Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman: War and Peace set in the 20th Century

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“Stalingrad” by Vasily Grossman opens with the sentence:

“On 29 April 1942 Benito Mussolini’s train pulled into Salzburg station, now hung with both Italian and German flags.”

In the first two chapters of this thousand-page novel are a description of a meeting between Adolph Hitler and the Italian fascist dictator. Mussolini is the older of the two, but the junior partner. Mussolini notes the signs of age and exhaustion in the 53-year-old Hitler. Hitler notes the decline in square-jawed Italian who is approaching his 60^th year.

Hitler describes his plans for a post-war Nazi-dominated Europe.  As he does, Mussolini sees Hitler as vain and stupid. Mussolini knows he is the smarter of the two, but Hitler has such overwhelming numbers in men and machines, that he can only accept his role as the junior partner. 

Hitler believes one great thrust into Russia will put him in control of all of Europe. Britain will capitulate, America will stay away, and he will be able to concentrate on the new world he created. 

Nothing turned out as Hitler planned.

Grossman is a wonderful storyteller.  This novel in two volumes is nearly 2,000 pages, “War and Peace” set in the 20^th Century centered on Stalingrad.  I read second volume “Life and Fate” in 2015.  The first volume was just published in English translation. 

Grossman was a Russian war correspondent throughout the Second World War. Russians everywhere read his dispatches from the front. 

That storytelling ability pulls the reader in, keeping the vast tale personal and close.  After showing the plans of Hitler through the jealous eyes of Mussolini, the next few chapters follow Vavilov, a father in his forties who gets a notice to report for military service the next morning. His son is already in the Army. Vavilov looks with love around his hut and does what he can to make sure his wife and family can survive the next winter without him.

Next we are at a dinner party in Stalingrad. The Nazi armies are still far off, but relentlessly advancing.  The group of professional workers, engineers, doctors, academics, speculate about what will happen to Stalingrad, to Russia, to themselves. 

Then we switch again to following a woman who is an industrial chemist checking for pollution in Soviet factories.  Just Tolstoy moved from ordinary life to war and back, Grossman draws a panorama of the battle for Stalingrad.

At the center of the story is the first mass attack on the city by the Nazis which begins with hundreds of bombers dropping more than a thousand tons of bombs, including fire bombs on the city.  Before I read the book, I thought mass fire-bombing raids began with the British attack on Hamburg.  The Germans turned Stalingrad into an inferno, incinerating thousands who were not killed by high explosives.

As the German ground attack nears the Volga River on the east side of the city and looks as if it will crush all resistance.  The Russians stop the Germans and counterattack. One of the long sad stories within the novel follows one battalion holding back a German attack to the last defender. 

I loved “Life and Fate” and hope to re-read it next year, now that I have finished the fist volume of this 1,800-page tale of the battle that was the beginning of the end of the Nazi attack on Russia.

Old Soldier: New Ignition

I just finished walking two miles because I rented a car with a pushbutton ignition--and I dropped the key!

I rented a 2019 Mitsubishi SUV to bring my son home for the 4th holiday, then to visit his sister Lauren and Godparents Stanley and Terry Morton and in Richmond.

Today I took some recycling to the drop-off point before returning the SUV. As I left the center, I dropped the keys, but the ignition was running so I drove away. I stopped a mile away to an Asian grocery store and the car would not restart. No key.

I knew where the key was, so I called the recycling center. They have a phone with a real answering machine. While I was leaving the message, the manager picked up, we made a couple of jokes about keys, and I walked the rest of the way.

As I returned, the only parked car on the side of the street where I was parked was my rental car. The street sweeper was 50 feet away. I jumped in the the car and took off before I got a $25 ticket.

After that, I bought pickled ginger and went home. Now I am going to return the rental car.

Tank Cannon Splits Turret in Half Every Time We Fire

Every time a gunner pulls his trigger in a tank and fires the main gun, the turret is split in  half as the gun recoils--stopping just a couple of inches before the rear of the turret.

As the gun snaps back into place, the spent shell pops from the breach, a nearly yard-long cylinder of hot aluminum that bounces from the back of the turret to the turret floor.

I was thinking about that black cannon cutting the turret in half and the clattering cannon shell bouncing in the turret because I am reading "Master and Commander" by Patrick O'Brian. This exciting book about late 18th Century sea battles explains gunnery at sea in considerable detail, including the injuries common when firing a battery of muzzle-loaded cannons on a ship at sea.  Crushed feet, burned faces, smashed arms, bodies trapped between guns, all these injuries happen frequently enough for Captain Jack Aubrey to say during a long fight, "The guns are as deadly to the crew as to the enemy."

It reminded me that I could not remember anyone who was injured by our 105mm cannon snapping back in a black blur of recoil then spitting a spent shell as it returned to its lethal place.  I am sure many armor crewman have been injured in a tank turret in the hundred years since tanks debuted on the battlefield, but it did not happen in my tank.

I am glad to have dangerous fiction and safe reality.