Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad

Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad by William Craig

As far as I know, other than this author’s brilliant “The Fall of Japan”, this is the only non-fiction book that William Craig penned.  Like “The Fall of Japan”, this book is an excellent account of one of the worst atrocities of World War II – The Battle of Stalingrad.

This book tells a very ‘human’ angle to the specific battle.  Yes, the particulars of strategy and battle movements are included here, but when those are the sole focus of a ‘war’ book, I confess that my attention span becomes exhausted after a short while.  Instead, William Craig chooses to also emphasize the key people affected by the battle as it was happening.  Not necessarily the soldiers; the battle devastated the entire city of Stalingrad, so lots of civilians were forced to suffer unbearable consequences as well.  By focusing on the people as well as the intricacies of the battle, it doesn’t make the story more enjoyable, but it helps sink in the much-needed reminder of just how awful war can be.

This battle began in late 1942. At this point in the global conflict, Adolph Hitler and Germany had basically succeeded with every act of barbaric butchery they had inflected on their mass of European neighbors.  Stalingrad was their first failure, and one can help but wonder if the main cause of the failure of Germany was nothing more a sense of arrogance and cockiness.  Germany hadn’t lost any other battle so far, so maybe their deranged leader WAS some sort of genius and the military believed that it was invincible.  It was odd that Hitler idolized Napoleon Bonaparte, as he seemed to replicate many of Bonaparte’s mistakes from a century ago.  Mainly, marching through the vast territory of Russia with the threat of a brutal Winter on the way.  From what we know of Hitler, he probably thought he was much more brilliant than his Austrian idol of yesteryear.

Reading this book didn’t really make you feel like you were rooting, in any sense of the word, for the “good guys to beat the bad guys”.  I came away with the sober realization that all of the brutal deaths and sufferings were not caused by an evil race of people, yet by maniacal leaders in power who refuse to let calmer heads offer rational advice in times of calamity.   In a sense, Hitler realizes (or SHOULD have realized) that his army was doomed at some point, yet he refuses to let his army retreat nor surrender.  In Hitler’s twisted mind, his generals need to literally fight to the death.  If hundreds of thousands of soldiers must perish to advance the cause of the diabolical 1,000-year rule of the Third Reich, why should these ordinary soldiers care if they must be brutally sacrificed?

The Russians really don’t have it any easier.  Their leader runs a close second in the lunatic department to Hitler, yet at least his directives seem to make more sense.  Defend the city at all costs.  I mean, what else could the people do?  Still, though, the stories we read throughout the book are devastatingly awful.  One thinks that if television cameras had been around in 1942 and the world could actually witness the atrocities as they happened, you might come away with the hypothesis that there would have been fewer wars in the immediate aftermath of World War II. See the use of media during the Vietnam War as an example.

To be honest, there are an awful lot of people and their stories in this book, and I simply couldn’t remember nor keep up with who was who.  In many instances, I couldn’t remember if I was reading about a German or a Russian. Even the last names of the individuals didn’t help.  Plus, there were one or two Italians in the narrative as well.  This really wasn’t too bad of a detriment, however.  As I mentioned earlier, you sympathize with ALL of the people in this account; regardless of what side they were fighting.  We never really felt ‘justified’ nor ‘relieved’ when these soldiers die of starvation, or freeze to death, or worse. We’re simply reminded of just how awful this time and place was in the second world war.   Be prepared to be grossed out more than you might think. We must remember that ‘war in the movies’ really never showed the horribleness as it really was.  The average movie goer simply wouldn’t be able to stomach it.

This book was a painful read, but necessary if one wants to truly learn about and study history during war time.  No matter how bad your life might be right now as you’re reading this reviw, I challenge you that you would much rather be where you are now, then if the stars had been realigned and you found yourself in Stalingrad in 1942.

I now know why all the Germans in “Hogan’s Heroes” would always shutter whenever they were threatened with being transferred to “The Russian Front”.

Call to Arms: The Corps Series Book 2

Call to Arms: The Corps Series Book 2 by W.E.B. Griffin

Book 2 of 10 in W.E.B. Griffin’s “The Corps” series.  Although Griffin always does a very good job catching his readers up to what has already happened in previous installments, I still maintain that if one is going to read any of the books in this (or any of the author’s) series, you really should go all out and read them all from start to finish.  So if you happened to grab this book at a garage sale, make the small sacrifice of finding and buying book 1 and reading that one first.

There are criticisms of this author’s style from both sides of the fence.  One side claims that he’s too technical when it comes to the intricacies of war and goes into far too much detail when describing battle weapons, and military jargon.  The other side claims that these books are really nothing more than soap operas with soldiers.  Both of these criticisms are fair, yet I never found the book to lean too heavily on either side and found the book enjoyable overall. 

This book of the series focuses on a select group of soldiers that are part of the marine corps and tells us a tale of their comings and goings as young men in the early 1940s as World War II begins to grip the nation.  This small group is young, cocky, and smarter than most. Because of their smarts, their actually low-grade officers rather than enlisted men.  How much they age in the next eight volumes, I have no idea, but in this book their quite green, quite adventuresome, a tad immature, and have an awful lot of sex on the brain.  This volume takes place during 1942; beginning right after Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U.S. is finding themselves a willing, yet slightly scared participant.  Ironically, a book about soldiers in 1942 such as this one features very little actual conflict.  Yes, there is somewhat of a plot. The main character Lieutenant Kenneth “Killer” McCoy is being recruited to be a part of a group of commandos that is led by an individual who is allegedly showing signs of instability as well as possible communistic leanings.  McCoy’s objective is to sniff around and find out if this leader is, in fact, a threat to the U.S. armed services and the American way of life.

Truthfully, though, there’s really not much of that story here.  Instead, we read an awful lot of romantic escapades among the soldiers.  Some are in serious relationships, some are in puppy love, and others are just looking for a loose woman to frolic with whenever the time seems right.  So, yes, there are almost as many women within these pages as the men, and you know without a doubt that we’ll see these relationships take many ups and downs in the subsequent novels.

I should also point out that the fact that you know you’re only reading a “chapter” of a much larger story by completing this book takes away the feeling of incompleteness.  Had this book been a standalone story, most readers would have been rightly let down at the fact that there really isn’t a complete story being told here.  I confess that I’m glad that as I’m reading this series, all of the books have been written.  I don’t think I would enjoy this if it were a “new release” and I had to wait a whole year or so before I could continue the story.  The story here is good, but not THAT good.  I would classify this book, and all of the other books by this author, as “light reading”.  They’re fun excursions, but nothing that will stay in your brain for any length of time, nor win any sort of literary awards.

Rush – Wandering the Face of the Earth

Rush – Wandering the Face of the Earth by Skip Daly and Eric Hansen

If ever there was a finer example of not judging a book by its cover.  

So let’s first discuss what this book is NOT as appearances can be deceiving.  When one first lays eyes on this ginormous coffee table behemoth, one might come away with the impression that this just might be an exceedingly comprehensive history of the band Rush chocked filled with pictures and intricate details of the band’s catalog; especially since you might find this book shrink-wrapped and can’t take a “peek” at the inside.  If this is what you are wanting or expecting, you’re likely to be highly disappointed.  What this book actually is, is a very detailed account of the band’s touring and live performances throughout its 40+ years of playing concerts all over the world.

Now, if you’re a Rush geek (such as myself), this just might be exactly what you do, in fact, want. Rush has a very hefty size of fans that actually love nerdy statistics and meticulous details pertaining to the band’s touring history.  We actually like to know what songs were played during each tour as well as other fine particulars.  So this books is essentially a very comprehensive list of every show the band has played on every tour along with selected facts around many of those shows. Each ‘chapter’ in this book contains a brief summary of the particular tour with a scattering of a few pics of the band during the specific trek.  Then, the detailed accounts of the tours are presented.  And, man, are these accounts detailed.

Sadly, all of these details aren’t necessarily captivatingly wonderful information.  In fact, once one gets about halfway through the book, it becomes almost compulsorily to simply ‘skim’ through the information.  Understandably, the earlier history of the band is represented honestly by stating that very little is known about some of the shows, and sometimes we’re told that no one knows for sure whether these particular early gigs ever happened at all. This is understandable, and one doesn’t feel cheated when the authors have to be vague on many of these early performances.

So what we DO get for every show (actual and presumed) is the date, the city, the name of the venue, the year the venue opened (this tidbit was actually HIGHLY unnecessary), the capacity of the venue, the actual tickets sold, and the names of any other acts that were on the bill.  The set list for each tour is actually listed at the beginning of each chapter, so any variations gig-by-gig are also included in these accounts as well.

We then get random press clippings about selected shows, as well as recollections by those closest to the band in attendance as well as the band members themselves.  Most of the latter is the most welcome, but to be honest, there simply isn’t that much of it here.  This shouldn’t be surprising.  I mean, if YOU played a couple of thousand shows during a 40+ year tenure, it’s highly doubtful you would remember details of, say, show #348.  So a lot of what we get here as far as ‘notes’ go simply seems unnecessary and repetitive.

It’s quite humorous that when one reads the press snippets of the last few years, there’s nothing but positive sentiments coming from critics all over the globe.  Those who know the band well know that this wasn’t always the case.  The newspaper frat could be quite brutal throughout most of the band’s history.  As a fan, though, this really didn’t bother me while reading.  Some of the observations in this book made me laugh out loud. My personal favorite: “Geddy Lee sounds like your neighbor’s cat after being attacked by a blow torch”.  Still, though, after reading several hundred snippets throughout this massive volume, these concert reviews, good and bad, wear thin after a while.

This biggest gripe for me concerning all of these ‘show notes’ is where exactly the facts came from and, more importantly, why the authors chose to include many of these rather worthless recollections.   For example, I seemed to read about ten times during the Power Windows tour that “Geddy tosses a ball backstage after the show”.   Reading this once would have been o.k., but at times it felt like the authors were desperately trying to stretch out the book so the pages could be as plentiful as possible.   

Other examples:

“Alex breaks a string on the song XXX, but quickly switches out guitars in order to finish the song”.

I swear I must have read such an incident about 50 times throughout this book.  Nothing personal, but I seriously doubt anyone reading this book gives a rip about a guitarist breaking a string on a guitar during a song. 

Another example: “Neil misses hitting one of the toms during the closing section of ‘The Camera Eye’ ”.  

Yes, the authors actually feel obligated to include things like this. Oy.  

Or: “Geddy accidentally sings the word ‘or’ instead of the word ‘and’ during the last chorus of ‘The Temples of Syrinx’. This might have been because he was flustered since he accidentally played the first note of the song on his bass with his index finger instead of his middle finger.”

OK, I made that LAST one up, but I swear that many of the comments read very close to this type of drivel.

Still, though, one has to admire the obvious tenacity required to put together such a compilation.  As most Rush geeks could probably tell you, it was only a matter of time before someone actually tackled such a project.  Despite its flaws of being a tad too detailed, this book still remains a ‘must’ for any serious fan of the band.  Just don’t expect a retrospective of the band’s career, details about the recording of the bands 20 albums, nor any reflections on the philosophic musings of lyricist/drummer Neil Peart.  Fortunately, there are plenty of other volumes out there if one is needing one of those particular itches scratched.