Historian Breaks Down 'Enemy At The Gates' Movie | Deep Dives

Hi, I'm Dan Snow. I love World War II history and one of my most fascinating projects was visiting the city of Stalingrad in Russia to explore one of the most notorious battlefields on the Eastern Front. In this video, I am going to review probably the most famous film ever made about the Eastern Front and that is Enemy at the Gates to separate fact from fiction this is one of history's

deep

dives

Autumn 1942 Europe lies crushed under the Nazi boot The German Third Reich is at the peak of its power Hitler's armies advance through the heart of the Soviet Union towards the oil fields of Asia.

A final obstacle remains a vulgar city where the fate of the world is decided. Stalingrad in the summer of 1942 Hitler made one more effort to win the war. in the East with a gigantic offensive not towards the Soviet capital of Moscow, but towards Ukraine and the Caucasus, where all the natural resources were Ukrainian farmland, heavy industry and coal, and further down, towards the Caucasus, towards Georgia, towards Baku, to reach Armenia, where Soviet oil supplies were and the third raid desperately needed oil, there was a shortage of oil, so the offensive crashes through Ukraine and reaches southern Russia, where stops, gets stuck in the Caucasus, doesn't really reach the main oil fields and one branch of this offensive gets stuck in the Vulga River in the city of Stalingrad.

Stalingrad was a not very important industrial city, but it became this totem, the focus of all the fighting on the Eastern Front, partly because it had the Stalin name that the Soviet leader and Hitler wanted. to capture it and partly because once you've half captured it you just try to do the job, you try to complete it and Stalingrad, where German troops advanced in September, was not fully occupied for months afterwards and became a monstrous battle of attrition. terrifying close-range battle that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and then became the axis around which Soviet forces would counterattack and inflict Hitler's worst defeat to that point in the Second World War.

Stalingrad is one of the 20th century, one of the most important in history. The Greatest and Most Terrible Battles This has to be one of the best scenes of all time. Many very inexperienced Soviet troops, in this case unarmed, crossing the vulgar, many of them in rowboats towards the destroyed remains of the city of Stalingrad. Beyond now, this scene is surprisingly realistic, it is true that they could be sent directly off the train without the necessary training or preparation. They were thrown to the front of Stalingrad, Belia, my daughter, I know it is for our homeland, I know it is for our homeland that you are giving your life I like the fact that you see here you get the commissars you get the kind of political officers reading in out loud like reading propaganda reading out loud uh reading the instructions to the men know you won't back down everyone here they are and then you see that the impact of the artillery shell on that little boat just shattered it and then here we have the dive bombers, the dive bombers, the dive bombers, strafing, strafing the boats that were crossing, um, this would have been, this was a common scene. of the GS division died while crossing the river.

This scene shows the dominant location of the German air force that is still in command of the skies at this point in World War II over the Eastern Front and these Stuka dive bombers. they specialize in low level attacks with acur, they come in a big dive from the sky, they dive and use that speed, but they and they use that dive angle to aim bombs and aim their machine gun fire very effectively because They head in a straight line. towards the ground, making them terrifying for units trying to cross. These stokers also have a siren with an iconic noise, so when they dive they scream and apparently the moral effect was as terrifying as the physical effect at this point Germany approached. total air superiority over the red Air Force on the Eastern Front the red Air Force in terms of equipment, IT training, their experience, their ground facilities were simply no match for the German lar, so they had a huge advantage, in addition to that the German guns The big heavy guns on the coast were able to fire on these barges, these small boats crossed the river, so crossing the river was very, very dangerous, in fact, particularly during the day, during the ra We film.

You have a scene here of Soviet shooting. his own men now this is very controversial and some Russians have strongly opposed this aspect of the film. There were so-called blocking detachments for men in Stalingrad. There were groups of troops who stood behind the attacking troops and encouraged them to do so. Threatening to shoot them if they did and occasionally shooting them, so it's true that the Soviets turned their guns over from time to time. Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, saw these months as a real crisis, an existential crisis for the Soviet Union. Union he believed that everything was on the table here, so he issues an order that is called the not one step back order and that meant that people were simply not allowed to retreat in that not one step back order that Stalin orders groups of soldiers that they would be allowed to fire on their own men if their own men are retreating, so they are called blocking detachments.

The Soviets would attack if they were not as enthusiastic as they should have been, they might be encouraged by the gunfire from their own side. in them, this shows the extent to which the Soviet Union was threatened at this point, they would take extreme measures to force their men into battle and these men were often as portrayed in this film, they were often very very young, poorly prepared and rather ill-equipped, you see the refugees here, quite rightly, the refugees desperately trying to get out of Stalingrad, uh, priority was given to military traffic, so not much thought was given to the refugees, the population of Sting GR suffered terribly during these months of long battle.

Staring is one of the largest battles in all of history, if not the largest, there is an intensity and horror all its own, so the casualties are carried to the river with horrible wounds when the one with the rifle dies, the one who is following this is the best. While

historian

s have objected to this, it is highly unlikely that the men would have been sent to the front line without being led into battle in this way. I think there is some truth to this and it gives you a feeling similar to improvised desperation. of the Soviet defense and how they simply plugged the gaps with human lives is simply an overwhelming scene, isn't this great mass of humanity poured into the meat grinder of battle and the vast majority of these men would not survive September 14 from 1942? a famous moment of crossing that river when the Third Guard Rifle Division crosses that river and they are thrown into battle, they weren't really prepared, um, they were quite experienced troops, new troops that filled their ranks, but they were thrown in following the instructions from the Soviet high command desperately clung to any patch of ground in the center of Stalingrad. 3,000 of them did not survive the day they were killed either at Crossing or as soon as they reached Stalingrad.

It was the most dreadful fate of any division. That division laid the foundation for Soviet resistance. They ensured that there would be no easy victory at Stalingrad and the Germans would have to advance inch by inch through the shattered ruins of the city, but very few of them survived the combat. looking at gr it is victory or death those who retreat I need a paper they will be shot I need a rifle there will be no mercy our cards so the Germans have steel helmets here interesting obligatory schwas to tell you whose troops these are and you have German armored vehicles, you have a Low German rifleman, there the whistle sounds.

The Soviets attack, they run forward, their officers cheer them on with guns, so you can see a mix of riflemen and then there are some that look like a World War I Maxim gun, a rolling machine gun. forward, so I'm trying to bring a little bit more firepower into this attack, but the Germans obviously have armored vehicles, they've got their bellies there, the tanks, and they're pretty well entrenched behind that W debris, so it's kind of a slaughter. the idea that the Soviets would launch human wave attacks, attack after attack, they spread incredibly with their own men and there is some truth to that, so they are in the center of the city, look at that center of the city, although only be September.

The battle has only been raging in the city for a few days at this point, but the city is almost completely destroyed. In fact, the LFA flew over the city after two days of intense airstrikes and said there were no more targets left to attack. it effectively destroyed it and yet the battle continued until February, so you can imagine the state of the city after all those months of enormous fighting. I mean, you just get a sense of the terrible firepower of those really effective German machine guns. There is no security in withdrawal. Because you weren't really allowed to join your German comrades, they understand your suffering and will care more about you than their own officers who are just sending you to your death.

The Third Reich is not your

enemy

. The

enemy

is bloodthirsty Saint and his people who have stolen. In your land, I think this scene is a little dramatized, it's a little exaggerated, it shows literally all the people who died in this attack, but there is a kind of basis of fact here that it is, in general, the Soviets at this point of history. World War II would tend to use humans to make up for their shortcomings in other types of warfare, so since they didn't have as many armored vehicles, they didn't have as much heavy equipment as they should have, so they were quite happy. to propel the young men forward into battle and here we see Jude La Vasil Zev, the man who would become a legend and who can actually use a rifle, so it is true that some of the Soviet rifles could be quite difficult to operate for some. new recruits and when they got dirty they would get stuck, the recruits would try to clean them or clean them and they could actually damage the rifle, so you can see that Basil Z knows exactly what he is doing, he knows how to handle the rifle, so I'm not very clear.

Why is this German officer exposing himself in a very recent rainy moment on the battlefield, but anyway, in the sight of the Soviet army, you noticed your eyes a little? Ser says he passed the gun to me and it's the start of an illustrious career as a sniper. Now, in fact, ZF came from a peasant family, I think he was in the Eurasian mountains, but he was actually in the Pacific Fleet of the Soviet navy and he volunteered to be transferred to Stalingrad, so he was not just a farmer. off the straight of the C railway, but it saw some very valuable German targets and snipers played an absolutely essential role in the Battle of Stalingrad in this type of landscape with a lot of cover, a lot of places to hide targets when when the Germans and and The Soviets were just a few meters away in a certain place, in some buildings, they were a room or a floor apart, so it's the perfect landscape, the perfect setting to inflict terrible damage on your enemy in Close Quarters and he is using the noise of the battlefield as cover. uh, his own shots are stopped.

Born St. Stalingrad is famous, among other things, for snipers and when you have two armies that are close together and with a lot of cover, there are a lot of buildings, rubble, tunnels, drainage pipes and gutters. We have perfect conditions for snipers because they can crawl close to the covert enemy and then they can shoot from a hidden position at the enemy, so Stalingrad becomes a sniper nest because the Germans and Soviets could be in the neighboring buildings. being in neighboring apartments, they could be on different floors of the same building, so having that ability to accurately target high ranking officers on the other side could have a huge impact on the course of the battle and the Germans learned to really fear than the Soviet sniper Threat: The Germans had less emphasis on snipers and that's because the Germans imagined a fast moving battle where they would advance aggressively all the time using tanks, armored vehicles interacting with each other, they didn't really imagine the type of static remains.

Sparse battlefield that was the ideal environment for snipers. My name is Nikita sovich kushev. I've come to take things under control here and this is a great scene. The arrival of Nikita Kusf is seen, who one day would become the successorof Stalin. leader of the Soviet Union and now this exaggerates the impact on the battle. Stalin sent him to the observation area, but he did not enter a bunker under the city and commanded daily operations during the siege, but he was sent. down there to give a little backbone to the troops down there this city is not K nor is it kyiv nor Minsk this city is Stalingrad Stalingrad this city is named after the boss it is more than a city as a symbol if the Germans capture this city, the whole country will collapse and it is and it is and the words he is saying, he is talking about stagnant ground as a symbol, it has the name of the boss, the name of Stalin, that is true, that is one of the reasons why Stalin was so desperate to defend it block by block.

It's also one of the reasons Hitler was so determined to capture her. Truly Stalingrad is a battle of dictators. You have these two overlords throwing men and equipment into this city simply because it has no particular military or strategic value, but because it is named after one of them it is named after Stalin and the dictators have an instinctive awareness of the importance of this type of emblems a city named after Stalin the idea of ​​a German flag flying around it was unacceptable to Stalin and was desperately needed for Hitler. I want our boys to lift their heads.

I want them to act like they have balls. What is your suggestion? Shoot all the other generals who have retired and their chiefs of staff as well. Make some examples. Deport the families of. the desert that is open gives them hope here the only options for men between the German bullets and ours but there is another path the path of Courage the path of Love for the country we must publish the Army newspaper again we must tell magnificent stories stories of that Exel sacrifices bravery we must make them believe in a victory we must give them Hope Pride a desire to fight yes we need to give examples but examples to follow what we need are heroes come to me in this scene it didn't happen like that at all but it is like that You see the importance of propaganda.

Anda and the Soviets were very, very intelligent in the use of propaganda, giving hope to men, giving examples, in particular using the basil grain to embolden the troops, make them believe in victory and it is true that throughout the war the Soviets. Union was very good at raising heroic figures by spreading them in the media and created these huge celebrities from snipers, coal miners sometimes or tank drivers, these people became heroes, the most important celebrities of Soviet Russia look at him with pride because he's looking. the whole country is watching you the second world war was a propaganda war everyone was into it the american and british press converted private soldiers sailors or am i heroes people kept talking, for example, guy gibson once carried out the Dam Busters raid made a propaganda trip through the United States of America and in this context you see Vasil Zit become a hero of the Soviet Union being turned into a media star by Chrisf that did not happen like that, but it is true that zeef became a favorite of the Soviet press and we say that the Soviet press was not a free press, they were all uniformed, they worked for the Soviet state as much as anyone else, so they were simply spreading propaganda, they were spreading the message that the Soviet press was not a free press.

The Soviet high command wanted them to do it and the Soviet high command wanted to emphasize the fact that Germany could and would be defeated: it would be defeated by producing more and more equipment in the factories that were actually being prepared in the East, so it was they would get many industrial workers. Being a celebration in this period, they would be defeated by the bravery of the men and women on the front lines and that is where Zef comes in. He is a shining example of a brave frontline soldier who is having a much bigger impact than just one.

A person might be expected to do so because he's using his rifle, he's not charging blindly into battle, he's using his rifle to take out Germans, lots of Germans, and often fairly high-value Germans, and so on. It's how the Soviets portrayed this war, this big German mass steamroller that emerged. much of the Soviet Union are being pushed back by trained uniformed peasants like Vasil Zit using the skills he learned on Soviet farms every victory every defeat by all the different combatant nations had a huge impact on the second world war the victories were magnified the defeats were minimized and in fact even the defeat of Stalingrad one of the most catastrophic defeats that any Armed Force has suffered in the history of the world even that was spun by the Germans when their army had been completely destroyed the last remains were taken into captivity Hitler and Goal's propaganda chief had the Sixth Army make the German sacrifice a kind of national mobilization event.

They said they were sacrificed in the P of civilization fighting the communist bolik uh Slavic Jewish hordes in the East that they tried to establish as one. of the great and glorious defeats that, as you know, the Roman Empire suffered, that would only harden the Senus of those left behind, so everything is constantly used for propaganda, so tell us Valadium which building it is in. There is no way. I know it moves everywhere. the moment he jumps from one to the other on which floor I don't know we'll see that now this is the plot of the entire

movie

is an LGE that they are in a kind of Jewel within this great huge battle that You are in a jewel with this German sniper of Elite.

He's had to deal with this very, very powerful Soviet sniper. Now this is something the Soviets stated as the war continued. They claimed that there was a battle between Zef and this German sniper. there is no evidence from the German side so we don't believe it happened but it is a big propaganda story and it claims that for days they chased each other around Stalingrad, let's see if our client has arrived are you ready mhm and now our famous Ural shepherd , who Major KCK thinks is an idiot, stands up to make sure he's hit the target.

The magic sees him aiming at his helmet, shoots, reveals his position and is shot once per turn. Snipers still tend to work in pairs, one of them will fire the gun. the other can act as a spotter and provide some situational awareness, meaning the sniper doesn't become fixated on simply looking down the SES and lose a broader appreciation of the battlefield and at this point you see Kulikov who is well on historical ground, rather. observer, but in this he is portrayed as theirs, as their kind of guru, as their trainer, except that ma K doesn't shoot because the biggest kug isn't there, you're about to see, they're about to jump through this huge hole in the apartment. building, so they will have to leave cover very briefly before they can find cover on the other side, so they will jump across this gap.

Now whoever jumps first has a huge advantage because any enemy snipers below will be taken by surprise. Someone jumped in and is ready to shoot a moving target in the air, but whose turn is it? I guess no, no, no, no, no, it's my turn to go first and it's your turn to punch a hole in your bridges. Here we see that this German sniper is so effective, he is so focused, he is so focused that he was just waiting for them to jump through that gap and he is able to kill Kulakov with a headshot.

I think it's pretty unlikely that this would have happened, but it's, um, it's very powerful scene. I think it gives you an idea of ​​the cat and mouse nature of the sniper war among the ruins of this city. This gives you a wonderful feeling of the fighting in Stalingrad. It takes place in the ruins. What used to be a tank factory later became a battlefield. Thousands of men fought for this small piece of industrial land. I have been to that factory, in fact the factory is still used to this day and its zit surf is immobilized.

The other thing. About this

movie

, what strikes me is that I think it would have been busy. I think there were a lot more people present, they wouldn't have had this entire Broken Factory to themselves right now, but I'm sure. that the snipers would have disputed since these two are now P people pinning each other down uh and for hours at a time potentially well this CLI this is interesting for B because Zev lost his gun he lost his rifle and he's completely immobilized he's curled up behind this piece of debris and he knows that if he shows any flesh the German sniper will put a bunet through him, give him the legs, yes you could see it, the bomb exploded, there is always military activity in Stalingrad, whether it's a bomb from a plane or a shell from an artillery piece some glasses crashed to the ground and that gives Zit an idea that the Germans are throwing everything at us, if they are lucky, one in 10 of these soldiers will come back alive you have a high level of education, you know languages ​​all you intercept you translate save hundreds of lives every message you decode kill thousands of them you have the duty to survive a fool was born to shoot a gun is what he knows you and I were born with a different purpose if that fool were here he would do it to you I say the same thing, so Tanya's character here is based on a real person, Tatiana Chinova, she was a Soviet sniper, the Soviets used women in that role, she had something like 24 confirmed kills, she became famous in her own right and worked next to zit.

Now we don't know if she was in a love angle with Dan and that's probably all made up for the movie, but it's definitely true that she was there on that battlefield and there would be a lot of women there, so the Soviets mobilized the women . In the Second World War, women served at the front in uniform alongside men. Where is he? where is vasili? lower your head in the scene you see T emerging from these pipes and I think this is how they would have traveled the battlefield. Become an expert at learning the terrain. The Soviet defenders of Stalingrad had a long time to learn that the city was like the back of their hands.

Those fighting on the front lines didn't really move much over the course of the fall and winter. 1942 and then they would have known the system THEY knew the pipes the underground tunnels the weights inside and outside the factories the Germans called it a rat stream The rat war because they were more underground than above ground slowly down, don't shoot , he is there, you see the pillar in front of you. I need you to move behind him and they will figure out a way to work together here to blind and dazzle the eldest kig and that allows Vil's IDF to escape. piece of glass are you ready? yes 3 2 1 where is it?

Where was the oldest one a few centimeters from your face? I have been so stupid V stupid that we tried with all our might to create an egalitarian society where there was nothing to envy your neighbor but there is always something to envy you are a good man miss I want to help you fail let me do one last thing something useful for a change let me show you where is the major no, don't do that, don't do that the intensity of the major kig is extraordinary you really think he is a master sniper his gaze is so powerful and here he is making his big mistake danoff has sacrificed himself he has become bait the The German major has shot him and the German major is now going to verify his death.

He believes he shot grains of bile. He's crawling around this railroad yard again. The only criticism I have here is how empty this stage is. I don't know why, I don't know why they stripped it. the people outside this battlefield would have been so densely populated with soldiers. I love this moment where he's just crossing the train tracks and then, boom, he freezes like an animal, he knows he's been tricked. You've seen the way ZF here has wrapped it up. the cannon wrapped his sights in rags so there is no way for the sun to reflect the metal and there he goes, he kills Major Kig but only because his friend sacrificed himself for a battle so famous for being one of the largest in history that It trapped millions of people, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.

This film reminds us of the individual experience. The loss, the horror, the trauma inflicted on each of those people who make up those giant armies is so intense. I find it very interesting about this movie. is that they wanted to tell the story of the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the largest battles in human history, with millions of people involved in the larger battle, to make it dramatic and exciting for the audience, they have highlighted two figures within her. I made it a gem between two figures, the Soviet sniper center Zef and the expert German Major Kig, and that personalized this monumental battle and is very effective.

Now Zeef later claimed that the Germans had sent the director of the Berlin sniper school to come to Stalingradspecifically to kill him and he was able to hunt him down and kill him now there is no evidence particularly of that we only have Zev's words and it is a time of a lot of Soviet propaganda and myth making so I don't think we can take him as true to his word, but it's true that ZF would have had Cat and Mouse, um gems, with German snipers chasing them through the ruins of Stalingrad, always moving, always trying to take out high value German targets, but also making sure he was gone.

Showing yourself to the German snipers must have been the most terrifying test you had to be very concentrated full of adrenaline for days and days. I don't know how he did it. I hope you enjoyed that review of The Enemy at the Gates if you want to see more of our

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