Stalingrad
Tags: anti war, cruelty

Plot synopsis:
The movie begins in 1942 with some German troops relaxing in Italy. They are playing cards, swimming and drinking. They are enjoying themselves until they hear music and realize they are late for their formations, and they rush to join their ranks. Everyone is praised for their fighting in Africa and the soldiers are awarded medals for their victory, though simultaneously scolded for being late. They are told to be ready to move on to their next mission, and they get on a train and leave. On the train the new platoon leader, Lieutenant Hans von Witzland (Dominique Horwitz), writes a letter to his love. The men discover that this is his first time to the front.On the way to Stalingrad the men see many wounded soldiers. The Lt. sees the way the Russian prisoners are treated and tries to convince higher-ups to treat the Russians better but they rudely ignore him. A preacher gives a pep-talk to the troops.Now in Stalingrad, the Germans are trying to take a factory. They suffer many casualties as they move toward the factory. The man who gave away their position in the first place is sent on a suicide mission to stop the Russian machine guns, which allows the rest of the soldiers to reach the factory. One man is told shoot anything that moves, and he accidently shoots his friend, which makes him break down. As he stays with his friend he hears a fallen Russian soldier talking to his mother as he dies. They finally take the factory, despite the casualties suffered.Nov 8, 1942: the troops listen to a broadcast from Adolf Hitler about why he wanted to reach Stalingrad and speaking of their victory there, with only a few pockets of resistence left. The troops talk about how they started with 400 men and now are only 62. The Lt. wants to agree to a short truce with the Russians to gather their wounded. The Russians agree but only if the Germans go first. The Lt. goes out first along with one of his men, Otto (Sylvester Groth). Otto and a Russian trade breads as they gather their wounded. One German back in the bunkers decides to shoot at the Russians and everyone begins shooting. The Lt. grabs a young Russian boy (Pavel Mang) and brings him back to their base, and yells at the man who began shooting.In the morning the mail and food arrives. The Russian boy finally speaks to the Germans as the Russians begin singing. One soldier, Rollo (Jochen Nickel), gets a letter from his wife that she is leaving him for a French prisoner of war. Rollo says he will make the Russians pay for it. Just as the Lt. is trying to comfort him, the Russians bomb their shelter and begin attacking. The Lt. and a small group take flamethrowers and try to find a way out through the sewers. The Lt. gets lost and finds a Russian girl, Irina (Dana Vávrová) in the sewers, who happens to speak German. She makes a truce with him, to help him find his friends if he lets her go. However, when they get deeper in the sewers she pushes him into the water and runs away. Fritz (Dominique Horwitz), one of the Lt.s men, finds the Lt. and helps him to safety. Emigholz (Heinz Emigholz), who they brought for luck, is found with his leg blown off. As they carry him off, they discover a Russian woman and her children hiding and give them some bread as they move along.When they get Emigholz to the medical area, they can not find a doctor so Fritz holds a gun to a doctor to get him to work on him. Captain Haller (Dieter Okras) shows up and says that they are under arrest. The Lt. wants to speak to the General about it, who says the event will not go unpunished.Dec. 1942: the 6th Army has been surrounded for four weeks. The men are now prisoners, and must look for land mines in a snow field. They are told they will be sent to the front to help defend Marinovka. They are also told that they will be honorably reinstated when they leave for the front.The men sit in foxholes waiting as fleet of Russian tanks drives by. The tanks notice them and begin to drive toward them. A battle ensues in which some of the men dig holes in the snow, wait for the tanks to drive over them and then stick grenades to the back of the tanks. With a combination of grenades and Molotov cocktails the Germans manage to destroy all of the tanks, though they suffer heavy losses. They are all honorably reinstated.The Germans are then seen burning down a village while taking all of the Russians prisoner. The Lt. and his men are told that they are not going on leave. Instead they are forced to execute Russian prisoners. The Russian boy is amongst the prisoners. The Lt. tries to say that the boy worked for them and therefore should not be executed. Captain Haller makes them execute him anyway. Fritz says he is going to leave, and the Lt. says he no longer feels bound to his oath to stop him. Fritz leaves along with GG (Sebastian Rudolph) and the Lt. As they are on their way they encounter a camp of Russian refugees. A man tells them how to get to Pitomnik in exchange for some bread. As they travel further they find some dead German soldiers who were wounded and had passes to go home for being wounded. They each get a pass and plan to use them to go home.At the airport the wounded are being inspected to ensure they are truly wounded and that it wasnt self-inflicted. After passing the inspection they are part of a large group pushing to try to get on a plane. They do not make it onto the plane. They meet back up with the other men. A plan flies over and drops a container of food and medals. The men begin to eat some chocolate and Rollo finally gets his Iron Cross that he wanted. As they do this, Captain Haller comes out and points a gun at them, telling them that he wants a report filed and that in the German army looters are to be shot. The Lt. tries to grab the gun from him and the Captain shoots GG. Rollo shoots the Captain, who proceeds to beg and plead with them. The Lt. says, You want a report? The Russian boy was named Kolya. And his name was Müllerlike a lot of others. They then shoot Captain Haller.They go to the Captains house that he told them about and find it full of supplies. They find a girl in a room, tied up in a bed. They decided to go by rank, which means the Lt. would go first. The rest of the men leave the room, and the Lt. walks over and cuts the girls ties. The other men are listening to music, drinking and washing themselves. They begin playing cards, as they were in the beginning, and the line Hertz ist trumpf is heard again. We see the Lt. in the room with the girl, who happens to be Irina, the girl he met in the sewers. She says she wants to be shot, so the Lt. gives her his gun and says to shoot herself. She can not, and they end up sitting and talking. Their injured Captain, Captain Musk (Karel Hermánek), who they brought with them, points a gun at them and tells them to be soldiers not deserters. Otto tells him that every night he prays to be killed. He then pulls out his gun, says Heil Hitler and shoots himself in the head. Rollo carries Captain Musk out and discovers a line of German officers, including the General, walking in a line with their hands raised, surrendering. The remaining two go with the Irina, who says she can get them out.Irina leads the two through the snow. As they head to where she is leading them, shots are heard. Irina yells I am Soviet! but they continue to shoot, killing her. Fritz and the Lt. crawl away, and sit in the snow holding each other and talking to each other about the best thing about the cold until they both freeze to death. The movie ends with them covered in snow and tells us that over 1 million people died in the battle of Stalingrad. It says that of the 260,000 people of the 6th Army, 91,000 were taken prisoner and only 6,000 of them ever returned home.

Review: That he is a German and she is Russian is not as important as that they are both souls in torment with no way out.The human agony of that scene is superior to anything I have seen in over 60 years of watching movies.The other is the final scene between Dominique Horwitz and Kretschmann as Fritz and Hans clinging to each other overwhelmed and miniaturized by the vast Russian winter.That final scene reminds me of Napoleon's death march from Moscow in 1812.
And as you watch this film, remember one thing, not every German soldier who fought in the war was a criminal.
The film is also successful in the sense that it doesn't allow character or plot to dominate it - it is simply a tale of survival, that attempts to depict the battle mainly from the ordinary (German) soldier's point of view.
As far as a 'war' movie  goes, I would give honors to Stalingrad over Saving Private Ryan and  even Liberal Hollywood's take on the siege of Stalingrad (from the  Soviet point of view): Enemy At The Gates.
This film is one of the historically most accurate war films ever made in that it displays the reality of soldiers in a battle situation as well as the particular circumstances of the Battle of Stalingrad, obvious when one compares this film to works such as Anthony Beevor's book "Stalingrad".Unlike the better known "Enemy at the Gates" where the plot diverts into a sniper/hunting story, this film shows what war can do to individuals.
I liked particularly the contrast of the opening scenes in sunny Porto Cervo (where the Germans are celebrating their recent victories) with the tragic scenes which followed when calamity overtakes them.I thought too that the three struggling figures exhausted in defeat symbolised the horrific loss of human life and the futility of war.
Well-meant attempt to depict the events concerning the battle of Stalingrad, though the individuals Vilsmaier concentrates on, remain - due to his direction - too far away from the viewer to have him/her really involved and the result is that the drama of the war is never really felt.
The movie's essence was delivered by one of the German soldier's comments after taking the building [in Stalingrad], "....62 men left out of 400." Expensive real estate which, as in so many other conflicts regardless of uniform, has its costs in blood.
To those people I recommend Antony Beevor's highly readable book, 'Stalingrad'.Viewed from a straightforward standpoint, Stalingrad is a pretty compelling war film that is nevertheless a league below US celluloid depictions of the battlefield: when it comes to depicting the fate of the 'poor bloody infantry', the second half of Full Metal Jacket, the first quarter-hour of Saving Private Ryan, or much of Black Hawk Down is infinitely superior.
As the Holocaust, through the global ceremony of Holocaust Day on January 27 and through the power of global films like Spielberg's Schindler's List, becomes transported away from a specific time and place into a world parable of evil, so we are able to reappraise the role of the German soldier as victim.
The characters war in sewer tunnels, rail yards, and from building to building in the hellish bomb-scape of ruined Stalingrad, only to be defeated by the unforgiving Russian winter.The film deals with the issue of Nazism and the vilification of Germans in that period in the way that many other films from both Germany and the rest of the world do.
This portrayal adds another layer to the suffocating envelope of trapped hopelessness that pervades the film.A sort of ground based companion to Das Boot, Stalingrad frames the epic struggle of World War Two in a personal light and from the unexpected perspective of the ordinary German soldier as a sort of hero made tragic by circumstance and a brutal government that would pervert his sacrifice..
A brief history of the facts behind this film have been well stated: 'The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in southwestern Russia.
It was amongst the bloodiest in the history of warfare, with the upper estimates of combined casualties coming to nearly two million.' The horror of this battle as written by Jürgen Büscher, Christoph Fromm, Johannes Heide, and director Joseph Vilsmaier manages to allow us to see the 'other side' of the German forces, those not committed to the Nazi hunger for world domination, but instead were simply men serving their required time in the army, hoping to return to their families.
The unit is directed by Lt. Hans von Witzland (Thomas Kretschmann, in a role that should have won him every award possible, so fine is his performance): he is a man who appears more human than soldier and indeed when his troop arrives in Russian territory he is appalled by the treatment of Russian POWs by German officers, a response that places him in a negative light with the Nazis.
There are many very tender moments between the 6th army and the Russians trapped by the siege of Stalingrad and as the bitter winter sets in the battle-weary soldiers are dying, committing suicide or attempting to escape and find their way back home.
The over two hour study of the cruelty of war ends with a solemn statement, both emotionally and visually and the Battle of Stalingrad, a victory of the Russians, shows the defeat of the minds (and lives) of the Germans.
An authentic view on the horrors of the most tragic and meaningful battle of World War 2 - just like "Das Boot" this is a masterpiece which could never come out of Hollywood..
But unlike shown in weekly propaganda news films, the German soldiers are neither depicted as heroes nor as Nazis, but simply as fathers, abandoned husbands and football fans, which share one common will: to somehow survive and return home.This movie may not be taken light hearted as there is a lot of fighting and dieing and the effects of weapons and ammunition are presented in a rather impressive and authentic way.
I think this film succeeds in depicting the decency of the people on both sides of the conflict as well as the obligatory sadism of the Officer who ordered the firing squad shootings of Russian civilians.It's pity the Germans still feel no WW2 Film is complete unless traces of the 'evil Nazi' are included.
The Germans lost 300,000 frontline combat troops and later, the second World War. This is the best Film ever made on the subject.
You easily see some of the German hierarchical relations, very different from the ones in US army.This is a movie which tries to get a real sight of what was Stalingrad, and I was not there, and I doubt most people were there now, but if I would choose one movie depicting this battle, for sure would not be the all American Enemy At The Gates.
This movie concentrates on a group of German soldiers who after fighting in the North Africa campaign are send to Stalingrad, Russia, where one of the most notorious and bloodiest battles of WW II is being fought.It's interesting to see the other side of this battle, since we mainly just always see the Germans simply as the 'villains'.
But of course you get accustomed to it quickly and you soon adapt the Germans as the main characters of the movie and you even start to care -and be interested in them.The way this story is told isn't however the best.
All of the actors aren't the best known actors around (Thomas Kretschmann was also at the time still a fairly unknown actor) but each of them fit their role well and gives its characters an unique face and personality.All in all not the best or most consistent WW II drama around but definitely worth a look, due to its original approach of the German side of the battle of Stalingrad and its good production values.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
On the eastern front of World War II a group of Wehrmacht soldiers, fresh from time off after a successful campaign in Africa eagerly proceed to their next line of duty: the Soviet city of Stalingrad, the site of history's most brutal battle.
And it came after the most brutal battle in all of history.Without question one of the best war films of all time.
I watched the film with my father who fought in WWII and the first thing he said was: "This is like real, this is how the war against Germans looked like".
But this was my first world war 2 movie seen from a German soldier's point of view.
But they had no options, if they didn't kill , they would have been killed by their superiors.This thing is evident when a young Russian boy is captured by the German army, and the soldiers who are protagonists in the movie are told to shoot the boy with dozens of other people.
Stalingrad is an attempt by the director to earn some sympathy for the German soldiers, who were always seen as culprits, but this film shows they were victims too.I don't want to get into the war crimes that Germans committed in Russia and other nations, but when you view a film you have to see it impartially.
This film doesn't show that Russians were bad despite being a German film, nor it shows that Germans were heroes, but still makes its point of earning sympathy for all the soldiers who lost their lives in the battle of Stalingrad..
I give "Stalingrad" credit in the sense that it doesn't completely portray German troops in the simple demonic quality which is the stereotype that many people now have, yet the movie includes stereotypes of its own, such as an almost too-good-to-be-true infantryman who has attitudes more akin to the 1990's than the 1940's, and two completely evil infantrymen and a rear-echelon officer.Some recent movies such as "Stalingrad" and "Saving Private Ryan" are frequently praised for their "authenticity" in depicting graphic scenes of combat, yet these same movies are deeply flawed and distorted in their depictions of the attitudes, values and behaviors of 1940's soldiers and civilians.
While many people these days like to denigrate war movies from the 40's and 50's which present more patriotic messages and aren't as graphic about combat, many of those earlier movies such as "Battleground" are much more accurate in their depictions of typical soldiers' attitudes, and they are often successful in showing the horrible effects of war in more indirect ways.One well-done part of "Stalingrad" is a battle between German infantry and Soviet tanks, which does a reasonable job of capturing some of the horror and confusion in such combat."Stalingrad" does a poor job though of showing the common look of the frontline soldier.
Books written about the battle by Antony Beevor and William Craig are recommended also, and the latter one is especially good about the common soldiers and civilians on both sides.Relatively recent movies which, in my opinion, are much better than "Stalingrad" and "Saving Private Ryan" in depicting attitudes and characters of persons during World War II, and the general feel, look, horror and grittiness of that war, are "Der Untergang" ("The Downfall") and "Talvisota" ("The Winter War").
Even if the beginning with its views of the beaches of Italy gives an impression of gradation to the subject, we're very quickly confronted to the reality of what was to happen: young guys who would prefer to be attending their everyday life with families and friends and brought into a storm by a megalomaniac scoundrel named Hitler.The best example of this is the huge lie of the general in the scene at the beginning of the film when he states that Germany has been victorious at El Alamein!All along the movie, we can feel the sense of betrayal of the battalion and Hans.
This showed the true brutality of what went on at Stalingrad and although I was not there I would think it resembled the image this movie created.As a response to some earlier posts where people said they didn't like this movie because it attempted to humanize the German soldiers.
It depicts the ordeals of some of the German soldiers that fought --- and died --- in and around Stalingrad during World War 2.
On the other hand, Soviet Russia was no innocent victim, its treatment of own and neighboring people in the 1930ies was nasty and lethal as well, and Soviet (non-)activities were largely a reason why Hitler had courage to start this horrible war.As for the movie, the events and background seem realistic (probably shot in Finland), most of actors performing Russians speak decent Russian, and leading men are catchy to follow (primarily Dominique Horwitz as Obergefreiter Fritz Reiser, Thomas Kretschmann as Leutnant Hans Von Witzland, Jochen Nickel as Unteroffizier Manfred "Rollo" Rohleder).
Nevertheless, if you like war movies based on real events, Stalingrad is worth watching..
Meanwhile, both films portray the reality of a distraught civilian populace.Unlike most American war films which one-dimensionally portray the enemy as 'bad', Stalingrad provides a far more realistic view of blended morality, showing warcrimes committed by all sides, whilst truly good-natured and moral individuals are also seen on both sides.
In the end, we are thus left with a sense of war as a senseless waste, as a struggle between corrupt leaders who exploit the naive youth who believe it is their duty to defend their country.Of course, the most controversial aspect of this film is that it deals with the Nazi movement and uses German soldiers as the protagonists.
It could be to debate that not so much time was spend on the war crime committed ( even by Wehrmact ) in Russia, but actually in Stalingrad, this was not a issue , it was pure survival for the German soldiers under siege.
But I've read now three different histories of the battle (most recently Antony Beevor's excellent book) and the movie does an excellent job of showing you a cross-section of life for German soldiers who fought, starved, froze and eventually died during the campaign while avoiding a superficial "check all the boxes" plot like the one in the truth-bending yet inexplicably popular "Platoon".
"Stalingrad" was the first realistic war film i saw .This was 4 years ago.Since then , i only have seen another :"Das Boot".Both films shows the real war ,not the surrealist things you see in American war movies.In "Stalingrad" you see normal people having to fight in a (like all of them),horrible war.In a war not everybody is a monster ,that is what American films show about the Germans ;most of them were normal people.Of course there were monsters ,like the German official this film shows, but most of them were like you and me.This film don't try to show German soldiers like saints ,try to show them like humans.
It has it all and it also quit accurate in portraying the fight around ,in and below the ground in the city as well as avoiding to glorify it ,but going directly to the meat of the case : The hell that it was and the suffering of the Soldiers in the front lines.As is the standard, the movie follows a platoon of German which is send to the city in order to help in the capture of the city and all of them soon release that this is not going to be walk in the park for the Soviet resistant is fierce and almost from the first minutes of combat you think "The crew doesn't waste any time , they go straight to the front lines.
Germans at War. A depiction of the brutal battle of Stalingrad, the Third Reich's 'high water mark', as seen through the eyes of German officer Hans von Witzland (Thomas Kretschmann) and his battalion.There is something historically and culturally significant about this film.
It will be interesting to see if there is a 'Directors Cut' in a few years time!If you want a warm fuzzy war film, aka 'Saving Private Ryan', 'Stalingrad' is not for you.
What is therefore missing is a depiction of the suffering of the civilian population and the Russian soldiers.The battle scenes, however, are well-produced and seem realistic from a technical and historical viewpoint and overall manage to portray the futility of the battle.To sum it up, the movie fails to give a three-dimensional image of the Stalingrad battle and therefore to some degree distorts the historical facts..
The battle for Stalingrad left one million dead, and this brilliant movie shows it all from the point of view of the German Sixth Army.
Movies and documentaries showing the German perspective realistically and objectively during World War II are far too rare outside of Germany; there is Das Boot and there is Stalingrad.
At some point, you need some historical background, before or after watching it.You can't expect any one movie to fully cover even a limited topic like the German-Russian battle in Stalingrad.
This movie was well-done in achieving its apparent aim of showing how horrible the conditions were for the Germans in the battle of Stalingrad, and in the Russian winter in general.
I think my feeling towards the German soldiers in this movie were different than, say, "All Quiet on the Western Front" because of who and what they were fighting for.
This does have value is showing what war is, however.Now, when are we going to get a good movie that tells things from the Russian point of view?
Dark, depressing portrait of the defeat of the german army at Stalingrad.Good at depicting the utter destructiveness of war.
The futility of War. Having just read 3 books on the Battle of Stalingrad, I expected this film to gloss over many of the events, and the thoughts of the average German soldier.
Have japanese film makers come to the point of making a movie in a lost battle where Japanese soldiers are decimated?
An excellent movie which shows the grim, terrible face of war from the point of view of a German Assault Engineer Platoon in Stalingrad.