Russia remembers World War II

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 21, 1998 | by Stephen Goode

War maps, Stalin's field coat, a piece of the Reichstag -- all are priceless tokens of tragedy, and all are on display in the United States from military archives in Moscow.

The exhibition to see in Washington as August sweated into September wasn't a collection of great art or sculpture, and it wasn't even at the Smithsonian. Entitled "World War II Through Russian Eyes," it was a collection of about 500 artifacts from Nazi Get many and Soviet Russia belonging to the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow, now off on a two-year tour of the United States.

More than 50,000 people viewed the show during its five weeks at the Ronald Reagan Center for International Trade, Washington's latest addition to the Federal Triangle. They saw objects taken from Adolf Hitler's bunker -- where he committed suicide -- such as a globe covered by a huge swastika and inscribed with "Came. Saw. Conquered" in German, recalling Julius Caesar's famous "Veni, vidi, vici."

They also saw Joseph Stalin's field coat, recognizable from many World War II photographs of the Soviet dictator, and various items of clothing worn by such Nazi leaders as Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goring, Reichminister Alfred Rosenberg and Hitler himself.

There were photographs of Jewish women and children -- stripped naked and waiting in line for what they evidently still believed would be showers -- and of other unspeakable events that mark this century.

There's a beautiful color poster with the British, American and Soviet flags side by side and flying from handles of bayonets whose knives are stuck in the carcass of a dead wolf that lies thrown across the Reichstag in Berlin. In Russian this vivid poster declares: "So shall it be with the fascist beast!"

Only four of the 500 artifacts in the exhibition have been seen previously in exhibitions in the United States. The purpose of the show is to emphasize the suffering of Russia during World War II, when an estimated 27 million Russians died. But the exhibition does not disguise the monstrous cruelties and hardships of Stalin's totalitarian state.

This exhibit clearly illustrates that Russians endured much and that they rolled back Hitler and the Nazi invasion with their government's help (and, of course, that of the Western Allies) but that victory in the East came because of a tenacity and an ability to endure extreme hardship that had nothing to do with the Soviet state and everything to do with the Russian character.

German artifacts include a motorcycle and sidecar manufactured by BMW and the original Barbarossa Plan (which detailed the German invasion of the USSR). But more impressively, there is Hitler's personal banner (believed lost for five decades) and the 30-foot eagle that was toppled from the German Reichstag as the Soviet soldiers raised their flag.

Russian artifacts range from a monumental portrait of Marshal Georgy Zhukov on horseback to a variety of objects from the many partisans who fought the Germans in Russia. There also are Soviet war maps and an elegant "Order of Victory" medal, the USSR's highest award to military personnel.

The medal is made of 121 diamonds (16 carats total weight), five rubies, gold and platinum. Only 19 of these medals exist. Eleven went to Soviet leaders, including (of course) Stalin, but also Zhukov; five were awarded to foreigners, including Gen. of the Army Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.

One way to render a feared enemy less threatening is to reduce him to ridicule, and the exhibit has two puppets used for just that purpose. Employed to entertain troops on the front, they are Punch-and-Judy-type caricatures of a very maniacal Hitler and a Dr. Goebbels who is rendered to suggest a monkey.

Goebbels comes up for ridicule again in a carving created by a Czech artist who pictures the Nazi minister of education leaning drunkenly against a street lamp and wailing at the moon. The curator has placed the carving on a table with paraphernalia taken from the bunker in which Hitler died: a carved walking stick used by the German dictator, a violin whose scroll has been carved in an image of Hitler's head, the globe with the swastika demanding total victory and a banner celebrating Hitler as "Creator of the New Europe."

The emblems of Nazi triumph are impressive. But the caricature of Goebbels placed in their midst defuses their horror and enables viewers to scoff at them for a moment, as does a metal model of the fasces knocked on its side and lying near the swastika-studded baton that belonged to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. (The fasces is the bundle of rods with a projecting ax blade that Italian fascists adopted as their symbol.)

In a similar waspish manner, the exhibition inserts into its model of a typical Leningrad apartment during the 900-day German siege a photograph of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. She endured World War II and the enormously debilitating siege with exemplary courage. But the beloved poet also is famous for another reason: the courage with which she withstood Stalin's deep and abiding personal hatred for her and the constant intimidation and harassment by bureaucrats and police that flowed from that hatred.