Small Scale Military Headquarters

Well I actually own a copy of 'Enemy at the Gates' and I am attempting to watch it again but it is truly a bad bad film...

Anyway, I found a link that you may find interesting and it is the reaction of the russian veterans to this film:

Veterans angry over Stalingrad battle movie

MOSCOW, May 8 (UPI) -- As moviegoers in the Russian capital bought tickets
Tuesday to watch a Western-made movie depicting the crucial World War II
battle, war veterans from the southern Russian city of Volgograd demanded
Russian legislators ban the picture.

Labeled Europe's most expensive film ever, French director Jean-Jacques
Annaud's "Enemy at the Gates" definitely struck a wrong chord with survivors
of the historic Stalingrad battle.

On Tuesday, a group of veterans from Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) sent
a letter to the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, the State Duma,
demanding that the screening of the movie be suspended, the official
Itar-Tass news agency reported.

No official comments regarding the demand were available from the Duma
Wednesday.

The veterans were offended by what they called distortions of real facts
that eventually depicted the city's defenders as cannon fodder who blindly
obeyed orders of Red Army officers and played a miniscule role in
Stalingard's defense.

According to the letter, Soviet commanders, in turn, were described as
ruthless tyrants, always ready to kill deserters or officers with miserable
records to boost soldiers' morale.

One such scene shows the character of Nikita Khrushchev -- who later
became the general secretary of the Communist Party -- ordering a Soviet
general who failed to drive back the Germans to commit suicide to encourage
his fighters.

The 84-million-dollar movie opened in Russia on March 30. The premiere was
held in Russia's third-largest city of Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River.

The movie received relatively good reviews from film critics, mostly owing
to the star-studded lineup of actors including Jude Law, Rachel Weisz,
Joseph Fiennes and Ed Harris.

At the same time, it was a commercial success at the box office,
collecting as of April 22 a total of $46.3 million in the United States and
$48.3 million elsewhere.

Nevertheless, its portrayal of events that reversed the course of World
War II has angered Russian battle survivors who fought against the Nazi's
for six months.

The Battle of Stalingrad was fought from July 1942, until February 1943,
when Germany's 6th Army under the command of Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus
surrendered to Russia, virtually ending the German offensive in the Soviet
Union.



http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5245.html##6

i never really liked the movie, except for the opening scene with the stukas attacking the ships of the volga and the russian troops charging the germans.

after i saw the movie i asked on 'missing-lynx' how accurate the portrayal of russian troops being forced to charge germans with the machine guns of their own officers at their backs. All responses were that this is the way it was done if the Red Army...soldiers would be shot if they did not charge. Apparently the Russian veterans outcry says the opposite...

Howevr, there is a famous quote by Stalin that goes "it takes a brave man to be a coward in the Russian Army". This suggests harsh measures were in place, at least for those who weren't enthusiastic about fighting.

I don't think that the commissars were out in the field to act as friendly career counselors!

I look at it this way. I'm sure the movie could of been done better, but the vets we are talking about were fed a bunch of bs by the Soviet propoganda that hid a lot of what went on around them. History bears witness to Stalin's culling of his gernerals after their failure to check the German advance in 1941 and the murder of innocent Polish officers (1200) by Soviet troops (of which the Russians OFFICIALLY appoligized for in 1999) show that the picture of the Great Patriotic War was far less than rosy! Brain washing and Vodka goes far you know.....

-Ski

I've read or seen documentaries of WWII Soviet veterans who knowingly or unknowingly distort the truth. War is hell. Maybe 60 years ago, in the heat of battle, what they've done seems right and justifiable. But after looking back, maybe those vets now want to forget what they've done in the past.

Interview a Russian vet now about the Soviet's atrocities committed on German civilians and most likely he'll deny it. If he doesn't, then he always say that he "heared" of some atrocities committed by Red Army soldiers, but he himself never committed or seen one.

The same can be said for German soldiers back then. If you ask a German vet why he fought in the war, he'll say that because he wants to defend the world and Germany from the Communists. Funny, Poland and the rest of Western Europe weren't Communists...

ENEMY AT THE GATES is one of my favorite WWII movies!
I think everything about this film is EPIC. I even like the "cheesy" love triangle!
I think Jude Law's other war movie, COLD MOUNTAIN, is more "cartoonish" the EATG.
I don't think that the Soviets did any suicide charges during the Battle for Stalingrad, but I'm sure they did it with "grunt" troops elsewhere on the Eastern front.

There is a book available through Amazon called "Armagedon", by Max Hastings. The book looks at the conquest of Germany mainly from the British point of view, but it has many insights from the Russian side as well. After reading this book you will have an idea on how brutal the Russians were to the: 1)Germans and their civilians, 2) the Russians who lived in areas overrun by the Germans and liberated by the Russians, 3)Russians soldiers who were prisoners of the Germans liberated by the Russians and finally victims of concentration camps liberated by the Russians. These points of view are taken from the Russian soldiers themselves and they reveal a brutality that out did Hitler in many respects.

TJ

I highly suggest the book Enemy at the Gates which the movie is based off of. The movie seems to be somewhat accurate to the book. Its pretty accurate how the Russians were treated. I know I read some where in there about the Russians shooting deserters. The Russian soldiers were afriad of giving up for fear of being shot. I know that in one day an entire division of 10,000 men were killed to capture the hill at Mameav Kurgan. But if you ever get a chance I HIGHLY recommend the book. Its written by William Craig.

Joe