Sunday, July 11, 2021

Jonathan Dimbleby’s epic account of Operation Barbarossa

Jonathan Dimbleby’s ‘Barbararossa - How Hitler Lost the War’, published this year, has to be considered one of the finest pieces of writing on the failed German invasion of Russia.

Martin Sixsmith writes of the book: ‘Jonathan Dimbleby’s epic account captures all the drama and magnitude of an event that determined not just the outcome of the war, but the future of the world.’

In November/Decemebr 1941 as the Red Army was beginning to turn the tide as the German attack on Moscow began to fail Alexey Surkov’s  popular prose poem ‘A Soldier’s Oath' captured the mood:

Mine eyes have beheld thousands of dead bodies of women and children, lying along the railways and the highways.

They were killed by German vultures .... The tears of women and children are boiling in my heart.

Hitler the murderer and his hordes shall pay for these tears with their wolfish blood; for the avenger’s hatred knows no mercy. (Page 457/458)

Surkov’s words are a warning to those who do gratuitous vile deeds to other people.

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