Stalingrad
The Pritzker Military Library offers a smaller event alongside its On War symposium: a chance for a limited number of people to meet with the winner of the year’s lifetime achievement award to discuss one of his books. Last year I wasn’t bright enough to sign up. This year I didn’t hesitate. The chance to hear Antony Beevor* discuss one of his most popular books, Stalingrad, The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 was too good to miss.
Soviet soldiers waiting for the German attack
Reading Stalingrad in preparation for the “book club”, I noticed that Beevor tends to stay in the German point of view. Listening to him talk about writing the book made it clear why he does. As he tells it, he researched the book in the early 1990s during a brief window of opportunity when Russia opened former Soviet archives to foreign researchers**--a period that a fellow researcher described as like the wild west, complete with bribery and the archival equivalent of cattle rustling. The military officers who controlled the archives were not happy that they had been ordered to open them and they greeted researchers with what Beevor described as a mixture of paranoia and naiveté. I found his description of the limitations the “archivists” put on his research, the ways he and his Russian research assistant stretched those limits out of shape, and his fears that they would seize his notes as gripping as any thriller.
The result of his research is an extraordinary book. Stalingrad is more than simple military history. Beevor places the battle in its political, social and military context, beginning with the events leading up to the Nazi invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941 and ending with post-war Stalinist paranoia. He describes not only troop movements and military strategy, but the impact of those movements on civilians and soldiers alike: German soldiers ill-equipped for the Russian winter stealing clothes off dead and dying Russians, women and children digging defenses outside the walls of Moscow and later Stalingrad, peasants harvesting tomatoes and melons as fighters take off and land on a field converted to an airfield. He offers quick portraits of individuals from both sides of the conflict, from the highest officer to the lowest man on the front line, soldier and civilian. He gives us instances of personal courage, political cowardice--and vice-versa. Above all, he is the master of the telling detail. (Want to know how cold it was on the march to Moscow? So cold that Germans used the frozen bodies of Russian soldiers to build corduroy roads when birch trees weren’t available.***)
Beevor’s image of war on the Eastern Front is brutal on almost every level. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of Beevor’s Stalingrad is his portrayal of the conflict between Germany and Russia in terms of the competing megalomania, paranoia and obsessions of Hitler and Stalin. Tragedy doesn’t begin to describe the results.
* Yes, this is the same Antony Beevor I argued with in a recent post. Just because I disagree with him on a point of historiographical policy does not lessen my admiration for his work. The man can write.
**The previous day, historian Gerhard Weinberg had pointed out that British and American scholarship on World War II traditionally focused on the western front not only due to national chauvinism but because prior to 1989 much of the source material dealing with the Eastern Front was inaccessible to Western scholars. So obvious, and yet something I had never considered. *head smack*
***That image may stay with me forever as an illustration not only of extreme weather, but of the fact that it is easier to wage war if you do not think of your enemy as human.
A History of America in 36 Postage Stamps: A Review and a Giveaway
In A History of Britain in 36 Postage Stamps, Chris West took the concept of micro-history to a new degree of micro, using a chronological series of postage stamps as “tiny rectangular time machines”. In his newest work, West uses the microscopic lens of the postage stamp to examine American history.
West cleverly opens A History of America in 36 Postage Stamps with the image of an eighteenth-century British revenue stamp—explicitly making the point that the history of the United States begins with a stamp. He ends with a self-designed stamp from stamps.com, a statement of discomfort about including a picture of himself in a collection that includes portraits of figures such as Washington and Lincoln, and a thoughtful discussion of the personalized stamp as the logical extension that all men are created equal. Along the way he discusses themes of American history drawn from the stamps, including westward expansion, innovation, and individualism. The themes themselves hold no surprises for anyone familiar with the broad outlines of American history, but West consistently chooses quirky or unfamiliar details to illustrate his story and occasionally draws unexpected connections. Perhaps the most interesting element of the book for American readers is the way West uses the history of America's postal service to illuminate social history. (Who knew that post offices became targets for hold-ups during the Great Depression?)
A History of America in 36 Postage Stamps is an engaging read that will appeal to both history buffs and stamp enthusiasts. If you happen to fit either of those categories,* I'm happy to offer you the chance to win an ARC of one of West's two books. If you want your name to go into the hat,** make a comment here on the blog, send me an e-mail, or comment on my Facebook post on or before December 1. Two books. Two ARCs. Two chances to win.
* If you're a regular reader here in the Margins I assume you're a history buff. Or one of my parents.
** Or more accurately, into the medium-size mixing bowl.
Most of this review appeared previously in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
On War, the Symposium– Year 2
Last week My Own True Love and I attended the Pritzker Military Library’s second annual On War Military History Symposium. Last year’s symposium blew me away. Perhaps I’m a little jaded since I’ve spent a lot of the last year reading, writing, and thinking about World Wars I and II, but this year wasn’t quite as extraordinary. Don’t get me wrong, it was a worthwhile afternoon. I still think Tim O’Brien is the berries. I took lots of notes. I came away inspired to write--more, longer, harder, faster, better.
Here’s the short version:
- I’ll go hear Tim O’Brien speak anytime I get the chance. The man is brilliant.
- Biographer Carlo D’Este gave me hope that I still have time to write a substantial body of work. He wrote six major books after a 20-year career in the military. His piece of advice for writing successful historical non-fiction: four little words, “Tell me a story.” So important to remember. So easy to forget.
- I’m still arguing in my head* with historian Antony Beevor, winner of this year’s Pritzker award for lifetime achievement in military writing. Beevor stated that he worries about “outsiders”** writing military history because they don’t “understand what armies are about.” [Insert sputtering here] Really, Mr. Beevor? Obviously my annoyance with this position is personal as well as theoretical. But leaving aside the question of whether an outside perspective can be valuable,*** it seems to me that “what armies are about” changes from century to century if not decade to decade. Anyone want to weigh in here?
- The symposium is organized around the Pritzker’s lifetime achievement winners, which means that the speakers tend to be of a certain age. More specifically, the history of the history business being what it is, the speakers tend to be men of a certain age. Without any disrespect for the panelists, all of whom are accomplished by any standard, by the end of the afternoon I was ready to see some different faces (and perspectives) on the podium: younger, browner, not male. Surely it’s possible to cast the net a little wider for interviewers.
Grumbling aside, my big takeaway from the conference was the resonance between statements made by Tim O’Brien and Carlo D’Este in two different panels.
- According to O’Brien, “History deals with abstractions. Literature is the reverse of history. It focuses on the individual. History can’t report to us LBJ’s dreams. His private conversations. It can’t report what it does not know. Literature reports what we do not know and cannot know.”
- According to D’Este, “When you write about war, what you’re really writing about is people. What men and women endure.”
Thinking about the relationships and disjunctions between those two statements will keep me amused for months. What do you think?
*And occasionally out loud. My Own True Love is very patient.
** i.e. people who never served in the military.
***Yes. The answer is yes.