In the midst of all the Jutland stuff , my other revelation of interest when I was 18 - the Russian Front - justa dded a battle star to my tunic. Finally - i've been wanting since I was 18 - I fin shed The Road to Stalingrad last nite. Finally. It's pretty god - but reminded me of reading books on English soil conditions inthe 16th century sometime a grad school away. DENSE SHIT. But also - accomplished. Unfortunately, i'm still stuck in the world of some of my great accomplishments being finishing this book or another.
Went out to eat w/ GF last nite. Pretty good. Miss her since we rarely see each other these days - I stop by her library 2-3x a week, we lunch on Thursday afternoons, and ....... So, it was good to see her. She had to work on Saturday morning, so I decided to protect myself from Mitty- yeah, that fucking bad I've become lately - by finishing the last 20p and drinking up a bit. Did keep me out of trouble - a near runthing these days.
I was @ Lanigans - and it was loud, crowded, drunk, beautiful, and young. Lanigans can be a fucking ghost town some nites - but bot this nite Fun - but whatw as really fun was reading about the last little bits on the Stalingard operation. We all know how it turned out - despite our American D Day, Pearl Harbour, Iwo Jima - the Englanders tobruk and the Battle of Britian - there really was no battle like Stalingrad. Two events - the destruction of 6th Army @ Stalingrad and the burning of Hamburg - both in 1943 - were the events where the Germans were like "OH - SHIT - OH - SHIT!!!" Not only did it cost the Germans a quarter of a million men, it also was the fist major battle where the Germans were just throttled.
And Erikson knows it. This book was written from the Russian view. Erickson was a specialist in eastern languages and his major works comes out of his knowledge of the works not usually rad by western readers- and his extensive interviews w/ those involved. For years (I know, imrepeating fom lastweek) all we got was the Western perspective of the war -allw ritten during the Cold War and really hating the russians. So, we got decades of written shit where Western writers LOVED th fucking Nazis - because the Germans were now our allies and the Russians were supposed to be our enemies. So - the Germans were great, they almost won the war - and the Russians were sheep who only won because they would let their massed troops get gunned down in every battle in pursuit of victory. And pay no mind to the fact that NINE OUT OF EVERY TEN Nazis were killed by the Russians.
So - the importance of Stalingard - Erickson treats it so highly that the planning and carryingout of the offensive takes up a lot of space and importance in the bok. Fact is, oly the first half of th battle is even INTHIS BOOK. SInce this book is titled The Road to Stalingrad, it stops the moment the Russian pincers close around the kessel. The next book - which I immed. picked up when I finished the 1st volume - walked out of Lanigans w/ my newpour on my desk ...er, table- threw the just cmpleted volume ontot he front seat and picked up the new volume. Have only read the frst few pages, but it's good.
And that thrilling rush to finish the book. It took a long time to finally get the hang of reading it - so dense - but again the end was a race. It was all concerned about that operation and the planning of it and the readying of it and all that ... pages after pages - and when it all comes down - meaning when the artillery finally fires on the preadvance bombardment - Exciting.
Funny too - @ NIU, when my assignments were to read book after book and have meetings w/ teachers to discuss "what's it all about??", I developed the habit of penning in notes, underlines, numbers etc etc etc- anything to annotate the important stuff. I generally just underline these days, and all the way through Road to Stalingrad there are penned in underlines. However, when the artillery finally went off, i wrote in "finally" next to that section.
Here, however, is my favourite section of the book. It is the exact moment of genesis of the whole idea of a Stalingrad counteroffensive. The backdrop is that the Germans, in the second year of the German Russian war, had a giant offensive in the South. The Germans entered the city of Stalingrad and for several months the city was a most horrendous scene of destruction. This was the period of the war when the Germans could still mass troops, so both sides kept throwing troops into the city. @ the beginning, it just looked bad for the Russians - the Germans had pushed and separated the Russians defending the city - and the Russians were desperate for some solution. So - the big guys meet:
What, then, does the Stalingrad Front need to break through the German 'corridor' and link up with the South- Eastern Front, Stalin asked. Zhukov replied: at least one fully reinforced field army, a tank corps, three tank brigades, and no less than 400 howitzers, plus nothing short of one fully concentrated air army. Vasilevskii agreed with this estimate. Stalin at this point picked up his own map with the location of the Stavaka reserves displayed on it and studied it at lenght. Moving away from the table, Zhukov and Vasilevskii talked quietly between themselves in a corner, saying in effect that another solution would have to be found. Raising his head suddenly, Stalin asked: 'and what does "another" solution mean?' General Zhukov was apparently taken aback tat Stalin had such sharp ears. Stalin continued : 'Go over to the General Staff and think over very carefully indeed what must be done in the Stalingrad area. Think about which troops and which areas they can be drawn from to reinforce the Stalingrad group, but at the same time don't forget the Caucasus Front. We will meet here at 9 o'clock tomorrow evening.' (p. 389 of John Ericksons The Road to Stalingrad.)
Finally, a fight. One of the teachers @ my school. He's a good friend, but he's also The Know it ALL. BCD laughes about one of his buddies - nice guy, too - but his sthicht is all conversations hav to be about Bob Dylan or Ikera Kurasawa and his films. If these two topics are not being discussed - he'll make sure the conversation will make its way around to it. So, my teacher buddy - hes got a similar deal. It's really hard to have any sorta conversation bcause he instantly changes it to something else - and then start to say "See, yr wrong!! Yr wrong" and every time, its NOTHING from what I said. I mean every time, I find myself not being able to carry on w/ a second sentance because he has to change the subjet and ..........
So, lunchenette @ Gilmart, when Iwas trying to talk about this book, of course I couldn't get the second sentance out per usual, and I just told him my deal:
"
Let me speak on my subject - you can get the next minute, but please give me one minute. Shit - you can have the NEXT FIVE MINUTES - just please let me have one uninterrupted minute. And Barbarossa( the book he was presently reading?) Yes, a good book - it was the first book I ever rad on the subjectand started me on this road - but its FIFTYS OLD NOW, AND SHOULDN'T YOU READ SOMETHING WRITTEN IN THE LAST HALF CENTURY - especially since to me all of that during the Cold War written stuff is kinda tainted against the Russians?"
I felt bad. But at least I was able to get my opinion out for once.
