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Irrespective of the detail, it was madness to throw the best mobile units into intense street fighting for Stalingrad and leave the exposed flanks, in open country, to be defended by the least mobile and poorly equipped Italians and Romanians.

Whole Panzer units fighting for a few yards of ruined city streets, whilst weak Axis allies with few feeble tanks and inadequate anti-tanks guns, trying to hold miles of front line. Regardless of how good/bad the commanders where, or how much fuel, it's the strategy of an idiot. For which we can all be truly thankful.

Back to the movie: I saw it, it was awful - terribly melodramatic, plot hardly engaging and in fact almost boring.

As bad as Pearl Harbour or worse?

Worse. Syrupy, bland plot; simply put: an unabashed epic post war melodramatic Soviet-style propaganda. Starts off with contemporary Russian rescue workers saving German tourists trapped underground in a mangled Japanese city devastated by an earthquake. This leads to a flashback to mangled Stalingrad 60 years earlier...

Problem is, they had good actors, great cinematography, but the result is so disappointing.

Quelle surprise. It was released in the anniversary year of the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, under the current Russian government. Propaganda was an inevitability.

What many of us tend to forget is that up till then no one had really posed a threat to the Wehrmacht. They were advancing on all fronts. The western front was on the British isle's, there were no allied forces left on the Western European continent. North Africa was ready to collapse. The British 8th army defending Egypt.
The soviets had lost thousands of men, tens of thousands were POW's. High command believed that the soviets could not field any more men. Russia was on the verge of collapse.
Stalingrad was another city like Kiev. It would fall after a few weeks of fighting.

The German soldiers believed their leaders. They had all reason to trust them, had they not been lead from victory to victory?

In hindsight everything looks different. Easy to see failings. Easy to criticize. The German tactics had worked so far, why not again? Just another city on another river.

Mat

ORIGINAL: Michael T

Boardgames still rule [:D]

Ha ! Oooooh Rah ! to that, I very much agree.

Awful movie. Russian made piece of crap.

ORIGINAL: british exil


The soviets had lost thousands of men, tens of thousands were POW's. High command believed that the soviets could not field any more men. Russia was on the verge of collapse.
Stalingrad was another city like Kiev. It would fall after a few weeks of fighting.

The German soldiers believed their leaders. They had all reason to trust them, had they not been lead from victory to victory?

Mat

Same kind of thinking Hitler had before the battle of Moscow. "Just a kick in the door and it will collapse".

I did not see that movie. I did like the 1993 film and also did like "Enemy at the gates" with Jude Law and Rachel Weisz.

Michel.

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Quelle surprise. It was released in the anniversary year of the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, under the current Russian government. Propaganda was an inevitability.

Actually, I think it is an excellent example of Russian movies made for propaganda purposes.

The 1993 film Stalingrad by Vilsmaier is worth watching! Highly realistic image of the brutal fighting during the Stalingrad kessel.