My Generation E-Book

Simone Malacrida

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The stories of three generations, told following distinct themes, unfold against the backdrop of the events that characterized the twentieth century, focusing in particular on what happened in Russia, Germany, and the United States. Three complementary visions alternate to provide the reader with a clear picture of the motivations and reflections that accompanied the personal decisions of the protagonists and the public choices of entire generations. Mikhail, Hans and Frank pour all their expectations into the meanderings of History, experiencing firsthand the tragedies and greatness of their era, while giving a final reinterpretation of the events that occurred.

Leseprobe

Simone Malacrida

My Generation

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

My Generation

“My Generation”

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

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My Generation

SIMONE MALACRIDA

“My Generation”

“My Generation”

Simone Malacrida (1977)

Engineer and writer, has worked on research, finance, energy policy and industrial plants.

The stories of three generations, told following distinct themes, unfold against the backdrop of the events that characterized the twentieth century, focusing in particular on what happened in Russia, Germany, and the United States.

Three complementary visions alternate to provide the reader with a clear picture of the motivations and reflections that accompanied the personal decisions of the protagonists and the public choices of entire generations.

Mikhail, Hans and Frank pour all their expectations into the meanderings of History, experiencing firsthand the tragedies and greatness of their era, while giving a final reinterpretation of the events that occurred.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

––––––––

In the book there are very specific historical references to facts, events and people. These events and characters really happened and existed.

On the other hand, the main protagonists are the result of the author's pure imagination and do not correspond to real individuals, just as their actions did not actually happen. It goes without saying that, for these characters, any reference to people or things is purely coincidental.

Finally, the opinions expressed by the individual characters are not attributable to the author in any way, whose intent is only to characterize, in their fullness, the generations presented.

ANALYTICAL INDEX

––––––––

WAR

I

II

III

HOME

IV

V

VI

YOUTH

VII

VIII

IX

LOVE

X

XI

XII

IDEALS

XIII

XIV

XV

ERRORS

XVI

XVII

XVIII

FUTURE

XIX

XX

XXI

“I don't live for myself, but for the generation to come.”

(Vincent Van Gogh)

WAR

I

I

I am part of that group of people, few to tell the truth for those of my age, who did not participate in the two main wars of the twentieth century.

I was too old to take part in the Second World War, at the time of its beginning I was in fact fifty-four years old.

That war was fought by my son and his generation, while I belonged to the civilian population that suffered the Nazi invasion and gave impetus to the Resistance in the face of the aggressor, carried out in symbolic cities such as Stalingrad and Leningrad.

I saw that massive catastrophe not on the battlefield but in the daily consequences of food rationing, resource scarcity, and the systematic destruction of cities and infrastructure.

I experienced extreme suffering for those who had to fight, knowing full well the risks involved in war and the power of the new weapons used, from carpet bombing to heavy artillery up to tanks.

My son's stories made me understand how the war had changed peremptorily. Since then it would have been more and more of a technological and specialist affair and no longer of traditional armies. The amount of people would count less and less and much more the equipment and preparation.

However, it would have remained a dirty business, which would have generated even more death and destruction.

I therefore have no direct testimony of that war, if not the stories of the civilian population regarding its consequences.

For the opposite reason, i.e. because of my young age, I did not take part in the war between the Tsarist Empire and Japan.

Conversely almost all of my peers participated in the first great massacre of the twentieth century, the Great War.

In particular, almost all of them were involved on the Russo-Western Front to counter the advance of the Central Powers.

I managed not to participate actively in that war due to a decision made seven years earlier by the tsarist government. In 1907 I was expelled from Russian territory, officially for subversive activities, and went into exile in Zurich.

That unjust decision, which caused me great suffering due to the forced detachment from my land and my loved ones, saved me from the horror of the trenches and massacres.

I lived those three years of world butchery in a neutral country like Switzerland, learning from newspapers and news reports about the amazing and terrible evolutions that technology had brought to the various armies.

I don't see those gloomy days spent in the trenches or those endless winters spent fighting the enemy on a front that stretched for thousands of kilometers.

I have only the dismay of a young revolutionary who saw in that war the latest madness of imperialism, ordering unheard-of massacres in the name of obsolete values such as nationalism.

In this way I did not share those experiences so common to many young people of the time.

Conversely, I can say that I have actively participated in two revolutions.

The first of these is the one that took place in Russia in 1905 and failed miserably. At the time I didn't have any specific military training and I didn't know how to handle any weapon.

I took part in the insurrections in Petersburg more out of shared ideals than out of experience in military tactics.

Our actions were limited to creating a state of tension which resulted in peaceful protests, the demand for certain political and legislative rights and actions of sabotage against some symbols of tsarist power.

The revolutionary action between October and November 1917 was quite different, following the return from exile and after the occasion for the definitive affirmation of the Bolsheviks was clear to all.

There it was a real military action aimed at the conquest of the nerve centers of Petrograd, while other comrades thought of implementing similar gestures in Moscow.

In those situations, the notions learned in the seven years spent in Zurich came in handy, in which I dedicated myself to learning the main military strategies.

First I studied the war tactics of antiquity including the evolution of fighting in Greece, from the Spartan hoplites to the Theban and Macedonian phalanx, the techniques of the Roman legions and the countless battles fought by the Chinese Empire and then by Genghis Khan.

I tried to understand how the introduction of gunpowder had changed those practices and how the battles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had taken place, ending up with the great turning point given by the Napoleonic campaigns and the theory of war made by Von Clausewitz.

On that historical framework, I grafted some factors of the nineteenth century including the motivational drives of an army of volunteers of quasi-professionals.

I was impressed by the events of Garibaldi and his Cacciatori delle Alpi and I understood how the shared ideal was the real weapon of difference in guerrilla actions and advanced tactics.

Finally, the First World War had demonstrated how the advent of new weapons, the machine gun, gas and remote bombs, completely changed the previous view, triggering major changes that we had just begun to learn.

The October Revolution was my great test and there I learned in a summary way to use a gun. I trained in the back of one of the headquarters where we met in Petrograd. Some comrades volunteered to teach shooting and target shooting.

Kamenev, whom I already knew in 1905, was in charge of the military and reported directly to the President of the Soviets, plenipotentiary Trotsky. Under Kamenev I was placed in the Red Guard, both for my economic-agricultural studies and for my social background and for the study of revolutionary tactics.

My brother Igor was a key garrison in the Petrograd Workers Soviet and was pleased with my appointment:

“Dear Mikhail, look at yourself. You in the Red Guard! In the future, we will not be able to trust the tsarist army and its disastrous ways of operating.”

Indeed, the Red Guard was the first nucleus from which sprang the great military reform imposed by Lenin and Trotsky, resulting in the establishment of the Red Army.

They gave me the responsibility of coordinating the assault on some army barracks that had remained loyal to the provisional government.

Each of the members of that handful of men was better prepared than I in the use of weapons, but I possessed the gift of oratory.

"Dear comrades, before going to arms, I take it upon myself to go and propose an agreement to the first military barracks."

So I did and managed to convince most of the soldiers to give up. After all, they were proletarians like us and many shared our ideas.

We managed to capture the strategic points of the city almost without bloodshed.

“Great job Malev, now we can launch the attack on the Winter Palace.”

Two days of battle sealed the victory of the Revolution in Petrograd. In Moscow, however, the situation was much more difficult and it took a week to control the city.

“This is just the beginning.”

It was said between us.

In fact, Russia is too large to be able to think of controlling it simply by having Petrograd and Moscow in hand.

The immediate threat was given by Kerensky who allied himself with the Cossacks and marched on Petrograd.

The Red Guard organized itself with artillery and we were in the front line at Pulkovo to thwart that counter-revolutionary attempt.

The Civil War had begun which pitted the Revolution against the Counter-revolution for three years.

This is the war I fought, my war on my native soil.

I immediately understood how our morale was skyrocketing and how the motivational charge was far greater among our ranks.

Lenin's first decrees mirrored his proposals made in the April Theses.

The decree on peace laid the foundation for the exit from the great massacre of the First World War, the decree on land was the first step in establishing Peasants' Soviets and making all people equal, the decree on power to the Soviets decreed the beginning of the transition to a classless society.

Those three decrees guaranteed, within the ranks of the Red Guard, a spirit that not even three hundred military victories could have generated.

In order to better counteract counter-revolutionary attempts, at the beginning of January 1918 the Red Guard transformed into the Red Army, our glorious army, the one for which I served as a lieutenant.

The Revolution was immediately threatened from many sides and we always had to manage many fronts at the same time.

Lenin was somewhat surprised by the strength of the Counter-revolution, only Trotsky's exemplary management at the head of the Red Army was the reason for our victory. He was able to displace his troops so as to defeat his enemies one at a time, rendering them powerless, and then divert them to other fronts.

From this point of view he adopted a completely different tactic compared to what is reported in the military manuals. Instead of concentrating all forces on a single goal, the division into many micro-conflicts allowed us to stall for time and defeat opponents one by one.

The first battles were aimed at guaranteeing a safe territory for the Revolution at least by creating a corridor between Petrograd and Moscow.

My presence was considered essential as I knew that part of Russia (having been born and raised there) and because my peasant extraction would have allowed, together with my oratory and convincing skills, a welding between the interests of the Revolution and those of the agricultural populations.

Lenin knew very well how, without the simultaneous contribution of the workers and peasants, considered as the two complementary faces of the proletariat, the Revolution would have failed. On this point of view, the Leninist vision turned out to be better than the Trotskyist one which rejected the contribution of the peasants, as they were considered reactionary.

The skirmishes were minor, but they enabled us to control a large area and extend our influence.

The promulgation of war communism gave the Red Army a great advantage, namely that of not having to worry about foodstuffs and supplies, seized by force and taken from the peasants themselves.

If the Civil War had lasted that long, we would have risked fomenting a counter-revolution even among farmers and this is what really happened after a year.

On the other hand, at the beginning of 1918, the greatest concern for the Revolution turned out to be that which resided in the south, in the Cossack area, right next to the Don.

There Generals Kornilov and Denikin, commanding units of the army loyal to the tsarist regime and many Cossack battalions, joined the cause of the Provisional Government's Socialist Revolutionaries.

Kornilov's advance towards Yekaterinodar was only temporarily halted by the Red Army, and his death did not help our cause. Lenin underestimated the forces at play and was energized by our first victories, but he was wrong.

The death of two commanders like Kaledin and Kornilov and the capture of Rostov by the Red Army were ephemeral victories.

Denikin's entry as supreme commander of the Counter-revolution in the southern zone was a major blow. Endowed with great charisma, he managed to bring together a large part of the revolutionary socialists, Mensheviks and that portion of peasants unhappy with the forced requisitions of food and opposed to the transfer of power by the Soviets.

The so- called Volunteer Army was formed which was the greatest danger to the Revolution and one of the main powers of the White Army.

I realized early on that our enemies made the same kind of mistake that we made in 1905. They split into many uncoordinated groups and were unable to unite to overwhelm us.

This was the reason why it took three years to put down all the revolts, a much longer period than we initially thought, but it was also the cause of the victory of the Revolution.

The other dangers came from the Siberian regions. There a Czech-Slovak legion of about thirty thousand men, loyal to Tsar Nicholas II, took possession of Western Siberia, the Ural area up to the Volga, preventing the connection between Siberia and the two main cities of Russia.

Not even the annihilation of the entire Romanov family was enough to make them desist, putting an end to one of the longest-lived monarchical dynasties in history.

Furthermore Kolcak had proclaimed a nationalist republic in the Omsk area and other small areas were in the hands of local governments.

My involvement in those military actions mostly concerned the preparation of the troops in anticipation of the confrontation with the enemy and the pacification of the controlled areas, mainly by convincing the peasants of the goodness of the Soviet project.

Trotsky's winning idea was to use people not as simple executors of a military hierarchy but for the individual peculiarities of each one.

Who better than me could have spoken to the peasants? Convince them of the need for an agrarian reform that would pass power to the Soviets and see common cooperatives as the real goal for better food production?

The goal of the Red Army was clear: to prevent more troops from joining the White Army and the peasants from becoming hostile to the regime and in favor of the Counter-revolution.

The Kolcak affair came to our aid as we were able to demonstrate how those attempts to oppose our government were clumsy excuses for the affirmation of a reactionary, despotic and personal power, which had nothing to do with the good of the people and the equality of the proletariat.

In the summer of 1918 the situation seemed to stabilize with these three large areas in the hands of the various commanders of the White Army. We had to avoid a battle of attrition at all costs and, in our plans, those months were to serve to devise new military and political strategies.

We also had to avoid the risk of encirclement by not allowing those three areas to come into contact with each other.

Then came that terrible day, that August 30, 1918.

The double attack in Petrograd, on the local head of the Cheka, the secret police, and in Moscow, where they even tried to hit Lenin, made us understand how the Counter-revolution was much more powerful than we thought.

The White Army, the royalists, the reactionaries, the revolutionary socialists of the former provisional government, were all united against us, against the Revolution and against the proletariat.

It was necessary to act quickly and resolutely.

It was months of infighting within the cities that affected the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries, definitively eliminating dissent within the Soviets.

Since then only the Bolsheviks remained to garrison the Soviets and the civil war sharpened in actions and results.

Much more power was given to the secret police and the Red Army was consolidated. Trotsky was the main architect of our victory, but also of the establishment of the so-called red terror.

Where my oratorical ability and that of my other companions could not convince the peasants, the Red Terror took care of annihilating those villages that had actively participated in the destruction of the Whites, perpetrated to the detriment of the proletariat.

Not that things got any better in the fall.

The end of the First World War was great news for everyone. Luckily, that massacre of proletarians had come to an end.

But the Western powers, in particular France and England who had signed the Triple Entente agreement with tsarist Russia, saw themselves threatened by the extension of the danger of an international socialist revolution and intervened directly in our civil war.

Economic and military aid, as well as fresh and well-prepared troops, were brought to the White Army throughout the winter of 1919, and Poland, under the pretext of undefined borders to the east, moved against us.

Meanwhile, in the cities, due to poverty, hunger and winter, the first uprisings against the Soviets and the Party began. We found ourselves forced to fire on the very proletarians who had actively participated in the Revolution a year earlier.

It was the worst moment of those years. That interminable winter brought with it an unparalleled fury, an internal attrition of the best forces of our generation.

At great cost we managed to keep order in the cities and to hold on to the positions we had previously conquered, but the spring of 1919, with the resumption of military action in a grand style, took us by surprise.

Denikin advanced from the south and we failed to put up any resistance, leaving free space for the Whites. Meanwhile Kolcak, who had become absolute dictator in Siberia, moved from the east and Judenic, commander in chief of the forces in the north, attempted a convergence towards the Volga and Moscow.

The Whites' plan was clear. By opening more fronts, they hoped to weaken and wear us down.

In those days there were violent debates within the Party about the best management of the Red Army.

In the end Trotsky's line prevailed and this was decisive for the outcome of the Civil War. Instead of opposing the advance of the White Army, the order was given to fall back on Moscow.

In this way we would not have lost either men or means unnecessarily and we would have left the conquest of many territories to the Whites, but of no real importance.

With their meager numbers they could not think of attacking us in our strongholds. Indeed, it was already difficult for them to control that territory.

In fact, their advance stopped, perhaps satisfied with the result obtained or deluded by a possible disintegration of our government.

By now the revolts in the cities had been put down and the disgruntled units removed from military management. Furthermore, the elimination of the Socialist Revolutionaries six months earlier had eliminated any possible internal enemy in the territory managed by our government.

Once again, Trotsky seized a winning opportunity and promulgated a reform of the Red Army. Many arms professionals were recalled to service, some of whom had lent their skills under both the Provisional Government and the Tsar.

So each of us, coming from the Red Guard, was joined by a long-time officer. We were left with the task of motivating the troops and gathering valuable intelligence among the population, while the actual military action was handed over to the latter.

The changes led to a great improvement in the efficiency of our army.

It was decided to experiment with Kolcak's troops, considered the best prepared.

In June we won a series of battles which made us recover all the territory left only a few months earlier.

The new military tactic was adopted against Denikin and Judenic with similar results. Judenic's Army was virtually annihilated, while by October the attempted attack by the Whites was repulsed on all fronts.

Now we could count on an undeniable advantage: that of having fresh and motivated troops against worn-out and ever less numerous armies.

The impending winter and what had happened in the west did not allow us to complete the task. Trotsky's great military tactics were seen precisely at that juncture. If we had pursued the pursuit of the Whites along the three lines of their attacks, we would have discovered the main cities and we would have been scattered without being able to defend ourselves against other enemies.

While the delay in defeating them could free up entire battalions to turn our attention elsewhere, leaving the solution of those minor dangers momentarily postponed.

The major concern now was the Polish invasion. The Western powers considered that maneuver much more interesting and much more effective than what was put in place by the Whites, therefore they supported it decisively.

After the end of the First World War and the independence of Poland, Pilsudski undertook a war of expansion which led him to conquer Lviv as early as November 1918, to then penetrate directly into our territory, conquering Minsk in the summer of 1919.

It was obvious that behind Poland was the shadow of England, our main ideological adversary during those first years of the Revolution.

Before proceeding directly against that army, there were long winter months of discussions and attempts to consolidate power.

The Russian winter has always been a fundamental test for the stability of a political and administrative system. The population, if exhausted and led to hunger or misery, is willing to do anything.

That winter was markedly quieter than the previous one. The foci of the Armata Bianca were less powerful, the peasants had become accustomed to the expropriations of their crops and dissent had been eliminated.

Furthermore, the sanitary conditions had improved. Fortunately, typhoid did not kill as many as the previous year and the Spanish flu seemed to have disappeared, while in the winter of 1918-1919 it claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, including Sverdlov, a prominent Party leader, trusted arm of Lenin and companion of many discussions in Petrograd.

During that winter I managed to obtain an important result within the Party.

A motion was approved which, once the Civil War was over, envisaged the revision of the provisions of war communism, especially as regards land reform and the treatment of the countryside and peasants.

I slowly convinced all the main members, with the exception of Trotsky, precisely by betting on the fact that by doing so, opportunities for revolts would be removed.

I was given the task, together with other specially elected comrades in a special Commission, of drawing up reports on the state of the countryside and the main political inclinations of the peasants.

However, this was only to take place following the repulse of the Polish invasion.

In the spring we prepared for the confrontation with the Poles. A good portion of the peasants supported our work so that we could leave few reserves to secure the rearguard, unleashing the majority of forces against the invading army.

The command was entrusted to the three main generals who had distinguished themselves in previous campaigns of the Civil War: Kamenev, Yegorov and Tukhachevsky. As in the times of the Revolution, I followed Kamenev's contingent.

When the first real battle took place, Kiev was already in Polish hands, but we were waiting for the surprise move by Trotsky himself.

Leaving the Don area where it was a garrison to counter Denikin's Cossacks and Whites, the army led by Budennyj surrounded the Poles with a huge pincer maneuver and retook the Ukrainian capital after only a month.

At that point the hand of the Party intervened directly, causing a peremptory order to be issued.

“The road to the world revolution passes over the corpse of Poland.”

It would have been only the beginning of the permanent revolution, the main pivot of the thought of Trotskyist internationalism.

In less than a month we achieved extraordinary victories, recapturing Minsk and arriving directly on Polish territory.

It took only another month to route Pilsduksi's army. At the beginning of August we were at the gates of Warsaw.

At that point, I was called back from the front. My job was exhausted and I was mainly serving in Russian territory, to gauge the mood of the peasants before the final offensive against the Whites.

I managed to understand how the so-called Green Army, made up of those wealthy peasants who had seen themselves expropriated of land and goods, could soon shatter.

From my experience of rural life, I understood how the majority of the effectives had been dragged into the Counter-revolution convinced by a group of a few well-to-do bourgeois from the countryside.

I made contact with the lowest part of that Army, where the proletarians clearly dominated.

I explained to them the reforms that the government would have launched at the end of the Civil War, probably as early as the beginning of 1921, therefore within a few months.

The end of war communism with its expropriations was an attractive prospect for them.

Within a month, we understood that Kolcak and Judenic's forces would soon collapse as the majority of the Green Army would join us, leaving few effectives who would decide to side with the Whites.

The situation to the south, in Cossack territory, was more complicated. Therefore we communicated that the first military objectives should have been those of Siberia and those of the north, to then aim for the south once these outbreaks were defeated.

I returned to Moscow full of fervor and good news.

At headquarters, I found a strange situation. Joy at the dispatches we sent was combined with disappointment at the news on the Polish front.

Pilsduksi had organized a counter-offensive with French and British forces that had come to its aid and had quickly broken the siege of Warsaw, driving the Red Army back from Polish territory.

We had succeeded in thwarting the invasion, in saving the Revolution and the Party, but not in exporting our Revolution internationally.

The order was given to begin peace negotiations for the definition of the borders between Russia and Poland and to sign an armistice.

We would later have thought of revolutionary internationalism, now the priority became pacifying our territory to give life to new economic and agricultural policies and consolidate consensus towards the Party.

Following our information, the Red Army, once again deployed in Russia in a very short time, quickly overwhelmed the whites of Kolcak and those of Judenic.

We then headed south, where Denikin's units surrendered earlier than expected.

A last attempt at Counter-revolution was made in the Crimea by Vrangel who rallied the last white battalions around him.

We besieged the area and within a month the few troops left under his command had to flee abroad.

Before the onset of winter of 1920-1921, the Civil War had ended in clear victory for the Red Army and the Party.

We had thwarted every counter-revolutionary attempt and interference by the imperialist powers in our affairs, but we had not succeeded in exporting the Revolution, at least not for now.

Some republics of the former Tsarist Empire had been united with Russia, such as Siberia, Crimea, Ukraine and White Russia.

Trotsky's goal was clear and convinced Lenin as well. Expand the Revolution in the Caucasus and the Baltic republics and then establish a federal state based on socialism and Soviet power.

The political decisions for the organization of power would be up to Lenin and the Central Committee of the Party, the military decisions for the conquest of these new territories would be up to Trotsky and the Red Army.

After the end of the Civil War, I participated less constantly in military activities, occasionally acting as a Party envoy in war zones, always with the task of carrying out propaganda and persuasion activities in the countryside.

From 1921 it was much easier to carry out this task due to the economic and agricultural reforms introduced with the NEP, based on my suggestions a few years earlier.

Thus we easily managed to take possession of the whole Caucasus, from Georgia to Armenia, and to prevent any attempt at peasant counter-revolution.

Conversely, that tactic did not prevail in the Baltic Republics, which maintained their independence.

However, victory in the Civil War marked the birth of the Soviet Union.

This was the war I fought and, although it wasn't comparable to the massacre of the World Wars, that was enough for me to understand how the death and destruction caused by this human choice cannot be justified.

Those comrades who died and were forgotten on the battlefields never returned to their families and were no longer able to make a contribution to the society of the future.

My generation is the one that fought a fratricidal war believing in the ideals of a Revolution, in order to make people equally equal and with the same prospects for a better future in a classless society.

II

II

In August 1914, at the age of nineteen, I, Hans Kempf, enlisted as a volunteer in the Army Corps of the Prussian Reich.

With me was Bruno Kohn, my most trusted friend and classmate. We were both recent graduates in accounting and accounting from one of the best institutions in Munich.

At first, we were assigned to a military training course, since neither of us had yet done military service. Besides, Bruno didn't even know how to shoot.

We were immediately told that we would be merged into the Ninth Army which was mobilizing for the Eastern Front. We were supposed to face the Asian hordes of the tsarist troops.

At first, it seemed to us a punitive solution since the tsar's army had six million personnel, the largest army ever formed. In hindsight it was fortunate, as the majority of the deaths of our army occurred on the western front.

The training course made us lose the opportunity to participate in the first battles, those that saw the withdrawal of Von Prittwitz up to the Vistula line, leaving the whole of East Prussia in the hands of the Russians.

Likewise, the first German counter-offensive on the Masurian lakes did not see our presence. We only learned that the great tactics of Colonel Hoffmann and the determination of François allowed a crushing victory.

The Russians retreated in less than a week and by the end of August the whole of Prussia was back in our hands.

While our entire volunteer regiment was preparing to complete its training, winter began to set in on the icy steppes and there were innumerable clashes between our and the Russian armies, causing enormous casualties on both sides.

The whole war did not seem to be resolved in a short time, as had been expected by all.

On the Western Front there was a stalemate, as well as on the Eastern.

All the contenders began to think about the general mobilization of the troops, the winter equipment, the distribution of food and setting up a real war economy.

The lightning intervention to resolve the issue from which the war had arisen seemed to have vanished by now.

Everyone would have had to face an unexpected enemy: winter. That was the greatest enemy of that war.

Cold, snow and mud have been our daily companions.

Due to his physical bulk, Bruno had been destined to use the machine gun, the weight of which required a great force for lifting and transport.

Instead, I was given the normal service rifle and they immediately made me practice shooting precision at considerable distances, given my diligence and aiming skills, as a result of years of hunting trips that I had carried out in my youth.

They granted us the request to serve in the same department and platoon, after they saw our harmony and our ability to draw fellow soldiers through patriotic speeches and words of comfort.

In December 1914 we were loaded onto a train bound for the Eastern Front. Crossing our great Germany was an immense joy for us.

We had met many young people from all over the world, each animated by the same feelings of attachment to their land.

The first military action in which we actively participated was the battle of Bolimow which we already prepared in mid-January 1915.

On January 31, 1915, following the commands of General Mackensen, we attempted to cover the right flank of the front to subsequently launch the definitive attack for the conquest of all of East Prussia.

We weren't told our role right away and that was good.

The high commands were confident of the artillery and began shelling Russian positions at Bolimow near Warsaw.

I still remember the sound of those six-inch shells. It was my war baptism, perched in a trench waiting to do my part.

I was crouched next to Bruno's machine gun and we exchanged jokes:

“With these we gut them.”

Some fellow soldiers who had already lived through all those months of war told us peremptorily:

“Newbies, stay covered. The cold will kill more than bullets and cannons. Don't get sick and keep your feet dry.”

He was a corporal, one Monk.

The same evening we realized that something was not going right.

The officers were gathered in a small room.

“Nothing good when they talk a lot.”

Monk said.

Bruno and I thought that corporal was a defeatist, one of those not convinced of our military, political and cultural superiority.

Artillery Lieutenant Bauer informed us of what had happened.

For the first time, innovative weapons had been tested, containing a noxious gas that was supposed to evaporate following the explosion and decimate the enemy rear.

The intense cold had nullified the effect, not being able to fully use those weapons.

Lieutenant Bauer concluded by affirming the superiority of the Prussian army and that, waiting to be able to use those gases during the spring and summer, we had to launch a traditional attack.

"Now it's getting serious," Bruno commented.

"With those gases we will certainly win," I added.

Thus began our first battle.

After the artillery, there was the assault of the infantry. My first assault.

I leapt out of the trenches while Bruno and the other machine gunners covered our advance.

Bullets whistling around us, we just had to run to not be easy targets. I have no idea how many of my fellow soldiers fell.

Despite my low speed I was not hit. My endurance skills got the better of me as I was able to run for kilometers at the same pace, while almost everyone set off at full speed to suddenly slow down after a few hundred meters.

We advanced for more than ten kilometers, the Russian front had broken up.

“Now you will see that it will be their turn. They will fight back.”

Monk reported at the end of the day.

Indeed they did.

The Russian response was vehement and we fought for three full days. We gradually retreated and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.

Eventually everything returned to the way it was before our attack.

“But what was it for?” Bruno asked me.

Lieutenant Bauer, passing by, scolded my friend.

“The enemy suffered twice as many losses as ours. They lost forty thousand men. This is a war of attrition."

I thought a lot about that statement. It meant that to win the war we would have to inflict more and more damage and that whoever resisted the longest would triumph.

"Please, stay alive."

Now I truly understood that exhortation Monk reminded us every morning.

In the following months, the tactics of the military command, entrusted to Hindenburg, became clear to us too.

The entire Battle of Bolimow had been just a diversion on the Eastern Front.

The real attack was that of the Masurian lakes which began immediately after the end of the hostilities in which we had participated.

In two weeks we succeeded in inflicting losses well in excess of the ratio of one to two, taking as many as one hundred thousand prisoners.

By then, winter was almost over.

Three months of bitter cold had turned each of us into people of the same complexion and appearance. Only height and weight set us apart.

Considering the high mortality of the front lines, it didn't take much to become a veteran.

The main operation of the northern part of the Eastern Front was planned for early May 1915.

That was supposed to be the blow that would put the tsarist army out of action, then we would head west, where the fighting between us and the French was becoming more and more bloody.

The use of gas had now entered the common practice of attacks on both sides, increasing the number of victims disproportionately. According to all the officers, he had never heard of a war so bloody and with so many dead.

We were informed that the battle would begin on the south side, towards Gorlice, to break the Russian front and to remove the threat to Galicia and Silesia, following a heavy concentration of Russian troops.

We remained in spasmodic waiting, in which, however, the soldiers perished either because they were sick or because they were wounded or because they were hit by fire from the enemy trenches.

Others and I were chosen precisely to play the role of remote snipers. They equipped us with special rifles, with sniper sights.

Our work was rather small; in any case, at least twenty Russians fell to my blows within a month.

The news from Gorlice was great. We had largely broken through, doing immense damage to the enemy who had ordered a general retreat. Over half a million Russians had been taken prisoner and we had split their troops in two.

Now our moment had come, to launch the attack to the north.

Following the ideas of Mackensen and Falkenhayn, we concentrated our forces on Warsaw.

It was a memorable attack, in which our assaults drove the enemy back.

Bruno mowed down their positions through frightening bursts of machine gun fire, corporal Monk always exhorted us to stay alive and, if possible, not to get hurt.

“There is only one thing worse than a dead soldier: a wounded soldier!”

We were at the height of joy when we saw the enemy flee.

"There's nothing to be happy about," Lieutenant Bauer told us.

“Ludendorff's plan was different and it didn't materialize. We weren't supposed to crush the wings of the Russian army by leaving them an escape route, we were supposed to carry out a colossal pincer movement that would have trapped all their troops. We had to focus on Vilnius and Minsk and not on Warsaw. Now the enemy has retreated leaving us a large part of Poland, but he saved his army and we will meet those soldiers again.”

That war taught us a great deal about military strategy and above all we understood which generals were capable of winning a battle and which instead were capable of conceiving a more far-reaching action.

Ever since then, I've always tried to think of all the possible implications of our assaults.

To understand if a victory was really such and a defeat as well.

Ludendorff and Hindenburg decisively took the initiative and the results were seen from the summer of 1915.

We broke through enemy lines in several places and advanced into Russian territory.

Only later did I realize how Falkenhayn's wait-and-see tactic made us lose the war.

Had we struck the decisive blows on the Eastern Front as early as 1915, we would have forced Russia's surrender and subsequently concentrated our forces against France and England, where the trenches were wearing down material and men.

The victory we obtained against the Russians was too late, by which time the best forces of Germany had been thrown to the wind.

Throughout 1915, and more so in the summer and autumn, an increasing number of new troops arrived, alternating with us for attacks on the front.

The majority of these troops were inexperienced and unprepared to face this new type of warfare, totally different from what was explained at the Military Academies.

Two months of field experience counted more than a year spent studying those strategies.

In fact, the best generals were those who were the first to understand the great news of that conflict.

The front stabilized around Riga and we had to prepare for another winter. No one would have thought that the war could go on for so long.

Before we did that, we were sent home for our first leave after a year of service. It was the first time that Bruno and I had left the front and it didn't seem real to us.

Return to our home in Munich for three weeks. I would see my parents and my girlfriend again. I would have slept in my bed, I would have eaten those delicacies cooked by my mother and not the frozen rations that they distributed to us every day, the quality of which had deteriorated considerably over the course of a year.

I would have put on comfortable shoes and relaxed in the warmth of the stove.

Before sending us home, they spent a few days in the rear to give us a presentable appearance.

I think it was an order imposed from above. Soldiers were expected to appear not careless, happy, and with a general sense of accomplishment.

In fact, clean-shaven and in a new uniform, we looked our best. We were certainly thinner than a year ago, but this was normal.

They let us spend Christmas at home and that was a great gift. It was the only moment of family joy during that war.

My mother found me noticeably thinner, while my father was proud of me.

“You are defending Germany. Honor and power to the Reich!”

My fiancée hardly recognized me. A year of war marks you deeply. You are used to not sleeping at night, to stay alert during bombing raids.

You are no longer fit to be around people and talk.

In the trenches, mostly one answers in monosyllables. When you're in action, you scream.

What a difference from civilian life.

The return to the front was markedly worse than our first departure. Now we knew what awaited us, possible death, a wound, cold, hunger, bombs.

A year before we were totally unprepared for those events, now they were normal routines to be done day after day.

The Russians made a surprise attack during the last months of the winter of 1916. They were greatly outnumbered, but disorganized.

They approached in large groups so that Bruno and the other machine gunners could mow down hundreds.

The snipers and I did the rest.

The cold was really intense and we didn't understand the reason for that attack. Over ten thousand enemy soldiers froze to death, and their small conquests were soon lost to our offensive during the month of April.

That year should have been the decisive one and things immediately went well, even for me and Bruno who were promoted to corporal, as a consequence of the fact that Monk and other first-time non-commissioned officers had passed away or had been transferred to the front. western.

However, the summer season led to a stalemate of all positions.

The southern side of the eastern front, the one garrisoned by the Austro-Hungarians, had succumbed to the attacks of the Russian general Brusilov, while the majority of our contingent was dislocated to the west.

It was evident that our generals were much more interested in defeating France and leaving Russia to her own internal affairs.

1916 was relatively uneventful with little skirmishes and few significant battles.

Despite this, we noticed how the quality of the equipment was declining, supplies were scarcer, the new departments were diverted elsewhere and there were no great licenses, except for a week during the month of July.

That wait wore us out more than the war itself as we were aware that if we hadn't won on the other fronts, the enemy could have overwhelmed our positions in East Prussia quite easily.

Hindenburg and Ludendorff also took command of operations on the southern front, once the exclusive province of the Austrians. Thanks to our effectiveness and strategies, the Russian advance was halted and the front stabilized.

At that point, just before the onset of winter of 1916-17, there were several briefings from central command.

The French army seemed almost on the verge of collapse, undermined by internal protests and defections. We stationed near Riga understood that something was happening in Russia. The troops no longer responded to the command of the officers and a general revolt was close, the prelude to an overall rout of their contingent.

Kaiser Wilhelm II's decision was clear. Attack England frontally to make it sit at the peace table and thus liquidate France and Russia. The new attack envisaged not only the normal land wear and tear through the action of artillery and trenches carried out on continental soil, but a new front made up of naval and maritime ones.

The tactic was risky and aimed at resolving the conflict as soon as possible.

In February 1917, after a particularly cold but combat-free winter, Russia exploded. There was a revolution which led to the abdication of the Tsar and the replacement of the government as well as many generals.

At that point, we played our wits and dispatched the greatest weapon Germany could ever unleash against that country: Lenin.

By supporting that subversive, we guaranteed victory on the eastern front. It was enough for us to get him into Russia, then he would have thought of doing the rest himself.

“This move is very dangerous,” Lieutenant Bauer told us, now promoted to the rank of major and awarded the Iron Cross second class for his military achievements during the cannonade of Warsaw.

"Major, why?" Bruno ventured.

“How why, Corporal Kohn? Have you ever read anything by this Lenin?”

Bruno shook his head.

“Here it is. Do you know that he preaches the union of all proletarians, the abandonment of arms, internationalism? If he wins in Russia, how long do you think it will take to spread his unhealthy ideas in Germany as well?”

I came to my friend's defense.

“Major, with all due respect, but we Germans are different from these Slavs. We will never embrace those ideas, we are for order and discipline.”

“We will see Kempf, we will see. We have set in motion a mechanism that could backfire on us. It's hard to control disease after the bacteria spread."

Meanwhile, in August 1917, our southern front advanced considerably by conquering Galicia. We were given orders to take Riga.

“We will adopt a new way of using artillery, as the British are doing on the Western Front.”

Major Bauer ordered.

We entered Riga almost effortlessly. At that point, victory on the Eastern Front was one step away.

In early November the Russian soldiers threw down their weapons and fraternized with us.

The biggest army in the world had dissolved, now all the Russians were leaving to make a revolution and they weren't interested in continuing the war against us anymore.

Bruno was enthusiastic:

“Our Kaiser was right! Lenin was much more powerful than any cannon."

In mid-December 1917, following the Bolshevik seizure of power, the Eastern Front ceased to exist and peace negotiations began.

We knew that we could demand very harsh conditions, that we could have all of East Prussia and all of Poland. At this point, it was time for politics. We had done our homework and were transferred elsewhere.