Ep 83 – Enemy at the Gates – The Battle of Stalingrad, Snipers and Propaganda

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we dive into Enemy at the Gates (2001), the wartime drama about Soviet sniper Vasily Zaitsev, the Battle of Stalingrad, and a completely unnecessary love triangle.
We explore the Battle of Stalingrad (one of the bloodiest battles of all time) and discuss how propaganda shaped this story both on screen and off.

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm married to.
And we like World War 2 media, and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosie the reviewer.
This week, we are talking about Enemy at the Gates, which came
out in 2001. This is a film directed by Jean

(00:22):
Jacques, I know, written by JeanJacques I know and Alan Godard.
It's based on the book Enemy at the Gates, The Battle for
Stalingrad by William Craig, which came out in 1973.
The film follows A fictionalizedversion of a real Soviet sniper
who served during the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942
to 43. And it's available on Sky
Showtime in the Netherlands. I had to sail the high seat

(00:44):
again this week. What did you think of this
movie? I thought it was strange.
Strange is my summary of this movie.
Just one word. Just strange.
That's not all I want to say. I thought it was interesting to
see Jude Law and Rachel Wise as literal babies in this movie.
And I was just, I'm telling you before we started recording that

(01:07):
this movie didn't really feel like a World War 2 movie to me,
even though it's set during World War 2 and there's clearly
a war going on. They could have done with a
little bit more context for me to kind of get more of a sense
of the war, I suppose. It's very much about this main
character, his girlfriend, his friend, and there's one other

(01:32):
sniper. So now that I think about it,
maybe that's wrong, maybe that'snot all that's in there.
But as you can tell, I'm sort ofconflicted about this film.
How about you? It feels very early 2000s big
box office blockbuster to me. Like the love triangle feels
kind of Pearl Harbor. Y yeah, you don't get a lot of

(01:53):
context, which is kind of unfortunate because I think in
the West there's potentially a lot less broad popular knowledge
about the East Eastern front. And so it was cool to get to see
this movie and use it as an opening to dive into that a
little bit more. But I don't feel like the movie
gave you a lot of context that might have been helpful in
understanding what was going on and what the stakes were,

(02:15):
etcetera. I did like to see that there was
a female character with something to do and I think the
set was pretty impressive. I mean, Stalingrad really got
the shit bombed out of it, and the fighting was very bloody.
We're talking about people fighting St. to street, house to
house, room to room. Sometimes there was occasions
where the Russians would be on one side of the hall and the

(02:37):
Germans would be on the other side of the hall.
And so I feel like we really getthis sense of like, it's almost
looks like a post apocalyptic landscape, and that feels really
true to life. So I did like that aspect of it.
But yeah, I think it's all right.
I don't know that it's my favorite history movie that I've
seen. You make a good point because
they do show you a lot of war and like warfare, but but I wish

(02:58):
they'd kind of maybe given us, the audience a little bit more
about the significance of Stalingrad and that sort of
stuff. I don't know if I just missed it
or if it wasn't in there. No, there wasn't a lot.
And I don't know if they thoughtmaybe because they were focusing
so tightly on the main characters that maybe it wasn't

(03:21):
super relevant. So that wasn't necessary for the
audience. And maybe we just want that
context because we like history.I don't know.
Because we're nerds, yes. No, I agree.
Maybe that's why you did a lot of the legwork here.
But can you take our listeners through a little background over
the Battle of Stalingrad? Yes, I will give you the context
that Enemy at the Gates did not give you.

(03:51):
Hitler broke the non aggression pact with the Soviet Union and
invaded in June of 1941. We've talked about this before,
Operation Barbarossa. This was catastrophic for the
Soviets. I mean, it's hard to overstate
how unprepared they were. The Germans advanced very
quickly. The Russians almost lost Moscow.
However, they did manage to holdon and this forced Hitler to
shift his primary target to the Caucasus oil fields.

(04:14):
The gateway to the Caucasus was Stalingrad.
This was a major industrial center.
It gave whoever held it control over the river Volga as a
transport passage as well as access to the oil fields.
And we talked about this a little bit in our ex company
episodes about how crucial of a resource oil was during World
War 2. The Battle of Stalingrad was the
bloodiest battle of World War 2 and maybe the bloodiest battle

(04:36):
in history. There were between 800,000 and
1.5 million casualties on the Axis side and 1.3 million on the
Russian side. It's kind of difficult to tell
because there was just such a staggering loss of life.
It marked a real turning point in the war because the Germans
lost their entire 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army, and it really
put them on the defensive in Russia.
The Soviets went on to win the Battle of Kursk the following

(04:58):
summer in 1943, and as we know, they basically continued their
advance until they reached Berlin in the spring of 1945.
So we're right in the middle of this huge clash of empires
between Germany and Russia at the point about what movie is
taking place. And it's a super long battle.
I see you've corrected me in thelength of it.
I thought it was five months, but it's closer to seven months,

(05:21):
so more than half a year. Imagine people were starving,
people were not having a good time.
Yeah, I mean there was a part ofthe battle I will get into this,
but where the Germans were surrounded and they ate all the
horses. That's the point that they were
at. Guys were eating 2 ounces of
bread a day and a bowl of waterysoup and maybe a can of meat if

(05:44):
the supply drop came in. That is not enough food for a
grown ass man to live on and a lot of people starve to death.
And also having to fight in verypoor conditions, it's not great.
For sure. Yeah.
Anyway, thanks for that refresher.
If you want to hear the other episode where we talked about
the oil fields, it's called thatout of a soldier if you want to

(06:05):
look for that. And with the that's sad.
I think we should get into the plot of this movie.
The film opens with the young boy being taught how to shoot by
his grandfather somewhere in OroMountains.

(06:25):
And this is our main character, just younger than we've seen him
later. There is a story about the real,
the silly sights of that's the name of the young boy who is
going to grow up. We're going to follow in this
movie, supposedly shooting a wolf and killing it with one
shot when he was a child. I don't know if it's apocryphal,
but this scene seems kind of loosely based on that.

(06:46):
It's interesting because it comes back later in the movie in
a nightmare or a dream and in the opening scene we don't see
him succeed to shoot the wolf. He actually fails and the wolf
eats their horse and his grandpahas to save him.
So interesting opening. Soon, yeah.
And actually, now that I think about it, there are a lot of

(07:08):
elements in Zeitsev's memoir that people think are perhaps
embroidered or exaggerated or we're propaganda by the Soviet
government. And it's interesting to me that
we get this opening scene where we don't see if he hits the wolf
or not. And so we maybe get a certain
impression of his ability and his marksmanship and him being a

(07:30):
stone cold killer at 8 years oldor whatever.
And then later in the movie we find out that that's not really
what happened and that he was not successful.
And so I don't know if the film makers intended this, but it's
kind of interesting to compare that to the story of the real
Zeitz of and what might be true or what what might not be true.
And also, I guess the story in the movie, which is completely
based on propaganda because he sides of ends up being used as

(07:54):
this like iconic hero to spur onthe.
So it's a very interesting parallel, come to think of that.
Yeah, in September of 1942, Vasily Zeitsev is now a grown
man, played by Jude Law, and he's a soldier in the Red Army.
Grown man is the vegetable, was what I was going to say.

(08:14):
Apparently, Jude Law went on. What did he call it?
He called it the Red Army diet, I think, and he lost like 12
kilos to play this role so that he could look like someone who
hadn't been eating enough food. Sounds kind of dangerous.
Yeah. Well, anyway, people are doing a
lot of that. Yeah.
He's a soldier in the Red Army. He finds himself on the front
lines of the Battle of Stalingrad initially.

(08:36):
We see him on a train with othersoldiers and he's coming into
town and he's kind of launched directly into the battle that is
raging. Nikita Khrushchev, played by Bob
Hoskins, wearing a nose prosthetic if I'm not mistaken,
orders the city to be held at all costs.
And Stalingrad, as the city stands in ruins, we can see it
burning on the far shore, in absolute shambles as neither

(08:58):
army is willing to retreat. Yeah, can I just say the opening
scene? Well, not the opening scene, the
first scene in which we see JudeLaw where the soldiers are being
moved around like cattle, but you get an immediate sense that
the Red Army was not a fun placeto be at this point of the war.
Yeah, by the end of the fighting, just to give you an

(09:19):
idea, 99% of the city was reduced to rubble, 41,000 homes
have been destroyed and out of 500,000 inhabitants, only 1515
remained, the rest having been killed or displaced.
This was the kind of battle where it pretty much got razed
to the ground. And like we were saying about
the the film set, the film studio actually recreated
Stalingrad at a Soviet Army basenear Berlin.

(09:41):
And it was at the time it was the biggest film set ever built
in Europe. The title Enemy at the Gates
comes from an emergency Pravda article.
Pravda was the newspaper that operated sort of as a function
of the Communist government as the city was being invaded.
They printed this emergency article.
I think they only printed 500 copies and then it was up to the
soldiers that received them to kind of read it, pass it along.

(10:03):
But in an editorial that urged calm, they stated we will
destroy the enemy at the gates of Stalingrad.
Take a shot. Exactly.
It is in your book as well, right?
Yes. Yeah.
Troops are brought to the other side of the Volga River and
freight trains and are then crammed into flinsy boats and
are made to cross the Volga River without any fire cover

(10:24):
while being shot at by the Germans.
So so far off. These boats kind of get
destroyed in this attempt and it's pretty brutal.
Reminded me a little bit of thatone scene in Dunkirk where
they're all like the mole. There's like a plane flying out
for shooting at them. It looks like that.
And any soldiers who attempt to get away and jump into the water

(10:45):
are shot down by their officers.So you either get killed by the
Germans or you get killed by your own officers.
And the ducks are stalling grand.
Like the city is pretty much in shambles and it's littered with
bodies and soldiers that are crippled.
So it's not a very you're welcoming.
Yeah. And there are some, I think,

(11:06):
stereotypes about the Soviet army in this scene that I just,
I thought were interesting. I think this movie is perhaps a
major part of why these stereotypes have been propagated
and and, you know, have been continued to be used in other
films. So there's this idea of the
Soviet soldier needing a gun at his back in order to fight.
And it's true that the Soviet Union did have these units of

(11:29):
the NTVD, which was the political branch who were there
to encourage men forward. But really these units saw most
use when it came to penal battalions.
So guys who may not necessarily want to fight, they would use
these units of the NKBD to encourage people to move forward
when they didn't want to. But really, they were not

(11:51):
machine gunning guys down like you see in this movie.
It was not like that they would arrest people.
There would usually be some kindof at least summary trial.
And there were, of course, people who were executed for
attempted to dessert or for retreating when they hadn't been
told they could retreat. But by and large, men were
either returned to their units or put in some kind of penal
battalion. So what we're seeing in this

(12:12):
movie is I think, sort of an unfair stereotype that other
Russians were not brave on theirown and they had to be coerced
into fighting for their country.There's also a part where Jude
Law doesn't get a rifle because there's not enough rifles for
everybody. And they're like, yeah, when
when the guy in front of you drops it because he dies, like

(12:32):
you pick up his rifle and keep going.
And that is also not really historically accurate.
The Soviet Union was actually well armed.
I mean, by the end of the Battleof Stalingrad, they would target
a single German soldier with an anti tank shell because they had
so much ammunition just stockpiled.
So there were, of course, probably points where in the
chaos of an initial battle or perhaps when they had gathered a

(12:55):
group of civilians to defend a factory, like there were
scenarios, of course, maybe where they might have been short
on weaponry. But the way we see it in this
movie was not how it was. It's definitely a gross
exaggeration. I wonder why they ever
simplified it in such a gross realm.
Like it's not even just a littlebit exaggerated, it's just
untrue. So why would they do that?

(13:16):
I guess they they're trying to make the Soviets look as bad as
the Germans to the Soviets. Yeah, yeah, interesting choice.
The real sites I've had been in the Navy since 1937 and later
requested transfer to a rifle division after the German
invasion. So he was not fresh and green by
any means. Him and his comrades, actually,
they arrived on the eastern Bankof the Volga River and they did

(13:41):
a bunch. They spent I think like 5 days
practicing, doing close quartersfighting because they knew
that's what they would be facingon the other side of the river.
So they spent a few days doing that before they actually
crossed the river. And when they crossed the river,
they crossed that night because of course you would cross at
night, not in daytime like in the film, and they did not incur
any casualties. So while it's probably true that

(14:02):
some units cross the river and, you know, got shelled, I mean,
of course it's true. I'm sure that happened, but it
definitely didn't happen to Zaidsev and he definitely didn't
cross during the day because that would be suicidal.
Yeah, I mean, I guess we're supposed to feel something for
Jude Law at this point, so maybethat's why they gave it to him.

(14:22):
And also, there aren't that manycharacters in this film, so I
guess they kind of decided to make him just the the receiver
of every single thing that happened in Stalingrad happened
to him. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I guess that's what you get whenlike one movie about the Eastern
Front comes out every like 20 years in Hollywood or whatever.
So soldiers are forced into a suicidal charge without a rifle.

(14:46):
As we just discussed, this is not really what happened in real
life. But anyway, they give you law a
handful of bullets and they're like good luck.
And the charge comes under heavyGerman fire from machine guns
and tanks around the city. The Soviet soldiers try to
retreat, and they get machine guns down by their own officers.
And then both sides were doing this, by the way, this thing
where they would do propaganda over loud speakers, and they

(15:09):
would try and get the other sideto surrender.
So in this case, we're hearing the German loud speakers ask
Soviet soldiers to surrender by going like, yeah, if you come
over to us, we'll actually treatyou better than your own
officers. I think we're seeing this before
on Generation War, Except that time let's is it.
It's the sergeants, I think, telling the Germans to join
them. Yeah.

(15:30):
And towards the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, there was
quite a lot of a pretty important member of the German
army would get picked up. And then he would call his
superiors who were still holdingout and be like, hey, the
Russians are being really nice to me.
They're giving me food and stuff.
You should definitely just surrender.
Everything will be fine. I wonder Well of the like over

(15:52):
100,000 Germans that were taken prisoner at Stalingrad,
something like 5000 of them evercame back to Germany.
A huge chunk of them died in these POW camps where the
conditions were really terrible.Like we're talking like
cannibalism terrible. Nikita Khrushchev as we who we
see in this movie. He was actually the first Soviet

(16:12):
leader to admit in his memoir that the Russians simply shot a
bunch of the German PO WS at Stalingrad.
They never even made it to the camps.
Oops, after all, this facility who's just about alive kind of
hides among a pile of corpses, which is not the last time you
will do this. While a tank shall incapacitates
a car that's coming towards him.The occupant of the car is

(16:34):
Commissar. Danny laughed by Joseph fans who
are really enjoy in this movie. And he takes cover in the same
heap of dead people and finds a rifle.
But Fasili then reveals himself and he kind of motions to the
commissar not to fire until there's an explosion so they're
not discovered and then enough then gives the rifle to Fasili

(16:58):
who then kills 5 German soldiersin less than a minute and saves
himself and then enough. And together they return to the
Soviet base just outside of Stalin Rod.
So we don't know if Danilov is 100% a real person.
He did get mentioned in the Craig book briefly because he
gets mentioned in Zeitz's memoirs.
But certainly if he did exist, they weren't like this whole

(17:21):
thing didn't happen. They weren't like buddy buddy or
good friends or anything like that.
But there is a grain of truth, because Vasily did get asked to
be in a sniper group after another officer had watched him
essentially take out a bunch of Germans with just a regular
rifle. Yeah, I feel like this again.
This movie oversimplifies prettymuch everything.

(17:42):
I'm just compounded into these characters, so maybe that's why.
But I did enjoy his character, even though it turns out to be
kind of a Dick. But in the beginning it was
quite nice. Yeah, Nikita Khrushchev arrives
in Stalingrad to coordinate the city's defenses and demands
ideas to improve morale. So he makes the old commander

(18:06):
kill himself, and then he's got all the other commanders
outside, and they're obviously all scared to death.
And so he's like, how am I goingto prove morale around here?
And the other commissars are like, how about you kill a bunch
of guys? How about you set an example?
And Danilov is like, I have a better idea.
I think people need like a positive example.

(18:26):
I think we should tell people about heroic escapades that are
happening, and that'll encouragethem to behave in a similar way.
And that's how he brings up Vasily.
And he's like, actually, I do know this guy who's a hero.
We should tell everyone about him.
Yeah, like at this point Danilovis kind of enthusiastic and
smiley and weird, but things will change.
Yeah. And he's, well, I mean, he's

(18:47):
obviously like a political officer, so he works for the
party. And you can tell that he's very
enthusiastic about being like, hey, if I do a good job for the
party, I can rise to the ranks. But that involves like, you
know, toeing the party line kindof thing.
I did think it was interesting how he talks a lot about how,

(19:07):
for example, when he's talking about Vasily and this German guy
that he's fighting against, he'slike, yeah, it's like a classic
example of class warfare. He's really talking the talk,
but he doesn't really walk the walk.
You know, He makes fun of Vasilyfor not being as literate as
him. And later on, he uses his rank
and power to make Vasily look bad when he gets mad at him.

(19:28):
I don't know. It's just like a classic person
who pretends to be die hard, butlike really he's just in it for
himself. He's a pop up is what he is.
Yeah, and just really self involved, I think.
But yeah, I wanted to note that Khrushchev, they make him look
like he's running the whole showin this movie, and that's not
what happened in real life. He was a political officer, and

(19:48):
he was at the defense of Stalingrad, and he was an
advisor. But the guy who really planned
the defense of the city and commanded the Stalingrad front
was a guy called Andre Yaromenko, who does not appear
in this movie. Yaromenko also appointed Vasily
Chekhov as CEO of the 62nd Army.The 62nd Army are the ones who
successfully held the western Bank of the Bolga for pretty

(20:11):
much the duration of the fighting.
So he was also a really massive figure that wasn't included.
And I personally think they usedKhrushchev to give Western
audiences the familiar touch point because Khrushchev went on
to be the leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin's death, and
a lot of people have heard of him.
So I think that's why they did that.
Yeah, I feel like they definitely didn't make this for

(20:32):
the history community at all. Kids for general audiences, very
much. Yeah, and I actually, I listened
to a podcast today called Based on a True Story, and they did an
episode about Enemy at the Gates.
And if you want to know more about Zeitzib and what he said
in his memoirs, you should give that podcast a listen because
they talk about a few stories that he specifically mentioned.

(20:54):
But apparently the real Vasily, he you know, he's just a regular
guy and he started to become famous because of this crazy
story. So basically the first week he
was in Stalingrad, he didn't really sleep.
There was not an opportunity forthat.
The situation was too unbelievable and too much shit
was going on. So he gets super, super, super

(21:15):
tired and he's like, I'm going to go to sleep in this bunker.
It's fully dark. And when he wakes up in the
bunker and he lights a match to light a cigarette, he realizes
that all the guys around him in the bunker are dead, not
sleeping as he thought. So then he goes out into this,
like, hallway and realizes that he's in basically a makeshift
mass grave. The Soviets have just started

(21:37):
piling bodies down there becausethey don't have anywhere else
else to put them. And they probably thought he was
dead because he was sleeping so deeply.
So he manages to bust out and he's like panicking because he's
afraid he's going to run out of air or whatever.
So he manages to bust out and hecomes out sort of near a German
machine gun nest. And the Germans haven't really
seen him yet because they're notexpecting a guy to come out of

(21:57):
the mass grave. So he throws a grenade in there
and takes out the machine gun nest.
And when he goes back and finds his guys, they're like, holy
shit, dude, we thought you were dead.
And then a few minutes later, they're like, man, we've been
pinned down by this machine gun for hours.
It's so weird. They stopped firing.
And he's like, oh, I, I got rid of it.
And they were like, dude, you came back from the dead.
And then you took out a machine gun nest and save all our lives.

(22:19):
And so that story started getting passed around.
And that was sort of the genesisof the legend of Veseli Zaitsev.
Amazing. And that was just so unlikely,
right? How?
I mean, again, I I don't know how much of this is true because
a lot of the stuff just comes from Zaitsev memoirs, but.
Who knows, It's a good story though.
It is. Facility is transferred to the

(22:40):
sniper division and he and then I love become friendly friends
maybe. And then they also, because this
story obviously needs more drama, also both become
romantically interested in a woman named Tanya, played by
Rachel Weiss, who looks like a baby in this too, and she's a
citizen of Stalingrad who has become a private in a local

(23:02):
militia. Danilov has her transferred to
an intelligence unit so she can be away from the battlefield,
and ostensibly to make use of her German skills because she's
very skilled in translating radio intercepts.
You know some more about Tanya, don't you?
Yes, Tanya Chernova was a real person, but roughly nothing of
what we see in the movie is true.

(23:23):
But also a lot of the stuff thatwe know about her is based on
interviews that William Craig did.
William Craig was the author of the book I read and a lot of the
things she said are now disputedby other historians.
So I don't think we fully know the truth about her.
But the broad strokes are She was studying medicine when the
war broke out and she went to Belarus and discovered that the

(23:46):
Germans had killed her grandparents.
And so she quickly became an anti Nazi partisan in basically
the woods of Belarus and Ukraine, you know, killing
Germans. And she referred to the live she
took a sticks that she had broken.
So she was like, oh, I broke this many sticks or whatever.
And by the end of her three months of battle in Stalingrad,
she had supposedly, quote UN quote, broken 80 sticks, and not

(24:06):
just from being a sniper. She did all kinds of stuff.
She would be sent on patrols andsneakily launch a grenade in
through a window or whatever. So I'm sure she's counting all
of these. But anyway, Zeitsev supposedly
taught her how to become a sniper and she became part of
his little group. And her having a romantic
relationship with Zeitsev is mentioned in the Craig book, but
she is not mentioned in Zeitsev's memoirs.

(24:27):
So I don't know if she made thatup, if that was excluded from
his memoirs because it didn't look a certain way.
I don't really know. Like I said, some historians
have questioned her claims. There's a guy named Anthony
Beaver who wrote this book called Stalingrad, which is also
a huge book on the topic in the field.
And he points out that women's sniper units were created in

(24:47):
1943 but wouldn't have existed yet at Stalingrad.
To which I say it's probably still possible.
There's a few one offs, right? I don't know, he's probably done
more research into this than I have, but what is true is that
there were over 2000 female snipers in the Red Army.
Only 500 of them survived the war, so not great odds. 800,000
women served in the Red Army, mainly in medical units, but

(25:09):
also as pilots, snipers, machineGunners, tank crew members and
in other auxiliary roles. That is neat 800,000 that's how
many women. It is, but it what's crazy to
think about is that was like 5% of the total Russian army,
because that's how many fucking people were in the Russian army.
Forget how fucking urged the Russian army was.
Yeah, the Soviet snipers are taking an increasing toll on the

(25:32):
German forces. And so the Germans get on the
horn with Major Irwin Konig, played by Ed Harris, who is
supposedly the Super sniper. And he comes to Stalingrad to
specifically to take out Vasily and crush Soviet morale.
Because at this point, right, Vasily is pretty famous.
They're publishing newspapers about him.
He's like a household name in Russia.

(25:52):
And so this Konig guy, he's a renowned marksman.
He's head of the German Army school.
He lures Vasily into a trap and takes out two of his fellow
snipers, but Vasily manages to get away.
Of course, when the Red Army command learns of Konig's
mission, they dispatch his former student Kulikov, played
by Ron Perlman, rocking a set ofsilver dentures to help Vasily

(26:13):
kill him. However, Konig tricks Kulikov
into revealing his position and kills him, which obviously
Vasily is quite upset about. And then and Khrushchev
pressures Stanilov to bring the sniper standoff to a conclusion.
He's like, look, I'm tired of hearing about this conic guy.
I vastly can't deal with him. Someone has to deal with him.
Like, just get it done. I don't know if the real Kolokov

(26:33):
had the silver dentures, but there was a few guys who
supposedly were walking around with these.
And the little story that he tells about how he came back to
Russia after he was fighting in Germany, I think.
And then the Soviet regime was like, you're suspicious now and
knocked all his teeth out. So we had that.
I get silver dentures. That is based on something that

(26:54):
happened to a real person, per the Craig book.
Yeah. Just a neat little window into
the fact that you can risk your life for the Soviet regime and
they might still kill you after or beat you up.
At least this whole plot line with Connie, this is like the
crux of the movie. And it's super weird because the
Craig book talks about this likeit's real, with no mention that

(27:17):
it could be Russian propaganda. Zeitsev talks about it in his
Diaries and in the auto biography he published in 1956.
But there's no record of a sniper by that name in the
German army. And you would think if he had
over 400 kills, as they say, he would be decorated and probably
subject to some nationalistic propaganda of his own.
I mean, the German sniper that we know of who has the most

(27:39):
kills from World War 2 has like 300 something.
So if there was a guy who is better than him, like you would
think we would have heard of it.Some people think that he might
have existed, but the Germans fearing that it would be a big
morale blow if people heard about it, the records about him.
But we know for a fact that the Russians invented a sniper who
had been sent to kill legendary Soviet sniper Ludmila
Pavlichenko. So the idea of the regime making

(28:02):
all this up wouldn't be without president either.
No. I know that a lot of records,
they're no longer available in Germany, like a lot of it's been
destroyed. But still, if it's something
this big, you'd think that somebody, somewhere would talk,
even if things got lost. Yeah, and the historian I was
talking about earlier, Anthony Bevor, was talking about how,

(28:22):
like, he's done years of research into this and he's
like, there was no sniper school.
The Germans did establish a sniper school, but it was not
until Stalingrad was already underway.
So it's not like they would havethis super sniper who had all
this experience running a sniperpaper school, and that's why
they brought him in and he wasn't able to find anyone by
this name. And also, apparently in
Zeitsev's memoir, he accidentally calls this guy by a

(28:45):
different name later in the book.
And then the different name thathe uses also isn't the name of
anyone who was in the German army.
So I think that it's possible that Zeitsev.
I mean, he did supposedly kill, I think 11 snipers at
Stalingrad. So I think it's possible that he
did face off against some guys who were pretty good.
But this whole thing about how this guy is a super sniper and

(29:07):
he's the best the German army has ever seen like that is that
seems incorrect. Yeah.
And especially since he became such a filter of propaganda for
the Soviets, like, yeah, it wouldn't be all that surprising.
The Based on a True Story podcast I listen to, the guy
mentioned that like Koenig is the German word for king.
So he's like, maybe, maybe this guy is more of a symbol than a

(29:31):
real person. When Donya requests to be
reassigned to the sniper division because she wants to
get in on the action because she's actually quite good, then
he'd have asked Facilite to discourage her from that.
And Facilite attempts to do so. But and relents when Tanya tells
him how her Hebrew parents were murdered by the Germans.
So he's like, at first he's trying and then he's like, Oh

(29:53):
well, she's got extra cost to want to fight so I'm not going
to try anymore. And also maybe a lecture a
little bit. Danilov recruits a young local
boy, Sasha Philipov, played by Gabriel Thompson, who idolizes
Vasily. And, and he's doing small jobs
for the Germans in exchange for food.
But he's also acting as a doubleagent.
So he, you know, he's in there, like polishing Konig's shoes.

(30:18):
And in the meantime, he's passing him false information
about Vasily's whereabouts to give Vasily a chance to ambush
this guy. Sasha is a real person.
He offered to repair the Germansfootwear.
He did this of his own volition.No one told him to do it.
And he would take information that he heard back to the
Russians. And he was 15 when the Germans
hanged him for espionage. Whenever I was a kid in the
movie like this, I'm like, Oh no, the kid is going to die.

(30:41):
Yeah, the silly. That's a trap for Connie after
obviously he's heard some information from Sasha and he
manages to wound him. But during a second attempt when
he's kind of laying outside to try and catch this guy, he falls
asleep. But did he fall asleep or is he
planned that? We don't really know.
I thought he fell asleep, but Sam isn't sure I think.

(31:04):
It's just so noisy and like the I don't know.
To me it looked like he was playing dead, but I don't know.
He thought he fell asleep for like a minute and miss Kanik.
And then after that when there'sthe German guy picking up stuff,
he is actually playing dead because otherwise he would get
shot. So that's my interpretation of

(31:26):
the scene. But then as he's playing dead,
his slime prologue is taken by aLuton German soldier and the
German command then takes this as evidence that facility is no
longer alive and so there is no reason to keep going there.
And they want to send him home, but he doesn't want to go home
because he does not believe thatPriscilla is dead and it's

(31:48):
awful. Yeah, Sasha is gutted because he
thinks that Vasily is dead, and Koenig's like, well, you don't
have to be sad, you know? I know he's not dead because I
haven't killed him yet. Imagine being that's sure of
yourself. Yeah, General Friedrich Paulus,
played by Matthias Habish, confiscates Konig's dog tags to
prevent Soviet propaganda from profiting if Konig is killed and

(32:10):
identified. In turn, Konig gives the general
a War Merit Cross that was posthumously awarded to his son,
a Lieutenant who was killed in the early days of the battle.
Just like a little moment of, I guess, trying to invoke some
sympathy for this bad dude before we go see him do like a
whole bunch of heinous shit. Too late, movie, too late.

(32:32):
Paulus gets about two seconds ofairtime in this movie, but he's
a major figure in Craig's book. He commanded the 6th Army
throughout the battle and initially the German advance was
strong. They swept into Stalingrad and
pushed the Russians effectively back to the river, but the
Soviets counter attacked and they were able to encircle him.
His troops ultimately held more than 90% of the city of

(32:54):
Stalingrad and then a pocket that was about 20 miles by 30
miles of the surrounding area. And initially Hitler sent some
other units to relieve him. They couldn't breakthrough, and
he's getting supplies by air. But there's just no way the
Luftwaffe don't have enough planes to bring the 700 tons a
day of supplies that an army that size needs, right?

(33:14):
And so Goering's promise that the Luftwaffe can deliver
sufficient supplies, this turns out not to be true.
It's just something that Goeringsaid to ingratiate himself with
Hitler. And so they start running out of
supplies, and they're out of ammunition.
They're out of food. They're, you know, not having a
great time. And Palace is like, well how
about we try and break out and meet up with the other army and

(33:35):
Hitler's like, no, you're not allowed to do that.
I want you to hold the line and stay where you are.
So he's kind of caught between arock and a hard place, AKA
Hitler and a few 100,000 Sovietsand the Germans starving to
death were ultimately overrun and Palace surrendered on
January 31st, 1943. Yeah, Hitler was pretty mad
about that. I bet we are getting so much

(33:55):
hammer growing in the past few months of doing this podcast and
there's more coming up too, which I think was this guy just
everywhere. I guess he was, but you know.
He did. He did have many titles, it's
true. Koenig tells Russia where he
will be next because he suspectsthat Sasha will tell Vasily.

(34:17):
And he's not wrong. Tanya and Vasily have meanwhile
fallen in love. That night, Tanya actually in
secret goes to the social barracks and they smash in
between other soldiers in the most uncomfortable scene I've
ever seen in my life. And I would like to scrub it for
my memory, please. I don't know who thought this

(34:39):
was a good idea, Anderson. It's like it's not romantic.
It looks painful. It looks gross and dirty.
And please never do this again. Thanks.
And you just know that, like, guaranteed at least one of the
guys around them is just pretending to be asleep and is
just listening to them make grunting noises at each other.

(35:00):
And because this movie is a box office movie, Danilov got very
jealous and he disparages for Celia and Electric to his
superiors, which is a very mature thing to do.
Yeah. Also, like, I don't think Tanya
has given any indication that she is interested in smashing
Danilov. So he's been thoroughly
friendzoned and he's just mad about it.

(35:23):
Well, Konig spots Tanya and Vastly waiting for him at his
next ambush, which confirms his suspicions that Sasha is passing
information to them. He kind of set him up, really,
and he kills Sasha and hangs hisbody from a pole.
Tanya sees it, she's extremely upset.
Everyone's mad. Vastly vows to kill Konig and
sends Tanya and Danilov to evacuate Sasha's mother, played

(35:45):
by Ava Mattis, from the city. But as they do so, Tanya is
wounded by shrapnel on route to the evacuation boats.
And everybody thinks she's dead,including Danilov, who's then
kind of feeling a bit sorry thathe was jealous.
And because he wants to feel better, I think he finds for
silly on his way to ambush Connick.

(36:06):
And because he wants to feel better again, he decides to kind
of stick his head up to reveal himself to Connick.
That way if a silly can see we're Connick is because Connick
shoots Danilov. And I was a little bit sad about
it because apart from the love triangle, which I didn't love, I
did like a good friendship and didn't like that he had to die.

(36:29):
But anyway, connect them thinks he's guilt facility because he's
killed someone and the only person he can imagine to be out
there is Facility. So he goes to inspect a body,
but he realizes too late that hehas fallen into Facility's trap
or not really his trap, but he'sfallen into a trap and facility
got to seize him. And they do a little stand down

(36:51):
and then when he turns to face for seven, he shoots him in the
face and kills him. Yeah, I mean, obviously I knew
it was coming, but I still kind of jumped.
Like I was startled when the gunshot went off.
I don't know if it was because it was so eerily quiet before
that. Like there wasn't really any
music or anything. Yeah, I don't remember, to be
honest. I watched this movie in three
days. I didn't watch it all at once,

(37:12):
probably because I didn't find it very good.
There was a real political agitator named Danilov.
First of all, we don't know 100%if he was real.
He's mentioned in the Craig book.
But there's a few things that came from Zeitsev's memoirs that
like, we don't have any way to prove.
Like we don't know if this guy was real.
But according to the Craig book,he was real.
And according to the Craig book,what happened was that Zeitsev

(37:35):
was on the 3rd morning of doing Recon on this conic guy.
He was in the same spot. He's there with his fellow
sniper and spotter Kulakov, the Ron Perlman character who did
not die. And they're on their third
morning and they're just watching and trying to keep an
eye on this spot where they think that Konig is.
And Danilov is just this guy whoshows up and he's like, hey,
like, what are you doing, bro? Can I come hang out?

(37:57):
At one point, Danilov thinks that he sees Konig and he's
like, he's like, oh, he's over there.
And he like, jumps up to point him out.
And then he gets his ass shot, of course, immediately, but he
does not die. He's just wounded.
Then Zaitsev and Kulikov did, supposedly after this had
happened, trick Konig into raising his head once they
figured out where he was, as Kulikov pretended to get shot.

(38:19):
Like he was like Oh no, I've been hit.
And then when Connick raised hishead to check out the situation,
that's when sites have shot him.I would like to unflaud her
further versus to the inner excellent.
I mean, again, the only place where any of this is mentioned
is insight, says Memoir. So it could completely be a

(38:41):
fabrication of his imagination. But I do think that even if
Konig isn't real, I think perhaps there is a kernel of
truth in this. Like this situation more or less
might have happened with a sniper that he faced off
against. And sure, because snipers are
hard to find and you have to system out to kill them.

(39:02):
So I do like the way the movie. It's just feel how difficult it
is to kill this guy. And also they do make sides of
seem kind of impressive. So I like that about the movie.
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, regardless of which
parts of this or his story were kind of judged up for
propaganda, it's undeniable thathe was really good at killing

(39:25):
dudes. Which is very handy anymore.
Yeah. Two months later, after
Stalingrad has been liberated and the German forces have
surrendered, Vasili finds Tanya recovering in a field hospital
and they reunite. I do like this handling because
they don't get all SAP love land.
It kind of zooms out. You just see the entirety of the

(39:47):
hospital and you don't see them anymore.
You just see him spot her and her spot him and then it kind of
zooms out from slowly and I kindof like that.
Yeah, it's hope full. Even though you don't know
ultimately what will happen, there's some hope.
And I think that also kind of probably captures what the moon
was like after the Battle of Stalingrad for the Russians.

(40:07):
Yeah. I mean, imagine having lost 1.3
million people and then having to go on because the war wasn't
over. Real Tanya did get wounded in
the stomach I believe like you see in the movie and she was
recuperating in the hospital andthey told her that sites of had
died. And it is true that he stepped
on a landmine and was temporarily blinded, but he

(40:29):
recovered enough to return to the front and he continued to
teach other snipers etcetera. According to the Craig book,
many years later she found out that he had survived the war and
married someone else. But also, like I said earlier,
there's no mention of her insideSubs memoirs.
So either he's trying to cover up early relationship that went
bad, or she was a little bit of the historian I mentioned

(40:52):
earlier. Beaver called her a fantasist.
So it's possible that she made some of this stuff up, you know?
Tell me about how awesome such of us.
Well, he's credited with between144 and 232 kills of Stalingrad.
There's a figure given in the Craig book.
There's a different figure given.
Everywhere I looked was like a different number.

(41:14):
So there's just, it's hard to confirm kills, I think in a
situation like that. Also, of course, he's probably
motivated to increase his kill count.
The Soviet government is probably motivated to increase
his kill count. And on the other side there's
probably people who are motivated to decrease his kill
count. So it's somewhere in that
window. It's still a fuck ass load of

(41:35):
guys. He was still a hell of a sniper.
The Battle of Stalingrad, even though he went on to fight on
other battlefronts. I think that one really stuck
with him and he lived the rest of his life in Ukraine, but he
asked to be buried in Stalingradafter his death in 1991, so he
is there to this day. Wow, to be honest, watching the
movie, if I had not seen the fact that it was based on a true

(41:58):
story, I don't know if I would have thought it was based on a
true story because it's just such AI don't know such a weird,
specifically narrow story. I don't know why.
Yeah, it's definitely got like, I don't know, maybe Gladiator
vibes, you know, where they do all this work, all this set
dressing to make you understand that you're watching a

(42:20):
historical picture. But they take a lot of artistic
license and they really try and mold it into the type of
storyline that they think that your average audience is going
to want to see when they go to the movies.
Yeah, and such, if I feel for silly, such a stereotype too,
because he's a reluctant hero. He doesn't want to be the hero.

(42:42):
He just wants to like, fight andget back to his unit.
And he doesn't even want to be asniper, I think in the
beginning. And it's such a like a Hollywood
star attack, too. Yeah, you know, I guess it's
nice to see a Western studio give some credit to a Soviet war
hero at a time when you know hisin the last in the last 80

(43:05):
years, the the Western relationship with the Soviet
Union has been a little tense. Rocky, I would say yes, yeah.
And they didn't do any cringe worthy accents in this.
They just, they were very just English.
Yeah, Which I did enjoy because say, I'm like, I don't really
need to watch Jude Law try and act an accent.
Like just let him have his regular voice please.

(43:35):
Well, we're going to rate this movie Combat Zones more like
friend zones out of 10 because of the love triangle.
But before we do that, you should rate US five stars and
follow us wherever you get your podcasts because that would be
great. Thank you and send this officer
to your friends too because theyneed to know more about
Stalingrad for sure. Of course, force everyone around
you to learn about Stalingrad. Tell them all about the Germans

(43:58):
eating their horses. How many combat zones?
More like friend zones out of 10.
Would you rate this movie? I would rate this movie 5 1/2
comment zones more like friend zones out of 10 because like I
said, roasted in three days which doesn't speak too well for

(44:20):
the movie. I didn't care too much about
anyone. I didn't really enjoy the basic.
I don't know, I just didn't likeit very much and I just wish it
had been slightly more informative of what happened in
Stalingrad instead of just showing Stalingrad and lots of

(44:41):
dead bodies. I would have.
Normally I find tragedy quite boring, but this movie kind of
suffered from not having enough strategy talk, so I would have
liked a little bit more. And yeah, I don't think I'm ever
going to watch it again. I did enjoy Joseph fans.
I thought he was good, but that's because I had a question

(45:01):
and when I was younger there's that's why.
Oh gosh. Well, I think this movie, if you
think of it in the sense of likethey're telling this very tiny
subplot from the battle focused on this one guy just against the
backdrop of what was happening in Stalingrad generally.

(45:23):
And, like, the battle itself is less important than I was, like,
set dressing then. And I think it's all right.
Like you, I would have preferredmore context.
I did like the set that they built.
I thought they did a good job ofmaking it appear like fucking
Judgment Day. You know, like 99% of the
buildings have been knocked down.
But yeah, I don't know. Weak characterization for the

(45:47):
most part. It's hard to care about these
characters very much. But it was cool to learn a
little bit about the Eastern Front.
So I think I'm going to rate it five combat zones, more like
friend zones out of 10. I don't think it's terrible.
There was some cool like combat scenes during the movie that I
liked. It was cool to see how snipers
operate and that kind of stuff. It's you know, cuz there's lots

(46:09):
of things that you wouldn't think of.
But yeah, I don't know. Nothing to write home about, I
suppose. I would like to amend my
reading, well, not by reading, but my explanation of the
writing. And I would like to say that I
really thought at Harris was very scary.
He was good, I'll agree he was good.

(46:35):
Are you reading anything? I am reading The Longest Day by
Cornelius Ryan, who also wrote ABridge Too Far, and I'm not that
far in yet. I think I've read like 70 pages
or something. But the writing style is so
interesting because it makes youfeel like you are there as it's
happening. It's really an interesting way

(46:57):
of retelling history because I think his sources are very good
and even some of the dialogue isreal, but everything around it
just reads like a novel. It's quite nice.
Yeah, yeah, Ryan is really good.It's such a shame.
I think he died young, ish. Like he had a heart attack at
like age 50 or something and undertaking like The Longest Day

(47:18):
or A Bridge Too Far. You know, he would do like 5
years of research. So it's just, it's just a pity
that we don't have more from himbecause he's such a good writer.
And in the book, I mean, D-Day has not begun yet and he's
already given me 5 different perspectives of it, the lead up
to D-Day. And it's so interesting to that
you get the German perspective and then you get a submariners

(47:42):
perspective and you get it's so interesting to have all these
little bits and pieces and now they all fit together and I'm
just really excited to read the rest.
Yeah, I'm excited to read that one too.
Because there's a movie. That's why we're reading it, and
also because he's good. What are you reading?
Are you reading anything new? Well, I just, I cranked through
like probably 80% of Enemy at the Gates this weekend, so I'm

(48:04):
done that now. And I'm just starting this book
that I just recently bought. It's like basically on the
bestseller list right now. It's called The Girl Bandits of
the Warsaw Ghetto by Elizabeth RHyman.
And yeah, I'm really looking forward to reading about some
ladies being kick ass during World War 2.
The need to make a movie for us to watch.
I would love to watch the movie,yeah.

(48:26):
I'm guessing it's too new for there actually a movie anytime
soon. For sure, yeah.
Shane Anyway, I think that's it,at least for me.
Do you have anything else you want to talk about today?
No, I do want to say I was supposed to be in Sicily this
weekend and I didn't get to go because of health reasons.
But our friend and SAS correspondent George Buster and

(48:47):
they wore their Rosie the Reviewer T-shirt and my friend
Dan also wore his cup. So we were a little bit in
Sicily. Yay which?
Is. Nice.
Anyway, that's it for another week of Rosie the Reviewer.
You can follow us whenever you get your podcast and rate US
five stars. As we've already told you, you
can send this episode to Friend to relax.

(49:10):
Questionable wolf triangles thatdid not exist in real life.
You can follow us on Instagram at rosidorviewer podcast or you
can visit our website rosidorviewer.com where I've
also linked to that podcast episode that so you can listen
to it. All right, see you next week.
Bye.