What do you all think of the movie Stalingrad? I'm currently reading 'Enemy at the Gate' by W. Craig (NOT the book that the movie bearing the same name was based on). How true to history is it?

By the way, the book by William Craig is a great read and depicts the battle through the eyes of everyone from the ground troops to Stalin and Hitler and draws on evidence from diaries, letters and hard historical material - worth a read if you can borrow it.

Cheers,

Cokes.

Cokes,

I got the book, stopped reading it in about the middle of the book. Got busy with other things.

The movie was pretty good. I mean its the only one there is out there that actually deals with the historical prospect of Stalingrad.

~Chip :-)

I liked the movie. It gave a reality to what the fighting must have been like in Russia.
I also liked the fact that the movie showed German soldiers as regular human beings. Too often Hollywood depicts every German soldier as some blood thirsty Totenkopf SS out to kill Jews and Gypsies. The winter battle against the T-34's was a great scene.
The recent movie "Enemy ot the Gates" was visually stunning and graphic. The storyline was a little weak, but that's Hollywood.
Peter

"Stalingrad" the movie was a good piece of cinema. I like Enemy at the Gates mainly for the subject (and I own the DVD) but the director could have done a couple of things better.

While the Zaitsev story is only a couple of pages in the book EatG, there are other elements that are also taken from there as well (Sasha for example). The best version of the story in print actually is "War of the Rats" by author David L. Robbins (see here for more book details.) Robbins has really done his research and has put for a more historically accurate, detailed and credible account of the sniper duel and Zaitsev's story than the movie director and screenwriters did. It's in the form of an historical novel, but was published in the Summer of 2001 when EatG was already in production I think.

I have the dvd of Stalingrad not a bad movie, Im reading Stalingrad by Antony Beevor havent made up my mind about it yet, I also have Berlin by thesame authur.

Anthony Beevor does not like Russians. Keep that in mind when reading his books. It colours his portrayals.