Posted on 01/12/2012 3:47:20 PM PST by dynachrome
Shooting the Life And Fate movie took place at a tank range Alabino. Welcome to the movie set with a lot of tanks, snow and other interesting things.
(Excerpt) Read more at englishrussia.com ...
(looks like some rather racy videos are below the story)
The book “Life and Fate” was smuggled out of the Soviet Union. Parts of the book are missing. With a story like this the film writes itself.
I’ll hand it to the Russkies, when it comes to war films, nobody does it better.
I’m impressed that they were able to find six functional T-34s. (I’m not good with the individual models...can anyone tell if they’re T-34/76s or the end-of-war T-34/85s?)
One of them is a T-34/76, the rest are all T-34/85s.
Recalling scenes from the movie “Liberation” (1968) about the Battle of Kursk on YouTube, I’d say the old MosFilm kept a huge stock of T/34’s and captured German tanks.
“able to find six functional T-34s”
They are pack rats when it comes to hoarding old weapons. Look how many Mosin Nagants are still around!
*Waves hand frantically*
Oooo, oooo, I know, I know.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 1812, right?
Ping
Maybe they borrowed the T-34s from North Korea?
Germany never had the population that could absorb the sheer manpower losses inflicted at Stalingrad while the Soviet Union did. While we in the West can bemoan the fact that it was these two tyrannies fighting for last person standing, the war and the world would have been a completely different place without this battle.
Of course this pre-supposes different people in charge of these two nations. Herr Hitler and Comrade Stalin should go down in history as idiots fully capable of snatching defeat over and over from victory.
Still it is the unsung masses who are the heroes and victims of Stalingrad and Leningrad (places which no longer bear those names) who endured hardships we can barely acknowledge let alone imagine enduring ourselves. If I were to ever meet a survivor, let alone a fighting veteran, of those campaigns, I would have no difficulty in saluting him or her.
PS: What is your favorite Bolo story?
I still believe that had the Nazis taken Moscow, Stalin would have been deposed, and the Bolshies may have gone down with him, and replaced by a new regime, that would have rallied the Russians to victory.
“favorite Bolo story’
I like the ones with a bit of humor (Laumer’s Retief series should be a TV show!)
“destroyed the German Army’s reserve”
I’d throw in Kursk, also.
Unlike the movie, which was only about Vasily Zaitsev, the book describes the whole campaign. Lots of really great individual accounts give a real sense of what both sides had to endure.
When I read about Stalingrad and Dunkirk I start to think we should have given Herman Goering a medal at Nuremberg, and then had a trial.
Yeah, love English Russia but the ads are definitely NSFW.
Anyhow, hope the movie is good. Russia's film industry is really coming along. I have access to a lot of Russian entertainment so hopefully I'll get to see it reasonably soon.
i am a fan of all of the BOLOS books, it would be a royal treat indeed to see a Mark XXXIII Bolo in battle!
Its unusual but possibly historically significant at least for a couple more generations that while Russia can film a movie using near period perfect tanks in Hollywood it has to be done with CGI.
Even back in when another big film came out about that very same tank battle Hollywood had to make do with mostly mocked up US tanks, and in the earlier Pearl harbor films and Tora, Tora, Tora they had to use US made planes disguised to look like Japanese fighters.
Agreed! These were the WW2 Germany's "Lost Legions" / Publius Quinctilius Varus and the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Expansion can and does continue but it is more momentum and the hollow military becomes the norm and the foot soldier knows it to his bones!
Yeah, but which one and from which of the Allies? The only one that I can think of from the USofA is the "Legion of Merit" and "Fat Hermann" would demand the Commander rank at a minimum.
I wonder if Reichsmarschall Goering was an inspiration for the "Peter Principal"? He certainly exemplified it.
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