I saw this movie about a year or so ago. The beginning of the film, had me in complete shock! I was at a loss for words at how the Russian officers in charge were treating their own troops at the time.

It's about the battle of Stalingrad, now named Volgograd.

I thought it was a great movie to watch, despite the ratings.



Anyone here seen this statue in person?




Anyone have any opinions on the movie?

"When the man in front of you is killed, pick up his rifle." Nice.

Couldn't believe there was a big budget movie released in the US about Stalingrad. I saw it in the theatres the weekend it came out years and years ago. I've probably seen it about 20 times now. Want to show it to my son but he's not quite ready. Very intense sniper scenes all throughout.

Oh, and old school Call of Duty fans will recognize the Red Square scene.

This movie is a classic.

Corporal Punishment said:

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Oh, and old school Call of Duty fans will recognize the Red Square scene.

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Oh yeah, I remember. Back when CoD was still good. It felt like you were playing "Enemy at the Gates: the Video Game."

Corporal Punishment said:

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"When the man in front of you is killed, pick up his rifle." Nice.

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Golden!

I was siting down watching in disbelief! Thinking, "they don't have enough guns for everybody?'

The Vasily guy literally had to fight tooth and nail just to get a handful of bullets from the officers.

Dire straits! Those soldiers were hard up for meager provisions and equipment.



On another note, the movie didn't sit too well with a lot of folks in Russia or Germany.

Personally I though it was awesome!

I watched this movie for the first time a couple years back because I heard a lot of good things. I thought it was pretty terrible.

Corporal Punishment said:

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"When the man in front of you is killed, pick up his rifle." Nice.

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Saw on the internet (because they never lie) that this was an exaggeration. The amount of death and destruction however, was not exaggerated.

The love triangle plot is silly and forced at times, but overall it's a solid WWII action flick. I'd like to see a movie about Anna Yegorova.

Red Sky, Black Death: A Soviet Woman Pilot's Memoir of the Eastern Front https://www.amazon.com/dp/0893573558/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_lZEMAb6H92ZGW

The.book is much, much better.

I know that's a cliche' these days, but I mean it without pretense intended. Pick up the book.

Yeah serving in the Red Army in WWII was pretty brutal. A billet by the Germans or a bullet by your own side. Pick your poison. The fighting was about as brutal and bloody as any battle ever fought.

Also just a fun fact, of the 92,000 Germans who were alive to surrender in 1943 only about 5,000 would be alive to repatriated about 10 years later after spending time in soviet pow camps

It's been a long time since I've seen it but I remember loving it

That was a really good movie.

I always liked contrasting this one against The Thin Red Line. The Thin Red Line just dropped the viewer into the action - Guadalcanal - without any real exposition as to why it was important. Enemy At The Gates opens with that map of Europe, which changes to red showing the Nazi expanse throughout Europe and pointing east into Central Asia. Gave a high level overview as to why these soldiers were fighting.

It's been awhile since I've seen it, but I remember loving some of it and thinking a lot of it was boring.

JABQ04 said:

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Yeah serving in the Red Army in WWII was pretty brutal. A billet by the Germans or a bullet by your own side. Pick your poison. The fighting was about as brutal and bloody as any battle ever fought.

Also just a fun fact, of the 92,000 Germans who were alive to surrender in 1943 only about 5,000 would be alive to repatriated about 10 years later after spending time in soviet pow camps

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So that's why, when given the choice, all those Germans preferred the US pow camps to the Russian ones.

dds08 said:

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JABQ04 said:

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Yeah serving in the Red Army in WWII was pretty brutal. A billet by the Germans or a bullet by your own side. Pick your poison. The fighting was about as brutal and bloody as any battle ever fought.

Also just a fun fact, of the 92,000 Germans who were alive to surrender in 1943 only about 5,000 would be alive to repatriated about 10 years later after spending time in soviet pow camps

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So that's why, when given the choice, all those Germans preferred the US pow camps to the Russian ones.

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Dan Carlin has a great series that explores the marked difference in brutality between the Western and Eastern Fronts. The first episode is here: Episode 27 - Ghosts of the Ostfront I (feat. Dan Carlin) by Dan Carlin's Hardcore History https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/episode-27-ghosts-of-the-ostfront-i-feat-dan-carlin/635055575

I enjoyed this movie, also have seen it probably a half dozen times. Have it on DVD somewhere.

dude95 said:

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Corporal Punishment said:

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"When the man in front of you is killed, pick up his rifle." Nice.

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Saw on the internet (because they never lie) that this was an exaggeration. The amount of death and destruction however, was not exaggerated.

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It wasn't an exaggeration. The red army was full of ******ed ideas.

One of my favorites was a chuteless low altitude airborne drop, they believed the snow would be thick enough to absorb the drop.

Love this movie. I want to say I saw this and Brotherhood of the Wolf at the theaters the same day.

James Horner's score is incredible in this. They used parts of it in the recent Magnificent Seven along with other nods to his career after he died.

dds08 said:

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JABQ04 said:

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Yeah serving in the Red Army in WWII was pretty brutal. A billet by the Germans or a bullet by your own side. Pick your poison. The fighting was about as brutal and bloody as any battle ever fought.

Also just a fun fact, of the 92,000 Germans who were alive to surrender in 1943 only about 5,000 would be alive to repatriated about 10 years later after spending time in soviet pow camps

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So that's why, when given the choice, all those Germans preferred the US pow camps to the Russian ones.

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Very much so. They would fight tooth and nail to get away from the Russians just to throw down their weapons at the first sign of Western Allies. And many times we would promptly hand them back over to the Russkies.

What is funny is the movie is literally like 2 paragraphs in the book with the same name. They managed to really draw out a 2 hour movie over multiple days for an encounter that wasn't as dramatic.

Zaitzev was an amazing sniper, but the sniper's duel with Koenig is most likely Soviet propaganda. There's no historical evidence of such a Major existing in the Wehrmacht, but it does make for one hell of a movie.

[It was deleted because it had a bunch of negative votes. This isn't the General Board. -Staff]

Spoiler Alert:




















Didn't Ed Harris play the German who hanged the kid to draw out the Russian sniper or force him to get emotional and make a mistake?

Yes. Also.... Spoiler alert..
























Ed Harris is also in this movie called Apollo 13. Yall should check it out but I won't say anything more because I don't want to give anything away.

I happened upon this movie the same way I stumbled upon "Office Space"; randomly.

Funny how that works.

Such a great feeling, watching a great movie by chance.

I think that's why cable will not go away any time soon. If it does, it's death will be "slow as molasses."

Southlake said:

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Spoiler Alert:




















Didn't Ed Harris play the German who hanged the kid to draw out the Russian sniper or force him to get emotional and make a mistake?

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That kid did exist IRL, but it went down a little differently.

Liked Enemy at the Gates, but it could have been so much better if had focused on sniping and tactics that made his such a good sniper instead of the silly love story. Throughout most of the movie the Russian is outdone by Ed Harris' character.

Another pretty good movie is Russian with subtitles that came out in 2013 called Stalingrad. Interesting but melodramatic battle scenes but worth a watch if you are interested.

Russian generals where some of the best (if not the best of WW2) but they understood that their only advantages were excessive manpower and the Russian Winter. In the first three weeks of the war on the Eastern front they had 750,000 casualties. Just imagine that from an American perspective, but the Russians it was not that big of a deal. And when they retreated they had a scorched earth policy of destroying everything in their own country to prevent it being used by the Germans.

Wasting lives in massive frontal assault against entrenched positions makes you a great general?

You need to check out the great generals of World War I.

BQ78 said:

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Wasting lives in massive frontal assault against entrenched positions makes you a great general?

You need to check out the great generals of World War I.

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And guess what... Dan Carlin has a great (and free) series about that, too.

BQ78 said:

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Wasting lives in massive frontal assault against entrenched positions makes you a great general?

You need to check out the great generals of World War I.

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Zhukov took over a failing army being routed and in retreat and stopped the Nazis just short of Moscow. He then lead a classic pincer movement to encircle and obliterate the 6th Army. Russian generals did much more than just frontal assaults. The Russians paid the "butcher's bill" during WW2 and our casualties would have been much higher without them.

BQ78 said:

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Wasting lives in massive frontal assault against entrenched positions makes you a great general?

You need to check out the great generals of World War I.

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Whay is impressive is the fear of losing face that caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of German soldiers by Hitler. He refused any requests for full withdrawal from all levels of his staff. He didn't want to give the Russians any propaganda material.

JonSnow said:

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BQ78 said:

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Wasting lives in massive frontal assault against entrenched positions makes you a great general?

You need to check out the great generals of World War I.

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Zhukov took over a failing army being routed and in retreat and stopped the Nazis just short of Moscow. He then lead a classic pincer movement to encircle and obliterate the 6th Army. Russian generals did much more than just frontal assaults. The Russians paid the "butcher's bill" during WW2 and our casualties would have been much higher without them.

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Not to discredit Zuhkov or the Russian fighting man, but Stalingrad should not have happened period. Hitler stopped the Nazis before Moscow. Hitler more or less gave the victory to Zhukov. Doesn't take much to bog down an enemy in a city and then use superior numbers and winter experience to encircle the enemy. I think that is literally the third tactic after smashing head on or hitting from the flanks in "How to defeat an army 101".

The movie was great IMO. Silly love triangle but they were trying to appeal to everyone. Hollywood did take some liberties with it but ya know....Hollywood. So it is pretty easy for me to gloss over that stuff. I enjoyed the movie and still watch it from time to time.

Saw it again yesterday. Unbeknownst to me, it was DVR'd.

I forgot, was taken aback, and surprised at how they let that kid be a double agent to the German sniper. No way I would have let him do that. It was a "dangerous game" indeed. Then they weren't honest with the mother about it afterward.

Perhaps that was just an exaggeration of the movie.

Since it seems you guys like WWII and snipers and stuff, check out the memoir of Josef Allerberger. One of the Wehrmacht's highest scoring snipers and he details what it was really like operating on the Eastern Front. Really cool book. One bit I remember is how he says he learned quickly that it was important to know when it was time to abandon your rifle and flee if you absolutely had to because it was widely known that if Red troops captured a German sniper alive he would suffer an especially painful death.

Well now you are really showing you don't know what you are talking about, because the Stalingrad operation you are describing (Operation Uranus) was executed by someone else while Zuhkov was executing Operation Mars and getting his ass handed to him around Rzhev by doing what? Attacking head long into bunkers on the Kalinin Front. Had Stalin not liked Zuhkov personally he might have been fired and executed for the disaster that was Operation Mars. Good thing Uranus was a success so they could sweep the disaster under the rug.