Enemy at the Gates

 

Dewi Gotcash

History 3121-M01

May 27, 2013

Final Essay Option 2

Due: June 6, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVzcQ4_khsM

 

Enemy at the Gates

            The battle of Stalingrad is an epic battle between the nations of Germany and Russia. The movie Enemy At The Gates is about the epic battle of Nazi invasion into the most symbolic city of Mother Russia, at that time. The reason Stalingrad is so symbolic in history is because it bears the name of the ruler, Joseph Stalin. If the Nazis would have won this battle, the people’s will to fight would have ceased to exist, and the new economic resources available to Hitler would have made the country collapse. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether or not the movie, “Enemy at the Gates” is a factually accurate depiction of the battle at Stalingrad. After reviewing the sources, I discovered that the movie is only non-factual when it comes to some of the intimate relationships between the characters. The battles are real. The people are real. Some of the war details are left out, as well as some of the other accomplishments of the main character. At the end of the day, this is a great war movie, as long as the viewer can deal with some of Hollywood’s normal interjections of romance, and inflated character traits.

            The historical value of the battle for Stalingrad is not in question today. Historians know for a fact that the actual battle took place. Stalingrad was in fact destroyed by much war during WW2. According to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, the Red Army suffered total casualties of 1,129,619. The movie does not go on to misrepresent that, but it does not mention these statistics. 400,000 German soldiers are said to have been capture, killed or wounded at this battle (Jewish Virtual Library).

What is in question in this essay, are the historical facts of the two main characters of the movie; A young Russian sharp shooter by the name of Vasilli Zeitsev, and a German aristocrat by the name of Major Erwin Konig. The movie traces the beginnings of the eventual Russian sniper, Vasilli Zeitsev. Struggling to survive the days he arrives at the heart of the battle, he eventually saves the life of a Russian Political officer by the name of Danilov. Danilov goes on to use Zeitsev as a symbol of hope and the Russian virtue of love for the motherland. The rest of the movie goes on to show Vasilli’s heroic actions as a sniper. The drama begins to unfold when Germany sends its best sniper, Major Konig, to hunt Vasilli Zeitsev down because Zeitsev is killing a lot of Germans and demoralizing the Army.

            To recreate the scene, the production crew went to great lengths to find a scene that would best mirror the actual battle scenes depicted. Because the actual city of Stalingrad does not exist anymore, they chose a city in Germany (Enemy At The Gates).  I have been to Germany and, in fact, this makes sense because the climate in Germany is very cold, muddy and dirty which made for a perfect place to create the scenery needed. The original city of Stalingrad was located on the river of the Volga. To recreate the opening scene where Russian soldiers are sent on boats across the Volga was actually filed near open mine pits towards the Polish border (Enemy At the Gates).

            After deep searching, I was able to find a credible analysis of the factual background to this film. Reviewer John C. Tibbets of the American Historical Review, pointed out some flaws in the historical accuracy of the film. Some of the facts are left intact, while other events were highly inflated to make a good Hollywood film.  For example, he points out that there is no historic documentation to the romantic rivalry between Danilov and Zeitsev, as far as the interest of a young female Russian soldier goes.

            Here are some truths. There was a young Sheppard boy in the Russian Army who rose up to be one of the great heroes to Russia out of WW2.  Tibbets goes on to explain that the film was created from the classic text written by William Craig Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad (Source 1). This text backs up the facts about Zeitsev. It also backs up the account of a German aristocrat coming from Berlin to hunt him down. Political officer Danilov, who helps build up the propaganda surrounding Vasilli Zeitsev was in fact an actual political agitator at the scene (Source 1).

            H-Net Online. Reviewed by David R Stone, puts this film on the equivalent of a teenage love film, with the exception of the great war scenes, and set production (Stone,H-Net Reviews). Here is one thing Stone had to say,“To end on a brighter note, Enemy at the Gates has at the very least boosted the number of my students who drop by the office to ask questions about Stalingrad. I only wish it had done a better job of giving them good answers.” (Stone,H-Net Reviews). It seems that Tibbets has company from David R Stone as to the melodramatic way this battle was portrayed by Hollywood.

What becomes inflated is the accounts of Zeitsev’s romance with a young Russian soldier, whom Danilov had a love interest with. This creates a major problem in the movie because Danilov betrays the very man he has publicly built up because he is jealous that this young Russian has not returned his love. In the movie, she falls madly in love with Zeitsev.  Tibbets says that the romantic injections create what he calls a “hokum straight out of the standard Hollywood combat films of the 1940s”(Tibbets pg 1108). He also criticizes the missing information on how the Russians did in fact defeat the Germans at the battle for Stalingrad. Tibbets is kind enough to enlighten the reader to the fact that the Germans were flanked by the Russian Army which cut them off from reinforcements and supplies. It was a miserable battle for the Germans as a quarter million of them died from starvation and disease. Only about 100,000 of them were left to live to surrender. The Russian Army was able to shatter the image of an unbreakable NAZI army. (Tibbets pg 1108).

            In conclusion, the above information is the limit of complaint from my reviewers as to the factual accuracy of the movie. He noticed a few other minor details such as the ending credits have a musical theme that sounds note for note with the theme from Schindler’s List (Tibbets pg 1108).  The movie produces a lot of human emotion because of the strong appeal to nationalism on both the German and Russian side. It is the first war movie that I have seen where the American point of view is completely left out of the movie. Americans are generally not very keen on our own history so I assume that most people generalize that the war in Europe always had American involvement. This movie proves otherwise.

The characters are very strong. The problem with this movie is that if you had to make a movie just on the facts alone, it would end up no farther than an epic tale on the Discovery Channel. Hollywood has to bolster up the scenes to capture as deep of an audience as they can. In that regards, the movie did very well, even through the minor factual misrepresentations, or inflations.

 

Sources Cited

1.      www.jstore.com American Historical Association. is http://www.jstor.org/stable/2692531

Accessed May 27, 2013

2.      H-Net Online. Reviewed by David R Stone. Published on H-War Jun 2002. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15019 Accessed May 31, 2013

3.      Jewish Virtual Library. A division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ww2/Stalingrad.html Accessed May 31, 2013.

4.      Enemy at the Gates. DVD Movie starring Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weiz, Bob Hoskins, and Ed Harris. Special features include behind the scenes featurette, exclusive cast and crew interviews.