Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Stalingrad

The Russians have a security problem.  Terrorists bombed a railway station (awful video showing the bomb flash and smoke is on TV) and then bombed a trolley bus.  Thirty or forty people dead.  These atrocities occured in "Volgograd" , "400 miles south and east of Moscow". 
   It wasn't until the next day that one newsie finally figured out that Volgograd is better known in the West by it's Word War II name, Stalingrad.  The newsie vaguely mentioned that a battle had been fought there. 
  The newsie didn't mention that the battle of Stalingrad was a turning point in World War II.  It was the first time the Russians managed to beat the Germans in a big standup fight.  Before Stalingrad, the Germans beat the Russians every time.  That turned around after Stalingrad and the Russians beat the Germans every time. The Russian victory at Stalingrad was crushing, they surrounded the German army and took them all captive.  Germany lost 250,000 men at Stalingrad.  The movie "Enemy at the Gates" was about the battle of Stalingrad.
  You would think that after such a legendary victory in the Great Patriotic War, the city would still be known as Stalingrad.  But, when "deStalinization" happened under Khrushchev in the late 1950's, part of "deStalinization" involved taking Stalin's name off his city on the Volga.   

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