Talk:Russia: War, Peace and Diplomacy

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Thank you for this new article, but note that other editors have noted its excessive detail. It is not necessary to summarize the entire book, and you may even have spoilers that would discourage someone from buying it..

---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 20:41, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Mmm...this does not sum up the entire book-it in fact only sums up one essay, "Celluloid Soldiers" about how German films portrayed the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front by Omer Bartov. I did not create this article, but most of what is written here is by myself. A long time ago, after I read this book, I thought "Celluloid Soldiers" had something interesting to say about the memory of the Eastern Front in the West as this was a case of the losers writing history. Note in particular how in the 1958 film Der Arzt von Stalingrad, the defeated German soldiers captured at Stalingrad are shown as more manlier and sexier than the victorious Russians, and needlessly to say Russian women much prefer these handsome Aryan heroes to their own hideously brutish and deformed men. Bartov makes the point that even through Germany lost the war, the way the Eastern Front is portrayed suggests that in some perverse sense the Germans were actually the victors. As he puts it, the way that the West remembers the Eastern Front, German soldiers "remain victorious even in defeat". Likewise note the way that the Soviet prison guards in Der Arzt von Stalingrad are shown as mostly Asian, which bears very disturbing affinities to war-time Nazi propaganda, where the Red Army was always described as "the Asiatic horde".

Bartov talks much about the "crisis in masculinity" in Germany after 1945, and how this popular image of the Wehrmacht as the most perfect soldiers ever was a way to cope with the "crisis in masculinity". He also makes the point, which does not elaborate upon, but this problem of a "crisis of masculinity" also affected Britain, the United States and other Western nations, which explains the popularity of this image of the Wehrmacht as the most perfect military machine manned by the most perfect soldiers ever in the English-speaking world. Bartov talks very briefly about how after 1975 many American war films portrayed American G.Is in Vietnam in an ultra-macho manner very similar to how German films portrayed the Wehrmacht. Just in the same way that in German war films, Russian women always prefer the blond Aryan heroes of the Wehrmacht over their own monstrous men, in American war films Vietnamese women always prefer American men over their own monstrous men. The fact that in both German and American films, Russian and Vietnamese women are shown as being happily conquered by soldiers who are just as much heroes in the bedroom as on the battlefield says much about the crisis in masculinity. Through in American Vietnam films Vietnamese women are almost always portrayed as prostitutes, which in turn reflects popular stereotypes of Asian women as either the submissive "Lotus Blossom" type or the ferocious, sexually aggressive "Dragon Lady". By contrast, in German war films set on the Eastern Front, Russian women start out as aggressive and ferocious, but are tamed by the Wehrmacht and turn into submissive, docile women happy to obey their Aryan masters. Bartov notes that in his essay that this meant to be just how manly the Wehrmacht soldiers are that they able to tame these wild, exotic Russian women into becoming submissive and docile, which not only reflects a graphically sexualized metaphor for relations between Germany and Russia, but also between men and women in general. This sort of sexualized version of a militaristic masculinity, which says much about the appeal of the Wehrmacht cult today, would be much better in the clean Wehrmacht myth article than here.

Bartov makes very interesting points about gender, especially the way that the Wehrmacht soldiers are always shown in highly macho terms as the very best soldiers in the entire world, which in turn makes them the most manly men in the world. Just read some of the books celebrating the Wehrmacht and watch the films summarized in "Celluloid Soldiers" and one will see that Bartov is not exaggerating. Anyhow, I think the material from "Celluloid Soldiers" should be back in the article on clean myth of the Wehrmacht, where it belongs. Bartov is very good when it comes to gender, and "Celluloid Soldiers" is one of his accessible and interesting essays. At present, the Wehrmacht myth article does not say anything about the "crisis in masculinity", and Bartov's essay should be there to enlighten the reader. If I understand it correctly, the objection to section in the clean Wehrmacht article is about because it uses only one source, namely Bartov's article, which is why this article created. If I move this back to where it belongs, I add in material from "Germany’s Heroic Victims" from the book Gender and Heroism in War Films together some of the essays dealing with cinema in A Nation of Victims?: Representations of German Wartime Suffering from 1945 to the Present.

Much of the grotesque idealization of the Wehrmacht, and the complete unwillingness to accept the idea that the Wehrmacht was deeply involved in the "war of extermination" that was Operation Barbarossa is basically due to ideas about masculinity. This whole cult of Prussian militarism glorifies a very particular idea of masculinity, which explains much of its appeal. Just how at the introduction to one of books by James Lucas, an author whose books glorify the Wehrmacht to no end, where he says that soldiers are the best type of men, and the Wehrmacht's soldiers were the very best type of soldiers and hence men. Lucas is British (through his wife is German), but its seems that this macho fantasy of men who are courageous, tough, chivalrous, and intelligent in a way that nobody can possibly be in real life is what is driving on as much as his Germanophilia. Needless, Lucas has no interest whatsoever in Wehrmacht war crimes, saying that allegations of war crimes against his heroes like Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and Field Marshal Albert Kesserling are "ridiculous" without even bothering to explain why. People, or any rate, men idealized the Wehrmacht because it embodies ideas about masculinity that increasingly out of step in today's world. In Nazi propaganda, the Red Army was always called "the Asiatic horde" that would destroy "European civilization", by most notably raping the women. As absurd as it may have been, Operation Barbarossa was presented as a "preventative war" forced on poor Hitler who just wanted to get along with everybody by an alleged Soviet attack that was supposed to start in July 1941. In other words, all of the extreme violence and cruelty of Operation Barbarossa were just defensive measures. Alongside this went an idealization of German women as demure, submissive, and docile beings whom men needed to take care and defend. German women were supposed to be subservient to men, and what men these are! The picture one finds of the Wehrmacht in books by James Lucas and Paul Carell is essentially the same as Nazi propaganda (not surprisingly given that is their main sources). The whole point here is that women are supposed to be subservient to these heroes who were doing such an outstanding job at defending them from "the Asiatic hordes". This cult of Wehrmacht, which is actually just a continuation of the cult of Prussian militarism, flourished in Germany during the war and for many decades afterwards. It is interesting that the Wehrmacht cult really started to caught in the English-speaking world about the same time as the rise of the feminist movement. I can from my own experience around here say that the editors who are most attracted to this cult of Prussian-German militarism (and there are a few-I'm in the minority around here about this one) tended to be on the right politically and have a barely veiled misogyny.

Plus, there are lots of other articles in Russia: War, Peace and Diplomacy which are not even mentioned here, which gives one a very misleading idea about what this book, which covers Russian history from the 17th century to the Putin era, is all about. Most of the essays in Russia: War, Peace and Diplomacy are about Russian history, not German history. To have an article that deals with one essay out of the 20 or so in the book is very misleading and violates the undue weight rule.

There is nothing here about the essay "Women and the Battle of Stalingrad" by Colonel Reina Pennington, for example. That is very interesting essay about the incredible women who took on and defeated the mighty Wehrmacht in history's bloodiest battle. The story of the ordinary Russian women who fought in the Battle of Stalingrad is unknown in the West (maybe because it not fit in with the popular image in the West of the Red Army as mindless brutes), but Pennington tells the amazing story about those extraordinarily brave teenage girls who operated the anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns at Stalingrad, who at one and same time were fighting the Luftwaffe in the sky and the Wehrmacht's tanks. After reading that essay, nobody can ever say that women are the weaker sex. It is an overlooked subject and an unjust one at that-maybe it is because most military historians are men who are not interested in women at war. Pennington herself complains that as she researched her essay about the women who fought at Stalingrad that a great many male historians were very unhelpful, asking her why she was researching something that was so unimportant. I once added material from Pennington's essay around here, but it seems that other hands have all deleted it. This image of the Eastern Front as a war that Germany in some perverse sense actually won with the Russians as mindless mass who were outfought by the Wehrmacht in every sense of the term is a very popular around here (note how most of the editors around here are male, and many of whom are infatuated with this ultra-macho image of the Wehrmacht), so needless to say the story of almost unbelievable bravery shown by ordinary Russian women at Stalingrad got deleted. --A.S. Brown (talk) 23:34, 12 December 2019 (UTC)