The 'untalented men' Grossman spotted on the Bug

Wishing all readers of this blog a happy and blessed feast of St Brigid. Today is traditionally held as the first day of Spring in Ireland.

Tomorrow is the anniversary  of the Red Army victory at Stalingrad.

On February 2, 1943 the battle at Stalingrad finally ended. Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus of the German 6th Army surrendered. It was the first time in German history that a field marshal surrendered.

There was no cameraman to film the capture of Paulus.

But for the Soviet victory on the River Volga what might have been the course of the war?

Three days earlier in Berlin, on January 30, which was the 10th anniversary of Hitler's coming to power, Goebbels read out a proclamation that included this nonsense: "The heroic struggle of our soldiers on the Volga should be a warning for everybody to do the utmost for the struggle for Germany's freedom and the future of our people, and thus in a wider sense for the maintenance of our entire continent."

On June 22, 1941 the German Army crossed the River Bug. Vasily Grossman in his historical novel 'Stalingrad' writes about that event on the Polish Russian border:

Many of those who were usually most timid and silent, seemingly untalented men whom nobody noticed, revealed a wonderful strength. And sometimes he glimpsed an unexpected void in the eyes of commanders who only the day before had seemed the loudest, most energetic and self-confident; now they seemed lost, crushed and pathetic. [page 112]

What a powerful observation. It was those seemingly untalented and unnoticed men, who changed the tide at Stalingrad and subsequently went on to Berlin.