UBC: Enemy at the Gates
Aug. 1st, 2009 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyCraig, William. Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad. 1973. New York: Penguin Books, 2001.
I found this book deeply problematic. Partly this is because I am irredeemably fussy and will nitpick anything to death, given half a chance. But I think my fundamental concern is a valid and important one. In this book, Craig has made some choices with which I vehemently disagree. One is to tell the story of Stalingrad rather than the history, which he does by largely turning the progress of the siege into a series of interlaced human interest stories. The other, related choice is to radically decontextualize the battle of Stalingrad.
What do I mean by that? I mean that, for the vast majority of the book, it is possible, and indeed encouraged, to forget that the German soldiers with whom we are asked to sympathize are in fact the tools of an abhorrent, genocidal ideology and government. (It is never encouraged, and rarely possible, to forget that the Russians are the tools of Communism--which Craig, writing in 1973, clearly expects his readers to find abhorrent.) Craig uses the word Nazi as little as possible, and never in connection with the men whose stories he follows; when he mentions the Germans' passionate belief in their ideology (which he does very rarely), it's only the cult of the Führer and the German Fatherland, never the equally prevalent belief in the racial inferiority of the Slavs and the German Manifest Destiny* to rule all of eastern Europe and most of Asiatic Russia also. He describes the Einsatzgruppen dismissively as "homicidal maniacs" (11), and clearly feels that he can place the blame for the genocide of the Jews only on them, leaving his German soldiers and officers untainted. He uses the word "holocaust" more than once, without any seeming awareness that it has particular connotations in any discussion of German participation in World War II, and late in the book, he says, "Paulus stopped trying to convince his superiors that further resistance was mass murder" (356)--without any recognition that "mass murder" was actually happening elsewhere in German-occupied Europe, in Auschwitz, Sobibor, and the other death camps.
Also, while Craig is quick and lavish in his description of the suffering of German and Axis POWs at the hands of the Russians, he absolutely and categorically ignores the systematic, programmatic starvation of Russian POWs by the Germans, and the equally systematic, programmatic, articulated as a matter of policy starvation of the civilian population in German-occupied Ukraine. He's stacked the deck, in other words, and I don't find that acceptable.
Do I think that the German soldiers and officers of the Sixth Army deserve sympathy? I certainly do. Their sufferings were horrible and pointless, and I feel sympathy--sometimes unwillingly--for anyone who believed in Hitler and was betrayed (which would be everyone who believed in Hitler). But I don't think that the outcome of the battle of Stalingrad, and the suffering of the Sixth Army, somehow negates the reasons and the choices that put them there in the first place. The Wehrmacht and its soldiers were not innocent of the Nazis' crimes. Craig's sentimentality and valorization of warfare are horribly misplaced in the story he's telling (even more horribly misplaced if he were actually writing history), and his belief that the battle of Stalingrad is a tragedy, the "gradual moral and physical disintegration of the German soldiers" (xii), is predicated on the idea that the Germans weren't morally bankrupt before they ever crossed the Don.
And I find that idea, as I said, deeply problematic.
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*Yes, I'm using that term deliberately and with intentional multi-directional irony.
I found this book deeply problematic. Partly this is because I am irredeemably fussy and will nitpick anything to death, given half a chance. But I think my fundamental concern is a valid and important one. In this book, Craig has made some choices with which I vehemently disagree. One is to tell the story of Stalingrad rather than the history, which he does by largely turning the progress of the siege into a series of interlaced human interest stories. The other, related choice is to radically decontextualize the battle of Stalingrad.
What do I mean by that? I mean that, for the vast majority of the book, it is possible, and indeed encouraged, to forget that the German soldiers with whom we are asked to sympathize are in fact the tools of an abhorrent, genocidal ideology and government. (It is never encouraged, and rarely possible, to forget that the Russians are the tools of Communism--which Craig, writing in 1973, clearly expects his readers to find abhorrent.) Craig uses the word Nazi as little as possible, and never in connection with the men whose stories he follows; when he mentions the Germans' passionate belief in their ideology (which he does very rarely), it's only the cult of the Führer and the German Fatherland, never the equally prevalent belief in the racial inferiority of the Slavs and the German Manifest Destiny* to rule all of eastern Europe and most of Asiatic Russia also. He describes the Einsatzgruppen dismissively as "homicidal maniacs" (11), and clearly feels that he can place the blame for the genocide of the Jews only on them, leaving his German soldiers and officers untainted. He uses the word "holocaust" more than once, without any seeming awareness that it has particular connotations in any discussion of German participation in World War II, and late in the book, he says, "Paulus stopped trying to convince his superiors that further resistance was mass murder" (356)--without any recognition that "mass murder" was actually happening elsewhere in German-occupied Europe, in Auschwitz, Sobibor, and the other death camps.
Also, while Craig is quick and lavish in his description of the suffering of German and Axis POWs at the hands of the Russians, he absolutely and categorically ignores the systematic, programmatic starvation of Russian POWs by the Germans, and the equally systematic, programmatic, articulated as a matter of policy starvation of the civilian population in German-occupied Ukraine. He's stacked the deck, in other words, and I don't find that acceptable.
Do I think that the German soldiers and officers of the Sixth Army deserve sympathy? I certainly do. Their sufferings were horrible and pointless, and I feel sympathy--sometimes unwillingly--for anyone who believed in Hitler and was betrayed (which would be everyone who believed in Hitler). But I don't think that the outcome of the battle of Stalingrad, and the suffering of the Sixth Army, somehow negates the reasons and the choices that put them there in the first place. The Wehrmacht and its soldiers were not innocent of the Nazis' crimes. Craig's sentimentality and valorization of warfare are horribly misplaced in the story he's telling (even more horribly misplaced if he were actually writing history), and his belief that the battle of Stalingrad is a tragedy, the "gradual moral and physical disintegration of the German soldiers" (xii), is predicated on the idea that the Germans weren't morally bankrupt before they ever crossed the Don.
And I find that idea, as I said, deeply problematic.
---
*Yes, I'm using that term deliberately and with intentional multi-directional irony.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-01 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-01 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-01 06:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's a pretty significant failure on Craig's part. When I saw your post title and first few sentences, I thought "but I kind of liked the movie!" and went on interested to see if the problems you saw had any bearing on the things I liked -- only to discover that aside from the title and the focus on Stalingrad, this book and that film are apparently COMPLETELY OPPOSITE. Like, opposite sides of the war opposite. (Have you seen Enemy at the Gates? Jude Law and Rachel Weiss and Joseph Fiennes, and it's notable to me for being the one WWII movie I've ever seen without a single American or British character in it. Plus the only American actor in a top role plays a German, whereas the Russians are played by Brits. But I digress.)
The unthinking use of the word "holocaust" can stand as a nice synecdoche for the flaws as a whole, I think. I mean, really. I'm generally in favor of viewing everybody as human, however twisted and wrong, and I'm quite in favor of extending a bit more sympathy to the rank-and-file, who may have been more cogs in the wheel than the ones driving the truck -- but you don't get to do that by sweeping context itself under the rug. That's called cheating. And bad scholarship, to boot.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-01 06:50 pm (UTC)And--I should be fair--he is not unsympathetic to the Russians. But he seems to have been seduced by the Tragic Grandeur (that's my irony there, not his; Craig seems to be devoid of a sense of irony except in the broadest and most brutal sense--of which there was plenty to go around for the Germans) of the fall of the Sixth Army; he's much more interested in the Germans falling apart than he is in the Russians holding it together. And once the counter-offensive starts, he deserts the Russians' POV almost entirely. The division in his head that seems to be important is East vs. West, rather than Nazis vs. non-Nazis. It's very weird to read.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-01 07:02 pm (UTC)Done in the context of a human interest narrative, but that's what movies are good at. Discursive history, not so much. So if you can tolerate a Russian-perspective view of Stalingrad wrapped up in the Ubiquitous Love Story, you might enjoy the movie.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-01 09:51 pm (UTC)The prof warned us that, while the writer had an excellent grasp of facts, the book was written in 1968 and had a huge axe to grind with China. She pointed us to a few paragraphs where he was actually arguing about whose cavemen were better and how that totally affected the present day culture, then asked us to be on the lookout for that kind of BS.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-02 12:23 pm (UTC)Came out at about the same time as this one, but narrated the Battle of Stalingrad from the Russian side. Emphasized Stalin's "stuff humans into the meat-grinder until it chokes" strategy.
My memory is hopeless.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-03 03:24 pm (UTC)For all that, I would say that in this case the movie exceeded the expectations of the book.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 11:01 am (UTC)I totally agree that a sentimental valorization of warfare is a horribly inappropriate lens through which to view the Battle of Stalingrad, but I have to take issue with the sweeping generalisation that the German soldiers were all, to a man, morally bankrupt before they ever crossed the Don. Because it's all much more complicated than that. Because it's easy with hindsight, and coming from another country, to say Nazis = Evil, and everyone who didn't realise that and start fighting against them = evil. It's a lot harder when you're embedded in a specific historical and social context. The German soldiers did go through hell on earth on the Eastern front - and they were drafting pensioners and teenagers by that point, basically anyone male who still had all four limbs - which isn't to say that they weren't fighting on the wrong side.
But it's not as simple as saying "The Germans were all already morally bankrupt, therefore their suffering doesn't count." Craig's book sounds dreadful, but it's possible to oversimplify in the other direction, too.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 11:05 pm (UTC)(I didn't say "all German soldiers were morally bankrupt"--I said I found Craig's implicit assertion that all German soldiers were good, morally pure men before Stalingrad deeply problematic. That's not the same thing.)
I also don't like to talk about morality as a basis of judgment, because it's always situational and subjective; one person's deeply moral action can be another person's worst sin, and what do you do with the evidence about Germans who believed that the genocide of the Jews was a moral imperative?
I think, however, that if an author wants to argue for this kind of moral degradation specifically at Stalingrad (or any other crisis point), he or she has to either (a.) be able to prove that any specific German soldier did not know about any of the profoundly immoral actions of the Germans--and from what I understand, it would have been hard for any German soldier not to know about the Einsatzgruppen--or (b.) be willing (and capable) of talking about the reverse-polarity morality indoctrinated by Nazi Germany. AND be willing (and capable) of talking about the real moral quandaries faced by Germans who did not agree with the Nazis, but believed that they were doing what was right for Germany. And by those Germans who didn't agree with the Nazis, and didn't think they were doing what was right for Germany, but couldn't, for whatever reason, hold onto those abstract principles (and there were plenty of reasons--I don't know that I personally would have had the courage to take a stand if I had had the great misfortune to be living in Germany in the 1930s).
My personal feeling is that, by the time they reached Stalingrad, no one in the German army could have had the kind of moral purity Craig seems to imagine--and not even because of the Nazis, but simply because of the realities of warfare. (I also don't think anyone on the Allied side had that kind of moral purity, either.)
I also never said their suffering doesn't count. Because I don't believe that at all.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 04:56 pm (UTC)I don't really have a problem with saying that that wasn't moral. There really isn't any moral framework that allows you to get away with that sort of stance - it's purely self-serving (although I agree that there are far trickier grey areas, especially as they relate to sexuality).
if an author wants to argue for this kind of moral degradation specifically at Stalingrad (or any other crisis point), he or she has to either (a.) be able to prove that any specific German soldier did not know about any of the profoundly immoral actions of the Germans--and from what I understand, it would have been hard for any German soldier not to know about the Einsatzgruppen--or (b.) be willing (and capable) of talking about the reverse-polarity morality indoctrinated by Nazi Germany
I'm not sure about this. I think a lot of people feel that they aren't responsible for sins committed by their government (otherwise we'd all feel a hell of a lot worse about the Middle East) as long as they weren't actively involved in committing that sin themselves. There's a still a long way to fall from "basically decent human being who doesn't want to think too hard about what their government is up to" to "active rapist and child-murderer". The Eastern front was undoubtedly hugely traumatic in this respect - but it sounds as if Craig is making the German soliders out to be a great deal more virtuous even than this rather grubby claim.
simply because of the realities of warfare
I would totally agree with this, but then I don't share Craig's view of warfare as a fundamentally valorous enterprise!
I also never said their suffering doesn't count.
No, you didn't. I confounded your criticisms of the book with some of the criticism made in the comments and I apologise for that.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 11:25 pm (UTC)It sounds like the kind of book that would leave me with an eye twitch an hour after I read it. Now, it's true that people have a way of blurring over the right or wrongs of our government. The Middle East is only a small part of it and the most recent history. If you ever did serious reading into the history of the U.S. you'd dig up a whole lot of things that we would find shocking and high school doesn't teach us. No, you have to pay money for college education to get your hands on real history, which is hardly surprising. At one time the U.S. military were at the beck and call of richest men in the country. The Pullman strike in and of itself was a battle between workers who wanted out of a system as horrible as theirs and the private military and U.S. military which happened all across the country.
Anyone see that Men In Black movie, the first one? That line by Tommy Lee Jones sticks out. "The person is smart, people are dumb, panicky and you know it." Which is rather true actually. For the past 4 years we got stuck with a moron who won using fear tactics. On the one hand, the author's version of war in general and Germans in particular is laughable, but on the other hand...the fact that the Germans continued their work under the Nazi Regime even with enough experience to personally witness the atrocity is not surprising. Humans don't like confronting that sort of thing, we don't like working so hard against the 'word' of whichever society and culture they live in. We don't like going against the tide, and we don't like seeing certain things because it means we'd have to deal with it.
Do you know that all the cool stuff and species fantasy writers create? Much as I don't believe in them, I keep a 1% uncertainty under my belt; because the talent we have for ignoring things we don't want to see is breathtaking and what goes under our noses is incredible enough as it is without bringing in, say, magic battles into it. The banks have made a killing off our misfortune and the politicians glad handing them are going merrily along, yet do you see people trying to initiate a 1 million person march on Washington D.C? The line shouldn't be, 'you can't handle the truth', the line should be, 'you don't want the truth.'