The greatest battle that humanity has ever known . . .
David M. Glantz wrote over 3,000 pages on The Battle of Stalingrad in his Stalingrad Trilogy (which actually consists of four books, as the final "book" is split into two volumes). That's pretty intense. Intense enough for me to be interested in having a look at it. So I availed myself of the services of the library and checked out the first volume (To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942), but decided that before I plunged into its 678 pages I should get a little perspective on the subject. So I watched Stalingrad (1993), and it was a good piece of film-making, but it seemed to me that the story had been skewed to show the Germans in the best possible light . . . which is kind of ridiculous, since they had invaded Russia without provocation.
Somewhere along the line I had heard about a documentary directed by a Russian fellow (Vladimir Petrov) in 1949 which actually re-enacted some of the battles that took place in Stalingrad and used German footage which had been captured after the war. It wasn't available on Netflix or Amazon Instant Video, however, and the Louisville Free Public Library did not have a copy. It was available for purchase from Amazon, but the cheapest copy was $25, which is kind of out of my price range. So I put it into my shopping cart and figured that if I left it there it might decrease it price at least a little bit (which seems to be the pattern), and then I'd go for it.
And then I remembered: it's the 21st century.
So I went Googling, and, indeed, there was the movie, parts I and II, in glorious black and white . . . all 3 1/4 hours of it . . . on The You Tub.
I've just watched the first fifteen minutes so far, and it is magnificent. Now I'm going to go watch the rest of it.
Dos vedanya Tovarisch!
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