When I told an esteemed colleague of mine I was planning on using my present moniker he asked me why? So, with that in mind, this entry is for people who do not know who, or what, "The Sixth Army" was and, to explain, why I picked an obscure and easily misconstrued name.
First of all, for you Nazis, neo-Nazis, skinheads, white supremacists, southern confederates, Apartheid supporters (That means you Dick Cheney), latent homosexual homophobes (Again I mean you Cheney), JDL members or just plain run of the mill general racists who found my humble little blog on Google I want to be very, very clear: I AM NOT ONE OF YOU.
I am an American Citizen, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, product of the public school system, a member of the lower, lower-middle or middle class depending on what year you're talking about. I work 9 to 5, pay my taxes and bills for the most part and, most importantly, I pay attention to things around me and, quite frankly, I don't like the things that I am seeing. I normally face the world of politics with a healthy sense of humor because, lets face it, the stuff these politicians usually say or the hijinks they get involved in are normally ridiculously hilarious.
Case and Point
One moment comes to mind. Married Fundamentalist Christian Dem. Rep. Gary Condit (Remember him), who was implicated in his intern Chandra Levy's disappearance, after some scrutiny, was revealed to have multiple affairs with a wide variety of women in such ludicrously clandestine circumstances. For example, the women were not allowed to say his name over the phone.
Condit - A pathetic sacrificial lamb?
Meetings with these women were set up by a third party at out of the way gin joints where the Congressman and his intended shack up would not enter or leave the establishment together. The woman was not allowed to carry keys, I.D. etc. All funny stuff even though the backdrop was a grisly murder of a young pregnant woman and this guy, just from his evasive, stonewalling answers to basic questions looked pretty guilty.
But the over the top moment from that whole sorry affair (The media circus tent only folded up because of 9/11) was a story about one of his ex-lovers who told one of the newspapers (Either the NY Post or the Daily News) in an "exclusive" interview that she remembers one time Condit breaking a date with her because he had to "go to a birthday party for a cop killer." I mean c'mon! What was going to come out next? A story that he stood up another ex-lover to sell dope and expose himself in a school yard? An interview with three school girls who claim that one night, in a darkened alley, the esteemed fundamentalist Christian House Member bounced his testicles up and down on their foreheads while singing the score of "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum?" Another ex-lover testifying that she found the Congressman in his office, shaking uncontrollably in a fetal position, weeping, repeating over and over in a quivering voice, the mantra "I am a good person?"
The corporate media really tore into this guy. Print news stories trumpeted debauchery at every turn. Ambush interviews by rabinous reporters on the Capitol steps with a very sleazy looking Condit saying no comment. Television interviews with the parents of the victim crying and pleading for their daughter back. Finally, a particularly slimy spot with Connie Chung on ABC where Condit looked so shifty that any casual observer would have asked, "Who's the murderer?" I remember the New York Post running a front page with a picture of Gary Condit's office web site. On the Condit home page there was a pretty innocent link with the banner "If you are interested in being an intern click here." Of course the Murdoch run rag saw it differently and ran the headline in bold THE MONSTER WANTS MORE!!
I do not know if Condit was guilty or not. In fact, I think he was later exonerated because the police found some evidence implicating a drifter. Of course the discovery of this evidence was too late to help him in his disastrous re-election campaign where prominent Democrats begged him to drop out which he refused. You see his innocence or guilt had nothing to do with his fate. He did some things that were morally questionable so that gave carte blanche to the opinion shapers to paint a picture that was not to flattering. Condit?s own handling of the spotlight doomed him to the perception of guilt so no matter what "the facts" turned out to be, his career was over. His district ran him out on a rail.
In my opinion, Condit got screwed. Certainly he did not help himself with his behavior before and after the disappearance of Chandra Levy but his own stupidity does not negate the fact that he became fodder for the cannons of media outlets eager to feed the American population's un-ending appetite for cheap gossip, true or false, that tears down anybody who is successful, well known or maybe just different in an attempt to make them feel better about themselves. No matter what Condit did after he was placed, or placed himself depending on how you see it, in the cross hairs of the media juggernaut he was going to pay the price. He put himself in a position to be sold out and the powers that be did just that. The Senators and Congressman all have their own dirty laundry. From mistresses to graft, these guys do not want any attention paid to their own foibles so every once in awhile a Condit or a Toracelli (Yet another disgraced corrupt senator from New Jersey) comes around that is such an easy target that everyone can stand around and point shouting "look at the bad guy." But what does any of this have to do with the sixth army?
The Lie
When I was a kid I really liked reading and watching documentaries about history. Unfortunately that usually meant learning about wars. I went to Gettysburg in the third grade and just loved it. Touring the battlefields, walking the grounds where Pickett, Longstreet and Robert E Lee walked over a hundred years ago a feeling comes over you that was best described by my father as, "You can really feel history BREATHING here." I also was a sucker for the "lost cause." I am not sure I am too crazy here. I, like a lot of other Americans, always root for the underdog.
Which do you think is the more appealing WW II story?
In April of 1945 on the Island of Okinawa, Japan, a heavily armed division is ordered to "mop up" a battalion of Japanese soldiers holed up in a cave almost out of ammunition and refusing to surrender.
OR
In December of 1944 a heavily armed US division is trapped and encircled by a surprise German attack in the crossroads town of Bastogne, Belgium. Although it is snowing, bitterly cold and they are outnumbered five to one, the troops understand they must hold this key position at all costs to thwart the enemy offensive.
Was this painted by someone
who actually had to kill a man?
I am, with out even knowing the ending, more drawn to the second story. There is something noble about the concept of sacrifice, honor and duty for the good of the whole that appeals directly to the listener. There would be no argument from anybody that any of the soldiers who constituted the "Battling Bastards of Bastogne" were heroes. Hell, Tom Brokow calls every one in the 1940s "The Greatest Generation." But my guess is he never served under fire. I know I didn't. In fact, it seems to me, the ones who throw around terms like "Glory" "Honor" and "Sacrifice" do not ever end up in a foxhole.
The ones who did serve, and I mean combat not KP, usually tell a different story. Just read some of the letters home from the servicemen in the Civil War or the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon in the First World War or the reluctance of many veterans of Korea or Vietnam to even talk about what they seen or did there.
Here is an excerpt from the British WW I combat veteran Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) describing a fellow soldier who was the victim of a gas attack:
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt,the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
The following excerpt is from the forward of the brilliant semi-auto-biographical novel All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque about his WW I experience on the western front while in the German army:
This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war...
"Trench Warfare" by Otto Dix
Fought in the Battle of the Somme - 1916
These two descriptions were from people who were there and it shows. They do not talk about the glory or even the heroism of being shot at. They sound like two men, who were on opposite sides of no man's land, but were both sold the same bill of goods by a bunch of people who did not know, or did not care to know, what it was like to be terrified on a blood soaked battlefield. Do you think if you actually experienced these horrors would you be so eager to send others into battle? My guess is you would be happy just to have an uneventful night's sleep trying not to remember these awful images. But leaders throughout history have consistently sold their people out, usually for their own gain, either to increase their power, prestige, property holdings or gold piles, with the underlying selling point to their populations The old lie: Dulce et decorum est.("It is noble and honorable to die for one's country")Unfortunately I do not think much has changed since 1914.
A Brief Background
Germany, which historically was the geographical term used to describe the small, independent German speaking States, Principalities and Kingdoms of central Europe (Bavaria, Hesse, Westphalia, etc.), became the German Empire in 1871 when, following the defeat of France by Prussia, the strongest German speaking state at the time, Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, was crowned German Emperor at the Palace of Versailles in Paris. Under the leadership of Chancellor Otto van Bismarck over the next two decades Germany became the most powerful state in Europe both economically and militarily. To make a long story short, eventually they lost a war (WW I - 1914-1918), became a Parliamentary Democracy (The Weimar Republic 1919-1932) and then a totalitarian dictatorship (The Third Reich 1933-1945). Throughout it all there was one constant, the Prussian military tradition, which stressed obedience, efficiency and discipline. This tradition stretched back for several hundred years, from the days of Frederick the Great, defining the German character and, one could argue, the stereotypes associated with Germany to this day.
German Empire 1942 - the eve of Stalingrad.
The "One Thousand Year Reich" that lasted 12.
When Adolph Hitler, leader of that ragtag bunch of hooligans called the Nazis, started his expansionist policies, they were believed, by a large portion of people, to be reasonable. His first move, in 1934, was to re arm. The German military, as stated in the Treaty of Versailles which ended WW I, could not exceed 100,000 men and could not produce tanks, airplanes or sub-marines. Well, argued some of the western powers, what?s the big deal? Every country has a right to defend itself right? His second move, in 1936, was to remilitarize the Rhineland (Western Germany) which was also forbidden by the Versailles Treaty. Well, England passionately argued, it's their country why can't their army go there? His third, and most bold move, was to lay claim to the Sudetanland, in 1938, which was the German speaking section of the Treaty of Versailles formed country of Czechoslovakia. Again the argument was that Germans should be in Germany so the British and the French found it quite easy to sell out the tiny democratic republic of the Czechs which only tasted freedom 20 years earlier (The next time that country would have self determination would be in the early 1990s with the fall of the Berlin Wall.) Finally Hitler wanted the "Polish Corridor," a strip of land that separated Eastern Prussia from the rest of Germany which was controlled by Poland. Again there were many Germans living in this area and, in fact, it was part of the pre-WW I German Empire. The Germans crossed the border on September 1, 1939 and two days later England and France declared war. Europe would lose at least 50 million lives over the next 6 years both in combat and civilian atrocities.
Most of the population of the Third Reich in the Fall of 1939 thought they were defending themselves. The reasons that the Nazi high command was giving for each aggression sounded reasonable, even righteous, through the state run media of Josef Goebels. Any dissension from the populace was squelched by the rapidity of victories. Poland, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Belgium all fell to the German Army with France herself surrendering in May of 1940. Anyone who still objected to the blatant aggression after that probably ended up in Dachau concentration camp as a subversive.
Finally in 1941 Hitler turned his eyes to the Soviet Union which in 1917 turned into the first communist nation on Earth. The Nazi Party despised communists and felt that the Jews and the Slavs in the East who were practicing it were inferior to Fascism and "German Culture." So in June of 1941, after detours in Greece and Africa (To bail out their ally Italy), 1 million German soldiers poured over the Soviet border for what would be the most titanic clash of arms and ideology in human history.
Like I said before, I believe the governments of the 20th century, like the Kings, Queens and Emperors before them, have sent kids to die for no other reason then their pride and profit while selling us on the notion there is something more noble going on. The most extreme case of this senseless slaughter was the blind naked aggression perpetrated by Nazi Germany between the years 1939- 1945. 10 million German soldiers died in the fighting and, contrary to popular belief, not all of them were wild eyed sadistic maniacs.
I want to be perfectly clear:
I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST ELEMENT OF THE WAR YEARS. I am specifically talking about the German military's prosecution of the war against France, England, the Soviet Union and later the United States which is very different from the Nazi implementation of "The Final Solution." Many casual observers might have combined these two very distinct elements of WW II as one big mess because, if no other reading or research is done, it is easy to think "what a bunch of scum bags." For the people out there who don't know or don't care about the distinction I have a simple formula:
SCHINDLER?S LIST a film directed by Steven Spielberg, deals with the holocaust and more specifically the murder of the Jews of Krakow, Poland. Similar types of sadism, rape and murder were happening all over Eastern Europe especially in Russia.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN a film also directed by Steven Spielberg, deals with the military aspects of the war which consisted of traditional combat and not atrocities. These operations, which I am focusing on, were generally carried out by REGULAR army divisions steeped in the "Prussian Tradition" I discussed earlier.
While the murder squads (These groups were referred to as Einzgruppen. Basically they would come to an area AFTER the regular army advanced and would commit the horrible atrocities you see on the History Channel. There were four operating in the eastern Soviet Union - An excellent movie which illustrates their activities is
COME AND SEE a 1985 Soviet film) and their minions (Ukrainians in particular joined the Germans in droves, enthusiastically killing Jews, Communists and Gypsies) were performing unspeakable horrors against other human beings the majority of the military personnel were in regular army units fighting a war that was sold to them as defensive and righteous. There were volunteers in the ranks but also conscripts and conformists who probably only wanted to go home. In other words, the majority of the regular army was
JUST LIKE YOU AND ME if we were born at that time and that place.
Now the cream of this military was the Sixth Army, German regulars who prided themselves on professionalism. They believed, for the most part, in God and Country. This army was the one who are in the famous image of the Germans proudly goose stepping through the Arch de Triumphe in Paris with the French guy bursting into tears. At that time, during the early days of the war, they were riding the crescent, so to speak, because of the unimaginable success of the German offensives. But by 1942 they were singing a different tune.
The Event
1942 - Building a better world?
To make a long story short these guys were sent to the eastern front (the Soviet Union) to spearhead the main offensive of 1942 which was the attack on the city of Stalingrad (now Volgagrad) which was an important heavy industrial city located strategically on the Volga River. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator and another sweetheart of the era, ordered his people including women and children, to hold the city at all costs. As the Germans entered the city a fierce house to house fight erupted which would last for months on end. The sixth army was deep inside Stalingrad but the Russians would not surrender. Every yard of ground was contested and soldiers on both sides lived in sewers for months. Controlled territory was first defined by city blocks then individual buildings and then finally even by individual floors and rooms in those buildings.
As the months passed it was becoming quite clear that the Sixth Army was bleeding to death in the face of an incredibly determined Soviet defense and the Russian winter was right around the corner. The high command in Berlin, specifically Hitler, refused to retreat. He would say over and over again "give no ground" and "we turned the corner" as the dreary reports came back from the front. He was confident victory was in hand and the Russians were almost completely spent. What he did not count on was the Soviet Reserves in the rear.
With all the Germans in or around the Stalingrad salient, engaged in the most brutal fighting of the entire war, their flanks further west were guarded by much weaker Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian divisions (All of which were German allies). Seeing the weakness, the Soviets led by the superb Russian General Zhukov, fully reinforced with their reserves from the rear, decisively counterattacked these weak troops and in doing so perfectly executed what military tacticians call a "double envelope maneuver" encircling the Sixth Army, the symbol of the strength and invincibility of the German war machine, still bogged down in the ruins of Stalingrad.
The men made a futile attempt to breakout of the trap but it was too late, the Russian forces were firmly entrenched. It was clear that the ring around Stalingrad was not going to break and, with the winter weather setting in, the Luftwaffe, which up until that time had complete mastery of the skies over Russia, was unable to supply the troops from the air, even though its commander, Herman Goering, guaranteed to be able to do so when the possibility of a complete withdrawal was brought up many months earlier.
In December of 1942, as the snow started to fall at regular intervals, the Germans who were in the outer suburbs of Stalingrad manning the perimeter, started streaming back into the city to take up final defensive positions and everyone began to realize their fate was sealed. With no hope of reinforcement, no chance of resupply, under constant enemy attack and the temperature dropping, they held on for another month with the only support from Berlin being crackling transmissions from cock sure voices spewing empty platitudes of "Aryan Superiority" and "Ultimate Victory" coming from the speakers of their rapidly depleting communication devices. Finally in late January and very early February, cold, hungry and completely out of ammunition, whoever did not get killed by hostile fire, froze to death or committed suicide, laid down their weapons and surrendered in mass.
The last message to the outside world, which came from the last working radio of the last defenders of the Tractor Works, a bombed out factory located in the heart of Stalingrad, on February 2, 1943 was, "We are out of ammunition. We have done our duty to the Fatherland."
The survivors were marched, very publicly, from Stalingrad to prison camps in Siberia through snow and freezing temperatures. The statistic I saw was 250,000 men went into the city in the Summer and Fall of 1942, over 90,000 of them surrendered and only 5,000 ever saw Germany and home again.
The Point
Yes, there is a point to my long winded, yet very general overview of war, so I will attempt to bring this thought full circle back to the original reason for this essay.
Like I said before, one of my passions for years is watching well made documentaries. As a kid I could not get enough of WW II stuff on PBS (Remember I am old enough to remember the days before cable!). One image that I remember stuck with me all these years and it's meaning I believe is very relevant today. The film involved what I have been talking about for the last few pages specifically the "mop up" phase of the Russian victory at the Battle of Stalingrad where Russian soldiers would go house to house capturing or killing any Germans that might still be in the area.
The scene is the outside of a house and four or five Russians are standing over an open cellar door, pointing their guns at the opening and gesturing very aggressively for whoever was in there to come out. Out comes a very raggedly dressed German with his hands up, a look of total terror on his face. The Russians are yelling at the German, most likely in a language he did not understand (there was no sound on the film I saw) pulling him out of his hole and kicking him very violently. The snow permeating the whole scene cemented the theme, in my interpretation of this powerful image, of isolation in an alien place a thousand miles from home, surrender, doom, suffering, total defeat and hopelessness. If it was a still photograph I would give it the title, "End of the Line."
I know absolutely nothing about this soldier coming out of the cellar, who I am empathizing with. I do not know if he committed atrocities. I do not know if he saved the lives of hundreds of people through some act of heroism. I do not know if he secretly plotted against the racist Nazi hierarchy to undermine a totally unjust war. I do not know if he saved an old lady's kitten in a tree. The point is IT DOES N?T MATTER. This guy is going to pay the price for his government's policies that led to death and destruction. He is going to pay for the behavior of his fellow citizens, who either actively supported or sat back and said nothing, not opposing these same policies, making the German people as a whole complicit in the crimes committed in their name.
I also want to point out that I do not really feel sorry for this guy. Anything he is going to suffer he does have coming to him. To put it another way, at least one of those five Russians surrounding him had one of their loved ones robbed, raped or killed by someone wearing the same uniform this guy is wearing. Even if this particular soldier never partook in any of those activities he is still the one left holding the bag. Life is not always fair so I find it hard to generate much sympathy for this guy whose only real crime MIGHT have been being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I think of the time when I was about ten years old and I was in my local pizza place. I am not a big fan of pizza crust so I normally favor the middle slice of a Sicilian (square) pie. When I asked the local low level Mafioso who worked behind the counter for that particular slice his response was something I will never forget. He said, with a stereotypical Italian accent, "You get what you get," and then proceeded to give me the corner piece. If you can understand and accept that statement you will be a much happier and content person.
Why?
The price of blind faith.
The Sixth Army, consisting mainly of "patriotic" Germans, were sold out by a government who, at first, took control of the limited media of the day (newspapers, radio, newsreels) to hammer home the concepts of nationalism and tribalism which would later convince a relatively well educated populace to think of their own "superiority" or "exceptionalism" over other peoples and cultures. Then, this same government, used the base emotions of hate and fear to convince a relatively well educated population to blame a specific minority as the root of all their problems then to wage aggressive wars of choice which eventually led to the occupation of sovereign nations and then to unspeakable atrocities "for the betterment of the world."
Does any of this sound familiar?
We, the electorate, ARE the Sixth Army of the new millennium. The same way President John F Kennedy in 1962, standing in the shadow of the biggest symbol of human oppression, the Soviet erected Berlin Wall, stated forcefully that "ALL free men are citizens of Berlin." Or the French newspapers, in the aftermath of the worst attack on U S soil proclaimed, "WE Are ALL Americans Now."
2003 - Building a better world?.
The present administration is selling out the American people with its disastrous policies of "preemptive war," environmental rollback, favoring corporate interests over labor, favoring large pharmaceutical companies over sick people and tax cuts for the wealthy over the middle class. But the BIG difference between then and now is WE COULD ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
By voting and making sure that that vote counts. By not letting any LIES go unchecked because if they are left out there with no counter they have a way of becoming truth or, more specifically, accepted theory. By not just accepting what you hear as fact because more times than not you will be wrong. Base your opinion on SOMETHING and not just parrot what you hear.
If you are throwing up your hands and shrugging your shoulders now, thinking "What the hell do I care?," maybe not to long from now you will be throwing up your hands climbing out of a basement, faced with a hostile enemy who is in no mood to hear about what a good person you were and how you had nothing to do with our shame.
It is not too late
But time is running out
Sixth Army
