I’ve been watching PBS’ “Rise of the Nazis,” which focuses on the Eastern front of World War II’s European Theater, and I’m just astounded at the parallels between that conflict and the one in Ukraine. Then as now, you have the irresistible force of a dictator — well, two in fact — determined to maintain chaos to stay in power and the immovable object of a people determined to go all in to save their homeland. The names have changed, but the issues behind the Nazi siege of Russia and the Russian siege of Ukraine remain depressingly familiar, particularly as brought home in the recent episode on Stalingrad, the turning point of World War II in Europe.
At its heart, “Rise of the Nazis” is a psychological portrait of dictatorship and democracy in peril. In Germany’s Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin, there are echoes of each other and of Russia’s Vladimir Putin today — strongmen who brook no dissent nor concern for civilian casualties; who promote the talentless and inexperienced and sideline the efficient but ambitious; who continually perpetuate conflict as a way to maintain control and keep attention on themselves.
Of course, these qualities define the malignant, nihilistic narcissist, the ultimate paradox. On the one hand, the narcissist is the best at everything and everything he has — it’s usually a he — is the best. On the other hand, “poor, poor, poor me.” He’s always put upon, NATO’s always being mean to him, he really won the election, it’s all a witch hunt, he needs to sue or slaughter someone to feel good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The other paradox is that while the narcissist is the Lake Titicaca of need — bottomless — a relationship with him is going to be like diving into the shallow end of the pool: You’re going to break your neck. Hence the narcissist must surround himself with yes men who can offer unconditional adoration and exile those who have a scintilla of independence of thought. The result is that those who are promoted are not necessarily the best and the brightest but the sneakiest and slimiest. You might think this counterintuitive. After all, wouldn’t someone who’s great at his job make you look good? That’s what George Washington thought. It’s why he nurtured men like Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette.
But Washington was a real leader. The narcissist is only interested in playing at leadership. He doesn’t actually want to do any real work and he certainly doesn’t want to take any real responsibility. By promoting the weak, the narcissist not only ensures an audience for himself. He’s able to eclipse any challenger to his power. Then when things go south — and they always go south, because the narcissist has no self-awareness and thus no real awareness of others — he has a ready stable of fall guys in his incompetent followers.
In “Rise of the Nazis,” we watch as Hitler, having dismissed his top generals, literally phones it in from his pretentiously named Eastern military headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair — a kind of overrated motel — maneuvering dithering Gen. Friedrich Paulus and the Wehrmacht’s Sixth Army toward their fateful encounter with Gen. Georgy Zhukov and the Red Army at Stalingrad.
After the Nazi invasion of Russia, Zhukov had been demoted for a time. Brilliant and courageous, Zhukov posed a threat to Stalin, who had all the qualities of dictatorship that Hitler possessed. (The only difference was he was on the Allies’ side. Or as President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, “He may be a bastard. But he’s our bastard.”)
Fortunately for the Allies, Stalin’s competent generals fared better under him than Hitler’s did under “Der Führer.” Stalin had ordered every man, woman and child in his eponymous city to defend it to the death. As the Germans advanced and laid siege to Stalingrad from August 1942 to February 1943, the Russians dug in. It would be the worst of urban warfare, hand-to-hand combat that was street by street, building by building, floor by floor, brick by brick. Participants on both sides faced bombing, shooting, starvation and even cannibalism. Not surprisingly, the Russians and Germans both experienced desertion and betrayal.
Meanwhile, Hitler was busy spinning a disaster into another Thermopylae, a fight to the death between the invading Persians and the valiantly defending Greeks. It was a weird analogy since the Germans were less the heroic Greeks and more the encroaching Persians. But the message was clear — victory or death.
There would be no victory for the Germans at Stalingrad as the citizens held them off and Zhukov encircled them. Stalingrad would be the deadliest battle of the war, with two million slaughtered, one of the bloodiest in history and the key to the war in Europe as German forces were redeployed to the Eastern front from occupied areas, setting the stage for the Allies’ successful Western invasion.
You think of Stalingrad, you think of Mariupol, where Ukrainian forces continue to hold on in a steel plant, and you think, there is Thermopylae. There is courage. There is hope.
Watching “Rise of the Nazis” offers an odd feeling of hope, too, for as the experts point out, dictatorship by its very nature is not sustainable. Indeed, the dictator, the narcissist trusts no one. And where there is no trust, there can be no victory and no lasting peace and achievement.