Why Always the Fighting?

A little food for thought about February 2nd. And no, not about the fact that its groundhog day.

On February 2nd, 1943, 91 000 starving, beaten Axis soldiers (mostly German, but also Romanian, Italian, and Hungarian troops) surrendered to the Soviets at Stalingrad, ending months of brutal fighting in the key city on the river Volga. Of course the Soviets regarded it, rightly, as a decisive victory (the German Army was in retreat on the eastern front for essentially the rest of the war), but also as a demonstration of the superiority of communism over national socialism (or Nazism). I'd argue that neither idea worked out particularly well, but the best laid plans of mice and men. Propaganda aside (because no one in their right mind would commit hundreds of thousands of troops to battle just to prove a political point, right?) Stalingrad was a disaster for the simple reason that over a million people died violently there and the city was utterly destroyed. I have no conclusion for this, just some food for thought. More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad.