Posted on 05/09/2015 7:58:47 PM PDT by WhiskeyX
Russian state television is promising a special treat for military veterans for Victory Day on May 9: a newly colorized version of the 1973 film classic Only Old Men Are Going To Battle, the powerful story of a doomed squadron of World War II fighter pilots.
There's just one problem. The movie, arguably one of the best of the Soviet war genre, was directed by a Ukrainian, filmed in Ukraine, and stars more than a half-dozen Ukrainian actors -- including Vladimir Talashko, whose character, an aspiring opera singer, is killed after deliberately crashing his plane into a Nazi supply train, shouting, "We will live on!"
"An enormous number of movies have been made, and are still being made, about the war," says Talashko, 69. "But this one is so strong and so important that Russia wants to tie it to its own success."
(Excerpt) Read more at rferl.org ...
There are fewer and fewer veterans of the Great Patriotic War alive in Russia.
The day is meant as a tribute to their valor and their sacrifice - and what it cost to defeat Nazism.
I learned last night that the Red Army lost 220+ thousand soldiers during the Battle of Berlin.
However, over 1 million German women who fell under Red Army control were raped, murdered, assaulted, or committed suicide (in Berlin, 100s per day after its fall).
Full movie on Youtube, Colorized and digitized.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7gdKC76Lwg
Looks interesting, I’ll put it on my list of things to watch.
Thanks for the tip.
True, when the Red Army swept into Berlin, the German women paid a nightmare price. Just as untold millions of innocent eastern European and soviet women did when Nazis came sweeping into -their- towns, stripped them naked and murdered them one by one, terrifyingly, at the edge of ditches.
Yet, for some reason, people don’t seem to associate the rape of Berlin with what the German forces did to the women in the countries they invaded.
Many people forget that the Russians were slaves who did what they were told to do, and there was no other option.
They were sent to their death by the millions and some died chained to their guns and others merely as cannon fodder in punishment battalions.
There was no value placed on their lives, and it shows in the almost impossible to believe number of deaths at the hands of vastly superior soldiers that they were fighting.
Because the Germans lost. And because they lost, they didn’t get a chance to enslave millions. The Soviets were lucky that way, so crying about the Germans is misplaced.
Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia. Two scorpions in a bottle.
“Because the Germans lost. And because they lost, they didn’t get a chance to enslave millions. The Soviets were lucky that way, so crying about the Germans is misplaced”
I don’t exactly follow the point. My question is that we hear a LOT about the rape of Berlin. Books, movies, plays, scholarly debate, etc. But I never see anybody make the association that its totally symmetrical to the way their own forces acted in the east.
Very basic, but if I go poison my neighbors dog, and then they came over and poisoned mine, I wouldn’t be mystified about why it happened.
Essentially, I’ve never seen Germans blame the SS and Police murder Battalions for bringing that down on their own women.
And who knows, if the Germans hadn’t done any of that evil kill the naked women stuff, maybe the Red Army would have still behaved the same way in Berlin. We’ll never really know I guess. Just an observation.
the movie Stalingrad(2013) was interesting. Could’ve done without the romance tho.
I have just seen another movie ‘Battle for Sevastopol’ about Lyudmila Pavluchenko - Ukrainian sniper who shot 300 Nazi in East Ukraine.
It is a joint Russian-Ukrainian production mostly shot in Crimea in 2013 before current crisis but only released in April in Ukraine and on DVD in Russia in May.
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt4084744/
Best war movie ever was Brest Fortress.
I like the 1940s war movies the best but will check this movie out.
Maybe you’re just sore about it because you’re Russian. I fully understand.
“And who knows, if the Germans hadn’t done any of that evil kill the naked women stuff, maybe the Red Army would have still behaved the same way in Berlin. We’ll never really know I guess.”
On the contrary, we “really know” the Russians raped their way across Europe by their mass rapes, torture, and murder of the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and other nation’s women whenever their troops recaptured their communities.
“Best war movie ever was Brest Fortress.”
I’ve seen that, and it’s a decent movie, but when you look into the actual history of it, the movie turns into fantasy pretty quickly.
The Brest Fortress was run by the NKVD, and was a prison of horrors.
Stalingrad (2013) movie had nice visuals, but I thought, it was way over the top. One scene had Soviet soldiers burning, fire everywhere, and instead of trying to put it out, they charge on the German lines — very silly stuff.
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