The Eastern Front

Yes, sometimes it's Ney on the slope of Mt. St. Jean, or jet fighter combat in MiG Alley, the defence of that very defensible defile @ Thermopylae, Chamberlain on the most exposed flank @ Gettysburg, the "run to the South" @ Jutland, Washington or Napoleon mad-galloping away from close pursuers during a battle, or Henry's position @ Agincourt - but generally, I am associated w/ WW2. Being of a certain age - the same age @ which one fondly remembers actually being in the Park when Britt Burns actually used to pitch - WW2 was rally gutted into our minds. Nope, not Vietnam - a war I can actually remember - it was all WW2.

So, w/ great pride, I am resuming my reading on WW2. It seems that the religious reading has finally abated - thought it still has some kick left - but by decision, I've decided finally to dirty myself on the new literature exploring the conflict between the Nazis and Russians - the greatest land war ever fought (9 of every 10 German soldiers killed in WW2 was killed on the Eastern Front). "New Literature" is important - since 1990, lots of more archives and shit are available to scholars, and since the major part of my study of that conflict revolved around the years 1984-1988, it's about time to dip back in.


That fist book - Barbarossa, by Alan Clark - blew me away and opened up to me a conflict that didn't deal w/ the Americans. A whole new world opened up*. So, almost twenty years since I basically sated meself on it, I now feel the urge to go back in. I'd tried before - the huge scholar is David Glantz, and I tied to get through Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War, 1941-1943 (2005) before surrendering @ about page 100 - i need to go back and fix that. But the book i decided to start w/ is Richard Overy's Russia's War, a nice 325 page short intro into the war. And it's great! So good, hard to put down. The frightening thing is the terrible cruelty of the Soviets. I'd finished Burlegh's A New History of the Third Reich w/in the last few months and was shocked @ the complete brutality of the nazis. Why yes, I know of the Holocaust - and however horrible it was, it was only part of what those fucks did. So horrible to read of their violence. But guess what? The Soviets were just as bad. W/ starvation's and ethnic cleanings, they were almost as bad as the Nazi's.

A very many times I feel horrible because our army could be used to really bring good to the world instead of endless wars. I know we did horrible things in Vietnam - horrible things in Iraq and Afghanistan - horrible things in Central America - boy, where this was going was I was gonna put down that at least America is better than the Nazis and soviets - but whats stopping me is the basically same treatment that the Nazi's dealt the Poles or Russians, and the Soviets did on peasant farmers and outspoken leaders, we gave to the Native Americans, the Philippinos, Central Americans, Africans, etc etc etc. ok, so I'll end this string.

But the Soviets were as crazy and evil as the Nazi's - just fucking horrible. Savages both.

Despite my wanting to read the new lit, I still have to read what replaced Barbarossa as the English 'bible' to the Eastern front - 1975's (15y before that magic 1990 date I was writing about earlier) The Road to Stalingrad by John Erickson. It was on the list and hungered over my whole undergrad career - but when it ended, whatever else was on th plate @ the time replaced it. I've got the book - a thick paperback - and want to get to it next. 1975, huh?
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*Jutland and dreadnoughts were also opened up to me in 1984 -same time. Richard Houghs Dreadnought was picked up, read, hit the fascination button, and then followed Arthur J. Marders From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: the Royal Navy in the Fisher era, 1904-1919 - five volumes @ about 400-500 pages each - the longest book I have ever read.