The line "Two broken tigers on fire in the night" reminds me of William Blake's famous poem "Tiger, tiger, burning bright; In the forests of the night..."
The second to last verse is intriguing but I doubt it means anything. The Soviet soldier is caught behind German lines and taken prisoner, then stands in a line with other Soviet prisoners, then the Germans take him alone from the lines and put on a train to Russia. Then apparently he comes back to Germany, the war ends (in April), and in October he and other Soviet soldiers are on a train back to the Soviet Union.
It's true that when Soviet soldiers became lost from their units and snuck back across the front line, sometimes other Soviet soldiers shot them suspecting they were spies or traitors. But that scenario doesn't fit the song. I'll bet that if you asked Stewart what the second to last verse means, he'd say "I don't know, it just came to me." Indeed "I'll never know, I'll never know" is in the lyrics. Sometimes songwriters are just inspired. That a line says "holy Russia" suggests a religious or mystical experience. The Nazis had some strange religious fascinations, in my imagination a German general wanted to go to a religious shrine in Russia before it was lost to the Soviet army, and chose a single Soviet prisoner with him, for reasons known only to the general.
That verse DOES mean something. When Stewart talks of standing in lines, or moving in lines, he's talking about formation. In this case, the narrating Russian soldier is talking about standing in formation with the Red Army, preparing to make the final approach on Berlin. This is done to point out that the narrator had fought for the Red Army for the entirity of the war (the first verse tells us he was there, on the front, when the Germans crossed the border into Russia. This sets up the final injustice that this young man endures...
That verse DOES mean something. When Stewart talks of standing in lines, or moving in lines, he's talking about formation. In this case, the narrating Russian soldier is talking about standing in formation with the Red Army, preparing to make the final approach on Berlin. This is done to point out that the narrator had fought for the Red Army for the entirity of the war (the first verse tells us he was there, on the front, when the Germans crossed the border into Russia. This sets up the final injustice that this young man endures -- lifetime (although probably a brief lifetime) imprisonment by the country that he fought so long for. (When he was "taken from the line" to "journey deep into the heart of holy Russia", it was by the Russians, not by the Germans!
This is based on facts! Stalin, with his massive paranoia, sent millions of his own soldiers to concentration camps after the war, including those that had been taken prisioner by the Germans! One site suggests that several million Russian soldiers were killed by the Comunists, after the war. I've heard this story from other sources than the internet & do believe it to be true. It fits in perfectly with what I know about Stalin!
I think Stewart wrote, not just this verse, but the whole song, as a salute to the Russian soldiers and people who paid such a high price, not just fighting the Germans, but trying to live under the rule of the Communists! I don't have them now, but I've seen figures where, over the course of their leadership, Stalin was responsible for significantly more death than Hitler. Of course, he had many more years to accomplish this. Both were pure evil, in fact, some people like to talk of the political spectrum as a line with liberals on the left & conservatives on the right. At the far right of this line would be facists and at the far left would be communists. I like to think of it as an alomst closed circle instead, where, if you go too far to either the right or left, you come back to the same evil tactics and interpretations as those you claim to be your worst enemy! This CLEARLY describs Hitler and Stalin!
@TDK Stewart read dozens of books to research this song, and while it\'s not up on his site anymore, he used to have about ten pages of notes on this song alone, including this part:\r\n\r\n"And now they ask me of the time I was caught behind their lines and taken prisoner ..."\r\n\r\nThe Germans viewed captured Russians as slave labor, and they were treated very poorly. As German labor became scarce, they were forced to work in armament factories and mines.\r\n\r\nSome 5,750,000 Russians were taken prisoner during the war. Barely 1 million were found alive at the end. Two million died...
@TDK Stewart read dozens of books to research this song, and while it\'s not up on his site anymore, he used to have about ten pages of notes on this song alone, including this part:\r\n\r\n"And now they ask me of the time I was caught behind their lines and taken prisoner ..."\r\n\r\nThe Germans viewed captured Russians as slave labor, and they were treated very poorly. As German labor became scarce, they were forced to work in armament factories and mines.\r\n\r\nSome 5,750,000 Russians were taken prisoner during the war. Barely 1 million were found alive at the end. Two million died in captivity from starvation, exposure and disease. A million were released during the war, some of them to serve in collaborator units set up by the German Army. Another million were never accounted for. According to the Germans 67,000 were executed, although it is believed that the actual number is far higher.\r\n\r\n"They only held me for a day, a lucky break I say ...."\r\n\r\nRussian prisoners of war who managed to escape their captors really did not fare much better. Fearing these men had been co-opted, Stalin ordered that they all be sent into a sort of internal exile in Siberia.\r\n\r\nAlso, Mark Stoler, on his blog Things Have Changed, has a full take on this song, including this:\r\n\r\nIn his epic account of the German-Soviet war, Absolute War, Chris Bellamy writes that "the Red Army was the only one in the world where being taken prisoner counted as desertion and treason". Stalin believed any soldier who allowed himself to be captured was a traitor and counter-revolutionary and that Russians exposed to Westerners for any length of time became a danger to the Soviet state, because they were potentially infected with subversive views. Bellamy adds: "The Soviet government and military command had absolutely no interest in what happened to Soviet people in German captivity. When prisoners of war who survived were released the end of the war, they were usually sent to the Gulag or shot, and the same fate even befell many who had fought and crawled their way out of German encirclements during the war."
The line "Two broken tigers on fire in the night" reminds me of William Blake's famous poem "Tiger, tiger, burning bright; In the forests of the night..."
The second to last verse is intriguing but I doubt it means anything. The Soviet soldier is caught behind German lines and taken prisoner, then stands in a line with other Soviet prisoners, then the Germans take him alone from the lines and put on a train to Russia. Then apparently he comes back to Germany, the war ends (in April), and in October he and other Soviet soldiers are on a train back to the Soviet Union.
It's true that when Soviet soldiers became lost from their units and snuck back across the front line, sometimes other Soviet soldiers shot them suspecting they were spies or traitors. But that scenario doesn't fit the song. I'll bet that if you asked Stewart what the second to last verse means, he'd say "I don't know, it just came to me." Indeed "I'll never know, I'll never know" is in the lyrics. Sometimes songwriters are just inspired. That a line says "holy Russia" suggests a religious or mystical experience. The Nazis had some strange religious fascinations, in my imagination a German general wanted to go to a religious shrine in Russia before it was lost to the Soviet army, and chose a single Soviet prisoner with him, for reasons known only to the general.
That verse DOES mean something. When Stewart talks of standing in lines, or moving in lines, he's talking about formation. In this case, the narrating Russian soldier is talking about standing in formation with the Red Army, preparing to make the final approach on Berlin. This is done to point out that the narrator had fought for the Red Army for the entirity of the war (the first verse tells us he was there, on the front, when the Germans crossed the border into Russia. This sets up the final injustice that this young man endures...
That verse DOES mean something. When Stewart talks of standing in lines, or moving in lines, he's talking about formation. In this case, the narrating Russian soldier is talking about standing in formation with the Red Army, preparing to make the final approach on Berlin. This is done to point out that the narrator had fought for the Red Army for the entirity of the war (the first verse tells us he was there, on the front, when the Germans crossed the border into Russia. This sets up the final injustice that this young man endures -- lifetime (although probably a brief lifetime) imprisonment by the country that he fought so long for. (When he was "taken from the line" to "journey deep into the heart of holy Russia", it was by the Russians, not by the Germans!
This is based on facts! Stalin, with his massive paranoia, sent millions of his own soldiers to concentration camps after the war, including those that had been taken prisioner by the Germans! One site suggests that several million Russian soldiers were killed by the Comunists, after the war. I've heard this story from other sources than the internet & do believe it to be true. It fits in perfectly with what I know about Stalin!
I think Stewart wrote, not just this verse, but the whole song, as a salute to the Russian soldiers and people who paid such a high price, not just fighting the Germans, but trying to live under the rule of the Communists! I don't have them now, but I've seen figures where, over the course of their leadership, Stalin was responsible for significantly more death than Hitler. Of course, he had many more years to accomplish this. Both were pure evil, in fact, some people like to talk of the political spectrum as a line with liberals on the left & conservatives on the right. At the far right of this line would be facists and at the far left would be communists. I like to think of it as an alomst closed circle instead, where, if you go too far to either the right or left, you come back to the same evil tactics and interpretations as those you claim to be your worst enemy! This CLEARLY describs Hitler and Stalin!
@TDK Stewart read dozens of books to research this song, and while it\'s not up on his site anymore, he used to have about ten pages of notes on this song alone, including this part:\r\n\r\n"And now they ask me of the time I was caught behind their lines and taken prisoner ..."\r\n\r\nThe Germans viewed captured Russians as slave labor, and they were treated very poorly. As German labor became scarce, they were forced to work in armament factories and mines.\r\n\r\nSome 5,750,000 Russians were taken prisoner during the war. Barely 1 million were found alive at the end. Two million died...
@TDK Stewart read dozens of books to research this song, and while it\'s not up on his site anymore, he used to have about ten pages of notes on this song alone, including this part:\r\n\r\n"And now they ask me of the time I was caught behind their lines and taken prisoner ..."\r\n\r\nThe Germans viewed captured Russians as slave labor, and they were treated very poorly. As German labor became scarce, they were forced to work in armament factories and mines.\r\n\r\nSome 5,750,000 Russians were taken prisoner during the war. Barely 1 million were found alive at the end. Two million died in captivity from starvation, exposure and disease. A million were released during the war, some of them to serve in collaborator units set up by the German Army. Another million were never accounted for. According to the Germans 67,000 were executed, although it is believed that the actual number is far higher.\r\n\r\n"They only held me for a day, a lucky break I say ...."\r\n\r\nRussian prisoners of war who managed to escape their captors really did not fare much better. Fearing these men had been co-opted, Stalin ordered that they all be sent into a sort of internal exile in Siberia.\r\n\r\nAlso, Mark Stoler, on his blog Things Have Changed, has a full take on this song, including this:\r\n\r\nIn his epic account of the German-Soviet war, Absolute War, Chris Bellamy writes that "the Red Army was the only one in the world where being taken prisoner counted as desertion and treason". Stalin believed any soldier who allowed himself to be captured was a traitor and counter-revolutionary and that Russians exposed to Westerners for any length of time became a danger to the Soviet state, because they were potentially infected with subversive views. Bellamy adds: "The Soviet government and military command had absolutely no interest in what happened to Soviet people in German captivity. When prisoners of war who survived were released the end of the war, they were usually sent to the Gulag or shot, and the same fate even befell many who had fought and crawled their way out of German encirclements during the war."