2/2/43 - this day in history

[Guy Profumo]

75 years ago today marked the end of the battle of Stalingrad.

Over 400,000 Soviet troops killed, and total casualties numbered over one million.

[Patrick Thistle]

I'm ashamed to say I really don't know where Stalingrad is.

[Gangster Octopus]

Volgograd...

[Patrick Thistle]

I don't know where that is either. I should look on a map and try to commit it to memory.

[Gangster Octopus]

Used to be called Tsaritsin or something.

[San Bernardhinault]

Down south. Almost equidistant between (the northern edge of) the Black and Caspian seas. It was important because it was the route to the Caspian Sea oil fields which the Germans were desperate for.

[Johnny Velvet]

Is there an argument that the Nazis would have won the European war if they'd captured Stalingrad? I've spoken before (perhaps on here) with people who've said that the Nazis were ultimately doomed the day they decided to invade the USSR due to its sheer size and the disparity of resources in personnel and materiel between the two countries. But if they'd successfully occupied the Caucasus and exploited its mineral wealth they'd have been able to wage war practically indefinitely, wouldn't they?

[San Bernardhinault]

And they'd have cut off Russia's last serious supply of fuel. It's obviously unknowable - there were many factors working against the Nazis by that point: the US had already joined the war, and the German military was overstretched in North Africa, and Italy was already becoming a bit of a mess - but it would have made a serious difference.

[G-Man]

My father fought in Stalingrad. For self-evident reasons, he never talked about the war, except about the horse he had when he was stationed in Denmark. There's an ID photo of him, taken in Stalingrad or just after. He is not yet 20 but looks ten years older. He was lucky to get shot in the arm (or shoulder, I'm not sure) and was evacuated on one of the last planes out of Stalingrad.

Next he was sent to Kursk. I know he arrived at Kursk in late May 1943, as the Germans prepared for battle there. I don't know how long he fought there once the battle commenced in July. At some point he was then posted to Leningrad. So like his father, who in WW1 did battle at Verdun, the Somme and Ypres, mine collected a trio of legendary battles.

After Russia he had a few easy months in Denmark, and then was stationed at Metz in eastern France. He was lucky to be taken POW by the Americans when the Wehrmacht collapsed. His brother, after whom I am named, was taken by the Soviets in 1944 and died in captivity in early 1945.

There are many questions I would have for my father, but the one I really would want to know is this: how did it feel to fight on the side of the regime who had killed your father just a year earlier? I know he had no choice, and there is no challenging of his ethics (whatever they were). But how did a guy like him, whose father died in Gestapo detention, relate to the Third Reich while he was in the field?

[NickSTFU]

I doubt he had time to think about it in the field. In the field he would just be thinking about himself, his immediate front, and his section.

Anyway, fascinating.

[Muukalainen]

Is there an argument that the Nazis would have won the European war if they'd captured Stalingrad?

I don't think so, no, I think it's too much of an extension, though, as Sam says, it would have made a serious difference. I guess the argument goes along the lines of putting the Caucasus to industrial production, shortening your supply lines, and transferring the troops and equipment further north to defeat Leningrad and Moscow and wherever else was left. This would then free resources to repel the Allied invasion from the west. Conquering a territory and then putting that territory to productive use for your own benefit are two entirely different things, and it's difficult to imagine the Soviets leaving anything that would be useful to the Nazis. On the military side, and even on the civilian side for that matter, the Soviets showed repeatedly that they were prepared to absorb any amount of losses in the defence of their homeland, and German resources, as great as they were, were not inexhaustible.

However, a Nazi victory in Stalingrad would have made their victory in Europe for a while a possibility, but the Soviets would have retreated to the east, been supplied through the east, regrouped and fought their way back. For me, what you wrote here

... the Nazis were ultimately doomed the day they decided to invade the USSR due to its sheer size and the disparity of resources in personnel and materiel between the two countries.

is always going to hold true.

[tee rex]

"Not much fun in Stalingrad ... "

One of those Anglo-French differences I remember from school trips was the number of streets named after Stalingrad: none vs many. Communist influence in local government, I guess.

Fascinating stuff, G-man.

[Satchmo Distel]

My father fought in Stalingrad. For self-evident reasons, he never talked about the war, except about the horse he had when he was stationed in Denmark. There's an ID photo of him, taken in Stalingrad or just after. He is not yet 20 but looks ten years older. He was lucky to get shot in the arm (or shoulder, I'm not sure) and was evacuated on one of the last planes out of Stalingrad.

Next he was sent to Kursk. I know he arrived at Kursk in late May 1943, as the Germans prepared for battle there. I don't know how long he fought there once the battle commenced in July. At some point he was then posted to Leningrad. So like his father, who in WW1 did battle at Verdun, the Somme and Ypres, mine collected a trio of legendary battles.

After Russia he had a few easy months in Denmark, and then was stationed at Metz in eastern France. He was lucky to be taken POW by the Americans when the Wehrmacht collapsed. His brother, after whom I am named, was taken by the Soviets in 1944 and died in captivity in early 1945.

There are many questions I would have for my father, but the one I really would want to know is this: how did it feel to fight on the side of the regime who had killed your father just a year earlier? I know he had no choice, and there is no challenging of his ethics (whatever they were). But how did a guy like him, whose father died in Gestapo detention, relate to the Third Reich while he was in the field?

He may have believed that the enemy would be even worse. Better the Devil you know. And the Nazi propaganda machine demonized the Russians as evil incarnate.

The Soviet determination to fight was an even clearer demonstration of soldiers being willing to forget their regime's misdeeds against relatives in, say, Ukraine.

[Nefertiti2]

Thanks for the reminder, Guy.

I remember my father quoting some epigram: "The British gave time. The Americans gave money. The Russians gave blood"

Any little Brexit scrote who brags about how "we stood alone" should be forced to visit the graves of every Russian and German soldier in Stalingrad.

[Gerontophile]

Any little Brexit scrote who brags about how "we stood alone" should be forced to visit the graves of every Russian and German soldier in Stalingrad.

My dad was in the navy, and he had a few stories, one of which involved Archangelsk (sp?) and a mini-mutiny because of something to do with not enough food. I always thought he was lying (because he was an alcoholic arsehole), but apparently, he joined up when he was 15, and served the full load, without dying.

Knowing him, if I were to compare him to a character in literature, it would be Nobby Nobbs. (Or for those of a non-Pterry world, the quartermaster from Catch-22.)

*Reading the last bit back, I realise I haven't read Catch-22. Shocking.

[pebblethefish]

Any little Brexit scrote who brags about how "we stood alone" should be forced to visit the graves of every Russian and German soldier in Stalingrad.

Of course, the little Brexit scrote might turn round and point out that as Stalingrad happened two years after the whole "standing alone" thing, then it has absolutely no relevance.

[Gerontophile]

Of course, the little Brexit scrote might turn round and point out that as Stalingrad happened two years after the whole "standing alone" thing, then it has absolutely no relevance.

This is why I rue not listening in history* at school. Well, that, and the whole 'history repeating itself' thing.

*I dropped it hot-brick wise, cos it was all fucking Hadrian, and royalty dates, and absolute cuntery. So aside from Mr Lavery, and his big biff, there was no point.

[Nefertiti2]

Of course, the little Brexit scrote might turn round and point out that as Stalingrad happened two years after the whole "standing alone" thing, then it has absolutely no relevance.

Of course it has relevance. The "We stood alone" erases the Russians. They confuse "standing alone" in 1940 (apart from the Poles, Free French, Czechs,Indians, Australians Canadians, West Indians, etc) with victory in 1945.

[pebblethefish]

No they don't. Have you asked them?

[Nefertiti2]

I've read a number of comments claiming that far from Britain owing Europe anything Europe should pay us because of the number of Brtish soldiers killed in liberating Europe. I've never seen a mention of, say, Stalingrad or the number of Russians killed. Do you know better?

[Pérou Flaquettes]

This is why I rue not listening in history* at school. Well, that, and the whole 'history repeating itself' thing.

*I dropped it hot-brick wise, cos it was all fucking Hadrian, and royalty dates, and absolute cuntery. So aside from Mr Lavery, and his big biff, there was no point.

Looking at history as dispassionately and objectively as possible, especially of course where one’s own country is involved, not only requires a degree of knowledge but also personal detachment, analysis, dialogue, intellectual humility and the ability and willingness to admit to one’s errors, to one’s own areas of ignorance while remaining extremely open-minded. And I won’t even go into how the political, or religious, dimension of history can seriously complicate matters. Or how one has to show at least a modicum of interest in history in the first place to tackle historic events.

This is an awful lot to expect from the average person who would rather cling on to their stereotypes, their rose-tinted views of history (too often just a few scraps of "knowledge") and indulge in blame culture or resort to other fig-leaf tactics if/when cornered.

Consequently, many people in nations like Britain and France aren’t prepared to face up to even the most basic historical issues or parts of history involving, directly or not, their country. (This is holding us back as a society and without wanting to shoehorn Brexit into everything, it partially explains Brexit.)

As a rule of thumb, the closer the historical event/period (geographically, chronologically, societally etc.), the more difficult it is to teach and get the general public on board. This is why, in short, the teaching of history (not just in schools but in the wider society), especially of one’s own country’s history, in both France and the UK is so fraught with difficulties, so controversial and why it ultimately leads to a disappointingly bland, truncated and too one-dimensional narrative (especially where 19-20th century or contemporary history is concerned, it can be almost total invisible for the most relevant and contemporary periods, eg the British Empire or the French colonial empire, the latter being absent from the French history curriculum for 11-15 pupils, not sure about the British Empire for the same age range or after but I doubt it's much different).

Why? Why on earth are these majorly important periods which, if studied young, would enormously help pupils to better understand contemporary French/British society left out of our history curricula altogether? So it means that the majority of pupils will leave school without having ever studied or come across the story of these empires, of colonisation etc., it's insane. How relevant is it to spend years poring over the minutiae of the Tudor court, over the details of Henry VIII's ghastly marital affairs, over Louis bloody XIV's mistresses and foibles but pretty much ignore the story of the Indian Empire? What is the bloody point of that? I know, it’s political, politicised, weaponised, controversial etc. but do we really have to wait another century or two, basically wait for everybody and the following two generations to be dead and buried, to teach in depth such topics at school or in a wider societal context? It's important to study most periods of history of course and Louis XIV and the Tudors help to understand a lot about our countries, how Europe was shaped etc. but the history curricula are too lop-sided in England/France and, to me, this really falls short of what one would expect from two modern, (comparatively) forward-looking countries like France and the UK.

But then again, keeping people as ignorant as possible and then playing to their prejudices, fears etc. is a pretty basic political tactic so we shouldn't be too surprised.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Examples that illustrate my above post are numerous of course but if we stay on the WWII topic, let’s just quickly remind ourselves how difficult it’s been for France to probe its Vichy past: it took over four decades for the majority of French people to come to terms with the reality of Vichy* (there are still many Vichy apologists/deniers of course but they’re a minority), and it took a US historian, Robert Paxton, to provide the thrust of this new-found awareness, via his seminal book Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 which was first panned by the older French historians and the mainstream media but progressively embraced by the younger generations of historians/by post 1968 activists/etc. Paxton’s book officially put paid to the orthodoxy (in France), "la doxa" as the French say, that Vichy was a victim, that it’d put up a strong resistance to the German occupier etc. (there were, of course, other landmark works that contradicted the official version, such as Marcel Ophuls' 1969 "Le Chagrin et la Pitié"/The Sorrow and the Pity French-Swiss-German documentary, but they reached few people. About the Sorrow and the Pity, it is interesting to note that the then French president - George Pompidou, as the doc was released in France in 1971 - was OK to buy the documentary and air it on French TV but Simone Veil was against its airing and it was only released in cinemas, and 10 yrs later it was broadcast on TV).

While one can easily understand how such jingoistic hermeneutics were deemed necessary in the aftermath of WWII as the nation was in dire need of unity and cohesion (especially after the massive épuration sauvage phase – wild purge – that had taken place in France at the Liberation - started even months before the Liberation - and is likened by some as the modern equivalent of the "Reign of Terror" during the French Revolution, the wild purge was the extra-judicial killings organized by the Resistance and the new authorities following the Liberation. These are estimated to have numbered between 9,000 and 100,000, with the historian Robert Aron citing 40,000; it was also a reaction against the official Vichy épuration between 1940 and 1944), it is difficult to accept that this "keeping people in the dark" phase lasted for so long.

Other pivotal national markers of this facing up to history were the series of high profile trials of war criminals in France (Klaus Barbie in 1987) and major French Nazi collaborators (Paul Touvier in 1994 and Maurice Papon in 1998 – a common thug appointed to the highest state positions, first by De Gaulle himself (!) then by Giscard D’Estaing) that shed a much-needed light on the dark years of Vichy France

[*of course, there was the huge and comprehensive post-war épuration légale period (legal purge) until the amnesty in 1953 and this served as a historical, official acknowledgement of the role of Vichy BUT a deep malaise subsisted long after – especially as the épuration sauvage phase had become massively taboo – and the long self-imposed silence or purdah that the 1953 amnesty legitimised kept a very uneasy lid on things, a malaise that French historians later called "the Vichy syndrome", a comprehensive and complex trauma that is sometimes divided into 4 distinct phases from 1944 to the 1990s. The épurations, both judicial and sauvage, left indelible marks on the French psyche for decades: https://www.counter-currents.com/2015/10/the-epuration/

[. . . ] Le Figaro of April 6, 1946 estimated the number of people arrested during the summer of 1944 at 1 million. According to Philippe Bourdrel (L’Épuration sauvage, volume 2, 394): “we estimate that there were 600,000 to 700,000 people extra-judicially imprisoned between August 20 and October 1, 1944. There were still 250,000 detainees in November 1944.” In his Letter to the Leaders of the Resistance, the writer and former resister Jean Paulhan wrote: “It is no exaggeration to estimate the number of Frenchmen affected in some or another by the crimes of the épuration at between 1,500,000 to 2,000,000.”

[ursus arctos]

I was a Paxton student in graduate school.

He has a deep and profound love of France and the French people and is genuinely pained that he had to labour in that vineyard without French support for most of his career.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

And sorry, hope I'm not derailing this thread... And thanks Guy for starting this thread, very interesting discussion and great contributions, I need to go so I'll bow out now.

PS: I've just seen your post UA, interesting. Yes, I can imagine how he must have felt.

[Nefertiti2]

Thanks Kev7

Rupa Huq MP has complained about how the Modern History A level curriculum has removed the Atlee Labour government from the narrative.