"…The Battle of Stalingrad has a different character since most noncombatants had been evacuated across the Volga before the worst fighting began. So I understood that any book on the subject would be focused more on the battle itself rather than the texture of everyday life under siege. When Antony Beevor's "Stalingrad, the Fateful Siege: 1942-1943" appeared two years ago, the reviews were unanimously favorable. Although I understood that Beevor was not sympathetic to the left, I was convinced that his book would be a useful introduction.
My only other exposure to the topic was a powerful German antiwar film titled "Stalingrad", directed by Joseph Vilsmaier. When I first saw it several years ago, the vision was so apocalyptic that I had some doubts as to the film's verisimilitude. After reading Beevor's book, I saw Vilsmaier's film once again. If anything, it now seems understated. What follows is a review of the book, the film, and related material, followed by other reflections on the importance of Stalingrad for the left of today.
Vilsmaier's film is in some ways is the dark side of Stephen Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan." Unlike Spielberg, Vilsmaier felt no need to make his characters heroic since the reputation of the Wehrmacht is beyond salvation. The only possibility was for him to dramatize the suffering of the everyday German soldier in a war that had no redeeming qualities. Unlike the flag-waving Spielberg, Vilsmaier tells a story of men who kill only to prevent from being killed themselves, and who, when they finally decide to desert, attain a level of humanity that had been denied them up to that point. Unlike Spielberg's wretched war-hawk lead-actor Tom Hanks who dies in the final scene holding off a German tank with a pistol, the two lead characters of "Stalingrad" die in each others arms during a blizzard, in desperate flight from the action…"
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bases more of his German artillery tractors.
