Stalingrad

I read Antony Beevor's book on Stalingrad. The callousness towards life on both sides astonishes me. There was one moment when, to combat cowardice, a Russian commander shot every tenth soldier. Behind every unit was another unit making sure that the first unit didn't run away. At one point the German soldiers saw that they had just shot at a boat of women trying to get away--and they felt bad about it! Hours before they had been shooting and killing women and children. The soldiers also looked around the steppes and thought--this might be a good place to have a farm. After they were surrounded, they thought--the Fuhrer (I can walk!) will rescue us. There's hope and then there's delusion. But perhaps the kind of delusional beliefs found among the Nazi soldiers parallel the everyday delusional beliefs among people today.