' of Hitler and World War II as entirely too implausible and clearly contrived.

Does anyone remember such a story? Do you remember who wrote it or where I can find it?

please.

ps: who is Amy Pond?

The last plane from Stalingrad

Before you read this post, please watch this little film clip from the German movie "Stalingrad." Start watching it at about 5:43. Then watch the first few moments of this second clip. (Be patient, I will explain). It is a convincing and accurate reconstruction of the last German plane escaping from Stalingrad.

Now I will tell you a funny story: Shortly after the last German was cleaned out of the Stalingrad pocket Charles De Gaulle visited the Soviet Union. He was given the grand tour of the battlefield. Everywhere he went there were remains of shattered German tanks and equipment. De Gaulle kept muttering "What a remarkable people!"

About the third or fourth time the general said this his Soviet translator couldn't take it any more and blurted out "Yes! The Soviet People ARE a remarkable people!"

"No," De Gaulle replied, "I mean the Germans. To have made it so far!"

Now come forward in time, to about 1983. I was at a faculty reception talking to a professor who was obviously American by voice and body language. In what passes for light chatter among historians we somehow got off on World War II. I tell him this story because I think it is funny.

He laughs slightly and says in a normal tone of voice, "You know, my father was evacuated from Stalingrad on the last airplane,"

I gape and stammer, which army was he in? "Oh, the German army."

I was born in 1949 and he was no more than three or four years older than me. If that soldier had not managed to get on that plane somehow I would have been talking to a different person that evening.

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The Great Patriotic War in Art

Found a link to a site with artwork from the Soviet Union during World War II (as we call it). You should take a look. Some of it is sappy, some dreadful, all of it hyper-patriotic. But some are arresting.

I like this one, entitled 'Victory Day in Berlin.'

[oops. Forgot the link. Thanks, Jack]

WWII: A History Lesson

Pat Buchanan is the most paleo of the paleo-cons. Yet I can remember when he was everywhere on TV - before he managed to write himself right out of the Repub party, which was a neat trick. Now he has written a book about World War II. It's basic thesis seems to be that Churchill was a fool for forcing Hitler to fight the war, kill the Jews and invade Russia. We would have been a lot better off if we had stayed out of it because the Soviets were worse than the Nazis and Russia was the only power that "won" the war.

Debatable. In fact so much so that National Review has put up a series of video interviews of Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens (talk about an odd couple) ripping the book's thesis to shreds. It's great fun.

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The Great Patriotic War - Again

Most Americans have absolutely no idea just how vast the war on the Eastern Front was in World War II or that it was the Russians who are most responsible for destroying Hitler and the Third Reich. I've mentioned this once or twice already, but the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine has a review article by Benjamin Schwarz on several new books that reveals just how much new info has come out about the Great Patriotic War and the debt the allies owe to Stalin. In every way imaginable it is a sobering story, especially for those of us who like to find neat little moral lessons attached to our history.

Schwarz slings some impressive numbers around to get our attention: 27 million dead Soviets, 4 million dead Germans, 2 million suspect minorities force marched into the interior, 158,000 Soviets executed for disertion, 926,000 dead Red Army soldiers at the battle of Moscow alone.

He is in agreement with Norman Davies' Europe at War in finding "insufferable" the notion that Britain and America stopped Hitler. For four years 400 Red army and Wehrmacht divisions faced off in a series of vicious and nearly constant battles along a 1,000 mile front. 85% of all German military dead were killed by the Red army. On the Western front, on the other hand, the most intense fighting saw 15 allied divisions facing 15 German divisions.

Now, about those moral lessons. Davies loves Poland and has no liking or sympathy for Stalin, especially after what he did to Poland. Yet his conclusion is clear, as Schwarz puts it: "the most odious criminal regime in Europe's history was defeated by an even more murderous regime, if numbers are the yardstick - which significantly tarnishes any notion of the "Good War."

Geoffrey Robert's is just as provocative in Stalin's Wars, an examination of Stalin's wartime leadership:

To make so many mistakes and to rise from the depths of such defeat to go on to win the greatest military victory in history was a triumph beyond compare... Stalin ... saved the world for democracy.

The Great Patriotic War

When I teach the second semester of world civ, I barely make it to World War II, my father's war. I always make sure I have time to tell the students that it was the Soviet peoples who broke the back of the Nazi war machine. Most are quite surprised. Last time I showed them the first fifteen minutes of "Enemy at the Gates" - it gives them a graphic taste of the fighting and what it would take for the Soviets to defeat this enemy. I particularly like Bob Hoskin's scene as Nikita Khruschev taking command.

Hence, last night when I read this post over on Catanima I felt compelled to try to answer Jack's question about why the Russian losses where so huge - perhaps as many as 20-25 million human beings. I was still sick, and tired, but I think my comment made sense.

Then this morning, when I am doing my morning reading while my coffee brews, almost the first paragraph I read (in Tony Judt's Postwar) is this about 1945:

The Red Army marched on foot and hauled its weapons and supplies on carts powered by draught animals; its soldiers were granted no leave and, if they hesitated, no quarter; 157,593 of them had been executed for 'cowardice' in 1941
and 1942 alone. But after a halting start, the USSR had out-produced and out-fought the Nazi colossus, ripping the heart from the magnificent German military machine .... But the Soviet victory had been bought at a uniquely high price. Of all the victors in World War Two - indeed of all the participant countries, victors and vanquished alike - the USSR was the only one to suffer permanent economic damage.

Russians called the war 'The Great Patriotic War' - 'The Patriotic War' in Russian means the war against Napoleon in 1812. Perhaps the Soviet army and peoples were our Spartans.