It was a titanic battle, with clear winners and losers. This fascination then turned into a dream. Somehow among the unending succession of nightmares found on those pages, I began to formulate a fascination. This was one of my first true loves and as such I can still recall it with misty eyed nostalgia. In what I still consider to be the greatest reference work ever created, I found thousands of pages on every aspect of the war. I discovered the Eastern Front in the voluminous Marshal Cavendish Encyclopedia of World War I. Nightmares & Dreams – Battle Lines Are Drawn Into oblivion – Russian soldiers charge forward at the Battle of Tannenberg The Eastern Front may have been forgotten by the west, but that was yet another reason I found it so intriguing. I was sitting safely sequestered among the school library’s modest stacks gaining an intense interest about a front that Winston Churchill deemed “The Unknown War: The Eastern Front.” The future British Prime Minister felt compelled to author an entire volume with that title about the front in his magisterial multi-volume history of the First World War. It is not without irony that one of the most catastrophic conflicts in human history came to me in a school library located thousands of kilometers and an ocean away from battlefields seventy-years after the fact. There was not much for the rest of us to do other than engage in the illicit consumption of booze, absurd acts of delinquency, and mini rebellions against anyone trying to exercise authority.Īnd yet from that time of troubles came one of the great obsessions of my life, the Eastern Front of World War I and specifically the Battle of Tannenberg. My high school had its own aristocracy (football players and cheerleaders), the bureaucracy (administrators and teachers), plutocracy (rich kids), autocracy (the bullies), and meritocracy (academic achievers). High school provided me an education in class systems. Much of my life since then has been informed by an urge to overcome people’s preconceived notions and the invisible hierarchies that govern both our personal and professional lives. High school altered the course of my life to such an extent that I can scarcely think about it without feeling complete contempt for the experience. Rather than enjoy it, I endured those three years of frustration and humiliation by seething mostly in silence. That time period can be summed up in two words, high school. My obsession with World War I on the Eastern Front began during one of the worst periods of my life. On the Eastern Front – Inn at Usdau on fire during the Battle of Tannenberg The obsessive may be at a loss to explain why they continue pursuing their passion well beyond the limits of reason, but they will continue that course no matter the cost in time, money, and energy. Obsessions can lead to the most extraordinary of emotions and the strangest of places. Perhaps that is because the pursuit of an obsession is a portal to another world, one that allows the obsessive to supersede the world in which they have been confined for far too long. The journey may be fraught with danger, but the destination is worth the risk. They must take their passions to the greatest extremes. That may well be true, but an obsessive ignores this advice. Self-help gurus and life coaches will advise moderation as a necessary antidote to obsession, offering moderation as the key to a happy life filled with contentment. Obsession leads to compulsion and compulsion to uncontrollable impulses. The urges that give rise to obsessions are unexplainable and undeniable, they have a magnetic allure that is as seductive as it is sinister. Obsessions can lead to places you would never imagine.
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