A Writer at War

“The ruthless truth of war…”
Vasily Grossman, Edited & Translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova
Vintage Books 2007

In 1941 Vasily Grossman was a Russian-Jewish intellectual and novelist living in Moscow. When Germany invaded, he promptly volunteered for service, but was too old and unfit for combat. Instead he was sent to The Red Star, the army’s official newspaper, as a special correspondent – where a much better use was found for his skills. After a quick course on how to wear a uniform and whom to salute, he spent the rest of the war accompanying the Red Army as a front-line reporter. He was with them through the long retreats of Autumn (barely escaping Orel before it fell) and at the winter battles for Moscow. He was in Stalingrad for much of that epic struggle and was at the liberation of Treblinka death camp. Finally, he accompanied the leading troops into Berlin for the final victory.

Grossman’s sympathy for the common soldier, and his willingness to share their dangers and hardships, put him as close as any non-combatant can be to what he called “the ruthless truth of war”. With his novelist’s ear for language, and his eye for the telling detail, he turned his interviews and eye-witness accounts into something close to poetry. It’s easy to understand why he’s considered one of the great war correspondents (along with such as Earnie Pyle).

A Writer at War is a collection of his wartime journalism, edited and translated by the always excellent Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova. Unsurprisingly, Grossman tended to run afoul of the authorities, who often edited his articles to tone down the horror, add stock heroic sentiments, and write out bad behaviour by Soviet side. In consequence Beevor makes heavy use of Grossman’s unpublished diary and notebooks. These were kept private – as notes, observations, and raw material for his articles – and so escaped the eye of the censor. The result is an unvarnished picture of the human face of war.

Modern historians no longer buy into the mythology of operationally brilliant Germans always beating up the primitive Soviets (if it weren’t for that darned Hitler!), but Russian original sources are still rare and hard to access. In consequence the Soviet side still tends to remain somewhat faceless, while the Germans receive vivid portraits of their plans and personalities. Grossman is a useful corrective with his eye-witness accounts of generals and common soldiers, farmers, bureaucrats, and village girls.

He talked to a fighter squadron shortly after a pilot was awarded a medal for ramming a German plane and the surviving pilots argue vigorously about how easy it is to ram an enemy — not heroic or worthy of a medal — and what a waste it is of all that precious ammunition carried by the plane! His interviews with commanders complaining about their drunken and/or unreliable subordinates puts a human face on the Red Army’s attempts to modernize and improve.

The famous soulfulness of the Russian personality comes through in his interviews with common soldiers as they wrestle with accepting their almost certain death, albeit in a worthy cause, against regret for everything they’ve left behind or haven’t yet experienced. (A horrifying number of these stories do end with an obituary.) He doesn’t neglect the civilian victims of war, and the book is a reminder that even so vast and “empty” a country as Russia was covered with a network of agricultural towns and villages. Wrenching choices had to be made in many of these about which was the greater danger – flight or occupation.

A common thread throughout A Writer at War is the absolute faith of almost every Russian soldier in both the rightness of their cause and their superior skill and bravery compared to their German foes. In the West we’ve become used to the Wehrmacht’s portrayal as a skilled but under-equipped foe, only defeated by our superior firepower and resources. So, it’s jaw dropping to read Russian complaints about how the rich Germans win only because of their lavish supplies of aircraft, tanks, and ammunition. The interviews are full of eloquent criticism about how terrified German infantry is of close combat, fighting in forests, and fighting at night (unlike brave Russians!), relying instead on crushing weights of artillery fire.
Grossman follows many of his subjects for extended periods, conducting multiple interviews and these, eventually, build to a complex portrayal of the strange mixture of inferiority complex, macho pride, and veneration for culture that makes up the personality of these soldiers. In contrast to the macho bragging above, when they find liberated Russian villages half destroyed and filth-ridden, they often sadly observe that the Germans are supposed to be the “cultured” race. When the Red Army enters East Prussia, the tidy towns, good roads, and luxurious homes cause many of them to ask: “why would the Nazis invade our poor country when it’s so nice here?”

Grossman is too observant and too honest just to be a Red Army cheerleader, though. He is appalled at the common practice among higher commanders of taking a “campaign wife” from the young women in signals or nursing units. Likewise, he’s not a fan of how many of even the more professional officers keep up the tradition of physically striking their subordinates. And, in occupied Germany, his interview subjects include many locals abused and women raped by Russian soldiers.

The centrepiece of the book, though, is his long account of the liberation of Treblinka death camp, which Beevor includes in full. The Germans attempted to cover up any evidence of Treblinka’s existence before retreating, but bits of bone and clothing were already poking above the surface of the empty fields when the Russians arrived. And most of the work of burning and burying the dead was done by prisoners, a few of whom were able to escape into the nearby woods before they too became victims of the final round of murders. Grossman interviewed all of them. And let me tell you, even if you think you know about the holocaust, his account of how Treblinka was operated will absolutely harrow you. He explains, with detailed stories and examples, exactly how the Germans used psychological tricks and manipulation to keep their victims docile, so as to reduce the number of staff needed to handle them. The same urge to efficiency kept the camp staff constantly developing their techniques for mass murder and the disposal of remains to keep up with the ever-increasing trainloads of men, women, and children arriving at the camp.
Seventy-five years later this remains a vital and important record.

THUMB UP

Note: If you want more Grossman, his post-war novel, Life and Fate, is a classic and widely available in translation.