How We Remember War | The Battle of Stalingrad (in Film)
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
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In this experimental video essay-supercut I explore how the bloodiest battle in human history, The Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943), is remembered in world cinema. The various German, Russian and Euro-American films about the struggle all give their own interpretation on the struggle, containing some parallels but most of all some significant contrasts in the battle's representation. This raises questions about the nature of the 'historical fiction film' and how it influences our postmemory of the War and of history in general...
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LITERATURE USED:
Stalingrad, Antony Beevor, 1998
FILMS USED:
The Battle of Russia (1943)
The Battle of Stalingrad (1949)
Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben/Dogs, do you want to live forever (1959)
The Great Battle on the Volga (1962)
Stalingrad (1993)
Enemy at the Gates (2001)
Stalingrad (2013)
MUSIC USED:
1. Suspense Music - Post Apocalyptic | CO.AG Music
2. Symphony No. 5 (by Beethoven) | Ludwig von Beethoven
3. Moonlight Sonata (by Beethoven) | Ludwig von Beethoven
4. From Russia With Love | Huma-Huma
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Thomas & Lars
Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.
Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
We all know that the 1993 Stalingrad was the superior one.
Piotr Papciak see "Attack and Retreat", 1964
Agree. The Stalingrad 1993 is the best.
The German version in 1993 was the best one I have seen it’s very realistic.
I really want to see it, but I can never find a translated version...
One that will load on my iPad anyways!
Lol
Dillon Crowe there is an English subtitle version on UA-cam
The 1993 version is the only one that does the battle justice.
Some soviets old films actualy historicaly acurate too, but modern is absolute propoganda (Enemy at The Gates just garbage and Stalingrad of Bondarchuk 2013 is a fucking joke, bad joke for veterans)
It is rather disappointing hearing from people the phrase "but enemy at the gates movie shows...". This stupid movie did so much harm.
As Carl-os said, the Russian one is really a disappointment. It was a romance novel with "evil" Nazi from space.
It doesn't even remotely do the battle and hundreds of thousand corpses justice if you read anything about it
I actually think Enemy at the Gates isn't that bad. It has high production values and the locations are authentic. It covers the fundamentals of the battle. It's loaded with inaccuracies but that's standard for a war film regardless of where it is set.
The big inaccuracy that really bothers people is the ridiculous Order 227 mass shooting of the retreating soldiers. To be fair, that order was subject to a lot of confusion and wild exaggeration in the Soviet Union itself for many decades after the war. But the filmmakers should have done their research.
Enemy at the Gates is pretty much the only film on the Eastern Front that has been seen by a worldwide audience beyond history buffs, and probably the only one that ever will be. Such is the power of Hollywood. But IMO it could be a lot worse. I get why a lot of people don't like the movie though, and that's fine.
Agreed, the 2013 movie was so silly compared to the original from 1993, and this is comming from someone who you could consider a total slavaboo
By far the best film about Stalingrad is from 1993.
Yes, but Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben (1959) is pretty good as well. Obviously it's dated but some good performances without veering into melodrama. - Thomas
Stalingrad from 1993 is one of my favorite WWII movies of all time. It really captures the complete madness of that battle.
Also some soviet films, they were patriotic but historicaly acurate. Modern (except 1993) is absolutly garbage.
Agree to agree evening more Stalingrad 1993 is great.the one from the 50s is good one aswell
young FEGELEIN
Funny how Kretschmann played in both a heartfelt emotional piece like the 1993 German movie and some balls-to-the-wall stupid action fest like the 2013 movie.
Mr. Pilgrim One of the things that inspired me to make this video. They even put him in similar situations! -Thomas
True. Just rewatched the movie, and while I kinda like the visual style, oh my god is it a fucking cringefest.
TK was brilliant in the German movie and was a movie star paying the rent in the Russian. Even Oliver paid the rent in the odd crap movie.
That is... incredibly succinct. Thanks for that.
Reminds me of an interview with Buscemi on "Con Air": "It's not my cup of tea, but well-paid. It gives me the financial freedom to do small movies I really feel good about."
That being said, the whole cast of the German Stalingrad movie was incredible.
Groth as Otto is HAUNTING. Rudolph as GeGe gives me a heartache every time he's on screen because he invokes the feeling of being your little brother. The banter and chemistry between Nickel (Rohleder) and Horwitz (Reiser) is is awesome. You're really convinced they've been through some shit together. And Dana Vávrová... what can I say about her. Haunting, powerful and even smeared up with dirt and grime just beautiful, like a flower growing out of a pile of rubble. Gone way too soon.
I find it great, that you showed Stalingrad 1959!
trycoldman23 I thought that movie was terrific! West-Germany had some great actors back in the day!
trycoldman23 WHY DO I KEEP FINDING YOU
Storytellers I liked it that much, that I made a lego version of it haha. Well I believe it's that good, cause the war was just some 15 years ago and many actors were veterans.
WTF you are everywhere
Where do you find these obscure films?
People constantly disagree on what the Battle of Stalingrad was, but they tend to agree on one description of it...
Hell.
Or something "10 times worse than hell"
you mean heil
" You call it hell.... I call it Tuesday."
A man of the Death Korps of Krieg
War isn't Hell. War is war, and hell is hell.
And of the two, War is far worse.
@@johnkonrad5040 Well said Hawkeye.
Its a shame that people will remember Stalingrad as they saw it in Enemy at the Gates, its a disgrace of a movie and shouldnt be taken serious by anyone who has an interest in an unbiased perspective of the battle of stalingrad and the Ostfront campaign itself.
From an historical perspective, I think Enemy at the Gates is probably the least accurate depiction of the battle, even when compared to the Soviet propaganda film. It's honestly quite insulting how they handled that film. It obviously had the budget to be something special, but they botched it pretty bad... - Thomas
to be honest, modern Russian movies are no better. It's just too much trendy to be anti-soviet among movie-makers.
What I find worrying is how much "pop culture" knowledge of this battle draws from Enemy at the Gates (either directly or indirectly through videogames and wargames inspired by it, like the Call of Duty series). Everyone "knows" that Soviet soldiers were underarmed, that "one man carries a rifle, the other the clip", that "not one step back" meant the NKVD regularly gunned down their own retreating troops, that Soviet soldiers were carried to the frontline in train wagons with padlocks, and other bizarre things that either are completely false or seriously misrepresent a remote core of truth. It's one thing for a movie to simplify things in order to be entertaining, and another to ideologically distort the truth so much that it's sometimes directly contrary to what actually happened. Even the German-made "Stalingrad" (1993), while not perfect, is better than Enemy at the Gates. It's like the producers of the movie were afraid Western audiences would sympathize with any Soviets other than the main hero Zaitsev.
+Dima S not so much trendy as the West's major boogeyman, more of a "cliche" if you ask me. In fictional settings they could do a lot better I agree.
+Erich Manstein Well, I was speaking mostly about the Russian cinema. The modern Russian state's worldview is nationalism ("Living space for Our people in Ukraine, Georgia and other bordering countries" and shit) and Nazis don't like commies so much, duh (which pisses off quite a portion of population there).
USSR was indeed scary for western counties when it existed like in the movie "Red Heat", but those fears were quickly forgotten when it fall. Nowadays Western cinema pictures Soviets as failing state which was doomed to fail thanks to it flawed production and poor people.
Enemy at the gates... Poor people, that think it is remotely historical. Bondarchuks Stalingrad is crap as well. There is one kind of movies you need to watch, if you are interested in history - documentary ones. Or even - in 2018! - try to read some books.
Great vid thou and thank you for neutral view - for some people it is Ostfront, for other - the highest point of Great Patriotic War.
Documentaries, at least the popular ones, tend to rely very heavily on propaganda footage though. Especially the kind shown on Discovery and History Channel.
The World At War is a good exception though.
Funnily EATG was based on a book. It was an excellent historical read too but unfit for film adaptation. EATG was a collection of anecdotes and footnotes of men who lived and died on both sides of the conflict but the film ignored all that for the Vasily sniper narrative and threw in a love triangle.
I can't agree more with you. Most of the modern russian cinematography is special kind of trash and historical ones - are special among special.
The Unknown War of Soviet-American production is great as well, made with lots of effort. Though I agree on your point - only deep reading into the topic can give you some kind of unbiased view. And only if you actually want to have one.
Man, I search about and it was a surprise for me that the Soviet high command wasn't expecting a victory from this front, based in what I saw in EATG (movie), it surprises me that the soldiers did fight to the last, there was a account of a guy which hide himself through the dead bodies, but different from the movie, the guy waited for a tank to come and throw a Molotov in the engine vents, caughting on fire with the fucking tank, would be way more heroic movie telling the things that the soldiers tell, but probably wouldn't fit to the western propaganda that the soldiers in Stalingrad were some kind of mineons.
All I remember about this battle is that Jude Law had sex with Rachel Weisz in a crowded room in total silence.
That's really all you need to remember from that steaming pile of garbage:)
Yeah, that whole getting shot by their Officers thing was offensive as crap to Slavik people. I mean its' Urban Warfare and people are retreating in all directions while inexperienced Red Army Officers are in charge, friendly fire is going to go down but that scene was just kind of wow. They would have lost a lot of ground if they actually did that. Come to think of it, The Uk always seems to release movies like that. The Death of Stalin was from the UK too.
N2 B-1986
They had machine gunners at the back to spray down the retreating.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_troops
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_No._227
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_No._270
soviethistory.msu.edu/1943-2/the-nazi-tide-stops/no-one-steps-back/
www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-two/world-war-two-and-eastern-europe/not-one-step-back-order-227/
It's the truth, but it's a truth that was much-embellished by post-war propaganda.
Yeah, that is why it is kind of offensive. That movie was inaccurate and made it look like Vasily was dropping them like flys from the get-go and that the mainland Russians were the ones that go through that whole thing when it was actually people from the other Soviet states.
I like how the movies from the German perspective show the growing despair amongst the soldiers.
What I don't like is the trend of how every bad action in a movie ranging from a single order to the whole undertaking of Operation Barbarossa is being blamed on very few high ranking men in the German military.
I find it disappointing that every common German Wehrmacht soldier in these movies is almost always either 1) just following orders or 2) silently murmuring anti-nazi/Hitler stuff as if every common bloke was completely aware of the wrongdoings of Germany in this war but just could not speak up and had to follow his orders. Reality however paints a much darker picture when looking at the responsibilities of German soldiers.
Its fairly accurate, the pre-war Army of Nazi Germany that was destroyed in 41/42 had a lot to say, especially in the winter months. And if you make a movie about SS soldiers you get an entire different picture then a war movie.
tyskbulle the ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers often had fanatical views as well and the Wehrmacht was aware that it was their responsibility to starve citizens of Eastern Europe as part of a strategy. They all went through the dictatorship of pre-war Nazi Germany and its indoctrination after all, but not all soldiers were like this
tyskbulle The ordinary Wehrmacht committed just as much atrocities as the SS did....realistically the Germans couldn’t even kill as much as they did without the Wehrmacht being fully involved. The SS alone couldn’t have killed 27 million Soviets and raped 10 - 15 million women on their own, after all. The scene where the German soldier shouts at his comrades not to rape the girl....never would’ve happened probably....
The idea that most of the Wehrmacht was against all this is a convenient Post-War lie, if anything only the Russians who experienced this will say the truth.
@@smonkedweed7414 well said
@@smonkedweed7414 yup.
Hi everyone! This is my most experimental video essay yet, part supercut, part essay (basically my Food in Film video on steroids). I've been wanting to make this video ever since we started the channel but I decided to wait until I felt that I had the editing skills to pull it off properly. I decided to experiment with the concept of show-don't-tell for this one, hopefully making things extra engaging and entertaining, and not bogging it down with endless (redundant) voice-over. Obviously this way of doing the video has its own issues and I think there's still plenty of room for improvement, but I greatly enjoyed putting it together and I hope it shows in the end product.
See if you can find all the parallels and contrasts between the films and let me know your opinion on historical fiction films and post-memory in the comments!
Lastly, please consider leaving us a dollar on Patreon or Paypal if you enjoy our work.
- Thomas
I just found this and I want to say you knocked it out of the fucking park. Amazing video and thank you for giving a worthy subject it's due.
It sure was risky to pick this particular battle, since it devides a lot of people. Germans and Russians alike. But you found a really clever way to do it. I loved your editing in this one and hope to see more experimental stuff. Well done.
I think it's great and well made,especially the editing gave me goosbumps!
Funnily enough, Thomas Kretschmann played a main role in both Stalingrad 1993 and Stalingrad 2013
Bro he's in the pianist and Valkyrie and downfall lol he wears the heer uniform a bit too well
Bodies are still being found in Stalingrad. Actually now it has a different name but still after nearly 80 years bodies of long lost soviet soldiers are being found.
Yeah, and quite a few of them every year, pretty crazy. Yes! And it will soon host the World Cup!
Its Volograd and its unreal the Grain Elevator is still their.
German soldiers too
Same with the Seelow Hills just outside of Berlin.
@@storytellers1 The most deaths took place between June 1941 and January 1942, when the Germans killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs primarily through deliberate starvation, exposure, and summary execution
Last year, I took a class on World War II, and I wrote my term paper on the Battle of Stalingrad. I say this without a hint of exaggeration:
Stalingrad is an abyss. Look into Stalingrad, and it _will_ look into you. The amount of misery visited upon every living thing in that city (in just eight months) cannot be expressed by mere numbers. And those numbers, BTW, are _staggering_ by themselves... and they _still_ don't do it justice!
BTW, since it's mentioned in the video, Antony Beevor's book on Stalingrad is a good narrative, but if you want a fully detailed, and impeccably sourced, portrait of the Battle of Stalingrad, track down David Glantz and Jonathan House's _Stalingrad Trilogy_ .
For those interested, there's a really great book about Stalingrad (simply titled Stalingrad) by German author Theodor Plievier, who based the book primarily on wartime letters from Stalingrad he spent years collecting and studying. It offers some of the most horrific accounts of human misery I've ever read, such as a sequence where a truck drives through a crowd of freezing soldiers, many of whom attempt to get up in hopes of moving to the truck to feel the engine's heat, only for their frostbitten legs to crack and give out. Or a part where one character passes by a graveyard of destroyed tanks and vehicles, and encounters a crazy, emaciated soldier gorging on an entire barrel of jam.
Growing up I didn't know much about the battle for Stalingrad... History channel would just talk about the battle of the bulge or Western side of the war. I don't think there ever gonna be a film that captures how truly hell on Earth this conflic was
alexgatillofull I recently saw a 2 hour documentary about the eastern front on their
Those films listed there literally did. And the history channel did cover the Eastern front. Ever heard of Soviet storm?
What are you talking about? Stalingrad is literally one of the pantheon of "Battles People Wont Stop Talking About" - West, East, or otherwise. It'll be Stalingrad, DDay, Bulge, Kursk, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, until that's ALL the war is to people. It's not fucking STALINGRAD we need to talk more about - it's Dubno, It's Sebastopol, it's fucking entirety of the Italian, Burma, or East African campaigns. Those are forgotten, those are neglected. It's the entirety of the Chinese experience, it's Khalkin Gol, it's Spanish Civil War veterans being interred in squalid French camps, joining the French army in order to get out of those camps and embarking on ten fucking years of nigh-nonstop warfare through North Africa, through the Sahara one way and back through it the other way, through France, marching into Paris and fighting into Germany - carrying the flag of a defeated country on their backs, a country that was not their own. THAT is not talked about, FUCK Stalingrad, I am fucking tired of Stalingrad. There is an entire world war that nobody cares to talk about, not Eastern not Western - nobody fucking talks about. I am sick of people talking about how "Oh poor Stalingrad, those damn Western historians never talk about it!" when it's a fucking lie.
There's actually a fantastic German movie about it called "Stalingrad", it's kinda hard to miss...
Watch Soviet Storm: WWII In the East.
Watch Stalingrad (1993).
Problem solved.
I was a little disappointing in the lack of your narration in comparison to movie clips in this, but it was still pretty good.
I get that. It was a conscious stylistic choice on my part, I wanted to challenge myself to just focus on flow and visuals to present the messages and have it be up to the viewer to see how much they see (and otherwise just have it be a nice supercut). Not to worry though, next video will be more traditional, this really was an experiment of sorts. - Thomas
Thanks for the feedback. I love it when content creators communicate well.
Watch all, just dont waste time on Stalingrad(2013) and enemy at the gates.
Basically only the German films are worth your time
Of course he had his weak points too (although I have no problems to admit that I cried when I saw him first in my youth). He let the German soldiers become killers mostly just because of orders from a a****** of officer, where sadly in reality quiet a number had not problem with shooting civilians in cold blood, or treat prisoners like they were no humans. The 6th Army had a cruel legacy before they came to Stalingrad as far as I know. But the film captures the nature of the fight inside the houses perfectly, and the one tank-assault is in my eyes still today one of the best pieces of work to show the horror of such kind of war. Even today I would think it could count as a good film. Sadly many modern German films about highly emotional parts of the Second World War are not nearly as good at this old one. But the same could be said about other old films.
Marc Bartuschka I agree. After doing some actual historical reading into the subject, it becomes quite obviouse that Vilsmaier (either consciously or naively) tried to make the German army look more morally righteous than it actually seems to have been. Although there were definitely officers and soldiers who did not at all agree with some of the war crimes they witnessed (some of them even turned against Hitler whilst in captivity) most of them didn't seem to start to complaim until things bogged down around Stalingrad and casualties began to mount. According to Beevor there seems to have been a widespread form a delusion about the complicity of the German army in the deaths of civilians. Starving kids were seen as tragedies by some, yet the correlation with the German invasion wasnt understood or taken into account. Obviously it's easy to judge in hindsight, especially for those who haven't seen war. But I don't think there's much doubt that Vilsmaier was very selective with his portrayal of the poor grunt. Anyways, it's still a pretty good film, and yes, the tank battle scene is near perfect, "Passt!" - Thomas
Thomas: I guess that is in part for the reason that the people who watch the film should identify themself at least a little bit with the protagonists, and second it may also be that many people especially in (West)Germany in the early 1990's had still a wrong impression from the role of the Wehrmacht (well, to be honest, there are more than enough still today about which you could say this, and that guys even turned louder in the last years, which make me feel quiet uncomfortable to say the least). In the public opinion this distinction between the insane leadership and the criminal SS and the ordinary grunt (and sometimes the clean officers as professional warriors) was what was told over many years in western Germany mainstream. The narrative in eastern Germany had more or less collapsed after the country who told and accepted little disagreement had collapsed, so many of that what was told there was seen as completely wrong - even the parts who where not really wrong. Although this story from the clean Wehrmacht (and it was never more than that, with little truth) had got scratches and cracks over the years, it was still strong at that point I think. The two "Wehrmachtsaustellungen", exhibitions about the role of the Wehrmacht in warcrimes in the middle/late 1990s and early 2000's (although the first had its flaws and failures) changed that in public opinion a lot (and they where also for me a turning point after which I began to look deeper into that), and many historical researches followed who did in my eye ended the myth of the Wehrmacht as an more or less "normal" army in many aspects. Today both science and most people know more and accept the sad and shamefull truth more than in 1993. As you said, a film mostly show the time in which it was made - and for that time it was quiet a thing I guess that the protagonists DID shot innocent civilians, insteed that the filmmakers spared them from doing so. They become guilty, what is more than in many older war films.
Hey Storytellers! Not about Stalingrad, but have you watched a Russian WW2 movie titled "White Tiger" (2012)? It's allegorical and its ending is definitely NOT meant to be taken at face value (though the fantasy/allegory left me thinking), and it's not exactly a big budget film so its effects are at times dodgy, but it has some damned good acting, is not mindlessly anti-Soviet but it's not propaganda either, has many haunting scenes, and overall I thought it was pretty good. Again, it's more allegorical than a movie about the war. Awesome moment for me: Keitel's moments near the end.
This is bloody brilliant. I was hoping for a third view to be shown, 'The City's People', since there are many examples from these films for which this perspective can be demonstrated, but I'm still blown away by this presentation. Especially so for someone as interested in the Second World War as I am. Bravo.
TopBunkProductions Thank you so much! I'm a huge WW2 fanatic myself and this one was really made for people who are interested in both film and ww2/history.
As for the 'People of the City', they're mostly used to say something about either the Russians or the Germans, so that's how I decided to use them here.
- Thomas
@@storytellers1 i think the most striking images of the people of Stalingrad were in the 1993 picture, the mother with her little children hiding in the sewers or the old man with his displaced family (according to the veteran advisor to the movie they used people's houses as firewood) trading the info on where Pitomnik airfield was to GG for a little bread all of which he gives to his grandchildren. RIP to all the innocent and also not so innocent victims of the crime against humanity that was the Battle of Stalingrad.
- also Thomas
I'd recognize that opening radio traffic anywhere! (Call of Duty [2003])
The good old days
Yes! I got CoD for Christmas '03 as my first PC game; I must have beaten it over a hundred times whem I was younger.
Awesome, I played it over and over again as well, and I spent hours in CoD: United Offensive multiplayer. - Thomas
Hell yeah! The LMGs were lame but I loved the tanks and jeeps. I was in a pretty good clan for a while in UO; I'll always have great memories of that game.
hjp14 I was in a clan as well, although I can't quite remember what it was called...
Enemy at the Gate is a very historically inaccurate movie
But the title iname s cool
The defeat at Stalingrad was what the members of the White Rose used to appeal to the German public in the pamphlet they were executed for.
Arguably the 1993 movie was the best of the batch. I haven't seen the West German nor the two older Russian films, but the Hollywood and 2013 Russian movies were quite offputting for different reasons even though they had nice cinematography.
finn .mov I know because I showed the utter disfuntion of both armies. Both had good men and officers, and bad men and bad officers. Stalingrad is the worst battle in human history.
There is a 1975 Russian film called they fought for their Motherland and is about the led up to the battle of stalingrad, in my opinion its should have been mentioned and is better then all the films in this video.
I don't think many people know of this documentary on UA-cam called "Soviet Storm". It is an amazing documentary-movie. It went from Operation Barbarossa, to the end of the war. Almost unbiased, if at all. Then it covered an episode or two about the invasion in Japan.
@@gothadelic9396 That was a good film. Modern Russian blockbuster films suck. Soviet films were actually much better because they didn't try to copy Hollywood then.
@@gregoriysharapov1936 I watched all episodes of that series. It was fantastic!
With my class I'm gonna let the pupils chose their Stalingrad movie to watch (they can choose between the last 3). I love the experimental editing and can use this video as an introduction to the assignment.
I was kinda hoping for some analysis between the movies as well. Maybe an idea for a follow-up?
History Hustle if you want to choose between the movies for some historical accuracy i would sggest the 1993 version because its not overly unrealistic slow motion fest of unrealistic scenes rather its more close analysis how naive german soldiers turned from optimistic to dowright horrified. It also shows the horros that the german side committed but it shows how people still did not want to do them and it shows that it was not black/white rathet gray. So I my self would suggest 1993 version because it's the most realistic of the movies its really well made and it shows the horrors of war without demonaizing anybody and showing humanity in all sides.
+MCNAKKIVENE Well said!
Through my eyes as a history teacher I think all 3 films have a historic value. The 1993 shows the horrors of the German side and makes a balanced view. Enemy at the Gates shows very well how the Soviet soldiers were dragged in the war by their inhumane leaders. The 2013 movie is more of an action movie but it does capture the large scale destruction of the battle very well because of the digital techniques available. That said, I do believe it's the least worth on a scale of educational value.
Be wary of this: "Enemy at the Gates shows very well how the Soviet soldiers were dragged in the war by their inhumane leaders.". I'd show Enemy of the Gates as an example of a Western ideological perspective intruding into historical facts. A lot of what is shown in the movie is undocumented or demonstrably false, like Soviets being transported "against their will" in padlocked train wagons, or there not being enough rifles and soldiers were sent forward unarmed, or machine gunners gunning down their own troops (no, that's not what "not one step back" meant).
History Hustle If you want an unbiased one that shows the horrors of the battle and the one that's most historically accurate then go with the 1993 version for sure.
Brilliant montage! Absolutely brilliant!
Letting the movies speak for themselves to make your point was very inventive, very clever.
Oh snap a video about Stalingrad, that's cold. I'm surprised with all that footage there was anything to ration. After each clip went down it was like the clip after was picking up from and leading the charge in it's place. Good video.
I'm a little sad Cross of Iron isn't in here somewhere but it is mainly about the retreat from Stalingrad so I guess that makes a lot of sense but that film seriously should get talked about more, the frantic chaotic editing, cinematography, and the signature slo-mo death dances that only Peckinpah could have pulled off mixed with his vicious attitude towards violence in general really make it worth a watch. Also amazing work on the college of comparing and contrasting the differing interpretations of the war in cinema, really shows just how more modern you get, the worse and more distant the interpretation of Stalingrad gets.
A Majority of the comments are spot on, it appears that the message was clear, good job by this channel! I think what many of the dissenters have to say about "Enemy at the Gates" is highly accurate, but until we are willing to talk about what really happened in that area, from 1939 until the fall, well we are just skirting the atrocities that both sides inflicted on their own people. I would READ the book by Antony Beevor, The Fateful Siege. It does touch on it, but there are still many points that are left out and I think you can't really brush over those facts. War is hell and it does bring out the worst in all of us, but can we really look past the fact that given the opportunity we will do whatever we are commanded to do, the answer is yes, even if it is noncombatants
If you haven’t seen it Come And See is a brilliant film that shows how horrendous war is. It has excellent performances from the cast, especially by young
Aleksey Kravchenko and really recreates well some of the horrors of the Eastern Front.
I can honestly say it is one of my top five war films ever.
I think it’s only available in Russian with English subtitles although that doesn’t bother me personally and I am not a big fan of dubbing.
Indeed, but I would warn all, not to have women around
@@RichardGalli-r6isome women may be upset by it but so would some men.
To a degree we should all be upset by it. It shows just how evil humans can be 😔
My dad just recently told me that both his grandpas survived Stalingrad, I even met one of them.. that‘s pretty crazy
did they get any medals
7:47 „wir haben hier nichts verloren“ shouldn’t be taken literal in this context, it would translate to something along the lines of „We shouldn’t be here.“
„We haven’t lost anything here.“ is not wrong, but it’s kinda not appropriate for the context.
Just wanna help:) wonder who did those translations?
Der Doctor Being Dutch, I understood the context of what the soldier was saying, but this was the translation given by on the official movie. - Thomas
Okay then the fault is completely on the Translators side :) As said just wanted to help, and keep on going with the amazing videos you made! I really learned a thing or two from watching them!
"We haven’t lost anything here.“ is not wrong,"
No, it is wrong because as you say it doesn't mean that someone literally lost something. There is no context where anyone would say "I didn't lose any of my items here", except as an answer to the question "Has anyone lost their glasses?".
The fact that there was any humanity at all shown towards the enemy during this battle - which there was, however little - is amazing, and ironically shows us the extraordinary capacity of the human mind for compassion.
Fegelein showed up in both Stalingrad movies. *Which isn't a lot but weird that it's happened twice.*
So I am pretty sure Stalingrad was one of the worst battles in the history of mankind. Sub zero temperatures and sewage everywhere, and then also all the hand to hand/room to room combat must of been so scary. When you think of how many snipers were everywhere it must of been just a horrible freezing hell.
It seems to me the best to show the battle for Stalingrad was the German film of 1993 and the Soviet film ,, They fought for their homeland "of 1979, if I was not mistaken
2,500 Russian men died a day at the height of the Battle Of Stalingrad. It was one of the most brutal acts in the history of warfare. If it wasn't for the bravery of those men, our world would a much darker place.
I'm not so sure about that...
speech free so you like Hitler eh?
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but the USSR would have won even if they lost Stalingrad. It probably wouldn't have even lasted longer.
Jaxon W you nice correlational fallacy
Jaxon W he probably means that this specific battle didn't meant much in the grand scheme of things, russians have a lot of land to keep retrieving and then strike back.
100,000 went to Siberia and only 5000 returned..
Most of the people interviewed on the German site were wounded soldiers that were flown out
fuck off
mikhailv67 Sad story, but most of those captured Germans were already starving, sick or wounded.
Damn, Stalin was too nice, non should've come out. I would've worked those fuckers to death.
uToxicCake wow I'm sure you would when you lead your Bolshevik revolution 👌 😂
Great video guys, love this format of video. It truly comes off as a short documentary made by a film studio. Keep up the awesome work.
Thanks so much, had a lot of fun putting this one together! - Thomas
@ 12:37 - the rifle that is on display at the museum is NOT the rifle of Vassili Zaitsev. In EVERY photograph of him taken during the war he was holding a Mosin Nagant 91/30 equipped with a PEM style scope and mounting system. The rifle in the museum is equipped with a PU scope and mounting system, they are ENTIRELY different. The scopes are uniquely attached to the rifle in a way that they can not be simply changed. This was an issue with "Enemy at the gate" that Jude Law used a PU in the movie... the PU was extremely rare in 1942 and didn't really reach mass production until mid 1943.
BTW - my opinion is that this was a quite well done and brilliant presentation!
bravo!
Please look into doing a video on Elem Klimov's 1985 "Иди и смотри" ("Come and See").
I might consider this in the future yes!
Come and See is one hell of a film. More attention means to be paid to it.
enemy at the gates is pure BS btw
The fog of war is a nearly an impossible barrier, that we who have come after those who fought on all sides, have to piece together the small clues, small bits of fact, or alleged fact, deriving on what our own lives have taught us about our human nature to distinguish what is fact, fiction, reality or fantasy, I must recommend Heinz Schroter's STALINGRAD for those interested. RIP to all the fallen on all sides of that terrible conflict that was WW 2. Thank you for this post though, excellent editing and the best part being the integrity narrative at the end warning the naive about believing what they see or hear just because it is written or filmed, again thanks for the post, i thought it was pretty well done myself.
Cool, the intro was like the opening to the Vietnam War documentary series by Ken Burnes.
Silver Excel You're the first to notice. Indeed, it's a visual nod to Burns' series:)
If anyone is serious about getting a closer and much more in-detail look at the Battle of Stalingrad, any book by Jason D. Mark is absolute gold. The man tries to tell the story as it was and to also give insight into the men themselves if possible. A dry read if you don't care about day-to-day reports from units, but fascinating if you like that stuff.
AUDIBLE 30-DAY FREE TRIAL (includes 1 free audiobook): audible.com/storytellers - I recommend STALINGRAD by Antony Beevor and narrated by Peter Noble. If you're even remotely interested in learning about the battle and WW2 in general, it's really worth giving it a listen. Kept me hooked throughout. What happened at Stalingrad is incomprehensible.
Beevor did wrote a very good book indeed in my perspective, however there are quiet a number of critic remarks to his work. For example his claim of the number of soviet soldiers who were executed by their own side is not really reliable and may very well be inflated (not by him with intend but the source he uses may be wrong). Books like that of Jochen Hellbeck (Die Stalingrad Protokolle, I guess in english it is Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich) correct this picture and sound for me reliable in that parts. That should not mean that the Soviet side was not ruthless against their own people (they were indeed and a lot of soldiers were shoot or send into penalty companies with little hope of survival often for little reason). But not all claims are true, and the role the Soviet ideology and the political officers of the Red Army did play in strengthen the will to resist the Germans and finally and luckyly defeat them may be in many "western" books often treated a little bit biased based on a ideological perspective.
honestly this video was a bit disapointing, i watch this to hear your commentary and your take on subjects, not a list of clips from movies with a theme in common. while it's there there is way too much "movie" if that makes sence.
I think the point was to (experimentally) allow the narrative to arise from the cinematic imagery.
I can understand that, and I knew some people would think that as I was putting the video together. This was really a passion project of sorts that I wanted to experiment on. As dirty pure remarked, the point is to showcase how these various films all give mostly conflicting perspectives on this battle (and some parallels), exposing how the battle is remembered by the involved countries and giving rise to the implications of post memory constructed through historical fiction films. What I'm trying to say should come from the juxtaposition of images. I felt relying on narration would be redundant for the most part and would've hampered the flow and interplay of the video. I obviously sacrificed general clarity of intent by doing this, so you'll have to forgive me for thinking out of the box for this one. Not to worry though, next videos will be more traditional video essays relying on voice over! - Thomas
I disagree, I would love to see more in this style. I think your editing makes the points you want to say quite clearly, and it makes for a more emotional experience.
There was a specific point to this video, I think it went over your head completely.
I actually think this is more effective; perhaps not so much as entertaining as listening to you, but more educational based upon its lack of speech, meaning we figure it out for ourselves.
Growing up in Austria there was always a very bleak picture of Stalingrad. Many people had relatives that lived through Stalingrad or more generally the campaign in the eastern front. Almost no one who was there talked about it, but they didn't need to. My friend's grandfather had no legs knee down, a shrapnel grenade landed in his trench. It really was a horrific mass slaughter and even if people went into it with enthusiasm, by the end everyone regretted it. Such a waste of life that eould scar both Russia and Germany for generations to come.
I remember when I watched Enemy at the Gates how much I was cringing. It truly is a bad movie.
One pattern I noticed in the montage is how war-movies in general too often only show women as either brutalized victims in order to establish how horrible war is and how bad the enemy soldiers are, or as love interests in order to show that the hero is a nice gentleman. This is disappointing considering that the Soviets did have many women fighting on the front-line, but there were also plenty of female chauffeurs and nurses on both sides who actively contributed to the war effort. This is why I think Generation War was such a great series, because in addition to showing the german perspective it also had two female protagonists, a singer entertaining the troops and a war nurse respectively, and it also showed their perspective and stories and how those both women changed from naive to cynical during the course of the war.
It's a real shame they keep overlooking such a badass historical force, but at least the power metal band Sabaton made a pretty good song about them: ua-cam.com/video/NU4e50fERiY/v-deo.html
Soviet Storm. Good documentary. 18 episodes.
And the most inaccurate portrayal goes to...Enemy at the gates!
Great editing job
Stalingrad 1993 is a good movie
Stalingrad (1993) in my top 5 war movie list
All three films are not great films but not bad.1993 Film is the better movie here but still not great .Starlingard remains untold on film in my opinion.
Still Stalingrad (1993) is a good anti-war film. Though it does downplay the darker side of the Wehrmacht. Remember the German Army was complicit in war crimes same as the SS.
I recently watched Der Hauptmann/The Captain (2018) and thought it was excellent! Definitely not for everybody, but if you want to watch a German made film about the darker side of the Wehrmacht, I would highly recommend it! - Thomas
Storytellers Thanks I might check it out.
So to compare these films with video games about Stalingrad
* 1993 Stalingrad is Red Orchestra 2
* Enemy at the Gates is early CoD
* 2013 Stalingrad is CoD from World at War onwards
The 1993 movie version of this battle is the best one out of all of them. Nothing will ever top it. Its a widely underrated film too. Its not only one of the best war movies of all time but its one of the best movies ever made end of!
Undervalued? "Soldiers" (Солдаты, 1956) is an underestimated and forgotten film about this battle. And "Stalingrad" (1993) does not look so underestimated. And yes, if you want about the same movie as "Stalingrad" (1993). Then I can offer you to watch the movie "Purgatory" (Чистилище, 1997). He's really about the First Chechen War. Or rather about the Storming of Grozny. But in general, they are similar in spirit.
The thing is - there is NO good movie about Stalingrad. The closest to one is 1993 version. The rest is pure garbage. I hope that one day somebody will film a good movie about Stalingard -without depiction of hordes of Red Army infantrymen running unarmed at Germans' machine guns or "love story" between German officer and Russian women whom he found in the rubble.
I mean there is a ton of actual eye witness accounts from both sides, all one has to do is to dig at memoirs and archives to make a realistic movie. I think enough time has passed to make an objective movie about battle of Stalingrad.
You are all bragging here like you really know what it was. Russian movie is a crap. All Russians say it as well. But you 1993 Stalingrad is also far from reality. Enemy at the Gates is a Hollywood story about a sniper who really existed. It's not about Stalingrad. I recommend to watch Panfilov's 28. It's a real story. A bit heroic but it's fine. Because it's a really heroic event.
There is anything more real than 1993 if there is please share
Tell me that Panfilov's 28 is worth watching. I mean, i can't stand the Stalingrad 2013 ''Music-video-of the 90's-feel!@
Privet is Juzhnoj Afriki ;)
You forgot the Sniper: Weapon of Retaliation 2009 a Stalingrad war movie
Rip GG mueller
Stalingrad 1993 > the others
"Honorable German Soldiers"? WTF? what were this "honorable" doing 2000 km from their home country killing and destroying? you kinda lost me at the very beginning....you actually spoiled a good video by including "Enemy at the Gate" fiction into this. Vasiliy Zaitsev was not a rabbit without rifle running for his life, he was a designated sniper from 284th Rifle Division.
You see, when you dismiss half of a story as "propaganda" and replace it with fiction because it doesn't fit your narrative, you are bound to create a story full of plot holes.
This was beautiful and insightful, as usual. Thanks.
One thing that always bugs me about ww2 films made in the west is that only axis forces speak their native language. In Hollywoodland everyone who fights a nazi has to speak English. The most common exception is when the character is German, but don't worry this one isn't a nazi so he speaks fluent English
This video is stunning, absolutely stunning.
7.40
This is really well done. Good job.
Don't watch present Russia's film about Stalingrad, it's awful. It doesn't represent that part of history it's just a film made for money and money only. I know what i'm talking about because i'm from Russia and we watched this film twice when i was in school and all what have saw is copying typical hollywood's blockbusters with explosions and stupid dramaturgy. It's a shame that Russians made that bad film (sorry for my bad english if it's bad)
I've actually got all those O.S.S training videos like the one in the bottom right hand corner at the start. They're pretty awesome to watch actually, it's weird hearing them say positive things about the commies.
Very well done. I have seen two or three of those movies.
Stalingrad 2013 was just a badass movie that I found fun and see as visually impressive
The 1993 one was insane and showed the real heart and desperate situation. The loss of everything and tje sudden placing in hell is never a good thing. A movie that will give you nightmares and shows the real real horror's of war is Come and See. Look it up ,even S and E said it was the most horrifying movie ever made.
"There are no retards in soviet union, only mentally ill." What movie was this from? Stalingrad was pretty much the hell on earth. Nothing but suffering.
Call of duty 2 taught me that: There were Russians speaking English, in the line up no matter what you always get the fucking 5 clip magazin and not the gun, there are planes, German planes, ruined buildings, if you come back to the starting point you get shot, and finally, sniping on ruined buildings.(AND IT WAS ALWAYS HARD TO FIND THE LAST GENERAL)
Stalingrad 1993,Generation War,Battle for Sevastopol great films!
Whenever I see the word Stalingrad i get 3/4 chub.
Like this?
Funny how german army shown more human by most films. Real funny. In Harold's "Ha ha I live here" kind of funny. My people shown like cowardly and perverted animals while defending their own home. O woe to their memory.
So beautifully put together
I love Russian history especially the Russian involvement in WW2. I found this video to be an amazing explanation of what each film set in Stalingrad symbolizes
It seems to me that the Germans are better at making films about the war, more historically. And where is the famous broadcast of the Soviets that - every 7 seconds a German soldier dies. Stalingrad is a mass grave.? 7:18 Very historical and colorful.
I always understand "dont touch my car!!!!" Wehen they jump into the volga off the boat^^
Excellent work! I've always wanted comparisons like this!
Great narration as always. I hope there is more of this style of videos in the future.
Thank you! Depending on how this video is received, I'm considering doing similar one on WW1 and maybe one on Vietnam. - Thomas
Or more on WW2?
Unfortunately, there aren't many conflicting perspectives on WW2 as far as I know. The great majority of the films are from the Allied perspective made in the US or the UK. - Thomas
What about my way 2011 it shows some parts of stalingrad with Koreans and Japanese force to fight in stalingrad
You have excluded the 1972 Soviet film "Hot Snow", also about Stalingrad battles.
Theory about focalisation in corpore! Amazing edit!
The 1993 movie has been BY FAR the closest to accurate. Then again my grandfather was injured in Dec at Stalingrad on the German side and told me whatever I see or hear about it was really 100x worse then people will ever really know about.
Hollywood war movies are usually absurd but Russian made war movies are expensive, epic and take absurdity to a whole new level.
Nobody talks about Hot snow. That's the best Stalingrad film
0:16 if anyone knows that song that the guy is talking over please tell me i would love to hear it
I would like to ask about adding Russian subtitles. It's a very interesting video for me, but I can't understand every word.
The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point in the second world war and perhaps the single most important battle of the 20th century. It's a damn good thing the Red Army was successful with Operation Uranus and it is important to remember how much credit the USSR deserves for the defeat of Nazi Germany. That said it is also important to see the battle for what it was; on one side was a genocidal fascist state fought largely by soldiers operating as cogs in it's machine, at best complicit in the crime and at worst active criminals themselves. And on the other side a country fighting for survival which was itself a brutal and murderous autocracy and once it had secured it's own survival it turned its eyes to domination and oppression and its soldiers would transform from patriots to oppressors. I'm glad the USSR prevailed but it is important to remember there was no true "good guy" between them. Only "bad" and "worse." On an unrelated note everyone interested in this battle should read Antony Beevor's book.
USSR and its people lived in a golden age when there wasn't war. You're brainwashed by western misinformation. The USSR was not a proper autocracy until Brezhnev was in power, after Khrushchev's slandering of not only Stalin, but the bolsheviks and true MLs, as opposed to proudly open revisionists who decentralized the policies that made the Soviet Union the superpower that it was which lead to its economic stagnation in the early 80s. Andropov was the last true leader of the USSR while Gorbachev's revisionist, anti-communist, pro-western policies destroyed the country that saved the world from the Nazis. Calling Stalingrad bad vs worse is so completely fucking ignorant and disrespectful to those who not only fought for their survival and won the war but those who lead them to victory in not just WWII but the Civil War. Perhaps you should stop reading from the perspective of western propagandists.
Well someone is a Stalinist. I didn't actually think there were any fans of his left except Putin. You're mistaking the absence of war for the presence of peace. You can't have peace without justice and justice would be hard to find in Stalin's USSR. Maybe I should call it a dictatorship and not an autocracy. Never the less you haven't said anything to disprove my point. Stalin was absolutely brutal. The forced famines in the Ukraine, the purges, the Katyn massacre, his reckless use of his troops as cannon fodder, the deportation of ethnic groups to camps, deliberately telling the Polish home army to rise against the Germans and then waiting for the Germans to destroy them before moving into Warsaw, the execution of his partisan allies, the torture and execution of Red army and civilian POWs whose only crime was being "tainted by fascism," his post-war purges, the murder of the cossacks, all of the people who were tortured and shot or just rotted in Lubyanka. I could just keep going right up until his death. Between 20-25 million civilians died because of Stalin. I don't place the blame for this brutality at the feet of every Red Army soldier. The Red Army soldiers were fighting in Stalingrad to defend their land, to survive and because they would be shot if they tired to retreat. I am saying they were part of the military machine for one of the most brutal dictators of all time and while it was preferable for Russia to win the war (and they were the nation most responsible for winning it) it was only preferable because of what the Nazis and Hitler were. And frankly, I think I was pretty clear about that. And while you might not like Gorbachev (personally I think his vision for the post-Cold War world was revolutionary and extremely forward thinking and it's to all our detriment that extreme capitalist concerns overrode his vision) you can't blame him for Soviet decline. It had been declining for years. He was simply in charge at the end, saw the situation for what it was and tried to make the best of it by ending hostilities. I actually know what I am talking about. I think you're the one who has been fooled by the propagandists.
Dorvid what do you mean,there were no good guys, I guess you never had to kill killers who came to burn to the ground everything and everyone you loved! Those man are heroes and the best of what humanity has to offer, sacrificing their own lives for your and my freedom !
This is not a grey thing, it's good vs evil!
I really think I have been pretty clear and still people don't seem to be getting it. I am not talking about a red army soldier with a rifle fighting to survive and trying to kick a genocidal invader out of their home. I am saying the government of Russia at that time was an oppressive mass murdering regime.
Dorvid you don't understand that the government wasn't Russian, for one,as Stalin was Georgian etc. So chill!
Do battle for Berlin next there are plenty of good films from the 1950s up to today on that from all perspectives
The 1993 movie Stalingrad is so far the ONLY war movie that has ever gotten me to cry over the death of Germans in World War 2. The last scene with the two men dying slowly in the freezing Russian winter was too much for me to bear, in combination with the rest of the movie.
Wait , I heard something from cod 1 in the intro no??
Adel Boukabous You've got an excellent ear my friend
1993 Stalingrad was an amazing film. Very underrated.
I like how people picture Germans as evil bastards and Allies as the saviours
Edit: the nazis may be bad, but not the only. The soviets also slaughtered a hell lot of people
to all those people out there, the not one step back order was only for the penal battalions and only those who committed crimes were in there, the crimes also include deserting and retreating, officers of non penal battalions that sent their soldiers in a massive charge like in the movie "enemy at the gates" would be shot or punished infront of his soldiers
"Liebste Klara, Russland ..."
The 2013 version is pure propaganda tha russians are potrayed like super soldiers and it is way to heroic and it is in no w, authentic
Well, in Russia itself they don't think so. Because instead of propaganda of the war for the Motherland, this film is propaganda of a male harem. Well, Captain Kang is a good character here. But I like this movie. For this is better than the fiction of the same director. Although "9th company", from the same director, is better than his "Stalingrad". I'm not talking about his father's work.