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I know this outs me as a cloistered american, but my mental narrative of WWII is woefully bereft of accounts outside of the US Britain, and Germany. The thought

I know this outs me as a cloistered american, but my mental narrative of WWII is woefully bereft of accounts outside of the US Britain, and Germany. The thought of your Pop Pop slogging through the countryside towards Berlin gave me goosebumps. Where is that movie, i ask you. Thanks.

hordac 12y ago
There's a movie released in 2001, called Enemy at the Gates, but it's kind of cheesy. But since you asked, it qualifies as the ever-so-rare Hollywood movie about a WWII scenario, involving a Russian protagonist, as told from a Soviet perspective. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0215750/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0215750/ It's the only English-language movie I can think of that fits those criteria.
- classicsnoot 12y ago
  In no way did i imply that english language only was a parameter, bro.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Way to thank someone for doing work on your behalf.
brudgers 12y ago
The scale of the War in the Soviet Union was vast. 26,000,000 is the commonly agreed on estimate of USSR deaths from the war. The theatre contained hundreds of divisions - many times those in which the US and Britain fought. A book on Stalingrad I recently enjoyed: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140284583/ref=redir_mdp_mobile http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140284583/ref=redir_mdp_mobil...
- classicsnoot 12y ago
  Understand, I am well aware of the facts and figures of the East's struggle. I have sat and talked with nearly 50 WWII vets at length, and not one of them from anywhere but the US, Britain, and Germany. The road to victory that Mother Russia took is informative when considering the events of the present.
  - brudgers 12y ago
    As I was writing, I refrained from referring to the the theatre as 'Eastern'. The term tends to turn encourage us to turn our backs on the way in which the Second World War shapes the politics of China and Korea [or Koreas] and the way in which the US interprets them. China was the first of 'the Allies'. It went to war with Japan in July 1937 - more than two years before France and Britain against Germany and four years before the rest of the Allies engaged Japan, i.e. China fought against Japan alone for longer than as one of 'The Allies'. Rana Mintner's Forgotten Ally was on the new shelf a few months ago at the public library: http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Ally-China%C2%92s-World-1937-1945/dp/061889425X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1401370700&sr=8-2&keywords=china+second+world+war http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Ally-China%C2%92s-World-1937... More recently I read Bruce Cummings The Korean War: A History. Now I no longer write North Korea's actions off as crazy. That's the country whose founders fought Japanese imperialism before and throughout the war. The American military maintained Japan's administrative structure in the South when it 'established itself' their following Japan's defeat. South Korea has had foreign troops in it continuously since 1895. North Korea sees that as problematic. http://www.amazon.com/The-Korean-War-History-Chronicles/dp/081297896X/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1401370140&sr=8-7&keywords=korean+war http://www.amazon.com/The-Korean-War-History-Chronicles/dp/0...
- cvos 12y ago
  If you are interested in a very good (and long) writeup about world war II from a perspective you probably didn't hear about in school: When we try to imagine what happened when the Japanese imperial navy approached Midway Island we're likely to get an image out of Star Wars -- daring attack planes, as graceful as swallows, darting among the ponderously churning cannons of some behemoth of a Death Star. But the sci-fi trappings of Star Wars disguise an archaic and sluggish idea of battle. What happened instead was this: the American squadron commander gave the order to attack, the planes came hurtling down from around 12,000 feet and released their bombs, and then they pulled out of their dives and were gone. That was all. Most of the Japanese sailors didn't even see them. One bomb fell on the flight deck of the Akagi, the flagship of the fleet, and exploded amidships near the elevator. The concussion wave of the blast roared through the open shaft to the hangar deck below, where it detonated a stack of torpedoes. The explosion that followed was so powerful it ruptured the flight deck; a fireball flashed like a volcano through the blast crater and swallowed up the midsection of the ship. Sailors were killed instantly by the fierce heat, by hydrostatic shock from the concussion wave, by flying shards of steel; they were hurled overboard unconscious and drowned. The sailors in the engine room were killed by flames drawn through the ventilating system. Two hundred died in all. Then came more explosions rumbling up from below decks as the fuel reserves ignited. That was when the captain, still frozen in shock and disbelief, collected his wits sufficiently to recognize that the ship had to be abandoned. The last of the carriers, the Hiryu, managed to escape untouched, but later that afternoon it was located and attacked by another flight of American bombers. One bomb set off an explosion so strong it blew the elevator assembly into the bridge. More than 400 died, and the crippled ship had to be scuttled a few hours later to keep it from being captured. Now there was nothing left of the Japanese attack force except a scattering of escort ships and the planes still in the air. The pilots were the final casualties of the battle; with the aircraft carriers gone, and with Midway still in American hands, they had nowhere to land. They were doomed to circle helplessly above the sinking debris, the floating bodies, and the burning oil slicks until their fuel ran out. This was the Battle of Midway. As John Keegan writes, it was "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." Its consequences were instant, permanent and devastating. It gutted Japan's navy and broke its strategy for the Pacific war. The Japanese would never complete their perimeter around their new empire; instead they were thrown back on the defensive, against an increasingly large and better-organized American force, which grew surgingly confident after its spectacular victory. After Midway, as the Japanese scrambled to rebuild their shattered fleet, the Americans went on the attack. From Midway till the end of the war the Japanese didn't win a single substantial engagement against the Americans. They had "lost the initiative," as the bland military saying goes, and they never got it back. http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm
- graystevens 12y ago
  I can completely recommend Blood Red Snow, an autobiography and memoir of the evens from a German machine gunner - absolutely fascinating: http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Red-Snow-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0760321981 http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Red-Snow-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0760...
- hga 12y ago
  "26,000,000 is the commonly agreed on estimate of USSR deaths from the war." At one level you should temper this appalling statistic: a whole lot of it was "self-inflicted", by the games and machinations Stalin played. Mass slaughter of the USSR's own people was a policy long before the war---that the people who did their 1939 census were sent to the Gulag should be sufficient telling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937) ---and the war just enabled a continuation if not increase in this. Note also how the continuous purges of Army officers left the Red Army in a crippled state prior to the invasion.

hordac 12y ago

There's a movie released in 2001, called Enemy at the Gates, but it's kind of cheesy. But since you asked, it qualifies as the ever-so-rare Hollywood movie about a WWII scenario, involving a Russian protagonist, as told from a Soviet perspective. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0215750/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0215750/ It's the only English-language movie I can think of that fits those criteria.

classicsnoot 12y ago
In no way did i imply that english language only was a parameter, bro.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Way to thank someone for doing work on your behalf.

brudgers 12y ago

The scale of the War in the Soviet Union was vast. 26,000,000 is the commonly agreed on estimate of USSR deaths from the war. The theatre contained hundreds of divisions - many times those in which the US and Britain fought. A book on Stalingrad I recently enjoyed: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140284583/ref=redir_mdp_mobile http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140284583/ref=redir_mdp_mobil...

classicsnoot 12y ago
Understand, I am well aware of the facts and figures of the East's struggle. I have sat and talked with nearly 50 WWII vets at length, and not one of them from anywhere but the US, Britain, and Germany. The road to victory that Mother Russia took is informative when considering the events of the present.
- brudgers 12y ago
  As I was writing, I refrained from referring to the the theatre as 'Eastern'. The term tends to turn encourage us to turn our backs on the way in which the Second World War shapes the politics of China and Korea [or Koreas] and the way in which the US interprets them. China was the first of 'the Allies'. It went to war with Japan in July 1937 - more than two years before France and Britain against Germany and four years before the rest of the Allies engaged Japan, i.e. China fought against Japan alone for longer than as one of 'The Allies'. Rana Mintner's Forgotten Ally was on the new shelf a few months ago at the public library: http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Ally-China%C2%92s-World-1937-1945/dp/061889425X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1401370700&sr=8-2&keywords=china+second+world+war http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Ally-China%C2%92s-World-1937... More recently I read Bruce Cummings The Korean War: A History. Now I no longer write North Korea's actions off as crazy. That's the country whose founders fought Japanese imperialism before and throughout the war. The American military maintained Japan's administrative structure in the South when it 'established itself' their following Japan's defeat. South Korea has had foreign troops in it continuously since 1895. North Korea sees that as problematic. http://www.amazon.com/The-Korean-War-History-Chronicles/dp/081297896X/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1401370140&sr=8-7&keywords=korean+war http://www.amazon.com/The-Korean-War-History-Chronicles/dp/0...
cvos 12y ago
If you are interested in a very good (and long) writeup about world war II from a perspective you probably didn't hear about in school: When we try to imagine what happened when the Japanese imperial navy approached Midway Island we're likely to get an image out of Star Wars -- daring attack planes, as graceful as swallows, darting among the ponderously churning cannons of some behemoth of a Death Star. But the sci-fi trappings of Star Wars disguise an archaic and sluggish idea of battle. What happened instead was this: the American squadron commander gave the order to attack, the planes came hurtling down from around 12,000 feet and released their bombs, and then they pulled out of their dives and were gone. That was all. Most of the Japanese sailors didn't even see them. One bomb fell on the flight deck of the Akagi, the flagship of the fleet, and exploded amidships near the elevator. The concussion wave of the blast roared through the open shaft to the hangar deck below, where it detonated a stack of torpedoes. The explosion that followed was so powerful it ruptured the flight deck; a fireball flashed like a volcano through the blast crater and swallowed up the midsection of the ship. Sailors were killed instantly by the fierce heat, by hydrostatic shock from the concussion wave, by flying shards of steel; they were hurled overboard unconscious and drowned. The sailors in the engine room were killed by flames drawn through the ventilating system. Two hundred died in all. Then came more explosions rumbling up from below decks as the fuel reserves ignited. That was when the captain, still frozen in shock and disbelief, collected his wits sufficiently to recognize that the ship had to be abandoned. The last of the carriers, the Hiryu, managed to escape untouched, but later that afternoon it was located and attacked by another flight of American bombers. One bomb set off an explosion so strong it blew the elevator assembly into the bridge. More than 400 died, and the crippled ship had to be scuttled a few hours later to keep it from being captured. Now there was nothing left of the Japanese attack force except a scattering of escort ships and the planes still in the air. The pilots were the final casualties of the battle; with the aircraft carriers gone, and with Midway still in American hands, they had nowhere to land. They were doomed to circle helplessly above the sinking debris, the floating bodies, and the burning oil slicks until their fuel ran out. This was the Battle of Midway. As John Keegan writes, it was "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." Its consequences were instant, permanent and devastating. It gutted Japan's navy and broke its strategy for the Pacific war. The Japanese would never complete their perimeter around their new empire; instead they were thrown back on the defensive, against an increasingly large and better-organized American force, which grew surgingly confident after its spectacular victory. After Midway, as the Japanese scrambled to rebuild their shattered fleet, the Americans went on the attack. From Midway till the end of the war the Japanese didn't win a single substantial engagement against the Americans. They had "lost the initiative," as the bland military saying goes, and they never got it back. http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm
graystevens 12y ago
I can completely recommend Blood Red Snow, an autobiography and memoir of the evens from a German machine gunner - absolutely fascinating: http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Red-Snow-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0760321981 http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Red-Snow-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0760...
hga 12y ago
"26,000,000 is the commonly agreed on estimate of USSR deaths from the war." At one level you should temper this appalling statistic: a whole lot of it was "self-inflicted", by the games and machinations Stalin played. Mass slaughter of the USSR's own people was a policy long before the war---that the people who did their 1939 census were sent to the Gulag should be sufficient telling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937) ---and the war just enabled a continuation if not increase in this. Note also how the continuous purges of Army officers left the Red Army in a crippled state prior to the invasion.