Enemy at the gate is on the history channel in 39 minutes
- Thread starter larrysmith
- Start date
- Location
- Blaster land, Okanagan BC
Fitting then that I ordered a Mosin and a crate of x54r tonight, more red rifles for the safe.
chevys_only
Member
- Location
- Lethbridge AB
Great show!!
I have it on DVD !!!!! yessssssssssss
and rachael weisz is yummy......almost as yummy as the k98 sniper and mosin snipers hehheh
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"The one with the rifle shoots! The one without, follows him! When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots!"
This is my favorite line from the whole movie, and it pretty much sums up the Eastern Front for the Soviets at the time.
This is my favorite line from the whole movie, and it pretty much sums up the Eastern Front for the Soviets at the time.
Not really, in 1942 the Soviets had more Mosin Nagant rifles available than men on the frontlines to use them. Even rear-echelon troops were given the comparative luxury of a handier M38 carbine. It was pure Hollywood fiction.
The opening scene of Enemy at the Gates was pretty offensive to all those old WW2 Ruskie veterans too. According to Hollywood, Russians are so cowardly that they need to be locked into their transport trains, will abandon ship at the first sign of danger and are stupid enough to organize a frontal charge against tanks, entrenched infantry and MG emplacements along a narrow urban corridor, where half the attackers are unarmed.
...The Russians fighting at Stalingrad were not fighting for Stalin or some ideology, they were fighting for each other, their country and their families...like any soldier. The opening scene was the equivalent of Speilberg's Saving Private Ryan depicting a bunch of US infantrymen cowardly abandoning the fight on the approach to Omaha beach.
While I would put the NKVD on the same level of barbarism as the Waffen SS, the depiction of indiscriminate executions by Commissars in the middle of a firefight and a NKVD barrier unit positioned on the frontline to gun down retreating troops is not based in historical fact. The NKVD butchers killed thousands upon thousands of their own, but it wasn't commonly done on the battlefield, it was done out of sight to avoid damaging unit morale.
During the initial German advances in Stalingrad: August 1 - October 15, 1942
140,775 servicemen were detained
3,980 were arrested
1,189 were executed by shooting
2,961 were sent to Penal battalions
97% of those detained for retreating or similar behaviour were sent back to the front without any punishment. It takes combat veterans to win battles, you don't build up a core of senior NCOs by executing an entire unit after every failed attack.
Overall, Enemy at the Gates was about as concerned with accuracy as The Patriot (the one where British troops murder an entire town by burning them alive in a church...an atrocity that was actually carried out by the Nazis...). Most of the time, Hollywood and history are like oil and water.
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GunsNotPuns
CGN frequent flyer
Higgs is correct. While that opening scene may be dramatic, it was hardly accurate.
While there is at least one case of Russian soldiers being ordered to fire on retreating comrades -- and reportedly those Russians were saved by a Panzer platoon that took pity and maneuvered in between them and their countrymen -- it was hardly some common occurrence.
While there is at least one case of Russian soldiers being ordered to fire on retreating comrades -- and reportedly those Russians were saved by a Panzer platoon that took pity and maneuvered in between them and their countrymen -- it was hardly some common occurrence.
Call
CGN frequent flyer
I saw this in the theatre back when it first came out. There were a bunch of kids (like 10 and 12 years old) running up and down the aisles and making noise, and during the climax I'd had enough and stood up and yelled, "Shut those kids up!". At that exact moment Jude Law's character shot the German officer sniper and I missed it.
Great movie! How are guys on cgn the experts on staligrad anyway? were they there? You are just reading history books with an American slant on everything. I would like to read through germn ww2 history books to read german slant on how things went down.
when ever I watched a movie that is base on some historical event , I take it with a grain of salt . in war there is a lot of confusion and not everything will be documented so even a writers imagination could well have happened , just gotta use your common sense when watching a movie .
