Homo homini lupus

That's Latin for "Man is a wolf to Man." It's appropriate when you think about the story of the Ostfront.

The story of the Ostfront was new to me until I listened to a Hardcore History podcast on it. In it, Dan Carlin, mentions reading a book by a writer to visits historical battle places. He described the Ostfront as this snow covered field. He and his guide stopped the motorcar just on the edge of it. His guide told the author to get out. As he did, he had trouble seeing because of the sun glaring off the snow covered field. However, when his eyes adjusted, he noticed all these odd shapes buried in the snow. The shapes stretched across the field.

He and the guide began to march across the field. To the writer's shock, he soon saw that the odd shapes were bones. Human bones. There was a clavicle. There was a rib. A thigh bone. Part of a skull.

He couldn't believe it.

Then the guide said that the bones litter the entire field. And that the entire field is just a fraction of the actual battle field.

Those were the remains of the Russians and Germans as they battled near what was then known as Stalingrad.

A brief rundown for you non-history people. The Ostfront is the name for the battle that resulted from Hitler's unwise decision to try and invade Russia. It proved to be one of Hitler's many final mistakes.

As the Germans marched across Russia, doing unbelievably horrible things to the Russian cities they occupied (see the pictures below).

Helmets from fallen soldiers litter the ground.



The hooves of horses that the soldiers had to eat.



The dead.



There's is nothing that can console this woman. Ever.



Townspeople hanged by German troops.



Look at the smiles on the German soldiers.



What is it about black and white pictures that always seem to convey so much?

This is a link to the Russian side of the conflict

http://www.russian-victories.ru/russians.htm

now it's interesting because it certainly illustrates the horrors the Nazi invaders inflicted on the Russians. However, what the cite neglects to mention is what the Russians did to retaliate when they began to occupy German cities. The cite shows the Russians handing out food to hungry children and helping out the elderly. You can't tell me that after seeing the Germans do terrible things to their civilians that the Russians didn't return the favor. Yet, the cite neglects to mention that at all.

The power of perspective!

Indeed, Man is a wolf to Man. I thought of this story from World War II when we recently read and discussed "Young Goodman Brown" - the greatest American short story by the way - in my College Comp class. When the devil tells the congregation of pious Puritans and vile sinners in the wilderness toward the climax of the story, "Welcome my children to the community of your race," he is acknowledging that evil is the nature of humanity.

When I saw the pictures from the Ostfront website, and I left some of the harsher ones off my blog - I thought he was spot on. Indeed, as one of the pictures shows, a child sobbing because his parents have been butchered and he is all alone by the roadside, if you have witnessed that, what horrors could hell possibly hold? Indeed, I think humans have done far worse things to themselves than Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness, or whatever you want to call him could ever fathom.