This film gives the viewer a real slap of reality to what the soldiers on both sides went through. It's the best film available about this particular World War 2 battle. The film describes the moral of the German soldiers going into the battle, right to what the battle became and ended up to be at it's conclusion. It's a true account of the horrors that these soldiers were faced with and makes it abundantly clear to the viewer how much of a tragedy this whole situation really was. The film is shown from the German soldiers point of view, and shows the world exactly what Adolf Hitler did to his soldiers. This film makes it clear that a tragedy like this never should have been allowed to happen, and leaves the viewer saddened and disgusted that it really did happen. It leaves the viewer well aware of how inhumane, selfish, careless, and out of reality Adolf Hitler was by this time. This film has it all for a war movie. Awesome battle scenes and perfectly accurate to everything that took place in the Battle of Stalingrad.

The reason I like German or in general European war movies is that they don't always have happy endings and don't glamor the war. War is full of cruelty, loss of any reason, inhuman and utterly horrible. In this story we follow Lt. Hans von Witzland. From the name you can figure out the young lieutenant is coming from a long traditional military family. At some point in the movie a higher ranked officer is mentioning his father. The young lieutenant is going through a change of perspective when he comes face to face with death and war, he's loosing his close friends, realizes the pointless battles, the corruption within higher ranked officers, the powerless generals who blindly follow orders from above and seeing everyone as numbers. This is how he looses faith for his country, his people, his army and the identity he once carried proudly in his stripes is now lost as he tries to survive the cruel winter in the front. An awesome movie that shows you the reality of every war. Nothing glamorous, just inhuman, raw and cruel. I would love to see this movie remade and modernized.

Let me start this review by saying that I am generally not too big on war films. I am pretty interested in politics though, but the depiction of actual battle scenes has never done too much for really. Luckily, this film is more than that. During its over 2 hours it does not only show bloody fights, but also delivers pretty good character evaluations and a smart approach to the idea of how to depict the very well-known fact that war is evil. This is about the battle of Stalingrad, maybe the most known battle in World War II, because it basically destroyed Germany's hopes of winning the War. "It" is the Russian winter in this case and the fact that German soldiers just weren't ready to deal with the heavy climate conditions. A bit of an irony that it happened right at the city that is named after the Russian leader at that time. But lets get back to the film. The director is Joseph Vilsmaier and at least people with an interest in German films should know him. He has worked in film since the very early 1970s and was also a co-writer with a couple other guys for this film here. The cast includes some known names, but nobody really where you would say "oh it's him". The most known of these today, almost 25 years later is probably Sylvester Groth. The only significant female character is played by Vilsmaier's wife Dana Vavrova, who sadly died far too young from cancer. This is certainly one of Germany's best (anti-)war films and if you appreciate the genre more than I do, you may actually have a pretty great time watching this one. The acting is fine, the character are relatable and memorable and it's really well done by Vilsmaier so that we can watch a credible tale of how they were not only struggling with their enemies, but also with other people in the German army and as a whole with their lives (as soldiers) in general. Thumbs up.

A battalion of German soldiers from the Afrika Corps are spending some time at an Italian port during the summer of 1942. At that particular time their spirits were high as the German army was in the process of advancing victoriously into Russia. But all that was subject to change as their next assignment would be: Stalingrad. And they had no idea what was in store for them. At any rate, told from the German perspective, this film does a remarkable job of showing the hardships and tragedy these soldiers had to endure. Despite proving themselves in battle, their courage and discipline was being tested as much by the Russian winter as it was their Russian foes. And yet they continued on all the same. Now, while everybody knows how this battle eventually played out, this movie allows the viewer to gain a unique understanding of how it may have appeared through the eyes of the German soldier. Definitely worth a watch for those who can appreciate a film of this type.