Prussia

Nothing like a bowl of Corn Chex and a history of WWII to keep me up until 3 AM. Max Hasting's Armageddon on the 1944-45 history of WWII (the companion volume to Retribution, the history of the Pacific War) feeds my interest in Eastern Europe and Russia these days. I just don't know what to make of "them" over there. One anecdote from last night's reading:

For fun, a soldier in Valentin Krulik's unit of the Sixth Guards Tank Army dressed himself one day in a German smock and helmet, then dashed into his section's bunker waving a Schmeisser [a German machine gun] and crying "Hande hoch" [hands up]. This was agreed to be extremely funny. But one of his comrades shot the cross-dresser before he was recognized.

Now, out of all the depravity of WWII, this is no where near the most cruel, but it is the most poignant for me. I would be that idiot dancing around in a dress with a machine gun. For that comedic genius born of desperation I would earn a bullet between my eyes.

So its the middle of winter on a giant flood plain between Poland and Germany (East Prussia, birthplace of several generations of my ancestors), you are some poor kid in a frozen wasteland in front of a professional German uber-army with a rifle to share with several other malnourished wretches from across the Soviet empire with tanks deployed behind you by Uncle Joe to mow you down if you run away. I just don't understand it. Why didn't their hearts just start beating like a hummingbird and explode from anxiety? I guess I am all the more curious because I feel like somewhere my family was caught up in the horror of it all.