Five years ago today, one of my heroes died

Five years ago today, August 3, 2008, one of my heroes died. I never met him, but I think I know him. Of one thing I’m certain, the influence exerted on me by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is incalculable. It’s difficult to explain the personal impact of Solzhenitsyn. He was such a massive figure in the public eye and provoked controversy (the good kind) throughout the course of his life. He was born on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk in southern Russia. Toward the end of WW II, in 1945, while serving as a captain in the Red Army, he was arrested for making disparaging remarks about Stalin in a private letter to a friend. He was initially taken to the infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow and was eventually sentenced to eight years of hard labor in several of the prison camps that he would later write about in his monumental three-volume, Gulag Archipelago. When I think of Solzhenitsyn, and I think of him often, several things come immediately to mind: highly principled, ferociously outspoken, unwavering, prolific author, unashamedly theocentric, inveterate enemy of all forms of totalitarianism, perseverance, endurance, faith, and perhaps most of all, suffering, suffering, and more suffering.

Same guy. Von Ribbentrop and Molotov negotiated the non-aggression pact (how’d that work out?) to divide Poland, and both countries invaded. It triggered WWII — then nothing much happened for seven months or so. The Germans invaded Denmark and Norway early in April, and then began the whopping month of fighting that bagged Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France.

At Dunkirk, Adumph lost his nerve (as he did in 1943 at Kursk) and failed to close out the war in the west by capturing the 300,000-man BEF. Although it took four years for the UK to recover from that (and with a lot of US help), capture of the entire army would have resulted in the collapse of the ramshackle British gov’t coalition, with or without a cross-channel invasion.

Then, instead of finishing up in North Africa, the Austrian pinhead thought it would be a better idea to invade the USSR.

Imagine that — despite the recent experience of the Russian front in WWI, and Napoleon’s self-destructive debacle a century before that, and (going back a bit more) the Persians’ attempt to subdue the Scythians by marching all over what is now the Ukraine until they felt the first breath of winter, he thought it would be a good idea.

Prevailing in North Africa was easily within their grasp; elimination of the British hold on the Suez Canal and the oil would have scratched the British Navy off the to-do list, as well as given the Reich and Axis (including Japan) all the fuel they’d need.

IOW, no Pearl Harbor, no Russian front (until they were fully mobilized and had eliminated all other threats), no D-Day...

It’s remarkable to contemplate, and I’m grateful he was such a dumbass.

Thanks GOPJ.

Solzhenitsyn was invited to lunch at the White House in 1982, The lunch included other dissidents, but Solzhenitsyn was to have a preliminary meeting with Reagan. Solzhenitsyn turned down the invitation.

Wow, that's too bad.

He was one of the good guys, helped expose evil in an excellent fashion.

Bumpin' this thread...

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.