HERO OF A LOST CAUSE

Who were the victors and losers of World War II? History tells us many names, but one of them is seldom mentioned, on account of being a ghost…

Comparing the luscious, eye-pleasing scenery of modern Italy with the far less rewarding sights of today’s Tunisia, we may perhaps attest to the utter silliness of the historical "what-ifs," such as in this case: "What if Carthage had prevailed against Rome, in the Punic Wars?" To imagine a Tunisian-based World Empire in the familiar place of Rome is too impossible to escape the natural conclusion that, at least here, the historical inevitability of the victory of Rome blows the "what-if" supposition out of the water…

“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse,” these doomsday words of Cato the Censor are not so much an expression of his personal opinion, as a dispassionate pronouncement of the inevitability of Carthage’s fall and utter destruction, which took three wars and well over a century to become a reality, but when it did, resulted in the slaughter of some half-a-million citizens of Carthage, and the reduction of a small number of survivors to slavery and deportation.

Rome won, Carthage lost all, including herself. History is written by the winners. It is therefore particularly surprising that, unconsumed among the smoldering ashes, a single fragment of that lost civilization has been able to stand out in all its glory, vilified and praised at the same time by its triumphant enemies.

"Hannibal ad portas," goes the Latin saying, like the Russian Booka-Booka, scaring little children at bedtime for many generations ever since. They call him one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, but perhaps he could indeed have been the greatest, considering that there was no one left to adorn and perpetuate his legend. Alexander left the whole world singing his praises; Napoleon was brought back to everlasting glory by his nation thirsting for superheroes. But not a single voice rises up for Hannibal, except for the grudging tribute of respect for the fallen enemy from Polybius, and to a lesser extent one from Titus Livius.

Of the three Punic Wars (the third one being the shortest, most lopsided, and lethal for Carthage), it was the Second Punic War, conducted virtually single-handedly by Hannibal, and as much against Rome as against the insurmountable odds of destiny, the latter robbing him of a world-historical personal triumph, of which he was, no doubt, exceptionally capable. But just at the peak of his incredible military success, threatening the very survival of the city of Rome, he was mindlessly set up by his own, when Carthage refused to send him the necessary strategic reinforcements, either disbelieving the actual plight of their enemy, or possibly, being more afraid of Hannibal’s growing personal power than of Rome’s potential retaliation. Whatever it was, the silly people of Carthage proved themselves unworthy of Hannibal’s genius, unworthy of a victory over Rome.

Alas, Hannibal’s historical tragedy was not being born a Roman, or else into one of those ascending nations of world history. Instead, he was an extravagantly superfluous son of an ill-fated city, the greatest hero of a hopeless cause who ever lived.

Yet, he was a genius, and a genius always partakes of the divine, thus transcending the circumstances, which would otherwise have condemned him to doom and oblivion. Betrayed and abandoned, he did not succumb to a self-administered poison, but lived on for eternal glory, eventually granted historical asylum in… Third Rome, namely, in Russia. In 1704, an eight-year old African boy was brought to Russia as a personal gift to Peter the Great. The Russian Tsar took good care of the boy, raised him as a bona fide Russian nobleman, rising to the rank of major-general and becoming great-grandfather to Russia’s greatest literary treasure Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. The boy coming from Africa, Peter thought it natural to give him the most famous African name: Hannibal!

We now take the time machine to the twentieth century. The place is the USSR, alias Third Rome, and the time is World War II. Returning to the opening question of this entry, who won that war?

Among the victors was a very prominent ghost, and, you guessed it, he was Hannibal the Carthaginian! The decisive victory of the war against Nazi Germany was the historic Battle of Stalingrad, in which the Soviet military commanders used the blueprint of Hannibal’s victory over Rome at Cannae, in 216 BC, to achieve a similar success, but on a far larger scale, in the winter of 1942/1943, thus turning the tide of the war and eventually assuring the ultimate victory. (Ironically, in the summer of 1943, at Prokhorovka, near Kursk, the Soviet Army used yet another foreign genius, the great military strategist Charles De Gaulle, to finish off whatever ambitions Hitler might still have had, in the greatest tank battle of all time. See my entry Le Général, posted on May, 16, 2011.)

One of the greatest assets of the Russian mindset is its unfailing recognition of foreign genius in all events of world-historical importance, and naturally, the desire to appropriate these achievements, invariably with proper attribution. (Such attribution increases the value of Russia’s self-esteem as the repository of Western culture, as befits her Third Rome Manifest Destiny.)

As a result, the name of Hannibal was a household name in every Soviet home, including mine. I can testify to the unbounded admiration for him, beginning with my father General Artem, who told me that Stalin admired Hannibal too, and so did Marshal Zhukov, of course, whom I had the privilege of knowing personally. Comparing the Soviet victorious pincers maneuver against the German army group of Field Marshal Von Paulus at Stalingrad to Hannibal’s rout of the Roman army at Cannae had become the favorite subject of conversation for the Russian veterans of World War II. And although many changes have occurred in Russia in the last 30 years, many of which I have found revolting, I still feel confident about the preservation of Russia’s historical memory, where Hannibal still lives in a glorious Pantheon, alongside many other foreign heroes, all assured of grateful immortality.