My first Carell book

[Krautman]

Some CMBB scenarios mention his work as a source, so just recently, i bought Carell's two books on the war in the east at a used books sale. Right now I'm a few hundred pages into "Unternehmen Barbarossa" (the one covering 41-43).

The first thing i noticed was his writing style, different from any other book's i've read before. Carell makes ample use of scant military language with all this dashing special vocabulary for attack, defense etc. and word omissions (e.g. "South-east Rshev" instead of "South-east of Rshev"). Even more strange is the use of Landser slang, which he himself, as one could assume, probably never used in spoken language. Isn't designating a bomb "Höllenei" (~"infernal egg")in a (history!) book on the verge of laughableness?

Carell's soldiers, Russians and especially Germans, never (at least as far as i've read) question the nature of the war they're caught in, they only care about their unit's military success. They're all good buddies, who stick together in any situation. And, of course, both sides pay deference to each other. They were just soldiers doing their job etc.

Carell's evocation of the image of an epic chivalrous struggle, a great adventure any participant can be proud to have taken part in, is inappropiately dramatic historiography at the very least, but not necessarily propaganda.

But then, in-between some nice anecdotes on Richard Sorge, the British secret service and the newly invented aerial reconnaissance in high altitudes, there is this bold theory that Stalin wanted to attack Europe after ~"the capitalist and the fascist gamecocks had exausted themselves"... (page 58 of my 1965 German copy)

Is there any truth to this? It sounds ridiculous to me. Stalin had much work consolidating what he already had, right? But if you carry on Carell's thoughts, then attacking Russia was a preemptive strike from the German point of view... The "Polish attack" on the Gleiwitz broadcast staion comes to mind... And further on into the book, mutilations of Germans captured by the Red Army are described in detail. The treatment of Russian POWs isn't mentioned at all. The Generalplan Ost, Einsatzgruppen genocide and W-SS/Wehrmacht war crimes do not exist in Carell's world. This makes me wonder why this book is on sale in Germany- though Carell could always claim the book is merely focused on frontline fighting, and thus doesn't contain these things.

The military facts are something i cannot comment on, although the history buffs around here will know. The Russians are usually described as brave, hardy soldiers, which they surely were, but Carell probably stresses that just to make the Germans stand out even more. The casualty rates he gives are questionable from my perspective. In battles like the sieges of Libau (Latvia), the Brest-Litowsk fortress or the Bialowicza forest (Poland), the Germans took, according to Carell, much less casualties than the Red Army, which is strange considering the nature of a siege.

Additionally, the mass-suicide assaults are there. In the Jelnja/Yelnya area, for example, Carell's Russians attack in rows, arms linked, over and over again in the same spot. Later on in the book, a mongolian (44th?) cavalry division conducts a mass cavalry assault against Mg- and artillery-reinforced defenders.

Is this falsified? What's you opinion on Carell?

I have read books on war before, but Ernst Jünger uses decent prose and not that shameless "Völkischer Beobachter"-style propagandistic language, and he has his marble cliffs and his original name, as opposed to Carell. And Jünger never claimed to write historiography.

I do confess that Carell's book is imho somewhat fascinating if regarded as an adventure novel, but repulsive if you consider it's supposed to be a history book of sorts.

Greetings

Krautman

[JasonC]

Carrell is a well known Nazi propagandist and nothing he says can be trusted. Everything he says could have been written by Goebbels and some of it was.

[David I]

Krautman,

Carell's books "Hitler Moves East" and "Scorched Earth" were the very first books I read on the Eastern Front. Did inspire me to read more.

You will notice a trend in all his writing that is pro-German and has a weird "We're winning! We're winning! Oh, we lost." pattern repeated many times.

DavidI

[HeinzBaby]

Sven Hassel's 'Wheels of Terror' did it for me, set the trigger to find out more...

Was a young impressionable school kid then, first book about the Russian Front I had ever read...

Played 'Yelnya Stare' on the BB demo, found out Hassel wasn't all Bull$hite afterall

[JasonC]

Yelna Stare is a cakewalk for any Russian player who knows what he is doing. The tanks would be enough with a third the infantry. The infantry would be enough without the tanks. Together, you can easily eat the entire defense and inflict more than you lose.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Krautman:

Some CMBB scenarios mention his work as a source, so just recently, i bought Carell's two books on the war in the east at a used books sale.

If only you'd have deferred your purchase by six weeks, you could have had a Christmas Carrell.

All the best,

John.

[Santosdiablo]

Well propaganda is propaganda

It is much easier to live in propaganda world where the soviets just walk straight forward into gun fire and just die

That is allways much easier then to be in the real world

[Krautman]

Originally posted by David I:

You will notice a trend in all his writing that is pro-German and has a weird "We're winning! We're winning! Oh, we lost." pattern repeated many times.

DavidI

Yes, that's a great description. Carell does often use "we" when one would rather write "the german armed forces" (even as a german). In 1992, he also published a book whose english title would be

"Stalingrad: Victory [!] and Downfall of the 6th Army". Looks like Pauly missed some facts there.

A quote: "They died so that NS-Germany would live". Another rather bold theory is that the war was not lost after Stalingrad...

I've done a little googling, and it is incomprehensible to me how Carell could launch a second career after 1945. In 1944, he actively forwarded an initiative to hunt the Budapest jews.

This is what he wrote in an official letter to state secretary Wilhelm Keppler, among other things Hitler's personal advisor in economy questions (my translation, sorry in advance for any mistakes):

"The planned action [against the Budapest jews] will, considering its dimension, attract great public interest abroad and will surely arouse a fierce response. The adversaries will scream and talk of manhunt etc. and, using atrocity propaganda, try to adrenalise their own sentiment and that of the neutrals. I would like to suggest guarding against these things by creating inducement and justification for this action, e.g. findings of explosives in jewish club houses and synagogues, sabotage arrangement, upheaval plans, attacks on police officers, large-scale illegal currency transfer ("Devisenschiebungen großen Stils") aiming to undermine the hungarian currency. The capstone under [=base of] such an action ought to be an especially gross case, which is then made use of to justify the great raid ("Großrazzia")."

I can't understand why he was not prosecuted at Nürnberg, this document was available to them.

Greetings

Krautman