And therefore the story of Stalingrad is the German story of coping with the darkest chapter in its history, attempting to redeem a disgraced
generation by putting the burden of guilt on those in a position of power. It’s the
Russian memory of the patriotic war against a brutal enemy, a statement for the resolve
of the Red Army. But it’s also the Western narrative of Stalingrad as a struggle of remarkable
victims caught in between two murderous regimes. More so than actually capturing the history
they’re attempting to portray, these narratives leave us with a broad variety of symbolic
perspectives on the battle, perspectives that reveal how the involved countries choose to
understand their past, showcasing the subjectivity inherent in our perception of history.
And now that our post memory of the war is becoming increasingly reliant on mediated
images of the past, the question that arises then is to what degree will our cinema and
our media, both consciously and unconsciously, influence and perhaps reshape how we come
to view the war and the past in general? Do they broaden our perspective and help keep
the history alive or are they bound to distort and revise the actual history, in the minds
of the viewer? Whatever your opinion on the matter may be,
the films about Stalingrad showcase how both filmmakers, storytellers and audiences alike
should at the very least be aware of the implications of post memory constructed through the perspectives
of works of fiction, and to be mindful of what we’re trying to say and what we’re
being shown about our history.
Thank you all for watching, and thank you to Audible for sponsoring this video! Audible
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compelling and intense accounts of the war that I’ve ever read, transporting you back
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Hitler and Stalin themselves. I love Antony Beevor’s work, and Peter Noble does a great
job in bringing his writing to life as a narrator. If you’re even remotely interested in learning
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