The Ardennes Offensive as reimagined by the folks who brought us "Looney Tunes". Sad, because only a couple of years earlier, "The Longest Day" set a new standard for depicting a huge scale WW2 battle.
Didn't realize the Ardennes forest in winter was in the middle of the desert in this movie. Looks good for the tank battles but unrealistic to history buffs.
The script for Battle of the Bulge was probably a rejected script from the TV show Combat! WW2 movies with Henry Fonda winning the battle are tedious. The 1978 Midway movie had me groaning audibly.
@@mrprof2030bruh in one of the only accounts with tigers the US had in Europe, a literal AT squad knocked out a Tiger with a Bazooka shot to the rear. It’s literally MEANT to kill tanks. And it’s a dam joke buddy, while you criticizing it when you have no idea what you’re talking about?
@mrprof2030 no you can take a tire tank out with a bazooka just not front on which if you're trying to take a tiger front on as infantry you have screwed up.
My dad was a veteran of the Bulge; from what he told me, it was mostly about German shock troops and the winter....Americans were not outfitted for the cold and spent day after day in subzero weather without proper food. this part of the Bulge was not covered in the movie.
It's not clear that the lack of cold-weather clothes played any role in the outcome of the battle. It made the GIs uncomfortable for sure, though. I highly recommend the book Citizen Soldier. As far as the movie Battle of the Bulge, it's Hollywood formula of a bunch of cliche soldiers in formulatic settings. This movie is a stinker. The movie Patton captures the importance of logistics and the herculean efforts required to deliver allied troops to the German flanks. Band of Brothers did a great job depicting how the Screaming Eagles were thrown into Bastogne with whatever they could carry.
@@331SVTCobra The lack of winter clothing degraded fighting effectiveness, This is clear from anecdotes recorded from Bulge vets; and it had a big effect on my father, whose feet were so badly frostbitten the doctors recommended amputating his toes. He refused this procedure, and his feet remained disfigured for the rest of his life
@@331SVTCobra Take a look at the frosbite and trenchfoot casualties. More than from battle! The GI boots had bern designed to absorb water proofing compound, but little was available so the boots absorbed water instead! Overshoes were not available until after the battle and were very cumbersome to march in.
My college English professor fought in this battle. He got frost bite and his toes turned black before being sent back for two days to have it treated. Patton ordered all NCO’s back to the front line and he was sent back. He explained that it was the most excruciating pain he ever endured but he was grateful to have survived.
@@331SVTCobraIt may have had an effect during the initial fighting as the cold must have wore the soldiers down by a lot much the same fate as german soldiers in the east.
Honestly, they might as well have filmed the movie in New Mexico. The landscape here is somewhere between the movie and the actual Ardenne, we have mountainous forests (in which it snows decently often and decently heavy,) and there's plenty of military bases around the state. If you need more snow for a few scenes, Colorado has many of the same advantages and is right there.
@@ronanchristiana.belleza9270 The movie was filmed in Spain, not in the Ardennes, and during filming it was too warm so there was no snow, just sand. The Spanish army provided the tanks, which is why they are not the correct types -- the Germans are using M-47 Pattons and the US are M-24 Chaffees. "A Bridge Too Far" had a hard time getting enough operational Shermans, resorting to mockups on trucks. It's difficult to film a full-scale tank battle more than 2 decades after the war had ended, so they had to make do with what the budget allowed. Today it would be done with CGI, and while the tanks would be correct, everyone would complain that it looked fake. Can't win...
@@AndrewAMartin There is snow in Spain, FYI. As an example, the initial scenes of Conan the Barbarian were filmed in the same places as in this movie. And there was plenty of snow.
@@ghostwithmp-5 Yep, that's where they got them from, used Spanish army extras and shot the film in Spain because it looked exactly like the dense snow covered Ardennes forest in winter.
Imagine making a movie about a battle that your president took part in and got so inaccurate your own nations leader makes a public press conference just to shit talk your film 😂 thats wild
Nowadays no one reads history so movies come up with all kinds of dumb crap and no ones bats an eye. And the presidents are out of touch escapees from a nursing home.
@@yottwr6108 Eisenhower might not be the best field general, but he was damn good with logistics and administration. Plus he is sensible unlike his fellow general like Patton and McArthur. General Montgomery even praised Eisenhower by calling him "military statesman". But he is not a perfect general, he sucks in everything else that involve war like commanding troops and military tactic.
The film was made in Spain. M47 tanks were used to portray King Tigers. At the time the film was made the Spanish Army had 20 Panzer IV tanks which could have been used in the movie but were not.
How do you know they could have been used? Did Spain agree? What was the cost? Were they in good condition? What were the safety concerns? And I don't know anything about running a government, a military, or a movie production. Just imagine some of the other objections I could bring up.
@cinimatics That's simple to fix. In the opening credits, put, " Battle of the Bulge, the made up version." And ad the lawyer's disclaimer, "Not a true representation of an actual event." But no, they purposely make it sound like it is an accurate account of a historical event.
A historically accurate war film being boring is wrong. You can just skip over many redundant parts. Trench warfare, urban warfare, warfare before Napoleon, it's all hectic. @@cinimatics
Band of Brothers, despite being a mini-series, ought to get a mention too for how it portrayed the horror of the Ardennes winter and combined-arms German military
Battleground and the three episodes of band of Brothers are the best versions of the Battle of the bulge. And they're done from from a small squad perspective. Battleground is an older film and it was actually shot mainly on a studio but it's really really good and has great actors. For me before 1960 it is the standard for World War II movies followed by a "walk in the Sun". The Battle of the bulge is one of the worst war movies I've ever seen. It is so wrong and so poorly done that even with a all-star cast it was just hot trash
@@chizorama- I don’t think the fact that a film attempts to depict something under the obvious limitations of production/plot time constraints is a valid. You’re not going to find a war movie that requires the viewer to sit eating popcorn for seven hours just because it took that long for the actual historical event of combat and battle to conclude…. Just think how long a theater-goer would have sit and watch Charlton Heston playing Moses in the 1956 film “The Ten Commandments.” The Hebrews wandered the desert for 40 years! Your butt would really fall asleep during that movie….
Was also criticized by my father, who was there. That movie is terrible, yet 80 years later we're still waiting for a good movie about one of the largest battles the US ever fought in.
Battleground, filmed in 1949, is a pretty good one that critics then thought was fairly accurate for the conditions and what the soldiers went through.
@@DemocracyOfficer2485 So go back and watch those two episodes, then come back and tell me what you learned about the Bulge, but don't mention anything that wasn't specifically stated in those episodes. They were not about the Bulge, they were about Easy Company's part of it. Or, are you one of those people that think the entirety of the battle was Bastogne? BTW, I've seen the entire series at least 10 times, the last time being about 6 months ago.
If you ever saw a Soviet or Russian movie about WW2, they at least made German Panzer mockups over the hull of a T-34 or T-55. While some of these mockups lock quite badly, others turned out great, either way it's better than nothing.
In all fairness, Ike was not actually in direct command of the troops at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. He and many other senior officers were back in Paris attending a "conference" and the wedding of Eisenhower's personal orderly to his driver in the Chapel of the Palace of Versailles. Even the Commanding General of the 101st Airborne was in Paris at the beginning of the Siege of Bastogne, Major General Maxwell D Taylor had left his division artillery commander in charge. Brigadier Anthony "Nuts" McAuliffe exercised command of the paratroopers in the Ardennes during the battle and sent the famous message back to the Germans when they asked him to surrender. (General Maxwell D Taylor himself would go on to be Chief of Staff of the Army under President Eisenhower, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Kennedy. General Anthony C McAuliffe would go on to be head of Army Personnel and Commander-in-Chief of US Army Europe around the same time Gen Taylor was Army Chief of Staff.) Ike's actual "most famous battle(s)" would be his command of Operation Torch (the Allied "invasion" of North Africa), The Invasion of Sicily, and as SHAEF / commander of ETOUSA for Operation Overlord and the liberation of (Western) Europe. Eisenhower almost never operated at the local level during WWII, nearly always as a Theater Commander with responsibilities for multiple battles and campaigns.
Presidents are pretty busy, but there were hundreds of extra's in that movie, I bet some of them were at the battle, hell Sevalis and Bronson may have been there.
Because very few Tiger I and II tanks were built and most were destroyed in combat or scuttled by their crews, it was common to use the US Army surplus of M-47 or M-48 Patton tanks to fill in the gaps in the 50's -70's war movies and TV shows. Eisenhower should have just been happy they didn't blame him for being caught flat footed while 250,000 German Troops with heavy tanks built up on his front while he had many of his officers on Christmas vacation. The soldiers at the time were none to happy with Eisenhower Christmas of '44.
Eisenhower didn't actually bitch about the tanks, just everything else in the movie. The writing and over the top....everything... The complaint about tanks is purely from modern nitpickers who can't comprehend that there's only one functional Tiger tank left in the world and it was only recently restored, zero functional KTs, and that when a lot of these old war movies were made, over 90% of the functional Panzer IVs still in existence were making up a significant portion of the Syrian army's tank fleet until most of them were lost in the Six Day War in 1967, and then more of them were lost in Yom Kippur War after being installed into a hill side as gun bunkers.
@@wolfehoffmann2697 Yes, as I mentioned, though for historical accuracy, the producers of "The Battle of Britain" basically rented the Spanish Air Force. I'm sure the Syrians would have happily traded the show runners their PzKW IVs for those M-48's!
First saw movie in 1971 with my late dad, who fought in Bulge. He enjoyed certain storylines such as how the Allies wrongfully thought Germany was defeated while they secretly built up for a surprise massive counter offensive, the use of english-speaking Nazis in GI uniforms, the Malmedy massacre, the superiority of German tanks and most of all, the initiative of ragtag GI’s who overcame initial confusion and regrouped to slow the attack and buy time…at great cost!! The acting was well done. It’s a movie, not a documentary.
The problem is that it's so far from being a documentary, that it becomes a parody. The American general sending wave after wave of tanks to the slaughter just to use up the Germans fuel would make Zapp Brannigan proud. In real history, when Patton's 3rd Army reached Bastogne, the Germans got the snot beat out of them.
@@daltongalloway 100% realistic isn't necessary, but 15% realistic is a joke. "The Longest Day" is not particularly accurate, but it is at least a good movie; "The Battle of the Bulge" is almost a caricature of a war movie.
I remember a Midway veteran watching the movie Pearl Harbor and complaining why didn’t they use Japanese carriers for the launch sequence. Someone told the vets that they sunk all the Japanese carriers.
of all the people who would criticize the movie because the tanks used were wrong, it had to be "ike".. all the other inaccuracies pointed out were valid but give the filmakers credit.. because it's hard to get german tanks by then and use them in a large scale battle.. if your going to criticize that movie.. why not criticize the patton movie for using inaccurate tanks used..
Eisenhower didn't fund the film either . They had to use what tanks were cheapest and available. Most German armor was either sitting on a shooting range or sold for scrap
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it back in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. It’s a movie, not a documentary, and I wasn’t even 10 yet. The best part of the movie was the German tank commanders singing.
I agree even when I saw it as a kid when it came out I found it full of shit and not believable. The film felt contrived and corny. The characters almost cartoonish. Like Telly Savalas as the loudmouth tanker , or Robert Shaw breaking into song with his fellow SS Panzer Corps. The Longest Day was much better as was A Bridge too Far in terms of depicting pivotal WWII battles in Europe.
@@vx633 Patton was pretty good too. Even Kelly's Heroes was more believable that that one, and it wasn't even menat to be believed. Actually, there was a lot of attention to detail in Kelly's Heroes.
@@Strike_Raid Patton the movie is awful and turns Patton into an inhuman caricature. It's trash propaganda. Patton himself was a stark, brash genius who told it to his men straight. He didn't BS them about greasing the treads of their tanks with the enemy's guts. Go listen to his actual recorded speeches. for yourself.
This kind of criticism moved to the movie is superficial. 1) I challenge you finding dozens of ww2 tanks of the same type available near to the movie location; 2) "the battle of the bulge" was in fact shot during winter, but it was a mild one and the snow melted . The real problem with this movie is its script: too slow and filled with uninteresting things like the whole Telly Savalas' subplot
@@AlanRoehrich9651 I’m just saying. I’m less concerned with the tanks anyway and more concerned that they shot their movie about the Battle of the Bulge in Spain… during summer… in the desert…
Considering Eisenhower's role at the time, the massive of loss and cost of our men in that battle, I think that if it deserved s*** talking, (which it did), from anyone, it was him. The men who lived and died there deserve that honor and accuracy.
Where's the Hollywood did not have the ability to get the proper tanks. In Hollywood did do a poor job of representing what really happened at the Battle of the bulge. But Hollywood wanted people to watch the movie. If they would have told closer to the truth most people wouldn't have even a came and watched the movie. People quit throwing a tantrum it was a movie.
It's kinda hard to get accurate tanks and gear of opposing militaries. It's pretty common in movies to use domestic tanks modified to look like foreign tanks
They didn’t even get that right. There were virtually no grey German tanks by then. The switched from the Panzer Grey used in the first years of the war to Dunklegelb (dark yellow) in Feb, 1943. at this period they were yellow with field applied green and brown camo, underneath a winter whitewash camo.
Including the 60,000 British troops being there and it was never told due to politics,oh yeah and the British stopped an attack on the Americans flanks which is also never mentioned but still lost lives saving that American flank.
@stephenchappell7512 can you blame him for doing that,his troops not being mentioned.how many lives was saved by his troops and by those who perished in doing so.
@@stephenchappell7512there were no brutush TROOPS IN the battle of the bulge. They were on a flank and unlike Patton's army did an unthinkable 180 turn to go into battle in Belgium, Montgomery like usual took his sweet time reorganizing his division to move on the flank. Stop with your crappy British propaganda
@@willthorson4543 The US troops far outnumbered the British troops during the battle, but they were there. Can you please learn to write, your comment made my brain explode trying to decipher it.
@willthorson4543 incorrect. Took me 15 seconds to find out that at the very least both Canadian and British paratroopers were dropped in as reinforcements. 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. Even most Canadians don't know about it. They also dropped in behind enemy lines on D-Day.
If there is one WW2 flick that needs a proper remake to do proper justice to the reality of the chain of historical events, it has to be this battle. The 1970 movie was embarrassingly bad.
@@stephenhannell1370 so what? Very few of those British troops were ever seen by the soldiers actually fighting in the Ardennes or at Bastogne. The British Army fought on the flanks and kept German reinforcements from making it to the Battle of the Bulge, but the majority were not with the US Airborne troops in the forest and suffered far fewer casualties than any of the American units.
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II which took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg.
panthers were produced post 45, and thousands of tanks were captured by the US or they could borrowed the german tanks from spain. still no tigers but panzer 4 and 5 would been better than what they used
@@markdrake6217 That is not obvious. Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers scrounged up German WW2 vehicles or made accurate recreations 60 years after the fact. The creators of this movie didn't even try, they just borrowed some US tanks and spray-painted them.
My uncle was in the 508th Regiment of the 82nd Airborne in the Ardennes during the bulge. I distinctly remember watching this movie with him and him laughing wildly while drinking martinis.
Dude wasn't just a president, unlike other presidents Eisenhower was the logistical genius behind America's involvement in the war So out of anyone to critique a war, he should be the one
My grandfather was at that battle and he never spoke about it except for one time I visited them in Kentucky and walk to the mailbox with them and he said I seen things that nobody should ever see❤👩🌾🙏
I don't mind some minor changes for entertainment purposes, but they swapped winter woods of France and Germany for treeless Spanish plains. The ending scene of this movie is an absolute embarrassment, like filming a movie about the battle of Gettysburg at the north pole.
Still a great movie. The best line is when Henry Fonda’s character was asked if the Germans made any mistake, and he calmly replies “Well, they made me mad”. Perfect.
When I was a kid I absolutely LOVED this movie, a pure popcorn flick. But as I learned more and more about the REAL battle I realized just how god awful it really is. The whole tank battle, in the desert no less ( ya know just like all the ones found in Belgium) , at the end is really rather comical
One of my favorite movies. Robert Shaw singing the Panzer Lehr is worth watching the film on its own. My brother and I laughed hysterically as kids watching that.
My family's house was used as a refuge by the Americans at the time. They apparently were quite cool, left a lot of chewing gum, a couple of spades, 50.cal ammo boxes and so on. Destroyed the front porch though because they thought they heard germans, turned out it was our German shepherd.
I had a teacher in high school in the 70s at MacArthur high school in Hollywood Florida. His name was Mr. pandak. and he was spitting image for Stalin. But he was hard-core. I got to school early in the morning for extra credit and he would be in the pool swimming laps at 75 and come out looking like he could kick your ass. I had a friend that I met in church in the 70s with one arm and never did you not see him with a smile and he was the most humble man. Before he died in 2012 he told me what happened. He was a sniper scout reconnaissance 414 in World War II and he got his arm shot off with one shot. He said he didn’t feel it he just looked down and saw his arm on the ground. He sent everybody back while he positioned them self and his only words was I “that man will never hurt anybody else. How powerful is that from a humble man. He taught me to shoot and fish. And I could never equal his precision with two hands. Best generation I’ve ever lived
I went to Army basic training back in 1981. I was army reserve, when I got back home. A friend of mine set me up on a blind double date. We went to the movies, and saw the Bill Murray's movie Stripes. Afterwards, we went for dinner and I was criticizing everything that was inaccurate. But I did laughed, that movie was hilarious. My point is, don't take everything from Hollywood too seriously. Laugh about the inaccuracies, you'll have a better time.
As a kid I gave them a pass for using M47's as German tanks, but the fact that they painted them early war (1939-1941) Panzer Grey and then turned around and put tri-colored camo on all the US vehicles......I still like the movie, it is what it is. I think it depicted at least some of the essence of what happened in the Ardennes.
There were many mistakes and generalization sum up but as a piece of art it was a masterpiece of action ,music and emotion. Not historical but the most beautiful war film.
Hollywood is always trying to rewrite history or promote propaganda that suits their interests. Rarely does a film accurately present it. First 10mins of "Saving Private Ryan" were so accurate by Steven Spielberg that many WW2 D Day survivors had to walk out of the theatre. I can not speak about the rest of that film. Tears fill my eyes and roll down my cheeks everytime I watch it. I am so thankful for the amazing sacrifices those men made that day. Bravery on full display. God bless them. They literally saved the world from evil. Thank you for your service.
The film was hokey. My uncle was killed in action January 23 1945 Staff Sgt WmbBill Donald Watts 30th rifle division 117th infantry Company E Durbin, West Virginia😊
"Mr President do you want comment on the ONGOING war in Vietnam? I'm sure they'd love your input" "No, but I do want to call a press conference for 4pm"
The top American officers surrounded in Bastogne had an elite unit of hair stylists to make sure their hair was perfect at all times. The U.S. supply planes flew in hair spray, mustache wax and Brylcreem.
My Grandad was in the Bulge battle he said the Germans started shelling his troops position Dec. 16 and didn't stop for 15 days straight no Artillery or tanks could match the German fire power , soon after Christmas the clouds finally broke , they started seeing American B-17 bombers flying overhead this bombing is what chased the Germans out of Belgium, and as my Grandad would say with a wink in his eye " Yeah they stated shagging Ass back to Germany " 😊
I found it very entertaining, and couldn't care less about the tanks not being Shermans and Tigers and such. MiG-28 in Top Gun anyone? It's a movie, not a documentary.
Not a BAD movie, just had nothing to do with the battle of the same name. Robert Shaw’s character was based on a real SS panzer commander who was still alive at the time, so they changed his name. The movie is worthwhile, if only for the scene of the German tank crews singing “Panzerleid.“
By the time this movie was made German tanks were already becoming scarce. Some European countries inventoried them into their own militaries for a while as an expedient. The majority of German armoured vehicles were scrapped for the steel and other metals. Especially if they were inoperable.
Good justification it sounds like for a "remake" of this film with a renewed emphasis on historical accuracy. Historical accuracy matters especially in dealing with historical events of this magnitude of significance.
I don't know about all that. The Spanish Army M-47s are similar in size and firepower to the German Tiger II and the M-46 is relatively similar to the M4 Sherman. The final tank battle was goofy, but the other parts of the movie were fairly accurate. The battle was over for the Germans with the defeat of 2d Panzer Div by US 2d Armor Div on the 25th and Patton relieving Bastogne on the 26th. The real problem with the movie was that it highlighted that Eisenhower as CIC was taken by surprise.
To quote "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young", Hollywood got it wrong every damn time (and yes I know it's referring to Vietnam but definitely applies here too).
My Great Grandfather was there. He served in WW1 when he was only 13 years old. He served again in WW2 in 2nd Division, 12th Field Artillery. During the Battle of the Bulge he fought in the Northern sector in the Ardennes Campaign, along with the 99th Infantry, and it is them who are responsible in preventing the 6th Panzer Division from securing Elsenborn Ridge and regrouping with Peiper’s Division; which forced Peiper to take a costly alternative route. 2nd Division’s sector is the only sector where the Germans didn’t break through during the campaign. My Great Grandfather, being a artillery man, is largely to credit for this. Everyone wrongly thinks Bastogne is where the Battle of the Bulge takes place, all the while forgetting and downplaying heroic men like my Great Grandfather.
Hahahaha I kinda love that a guy at the level of Eisenhower saw the movie and was like, “Jesus Christ, set up a press conference for tomorrow morning” don’t plan on watching this one, band of brothers did well to show me what it was like
I remember when I have seen that movie playing on tv several times, I never fully watched it, but even as little kid these tanks looked really weird for German WW2 tanks, like something felt not right
As far as tanks go you can't REALLY blame them. I mean, you try finding enough Panzer tanks that survived the war. They were all destroyed by allied armour or by their own crew to prevent capture, broke down, or melted after the wars conclusion. There is only a VERY small handful of Panzer tanks left, and a good number of them aren't original anyways.
spain were the filmd this scene offered them to borrow there german ww2 tanks and they could found more in france, italy, the benelux region, the british and west germany. most of them got destroyed in the 1970-80 so a movie that came out 1965 had no excuse being this lazy.
@deathtrooper7760 Fair enough. I was certain that the allies melted down all German or axis military equipment after the war to prevent them being used again. Except for Britain for Operation Unthinkable, but I did forget that former Axis or axis aligned nations kept some Panzer tanks. Even still there weren't many.
The Ardennes Offensive as reimagined by the folks who brought us "Looney Tunes". Sad, because only a couple of years earlier, "The Longest Day" set a new standard for depicting a huge scale WW2 battle.
Didn't realize the Ardennes forest in winter was in the middle of the desert in this movie. Looks good for the tank battles but unrealistic to history buffs.
The script for Battle of the Bulge was probably a rejected script from the TV show Combat!
WW2 movies with Henry Fonda winning the battle are tedious. The 1978 Midway movie had me groaning audibly.
@@331SVTCobraImpossible. Sgt Saunders would never let a division of German M47 Patton tanks just roll by.
Yet ironically Eisenhower also disapproved of “The Longest Day” for its historical inaccuracies, I personally love the movie though
So you bought 50 year old Red Buttons as a paratrooper?
Production, "How come we can't get REAL Tigers?"
Grandpa, "Because I was too good with a Bazooka!"
@@mrprof2030bruh in one of the only accounts with tigers the US had in Europe, a literal AT squad knocked out a Tiger with a Bazooka shot to the rear. It’s literally MEANT to kill tanks. And it’s a dam joke buddy, while you criticizing it when you have no idea what you’re talking about?
@mrprof2030 no you can take a tire tank out with a bazooka just not front on which if you're trying to take a tiger front on as infantry you have screwed up.
@@mrprof2030who lost?
if you think A bazooka could destroy A tiger then your crazy
@@Armada-1935an american ww2 bazooka can't.destroy A.tiger
My dad was a veteran of the Bulge; from what he told me, it was mostly about German shock troops and the winter....Americans were not outfitted for the cold and spent day after day in subzero weather without proper food. this part of the Bulge was not covered in the movie.
It's not clear that the lack of cold-weather clothes played any role in the outcome of the battle. It made the GIs uncomfortable for sure, though. I highly recommend the book Citizen Soldier.
As far as the movie Battle of the Bulge, it's Hollywood formula of a bunch of cliche soldiers in formulatic settings. This movie is a stinker.
The movie Patton captures the importance of logistics and the herculean efforts required to deliver allied troops to the German flanks. Band of Brothers did a great job depicting how the Screaming Eagles were thrown into Bastogne with whatever they could carry.
@@331SVTCobra The lack of winter clothing degraded fighting effectiveness, This is clear from anecdotes recorded from Bulge vets; and it had a big effect on my father, whose feet were so badly frostbitten the doctors recommended amputating his toes. He refused this procedure, and his feet remained disfigured for the rest of his life
@@331SVTCobra
Take a look at the frosbite and trenchfoot casualties. More than from battle! The GI boots had bern designed to absorb water proofing compound, but little was available so the boots absorbed water instead! Overshoes were not available until after the battle and were very cumbersome to march in.
My college English professor fought in this battle. He got frost bite and his toes turned black before being sent back for two days to have it treated. Patton ordered all NCO’s back to the front line and he was sent back. He explained that it was the most excruciating pain he ever endured but he was grateful to have survived.
@@331SVTCobraIt may have had an effect during the initial fighting as the cold must have wore the soldiers down by a lot much the same fate as german soldiers in the east.
You forgot to mention that the Ardennes forest in winter was smack in the middle of a desert for the final tank battles in the movie.😄
@stephenchappell7512 no wonder Eisenhower left in disgust.
Spain, was Spain😂😂😂
I almost thought it was battle of Kursk.
Honestly, they might as well have filmed the movie in New Mexico. The landscape here is somewhere between the movie and the actual Ardenne, we have mountainous forests (in which it snows decently often and decently heavy,) and there's plenty of military bases around the state. If you need more snow for a few scenes, Colorado has many of the same advantages and is right there.
Who defeated the German Army in the 'battle of the bulge' ?????
Hitler, with his incredible stupid planning.
Due to a typing error, the battle was filmed in a sand covered landscape, not a snow covered landscape.
Is that legit? Just a curious question
@@ronanchristiana.belleza9270 The movie was filmed in Spain, not in the Ardennes, and during filming it was too warm so there was no snow, just sand. The Spanish army provided the tanks, which is why they are not the correct types -- the Germans are using M-47 Pattons and the US are M-24 Chaffees. "A Bridge Too Far" had a hard time getting enough operational Shermans, resorting to mockups on trucks. It's difficult to film a full-scale tank battle more than 2 decades after the war had ended, so they had to make do with what the budget allowed. Today it would be done with CGI, and while the tanks would be correct, everyone would complain that it looked fake. Can't win...
@@AndrewAMartin There is snow in Spain, FYI. As an example, the initial scenes of Conan the Barbarian were filmed in the same places as in this movie. And there was plenty of snow.
@@gustavocano I should have said, when they were filming in Spain, there was no snow. My bad.
@@AndrewAMartin thanks for the info
I love that Germans are using cold war M47 which is US btw
I couldnt watch this movie i think, played too much war thunder
Spanish M47's 😂
@@SirAntoniousBlock Spanish?
@@ghostwithmp-5 Yep, that's where they got them from, used Spanish army extras and shot the film in Spain because it looked exactly like the dense snow covered Ardennes forest in winter.
@@SirAntoniousBlockAn arid mountain environment in July, perfect representation of the Belgian forests in December
Imagine making a movie about a battle that your president took part in and got so inaccurate your own nations leader makes a public press conference just to shit talk your film 😂 thats wild
Nowadays no one reads history so movies come up with all kinds of dumb crap and no ones bats an eye. And the presidents are out of touch escapees from a nursing home.
Eisenhower was holed up and under heavy guard in Paris. He certainly did not take part in this battle.
@@yottwr6108 Eisenhower might not be the best field general, but he was damn good with logistics and administration. Plus he is sensible unlike his fellow general like Patton and McArthur. General Montgomery even praised Eisenhower by calling him "military statesman". But he is not a perfect general, he sucks in everything else that involve war like commanding troops and military tactic.
Especially Malmedy
I read General Marshal placed him because he was 'politically savvy'. And I hated this movie then and still hate it.
The film was made in Spain. M47 tanks were used to portray King Tigers. At the time the film was made the Spanish Army had 20 Panzer IV tanks which could have been used in the movie but were not.
Seeing these pictures hurts my eyes
Wait, seriously? Damn.
How do you know they could have been used? Did Spain agree? What was the cost? Were they in good condition? What were the safety concerns? And I don't know anything about running a government, a military, or a movie production. Just imagine some of the other objections I could bring up.
It would still have been an historical travesty
@@TK0_23_Exactly
Rewriting history, it's what Hollywood does best.
U571 actually lying
No. People still don't understand that a "historically accurate" war film is probably going to be very long and very boring.
@@cinimatics
“Historically accurate movies are boring “
das boot : hold my torpedo
@cinimatics
That's simple to fix. In the opening credits, put, " Battle of the Bulge, the made up version." And ad the lawyer's disclaimer, "Not a true representation of an actual event." But no, they purposely make it sound like it is an accurate account of a historical event.
A historically accurate war film being boring is wrong. You can just skip over many redundant parts. Trench warfare, urban warfare, warfare before Napoleon, it's all hectic. @@cinimatics
Outside of Pearl Harbor the most inaccurate war movie ever. For the most realistic movie on the Battle of the Bulge watch the movie Battleground
Band of Brothers, despite being a mini-series, ought to get a mention too for how it portrayed the horror of the Ardennes winter and combined-arms German military
That I will do Battleground thanks,
Battleground and the three episodes of band of Brothers are the best versions of the Battle of the bulge. And they're done from from a small squad perspective. Battleground is an older film and it was actually shot mainly on a studio but it's really really good and has great actors. For me before 1960 it is the standard for World War II movies followed by a "walk in the Sun".
The Battle of the bulge is one of the worst war movies I've ever seen. It is so wrong and so poorly done that even with a all-star cast it was just hot trash
Saving Private Ryan is up there, they charged right up Omaha Beach & took it in less than 40mins.
@@chizorama- I don’t think the fact that a film attempts to depict something under the obvious limitations of production/plot time constraints is a valid.
You’re not going to find a war movie that requires the viewer to sit eating popcorn for seven hours just because it took that long for the actual historical event of combat and battle to conclude….
Just think how long a theater-goer would have sit and watch Charlton Heston playing Moses in the 1956 film “The Ten Commandments.”
The Hebrews wandered the desert for 40 years!
Your butt would really fall asleep during that movie….
Was also criticized by my father, who was there. That movie is terrible, yet 80 years later we're still waiting for a good movie about one of the largest battles the US ever fought in.
Battleground, filmed in 1949, is a pretty good one that critics then thought was fairly accurate for the conditions and what the soldiers went through.
Watch band of brothers
@@DemocracyOfficer2485 yeah, sure. One episode focusing on the relationship between a medic and nurse. Not what I'm talking about.
@@kilroy2517 there’s 2 episodes covering it which is roughly 2 hours. The same length as most movies.
@@DemocracyOfficer2485 So go back and watch those two episodes, then come back and tell me what you learned about the Bulge, but don't mention anything that wasn't specifically stated in those episodes. They were not about the Bulge, they were about Easy Company's part of it. Or, are you one of those people that think the entirety of the battle was Bastogne? BTW, I've seen the entire series at least 10 times, the last time being about 6 months ago.
I quote Michael Bay on the tanks issue. You can’t get mad we didn’t use the machines after you destroyed them
If you ever saw a Soviet or Russian movie about WW2, they at least made German Panzer mockups over the hull of a T-34 or T-55. While some of these mockups lock quite badly, others turned out great, either way it's better than nothing.
@@levilastun829They also used hordes of real German POWs, years after the war ended.
@@levilastun829 movies like saving private Ryan did too.
@theapexdragon5010 fr. Saving Private Ryan is what happens if you make effort in a movie.
Red dawn 1984 disagrees
Hollywood never gets anything right.
Definitely an entertainment war movie not a historical reenactment.
People are complaining there aren't any black people in the tv show "Shogun" you can't impress everyone 😅
You’d think the filmmakers would interview Eisenhower before making a movie about his most famous battle 🤦♂️
In all fairness, Ike was not actually in direct command of the troops at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. He and many other senior officers were back in Paris attending a "conference" and the wedding of Eisenhower's personal orderly to his driver in the Chapel of the Palace of Versailles. Even the Commanding General of the 101st Airborne was in Paris at the beginning of the Siege of Bastogne, Major General Maxwell D Taylor had left his division artillery commander in charge. Brigadier Anthony "Nuts" McAuliffe exercised command of the paratroopers in the Ardennes during the battle and sent the famous message back to the Germans when they asked him to surrender.
(General Maxwell D Taylor himself would go on to be Chief of Staff of the Army under President Eisenhower, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Kennedy. General Anthony C McAuliffe would go on to be head of Army Personnel and Commander-in-Chief of US Army Europe around the same time Gen Taylor was Army Chief of Staff.)
Ike's actual "most famous battle(s)" would be his command of Operation Torch (the Allied "invasion" of North Africa), The Invasion of Sicily, and as SHAEF / commander of ETOUSA for Operation Overlord and the liberation of (Western) Europe. Eisenhower almost never operated at the local level during WWII, nearly always as a Theater Commander with responsibilities for multiple battles and campaigns.
@@williestyle35 Thanks for your authoritive post. - It's always good when someone joins in with the facts. 👍
Presidents are pretty busy, but there were hundreds of extra's in that movie, I bet some of them were at the battle, hell Sevalis and Bronson may have been there.
Because very few Tiger I and II tanks were built and most were destroyed in combat or scuttled by their crews, it was common to use the US Army surplus of M-47 or M-48 Patton tanks to fill in the gaps in the 50's -70's war movies and TV shows. Eisenhower should have just been happy they didn't blame him for being caught flat footed while 250,000 German Troops with heavy tanks built up on his front while he had many of his officers on Christmas vacation. The soldiers at the time were none to happy with Eisenhower Christmas of '44.
Eisenhower didn't actually bitch about the tanks, just everything else in the movie. The writing and over the top....everything...
The complaint about tanks is purely from modern nitpickers who can't comprehend that there's only one functional Tiger tank left in the world and it was only recently restored, zero functional KTs, and that when a lot of these old war movies were made, over 90% of the functional Panzer IVs still in existence were making up a significant portion of the Syrian army's tank fleet until most of them were lost in the Six Day War in 1967, and then more of them were lost in Yom Kippur War after being installed into a hill side as gun bunkers.
@@wolfehoffmann2697 Yes, as I mentioned, though for historical accuracy, the producers of "The Battle of Britain" basically rented the Spanish Air Force. I'm sure the Syrians would have happily traded the show runners their PzKW IVs for those M-48's!
Yeah, well where are the shermans?
First saw movie in 1971 with my late dad, who fought in Bulge.
He enjoyed certain storylines such as how the Allies wrongfully thought Germany was defeated while they secretly built up for a surprise massive counter offensive, the use of english-speaking Nazis in GI uniforms, the Malmedy massacre, the superiority of German tanks and most of all, the initiative of ragtag GI’s who overcame initial confusion and regrouped to slow the attack and buy time…at great cost!!
The acting was well done. It’s a movie, not a documentary.
Great point! When watching any movie, I check my brain at the door.
The problem is that it's so far from being a documentary, that it becomes a parody. The American general sending wave after wave of tanks to the slaughter just to use up the Germans fuel would make Zapp Brannigan proud. In real history, when Patton's 3rd Army reached Bastogne, the Germans got the snot beat out of them.
@@ostiariusalphaonce again it’s just a movie. It’s not a documentary! People who want every film to be 100% realistic are the worst
@@daltongalloway 100% realistic isn't necessary, but 15% realistic is a joke. "The Longest Day" is not particularly accurate, but it is at least a good movie; "The Battle of the Bulge" is almost a caricature of a war movie.
@@ostiariusalpha it’s a movie. It doesn’t have to be realistic at all 🤣. You history nerds don’t have anything better to do with your life
I remember a Midway veteran watching the movie Pearl Harbor and complaining why didn’t they use Japanese carriers for the launch sequence. Someone told the vets that they sunk all the Japanese carriers.
However, despite these inaccurancies this became a box office hit!!
of all the people who would criticize the movie because the tanks used were wrong, it had to be "ike".. all the other inaccuracies pointed out were valid but give the filmakers credit.. because it's hard to get german tanks by then and use them in a large scale battle.. if your going to criticize that movie.. why not criticize the patton movie for using inaccurate tanks used..
It's cool as fuck
@userjlj The Battle was fought mostly in the forest or along narrow roads. There weren't large epic tank battles.
Because the masses love to be spun a story, they can't handle the harsh reality of war nor do they care.
Eisenhower didn't fund the film either . They had to use what tanks were cheapest and available. Most German armor was either sitting on a shooting range or sold for scrap
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it back in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. It’s a movie, not a documentary, and I wasn’t even 10 yet. The best part of the movie was the German tank commanders singing.
I presume you're referring to Panzerlied. This movie got that wrong, too, as Panzerlied has more than 1 stanze.
@@ImperiumRomanum476How many ignorant American movie-goers would notice that?
@@ImperiumRomanum476 Yes they just repeated it over and over 😂
Ob sturmt oder schneit oder die Sonne uns lacht - A little American kid didn't need more than that stanza to get an interest in learning German
@@AllenMacCannell I had my whole Army company singing that song in 1981.
Criticism is well deserved. It's an embarassingly bad movie.
Nah.
I agree even when I saw it as a kid when it came out I found it full of shit and not believable. The film felt contrived and corny. The characters almost cartoonish. Like Telly Savalas as the loudmouth tanker , or Robert Shaw breaking into song with his fellow SS Panzer Corps.
The Longest Day was much better as was A Bridge too Far in terms of depicting pivotal WWII battles in Europe.
@@vx633 Patton was pretty good too. Even Kelly's Heroes was more believable that that one, and it wasn't even menat to be believed. Actually, there was a lot of attention to detail in Kelly's Heroes.
Totally wrong.
@@Strike_Raid Patton the movie is awful and turns Patton into an inhuman caricature. It's trash propaganda. Patton himself was a stark, brash genius who told it to his men straight. He didn't BS them about greasing the treads of their tanks with the enemy's guts. Go listen to his actual recorded speeches. for yourself.
This kind of criticism moved to the movie is superficial.
1) I challenge you finding dozens of ww2 tanks of the same type available near to the movie location;
2) "the battle of the bulge" was in fact shot during winter, but it was a mild one and the snow melted .
The real problem with this movie is its script: too slow and filled with uninteresting things like the whole Telly Savalas' subplot
being lazy and not taking the offer from spain to borrow there ww2 tanks when recording in spains dessert in the summer
I watch movies for entertainment, not education.
Hollywood film historically inaccurate?
Don't tell the 'Braveheart' fans.😅
When a comedy movie like Kelly’s Heroes makes a real effort at convincingly dressing up a T-34 as a Tiger, this movie has no real excuse
They needed three Tigers, at most, in Kelly's Heroes.
The movie being discussed needed dozens.
@@AlanRoehrich9651 I’m just saying. I’m less concerned with the tanks anyway and more concerned that they shot their movie about the Battle of the Bulge in Spain… during summer… in the desert…
My advice to Eisenhower is, don’t look to Hollywood for historic accuracy. It’s just entertainment.
Considering Eisenhower's role at the time, the massive of loss and cost of our men in that battle, I think that if it deserved s*** talking, (which it did), from anyone, it was him. The men who lived and died there deserve that honor and accuracy.
Where's the Hollywood did not have the ability to get the proper tanks. In Hollywood did do a poor job of representing what really happened at the Battle of the bulge. But Hollywood wanted people to watch the movie. If they would have told closer to the truth most people wouldn't have even a came and watched the movie. People quit throwing a tantrum it was a movie.
A fictional film that should be banned
as if they have lots of surviving tiger tanks after ww2 that they can use in movie duh
You think every war movie uses original tanks and equipment? Lmao 😂
Actually they did use king tigers in the ardennes forrest,but had to abandon them due to fuel shortage,and this is when the STG44 came into service.
King Tigers also had trouble with the narrow roads and lack of bridges capable of supporting heavy armor in the Ardennes.
there were , many were scrapped but many others got sold, syria used some of them against israel.
Eisenhower never watched any war movies. It was always Westerns at the White House. He loved Charlton Heston, he hated Robert Mitchum.
He was a communist that didn´t pull up to Moscow.
It's kinda hard to get accurate tanks and gear of opposing militaries. It's pretty common in movies to use domestic tanks modified to look like foreign tanks
A lot of those older ww2 movies used American Tanks as German ones by just painting them grey and adding decals
They didn’t even get that right. There were virtually no grey German tanks by then. The switched from the Panzer Grey used in the first years of the war to Dunklegelb (dark yellow) in Feb, 1943. at this period they were yellow with field applied green and brown camo, underneath a winter whitewash camo.
Including the 60,000 British troops being there and it was never told due to politics,oh yeah and the British stopped an attack on the Americans flanks which is also never mentioned but still lost lives saving that American flank.
and Montgomery (being Montgomery) wasted no time in rubbing the salt into
the US's wounds
@stephenchappell7512 can you blame him for doing that,his troops not being mentioned.how many lives was saved by his troops and by those who perished in doing so.
@@stephenchappell7512there were no brutush TROOPS IN the battle of the bulge. They were on a flank and unlike Patton's army did an unthinkable 180 turn to go into battle in Belgium, Montgomery like usual took his sweet time reorganizing his division to move on the flank. Stop with your crappy British propaganda
@@willthorson4543 The US troops far outnumbered the British troops during the battle, but they were there.
Can you please learn to write, your comment made my brain explode trying to decipher it.
@willthorson4543 incorrect. Took me 15 seconds to find out that at the very least both Canadian and British paratroopers were dropped in as reinforcements.
1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. Even most Canadians don't know about it. They also dropped in behind enemy lines on D-Day.
If there is one WW2 flick that needs a proper remake to do proper justice to the reality of the chain of historical events, it has to be this battle.
The 1970 movie was embarrassingly bad.
I think it was actually 65 but yes you're right although Band of Brothers kinda covered it (more accurately)
Yeah and add the 60,000 British troops that was there also.
@@stephenhannell1370 so what? Very few of those British troops were ever seen by the soldiers actually fighting in the Ardennes or at Bastogne. The British Army fought on the flanks and kept German reinforcements from making it to the Battle of the Bulge, but the majority were not with the US Airborne troops in the forest and suffered far fewer casualties than any of the American units.
They did remake it, it was called Band of Brothers.
It needs a remake with today's technology!!
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II which took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg.
It was also the second war in a row where German forces launched a "surprise attack" through the Ardennes Forest.
Same war. They did it during the invasion of France.
Where do you get a fleet of WW2 tanks... They only had basic special effects
panthers were produced post 45, and thousands of tanks were captured by the US or they could borrowed the german tanks from spain. still no tigers but panzer 4 and 5 would been better than what they used
@@deathtrooper7760 Most of the remaining panzer IVs were busy being destroyed by Israeli Shermans about this time.
Was a shit film with some top actors too
You have to treat this film as popcorn entertainment, not gritty reality.
@@fazoleeven then, its pretty bad
Well someone should have reminded Ike he destroyed all the German tanks in the war!
Not him personally as he was a desk jockey
A majority of German tanks lost were lost to the Red Army.
Large numbers of German tanks survived the war and were used by European countries through the 1950s.
Obviously, there weren’t enough around that were functioning to have been used in the movie and that’s what matters here.
@@markdrake6217 That is not obvious. Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers scrounged up German WW2 vehicles or made accurate recreations 60 years after the fact. The creators of this movie didn't even try, they just borrowed some US tanks and spray-painted them.
My uncle was in the 508th Regiment of the 82nd Airborne in the Ardennes during the bulge. I distinctly remember watching this movie with him and him laughing wildly while drinking martinis.
One of those times a former president criticised Hollywood for their absurd takes on WW2. 😂
Watch the TV series Band of Brothers for a more realistic depiction of Bastogne.
Dude wasn't just a president, unlike other presidents Eisenhower was the logistical genius behind America's involvement in the war
So out of anyone to critique a war, he should be the one
@@blackdog2994Band of Brothers is another "Good German" travesty
And yet many people say that "old movies are better and more accurate."
Some are but not all. It depends on many things - but making general statements about anything is usually inaccurate.
Who says that?😂
Tora, Tora, Tora was very accurate. Most others didn’t come close.
@@rfoyster2918 , too many.
Ike was like every critic who played Call of Duty: Vanguard.
My grandfather was at that battle and he never spoke about it except for one time I visited them in Kentucky and walk to the mailbox with them and he said I seen things that nobody should ever see❤👩🌾🙏
I don't mind some minor changes for entertainment purposes, but they swapped winter woods of France and Germany for treeless Spanish plains. The ending scene of this movie is an absolute embarrassment, like filming a movie about the battle of Gettysburg at the north pole.
It was a movie, Ike, not a documentary.
If you want to make a fantasy movie
make a fantasy movie
If the film was made today Eisenhower would be Palestinian, black and transgender.
It's Hollywood. When has the film industry ever gotten an historical event right?
Imagine the president having a press conference just to roast your film
Still a great movie.
The best line is when Henry Fonda’s character was asked if the Germans made any mistake, and he calmly replies “Well, they made me mad”.
Perfect.
When I was a kid I absolutely LOVED this movie, a pure popcorn flick. But as I learned more and more about the REAL battle I realized just how god awful it really is. The whole tank battle, in the desert no less ( ya know just like all the ones found in Belgium) , at the end is really rather comical
The band of brothers move was closer
Really has to feel bad when the president openly criticises your film.
Depends on the president. Obama‘s criticism of a military movie would be a pretty good indication that they got it right.
One of my favorite movies. Robert Shaw singing the Panzer Lehr is worth watching the film on its own. My brother and I laughed hysterically as kids watching that.
My family's house was used as a refuge by the Americans at the time. They apparently were quite cool, left a lot of chewing gum, a couple of spades, 50.cal ammo boxes and so on. Destroyed the front porch though because they thought they heard germans, turned out it was our German shepherd.
I never knew that the Cold War US M27 tank was really a German late WW2 design!
I had a teacher in high school in the 70s at MacArthur high school in Hollywood Florida. His name was Mr. pandak. and he was spitting image for Stalin. But he was hard-core. I got to school early in the morning for extra credit and he would be in the pool swimming laps at 75 and come out looking like he could kick your ass. I had a friend that I met in church in the 70s with one arm and never did you not see him with a smile and he was the most humble man. Before he died in 2012 he told me what happened. He was a sniper scout reconnaissance 414 in World War II and he got his arm shot off with one shot. He said he didn’t feel it he just looked down and saw his arm on the ground. He sent everybody back while he positioned them self and his only words was I “that man will never hurt anybody else. How powerful is that from a humble man. He taught me to shoot and fish. And I could never equal his precision with two hands. Best generation I’ve ever lived
It was still a great move, although the historical inaccuracies are a point well taken.
I believe what General Eisenhower says is actually true since he was actually there not Hollywood industry version
Bro in war time that only was a couple of days one month of combat seems like a blessing today
Eisenhower was a true patriot. And he warned us of the industrial military complex.
I went to Army basic training back in 1981. I was army reserve, when I got back home. A friend of mine set me up on a blind double date. We went to the movies, and saw the Bill Murray's movie Stripes. Afterwards, we went for dinner and I was criticizing everything that was inaccurate. But I did laughed, that movie was hilarious. My point is, don't take everything from Hollywood too seriously. Laugh about the inaccuracies, you'll have a better time.
So what has changed , Titanic , Pearl Harbour , Midway !
It was criticized by Joaquin Piper as well..
Interesting.
Pepper was stopped by "the damned engineers" who blew the bridges his heavy armor needed to reach the Meuse.
"We weren't THAT up-BR'd"
- Eisenhower
In the movie, the tanks, the Germans using, were ALL American tanks, the M-24 Chaffey, and the M-26 Pershing.
Eddie
As a kid I gave them a pass for using M47's as German tanks, but the fact that they painted them early war (1939-1941) Panzer Grey and then turned around and put tri-colored camo on all the US vehicles......I still like the movie, it is what it is. I think it depicted at least some of the essence of what happened in the Ardennes.
It took place in winter , I hardly saw single pile of dirty snow. But , Hollywood was really stretching their creative licensing.
There were many mistakes and generalization sum up but as a piece of art it was a masterpiece of action ,music and emotion.
Not historical but the most beautiful war film.
I know the landscape quite well in the Ardennes. Imagine a colde winter with it and you have an unbelievable difficult landscape to move through!!
Hollywood is always trying to rewrite history or promote propaganda that suits their interests. Rarely does a film accurately present it. First 10mins of "Saving Private Ryan" were so accurate by Steven Spielberg that many WW2 D Day survivors had to walk out of the theatre. I can not speak about the rest of that film. Tears fill my eyes and roll down my cheeks everytime I watch it. I am so thankful for the amazing sacrifices those men made that day. Bravery on full display. God bless them. They literally saved the world from evil. Thank you for your service.
The film was hokey. My uncle was killed in action January 23 1945 Staff Sgt WmbBill Donald Watts 30th rifle division 117th infantry Company E Durbin, West Virginia😊
Christopher Lee auditioned for that. They said he didn’t look like he could pass as a soldier.
"Mr President do you want comment on the ONGOING war in Vietnam? I'm sure they'd love your input"
"No, but I do want to call a press conference for 4pm"
The top American officers surrounded in Bastogne had an elite unit of hair stylists to make sure their hair was perfect at all times. The U.S. supply planes flew in hair spray, mustache wax and Brylcreem.
"Every aspect was inaccurate" - standard Hollywood.
That's why it's a movie
My Grandad was in the Bulge battle he said the Germans started shelling his troops position Dec. 16 and didn't stop for 15 days straight no Artillery or tanks could match the German fire power , soon after Christmas the clouds finally broke , they started seeing American B-17 bombers flying overhead this bombing is what chased the Germans out of Belgium, and as my Grandad would say with a wink in his eye " Yeah they stated shagging Ass back to Germany " 😊
My father was in that battle...he told me it was the most bloody of all..he was in many battles...
I found it very entertaining, and couldn't care less about the tanks not being Shermans and Tigers and such. MiG-28 in Top Gun anyone?
It's a movie, not a documentary.
Not a BAD movie, just had nothing to do with the battle of the same name. Robert Shaw’s character was based on a real SS panzer commander who was still alive at the time, so they changed his name. The movie is worthwhile, if only for the scene of the German tank crews singing “Panzerleid.“
At least we have Kellys Heroes from back then...😂
Still one of my favs!!
Back then movies always used modern tanks as stand ins. There was no CGI.
In the film, 'Patton', during the Battle of El Guettar scene, the Nazis are driving M48 Patton tanks.
Maybe Hollywood should do a accurate version of that famous battle.
Being freezing cold out in the open is hell on earth🧐
By the time this movie was made German tanks were already becoming scarce. Some European countries inventoried them into their own militaries for a while as an expedient. The majority of German armoured vehicles were scrapped for the steel and other metals. Especially if they were inoperable.
Good justification it sounds like for a "remake" of this film with a renewed emphasis on historical accuracy. Historical accuracy matters especially in dealing with historical events of this magnitude of significance.
IKE never even saw combat. Patton saw combat, but IKE fired him.
When the president says your movie is crap, you know you messed up
Gotta love m47 Patton tanks role playing as tigers, panthers, panzer 4’s, and Stug 3 tanks
I don't know about all that. The Spanish Army M-47s are similar in size and firepower to the German Tiger II and the M-46 is relatively similar to the M4 Sherman. The final tank battle was goofy, but the other parts of the movie were fairly accurate. The battle was over for the Germans with the defeat of 2d Panzer Div by US 2d Armor Div on the 25th and Patton relieving Bastogne on the 26th. The real problem with the movie was that it highlighted that Eisenhower as CIC was taken by surprise.
They should most definitely add the fact that Monty and the British saved these American Cowboys from a complete fuck up.
To quote "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young", Hollywood got it wrong every damn time (and yes I know it's referring to Vietnam but definitely applies here too).
My Great Grandfather was there.
He served in WW1 when he was only 13 years old. He served again in WW2 in 2nd Division, 12th Field Artillery. During the Battle of the Bulge he fought in the Northern sector in the Ardennes Campaign, along with the 99th Infantry, and it is them who are responsible in preventing the 6th Panzer Division from securing Elsenborn Ridge and regrouping with Peiper’s Division; which forced Peiper to take a costly alternative route. 2nd Division’s sector is the only sector where the Germans didn’t break through during the campaign. My Great Grandfather, being a artillery man, is largely to credit for this.
Everyone wrongly thinks Bastogne is where the Battle of the Bulge takes place, all the while forgetting and downplaying heroic men like my Great Grandfather.
Hahahaha I kinda love that a guy at the level of Eisenhower saw the movie and was like, “Jesus Christ, set up a press conference for tomorrow morning” don’t plan on watching this one, band of brothers did well to show me what it was like
I remember when I have seen that movie playing on tv several times, I never fully watched it, but even as little kid these tanks looked really weird for German WW2 tanks, like something felt not right
"stop being such an accuracy ally"
-the film producers
I forgave them for not using the correct tanks. But not for rewriting history. I hate it when filmmakers do that at scale.
Back when we had real men, and patriots in our military.
As far as tanks go you can't REALLY blame them. I mean, you try finding enough Panzer tanks that survived the war. They were all destroyed by allied armour or by their own crew to prevent capture, broke down, or melted after the wars conclusion. There is only a VERY small handful of Panzer tanks left, and a good number of them aren't original anyways.
spain were the filmd this scene offered them to borrow there german ww2 tanks and they could found more in france, italy, the benelux region, the british and west germany. most of them got destroyed in the 1970-80 so a movie that came out 1965 had no excuse being this lazy.
@deathtrooper7760 Fair enough. I was certain that the allies melted down all German or axis military equipment after the war to prevent them being used again. Except for Britain for Operation Unthinkable, but I did forget that former Axis or axis aligned nations kept some Panzer tanks. Even still there weren't many.