The Non-Nazi General, the Gentle Historian, and the Significance of Miracle-Gro

Dr X. posts this from Seelow, a quiet place overlooking a nice river:

"It is in the nature of defeats that competence and heroism are overlooked. In the final days of the Third Reich, if you look at where the Germans were able to mount effective resistance, you see one guy appearing again and again - Gotthard Heinrici.

"In late 1944 his First Panzer Army fights an effective mobile defense in Hungary and Czechoslovokia. In April 1945 he's directing the defense at the Seelow Heights, surviving an attack by a force 10x his size, inflicting huge casualties (Russian+German casualties in this 4-day battle were about the same as U.S. deaths in Vietnam), and getting out alive (a blow-by-blow account is here). A week later he's getting units linked up and moving them west so they can surrender to the Western Allies.

"Like Guderian, he had a bad habit of telling Hitler to fuck off - he ignored 'scorched earth' orders, refusing to burn Smolensk - and, at the very end of the war, requested permission to move his headquarters to a town west of Berlin. Thus ends his career. He surrended to the good guys and lived until 1971.

"He was married to a half-Jewish woman, but got a certificate from Hitler certifying her racial purity.

"So here's to you, Mister Religious Non-Nazi Married to a Half-Jewish Woman Effective Last-Ditch Defensive Strategist Guy.

"How could I ever get my head around his world view? I think I'd have a better shot at channeling Nagel's Bat. And don't get me started on Rogge.

"There is a new book out that might, somehow, help bridge that gap. It is called Five Germanies I Have Known, by the respected liberal historian Fritz Stern. A decent NYT review is here, and a recent article by Stern is here.

"Or maybe it just confuses things further. The New York Times reviewer says 'the Stern family is lucky. Even when their cousin Otto is arrested during the Kristallnacht pogrom, which occurs just a month after Fritz and his parents get out, and Otto’s 'Aryan' wife leaves him, he manages to emigrate to the United States ... where he invents the plant fertilizer Miracle-Gro and becomes a millionaire.'

"What the hell. I don't think Odets would have written it that way."