World War II · Film · 1977
Cross of Iron
A cynical German corporal and his reconnaissance platoon fight to survive the Soviet onslaught in the Kuban bridgehead, and a vain new captain who wants an Iron Cross at any price.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 2 places.
Stop 1: Kuban bridgehead (Blue Line)
Key location
Steiner's platoon raids Soviet positions, shelters a captured boy soldier and faces a massive assault that the new captain spends hiding in his bunker.
Stop 2: Retreat toward the Kerch Strait
Left behind by their own battalion, Steiner's men cross enemy territory to reach the German lines as the army pulls back toward Crimea.
What really happened
Sam Peckinpah's film adapts Willi Heinrich's 1956 novel 'The Willing Flesh', based on his own service with the 101st Jäger Division. After Stalingrad, the German 17th Army held a bridgehead on the Kuban and the Taman Peninsula in 1943, defending the fortified 'Blue Line' against repeated Soviet assaults.
In September and October 1943 the Germans evacuated the bridgehead across the Kerch Strait into Crimea. Steiner and Stransky are fictional, but the film's picture of exhausted, disillusioned front soldiers and medal-hungry officers was shaped by veterans' memoirs; its slow-motion violence reflects Peckinpah's style more than the record.
Where to watch
Checking streaming services…
Full details
- Original title
- Cross of Iron
- Directed by
- Sam Peckinpah
- Countries
- United Kingdom, Germany
- Languages
- English, Russian
- Released
- 1977
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Eastern Front
- Themes
- Combat
