Letter to Fritz and Ivan

Dear Fritz and dear Ivan (nickname for German and Russian privates respectively during WWII),


I've recently learned much about your personal ordeals during the battle of Stalingrad. The unsettling noise from guns and cannons has not been heard for seven decades now, the sickening whistling sounds from falling bombs have ended. And the city that saw so much human tragedy and suffering, has changed its name: the stamp of Josef Stalin has somehow been erased through the renaming. It's Volgograd nowadays, but the slowly moving waters of Volga weren't always as serene as they appear these days.


One came as conqueror thrust into battle by a single man who promised Germans unspeakable glory, the other was jerked out of complacency as disbelief gave way to recognition of fact: Russia was being invaded by soldiers thought to be friendly. But Ivan, you had been lied to, every bit as much as you had always been lied to. First by your government claiming you resided in a nation on its way to reaching the pinnacle of human civilization and achievement. Then your unlikely ally suddenly appeared as a devious turncoat, and in breach of every line in the peace accord embarked on a bloody campaign to wipe your nation off the face of the earth.


Fritz, on the other hand, you imagined you were entering foreign territory in order to enhance the status and glory of your fatherland. You probably felt wronged by the terms imposed on you following the defeat of 1918, and thought that finally opportunity was granted to you by destiny to avenge yourselves. Or perhaps you did believe in Nazi propaganda, acting in accorance with a personal conviction that subhumans such as the Slavic nationals had to be removed. There is even a chance you went grudgingly, silently protesting or cursing your fate: what had you done to deserve selection as a target for Russian cannon fire?


Whatever it was that drove you, wherever your loyalties lay: still you were mere adolescents, not by far having reached maturity or manhood yet. You most likely dreamed of your future careers in your native towns of Munich or Stalingrad, not at all envisaging the very nadir of your lives awaiting you in the ruins and rubble of a Russian city, or in the dirty trenches dug by your frost-bitten hands.


You were most likely on average 18 or 19, never having felt the colossal strain of warfare, the mental torture of waiting endlessly for certain bombardment to resume. You had never known this gut-wrenching fear before, you had never seen heads severed from lifeless bodies. You were badly prepared for the nocturnal terrors that would strike while you were lying there, begging for a respite from the cruelties you knew would come. And Ivan, though you enjoyed the dubious privilege of walking on home turf, you still often wondered if there could be another Russia for you, once this one had been blown apart.


Having learned much more about your destinies, it makes we want to cry: maybe you were guilty as sin, certainly you knew enough to be responsible for your works of hatred, your cold-blooded acts of maiming, raping and looting civilians, your merciless treatment of prisoners of war as you forced them to march yet another mile, acting oblivious to their muted cries for mercy. But still.


I find it impossible to hate either of you.But I also find it equally impossible to fully exonerate you, Fritz, becuase you knew you were part of an invading army. You must have known this was morally wrong. And Ivan, venting such unbridled hate, murdering helpless prisoners at the slightest whim. You really can't have been proud of yourself for such lack of compassion?


But still. Your lives were wasted for no reason. Fritz, you were needlessly sacrificed in the name of the impossible megalomania of the Third Reich and its grand masters. Ivan, you defended your nation knowing you were in the right to do so, and yet: if the war effort had been carried out with much more care and consideration for the fates of the GI, scores of Russian lives clould have been saved. But your dictator didn't care for individuals. He cared nothing for the widow and the orphan in the ruins of Stalingrad. All that mattered to Josef Stalin, the man of steel, was Stalin's continued grip on power. He couldn't stand the idea of losing. It would hurt his reputation, his legacy.

Dear Fritz and Ivan. Your are still faceless, unremembered. No grandchildren of yours walk this earth in peaceful Europe. Marriage was never to be for you. And your grieving sweethearts are dying too now, desperately clinging on to some fading piece of memory, hands occassionally clutching a half-torn photo with your smiling faces on them.


I cry for you. Because you died before you got a chance to live out your dreams, godless or God-given. I'm still here with children of my own who may some day have to defend their  freedom, although it doesn't look very likely at present that they will have to sacrifice anything beyond a holiday or two.


Go to your rest, Fritz and Ivan. If there is such a thing for you where you are.