Omer Bartov reviews Grossmann, Merridale

[jtcm]

In the latest Times Literary Supplement, there's an excellent, and movng review of Vassily Grossmann's wartime notes (presernted by Anthony Beevor and others), and Catherine Merridale's book on the Gr. Patriotic War seen at "grunt level" by the Soviet soldier, and his incredible suffering and sacrifice

TLS Bartov review

[Michael Dorosh]

Bartov spouts worse propaganda than Goebbels. Check out his HITLER'S ARMY sometime; he draws stuff out of thin air to try and prove the point that the entire German Army was one big einsatzgruppe. I'd not be surprised to hear that he paints the Soviet Army in glowing terms, it only goes to further his own agenda of painting the Germans in as bad a moral light as possible.

The West is finally coming to the realization that despite its heroics and posturing, without the horrific sacrifice of the Soviet Union, it would have been squirming under the Nazi boot for far longer.

When is this crap going to end? The Eastern Front was widely reported in the popular press during the war, and histories after the war certainly paid at least lip service to the notion that Soviet Russia was somehow involved in the Second World War. Given they were our enemies during detente and threatening to wipe those of us in the west off the face of the earth with nuclear weapons, I hope we can be forgiven at some point for not exalting them to the degree they would have liked. Not to mention that whole notion of Stalin murdering more people than Hitler made them a little less of a heroic figure.

There was a good line in the Nuremburg movie when Maxwell-Fyfe looks over at the Russians and comments with words to the effect of how a pity it is that despite all their suffering during the war, it still was so hard to feel the least bit sorry for the Soviets.

It's like the whole tired "Korea is the forgotten war" notion over and over ad nauseam. How much recognition is required before we can lose these diatribes?

I think the West realized very well how much sacrifice was made by the Soviets; if we haven't made a big deal of showing it, well, we have certainly had good reason not to glorify their system of government.

Perhaps Bartov can one day turn to writing about something he knows about and stop his revisionist drivel.

[ January 26, 2006, 09:22 AM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Melnibone]

I'm reading the Vassily Grossmann book at the moment...powerful stuff indeed.

[76mm]

Dear Michael,

I appreciate your points very well, but if I had to bet, I would say that--at least until the recent spate of WWII shooters--your average youngish American had no idea that the Soviet Union fought in the Second World War at all, would have a 50/50 chance of picking which side they fought on, and would certainly dispute the notion that their contribution was a decisive one (after all, they weren't involved in D-Day, were they?).

This comment obviously doesn't apply to anyone with even a passing knowledge of WWII, but I am usually shocked to find out how little Americans know about history. I wonder how many people watching today even catch the gag line in "Animal House" about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor...

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by 76mm:

Dear Michael,

I appreciate your points very well, but if I had to bet, I would say that--at least until the recent spate of WWII shooters--your average youngish American had no idea that the Soviet Union fought in the Second World War at all, would have a 50/50 chance of picking which side they fought on, and would certainly dispute the notion that their contribution was a decisive one (after all, they weren't involved in D-Day, were they?).

This comment obviously doesn't apply to anyone with even a passing knowledge of WWII, but I am usually shocked to find out how little Americans know about history. I wonder how many people watching today even catch the gag line in "Animal House" about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor...

But if your average US game player was unaware of Kursk, Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad, Kharkov, Bagration, the destruction of the Polish Home Army, Katyn, the T-34, and the Battle of Berlin, do you really think they were any less ignorant of Tunisia, Gela, Salerno, the siege of Brest, Aachen, the Ludendorff Railway Bridge, the Hammelburg Raid, or the meeting on the Elbe?

It's a bit beside the point though - my points are

a) that Bartov would sell his soul to paint the Germans in the worst light possible (not that they need his help for the most part); that would include glorifying the Soviet regime

and

the West has not unfairly "forgotten" anyone, be it US Army Korean war veterans or the struggle of the Soviets in the Great Patriotic War. I think we can be forgiven for not glorifying the regime which murdered thousands of Polish intelligentsia, let the Home Army be wiped out, refused to reinstall democracy, annexed the Baltic states, held Eastern Europe hostage for decades, threatened nuclear war on the west, almost brought it about in Cuba, lied to millions of their own citizens on a daily basis, and ultimately was responsible for the death of millions of people, more than the fascists killed.

Now that the Cold War is over, yes, we can look at the Soviets in a more understanding light; no, I don't hold it against anyone who refused to do so during the Cold War.

[jtcm]

I like Bartov's stuff (I read his book on Hitler's army at the same time as Christopher Browning, and come to think of it at the same time I visited the "Vernichtungskrieg" exhibition at the Museum for the History of Hamburg, around 1993, the one with the photographs and the extracts from German letters), and wouldn;t exactly call it revisionist (reserving that term for Holocaust deniers); and Catherine Merridale's Night of Stone is a very moving history of death in the Soviet Union-- and the repressed memories of suffering.

The Merridale, and the Bartov, is not about painting glowing image of the Soviet system; but to comment on the experience of the Soviet soldier, caught in circumstances of incredible hardship. The review is humane, and powerful, and I found the last paragraph deeply moving.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by jtcm:

I like Bartov's stuff (I read his book on Hitler's army at the same time as Christopher Browning, and come to think of it at the same time I visited the "Vernichtungskrieg" exhibition at the Museum for the History of Hamburg, around 1993, the one with the photographs and the extracts from German letters), and wouldn;t exactly call it revisionist (reserving that term for Holocaust deniers...

You're arguing, then, that there are grades of revisionism?

Bartov appeals to the ignorant. Browning's book on Police units in the Holocaust was good; I wouldn't put him in the same category as Bartov, whose use of primary research was poor, especially in comparison to Browning.

Arguing that the Germans were better/worse than the Soviets can only lead to Bartov coming also to a conclusion on the number of angels he can fit on the head of the proverbial pin.

I wonder if Bartov would ever quote a German soldier who decried the lack of religious worship under the Nazis?

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by jtcm:

The review is humane, and powerful, and I found the last paragraph deeply moving.

I found the review too flowery by half, but I suppose literary pretensions are expected of the reviewers in the TLS.

The bit of the review that most struck me was the phrase "the more we learn about the Soviet Union, the more we realize that the term totalitarianism simply does not fit the bill".

I am baffled as to what the reviewer thinks we have discovered that might cause us to think that the USSR was anything other than totalitarian. If the Soviet Union was not an example of a totalitarian state, then I don't know what the hell a state has to do to qualify.

All the best,

John.

[zmoney]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

The bit of the review that most struck me was the phrase "the more we learn about the Soviet Union, the more we realize that the term totalitarianism simply does not fit the bill".

I am baffled as to what the reviewer thinks we have discovered that might cause us to think that the USSR was anything other than totalitarian. If the Soviet Union was not an example of a totalitarian state, then I don't know what the hell a state has to do to qualify.

All the best,

John. [/QB]

Time tends to wash away all sins. I think that is the case with this author. I think it also applies to people around the wourld when they say Mao was a great and just leader but tend to forget the 35-70 million people he killed.

[Chichikov]

The bit of the review that most struck me was the phrase "the more we learn about the Soviet Union, the more we realize that the term totalitarianism simply does not fit the bill".

I think he simply objects to the term totalitarianism, because it equates Stalin's Soviet Union with Hitler's Germany, when the two were very different (although equally evil). The whole article is shoddily written, but apparently he's arguing that totalitarianism is too vague a term to be useful as anything else than a slur.

[-E]

Originally posted by 76mm:

I appreciate your points very well, but if I had to bet, I would say that--at least until the recent spate of WWII shooters--your average youngish American had no idea that the Soviet Union fought in the Second World War at all

I sincerely believe that... as an example, I was just watching a documentary about the making of the film "The Battle of Britain," and in it they interviewed Americans who worked at the US Embassy in London. The embassy employees were asked about the (real) Battle of Britain. They looked like the worst of Jay Leno's on-the-street comedy interviews/questioning. The part that makes it even worse, is that the documentary/questioning was filmed in 1968!!! (read: almost 40 years closer to the events!)

[Xenophile]

I'm not certain what point Michael is making here. It surely can't be that the German Army actually carried out their moral responsibilities to Soviet prisoners of war, or that they made proper provision for the civilian population they controlled, or that they didn't massacre many of those civilians as 'reprisals' or simply call them partisans and massacre them anyway.

They didn't steal or destroy their food or shelter as a matter of policy? It is not to excuse the crimes of the Soviet state against their own people to accuse the German Army of at best, indifference to the deaths of millions of civilians and culpability in more deliberate exterminations. So what is the point - that Bartov may exaggerate what they did? How many demons are on the head of the pin?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Xenophile:

I'm not certain what point Michael is making here. It surely can't be that the German Army actually carried out their moral responsibilities to Soviet prisoners of war, or that they made proper provision for the civilian population they controlled, or that they didn't massacre many of those civilians as 'reprisals' or simply call them partisans and massacre them anyway.

They didn't steal or destroy their food or shelter as a matter of policy? It is not to excuse the crimes of the Soviet state against their own people to accuse the German Army of at best, indifference to the deaths of millions of civilians and culpability in more deliberate exterminations. So what is the point - that Bartov may exaggerate what they did? How many demons are on the head of the pin?

What you call exaggeration, a serious historian calls at best flawed research, at worst outright lying.

I'd be the last one to defend the Third Reich, the Nazis, or indeed the Wehrmacht from culpability in war crimes. I think there is a lot yet to be learned about it all happened. Simply writing the Germans off as "inherently evil" or "barbarians" is at the end of the day quite dangerous, as it presumes something like that could never happen again.

I was watching Judgement at Nuremburg again last night, and the stuff that comes out of Burt Lancaster's mouth during his first speech on the dock was chillingly similar to stuff I've heard about the US Patriot Act. Which isn't to mean I believe the US is going down the road to totalitarianism (hey, according to Bartov, how do you even tell, right?) but it does mean things aren't so black and white that you can brand an entire nation. Bartov would argue that you can't judge an entire race the way the Nazis did; why then does it become ok to judge an entire nationality?

[Xenophile]

I don't know enough to properly judge Bartov's thesis on the nature of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. It does seem that that conflict was on a more vicious level than those against other enemies. My reading of him was that he believed that the German Army's complicity and involvement in the general atrocity of the war in the Soviet Union had been overshadowed by the attention paid to the specifically Nazi organisations. Perhaps he tries to swing opinion too far that way.

(From my intermittent reading here, I really hadn't held you to be in any way sympathetic to the Nazis, nor do I now. I just thought your view of Bartov was expressed more vehemently than seemed warranted.)

[Michael Dorosh]

Well, its important to know where we are all coming from; we've had our share of Junior David Irvings on the forum.

Bartov makes many conclusions which are probably true; I don't like his methodology and I think he "expresses his views more vehemently than seems warranted." But the most important thing he does is get people talking about these issues - as indeed, we are right now.

[Xenophile]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

and I think he "expresses his views more vehemently than seems warranted."

Ouch!

On another matter the thread touched on, I think the role of the USSR in WWII is simply not part of the common cultural knowledge, certainly in the UK. Even where 20th century history is taught in schools, the importance of the Nazi-Soviet conflict isn't normally recognised, let alone emphasised.

It's not uncommon to realise that an intelligent, better-than-normally informed person simply has no idea of the hugely greater relative scale of the war on the other side of Europe compared to say, Italy or North Africa. Or is completely unaware of it. (I suppose 'Enemy at the Gates' may at least have widened common knowledge a little.)

I'd concur with the notion that the Cold War is responsible for that ignorance and though that really isn't a barrier now, WWII is sufficiently long ago that the details(!) of it are hardly likely now to become part of common knowledge.