STALINGRAD 301
and Reiser then decide to desert. They steal medical tags from corpses to feign being
wounded and head towards Pitomnik Airfield, in the center of the “cauldron”
(pocket), in hopes of catching a medical evacuation plane out of Sta lin grad. How-
ever, they arrive too late and watch as the final transport heads out without them
and the airfield is riddled with bullets from the Rus sian forces. They return to their
unit in a shelter and see that Musk is afflicted by a bad case of trench foot. When
a German plane arrives with supplies, the unit hurries out to secure provisions.
Haller accosts them at gunpoint and is taken down, but he kills GeGe as he hits
the ground. Making a desperate play for his life, Haller tells the men that he has a
stash of supplies hidden at a local house, but Otto executes him. The men find the
house in question full of provisions, but they also find Irina bound to Haller’s bed
as his sex slave. Von Witzland frees Irina, and she tells the men that she collabo-
rated with the Germans. The squad help themselves to food and drink, while a
feverish and dying Musk tries to convince them to fight on. Otto commits suicide
instead. Once Musk dies, Rollo brings his body outside and sees the remaining
members of the German Sixth Army conceding to the Rus sian forces. Irina, Wit-
zland, and Reiser make their way through the snow to escape, but shots from the
Soviets kill Irina and mortally wound Witzland. The Germans manage to get away.
Witzland eventually succumbs to his wounds and perishes in Reiser’s arms. Rei-
ser holds his dead commander, thinking about North Africa as he eventually freezes
to death.
Reception
Sta lin grad premiered in Munich, Germany on 21 January 1993 but was not released
in the United States until 24 May 1995, after it had already gone to video. Box office
numbers are unknown, but anecdotal information suggests that the movie was not
profitable— perhaps not surprising, insofar as Sta lin grad is one of the bleakest mov-
ies ever made. It did, however, receive mostly positive reviews. Stephen Holden
notes that Sta lin grad “has some of the most virtuosic battle scenes to be found in a
modern war film” but also observes that the movie “is so determined to show the
horrors of war that [it] doesn’t devote quite enough time to its major characters”
(Holden, 1995, p. C19). Peter Stack called the film “grimly beautiful” and found
the soldiers depicted as “anything but reverent toward their leaders... Sta lin -
grad is rough yet fascinating viewing. Delving into the brutal realities of war
with an almost docudrama style, it renders a bitter, almost choking sense of the
futility of war through the destruction not only of bodies, but of the human
spirit” (Stack, 1995).
Reel History Versus Real History
In its display of uniforms, weapons, and tanks and its visceral rendering of com-
bat in urban and open settings, including severe casualties, atrocities, and the abys-
mal conditions faced by the trapped remnants of the Sixth Army, Sta lin grad
achieves a high degree of historical accuracy. Focused at the squad level, the film
is not able to convey or even suggest the enormous scope and complexity of the
Battle of Sta lin grad (a task better left to documentaries).