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Lost conscience. I did not expect that my views and feelings of Stalingrad would coincide with those of field-marshal Erich von Manstein (1887-1973), Hitler’s most brilliant general, the commander of German Southern Army Group at the time of the Stalingrad battle. I did expect a high military profes- sionalism in his war memoirs Verlorene Siege (1955; English translation Lost Victories, 1958), maybe some new angle, different from the victors’ account. However, it stuck me how insensible he is to the aims of his actions and to human suffering from his actions. How dares von Manstein to compare Stalingrad with Thermopylae: Greeks at Thermopylae in 480 BC were defending native soil against the invading Persian Empire while Germans at Stalingrad in 1943 were defending their own skin after being encircled, as invaders, thousands kilometers deep into Russian soil. Besides, von Paulus, the commander of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, and his Germans did not match the moral strength of Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae, exactly because they didn’t fight a patriotic last stand. Interestingly enough, von Manstein, the brilliant general who claims that if the generals had been in charge of strategy instead of Hitler, the war on the Eastern front could have been won, shows a lot of pride for his own "bleeding from a thousand wounds" escape from the encircling. And why the generals had a winning hand (as compared to Hitler)? Because they were artists, they destroyed other peoples’ lives and achievements in an artistic manner, not only efficient but also pleasing manner. Did von Manstein ever ask himself what 1,080,000 Russian mothers and 405,409 German mothers were thinking of his art from July 1943 to January 1944? |
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