World War II · Film · 1993
Stalingrad
A German assault-engineer platoon goes from a sunny rest stop on the Italian Riviera to the ruins of Stalingrad, where the fighting, the winter and the Soviet encirclement strip away every illusion they had about the war.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 5 places.
Stop 1: Cervo, Italian Riviera
On leave by the sea, the platoon is decorated for the fighting at El Alamein and then boards a train bound for the Eastern Front.
Stop 2: Stalingrad factory district
Key location
Thrown into the city, the men assault a factory and fight room by room, even arranging a brief truce with the Soviets to recover the wounded.
Stop 3: The Stalingrad pocket
Stripped of their rank, the survivors clear mines in a penal unit while winter sets in and the Red Army closes the ring.
Stop 4: Pitomnik airfield
Desperate to get out, three of them race to the airfield hoping to board one of the last planes leaving the pocket.
Stop 5: Frozen steppe outside Stalingrad
As the 6th Army collapses, the last men of the platoon try to slip away from the city across the snow.
What really happened
Joseph Vilsmaier's film follows soldiers of the German 6th Army, which reached the Volga in late August 1942 during the summer offensive known as Case Blue and spent the autumn in house-to-house combat for the city's factories against determined Soviet defenders.
On 19 November 1942 the Soviet counter-offensive, Operation Uranus, broke through the Romanian armies on the flanks and closed the ring four days later. Roughly a quarter of a million Axis soldiers were trapped without winter clothing or supplies; the Luftwaffe airlift failed, and the starving remnants of the 6th Army surrendered between 31 January and 2 February 1943.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Stalingrad
- Directed by
- Joseph Vilsmaier
- Countries
- Germany
- Languages
- German, Russian
- Released
- 1993
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Eastern Front
- Themes
- Combat
