Generals send soldiers on suicide mission.
Though based on a onetime best selling novel, no studio was interested in making Paths of Glory until Kirk Douglas agreed to star in it. The film was shot in Germany at the Geiselgasteig Studios in Munich. The two main location sites, the chateau and the battlefield, were only a 30 or 40 minute drive away. Kubrick spent a month supervising the digging up of the battlefield and used 600 German police as extras. The wooden planks in the trenches doubled as a track for the camera's dolly shots.