A Generation of Soldiers Lost to the Hell of War

Rating: 10/10 (6 October 2005)

There might well be minor historical inaccuracies in this rare film, showing the Bravery & contributions of the Red Army in WWII, but as a Personal Witness to the aftermath while traveling through the old Soviet Union less than two decades after the event....being dumbstruck at the almost total absence of a generation of Males (not to mention the thousands of Russian women who fought alongside and gave their lives) in the 1941-1945 battle with a German Army to which Stalin had mistakenly given free reign in the belief that Hitler would be Honorable....this tale tells the turning-point of the horrendous Battle of Stalingrad as a small corps of Snipers led by Vassily Zaitsev (who's rifle I witnessed prominently displayed in the Kremlin Museum) gave their fellow countrymen Hope by their stealth in picking off, particularly Wehrmacht Officers in the Ruined City, eventually leading to the loss of a million German soldiers....who otherwise might well have been at Normandy in what might well have crippled our own efforts to successfully engage our troops in Continental Europe.