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Soviet tanks were moved out of the salient to form a large reserve force for counter-offensives. The Battle of Kursk was the first time in the Second World War that a German strategic offensive was halted before it could break through enemy defences and penetrate to its strategic depths.
Factual error: None of the German tanks are accurate representations of German WWII types. They are all post war US variants. ie. M47 Patton Tanks. [Still a mistake, but an elaboration: This is a common problem in depicting German tanks: few, if any, survived the war. The few museum examples wouldn't be released for movie work, and certainly WHERE, some 20 years after the war, would one find a brigade's worth of running Tiger II tanks? Never mind that Kampgruppe Pieper, which Hessler's command is loosely based on, actually used Mark IV and Panther tanks. There was one King Tiger battalion, and it was in reserve well behind KG Peiper. The M47s versus the M24 Chafees (mistakenly called 'Shermans' at times) is a fairly accurate comparison of the respective sizes, firepower, and other combat capabilities of the respective tanks. Some other movies, like 'Kelly's Heroes', have their 'Tigers' mocked-up with sheet metal, wire mesh, and sacking over a different type of tank (in that case, T-34/85s of the Yugoslav army are mocked up as Tiger Is, a fairly decent job).]
Continuity mistake: Near the beginning, Lt. Col. Daniel Kiley is in a scout plane and flies over Col. Martin Hessler, who is in a German staff car below. Kiley tells the pilot to 'rev the engine' just above the car to entice Hessler to look up at them, so he can get a good photograph of his face. The plan works, and the ground level movie camera shows Hessler looking up. When the 'photo from the air' is later developed, it shows Hessler looking up from the ground level camera's perspective, eyes focused about 30 degrees behind the airplane and giving a profile of Hessler.
Factual error: In the final scene showing the retreating German army, the land they are travelling over is fairly flat and devoid of trees. The Battle of the Bulge was fought in the thickly forested and hilly Ardennes Forest.
Factual error: All of the jeeps used by American forces are of post-war design - most probably CJ-3 (M38) models - recognisable by their one-piece windscreens. Some of them have been modified to somewhat resemble the WW2 model by moving the spare wheel to the rear, but most of them still have the spare fitted to the side further identifying them as post-war models.
david barlowContinuity mistake: In the scene where Col. Hessler is visited by a courtesan, he refuses her 'services', opens the door and hands her her fur coat. In the next shot, the door is closed again and the colonel still has the courtesan's fur coat.
Audio problem: In the opening, Lt. Col. Daniel Kiley is following the German staff car in the scout plane. As the car swerves back and forth on the gravel road, you hear the tires squealing. This would not happen on such a road.
Factual error: During the scene (near the end of the film) in which Col. Hessler's tanks attack a hilltop fuel depot, American GI's counterattack by rolling burning 55 gallon gasoline drums at the German tanks. When one of the burning drums hit Col. Hessler's tank, the tank IMMEDIATELY explodes and its turret blows off. The blowing off of the turret indicates that something inside the tank (most likely the ammunition) exploded. However, in order for a burning gasoline drum to cause such an explosion, the burning gasoline has to heat the interior of the tank to make it hot enough for the ammunition inside to explode.
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Factual error: The 'German' halftracks are all in fact American halftracks painted in German colours. The vehicles used by the two sides looked very different.
NecrothespFactual error: The American vehicles (jeeps, trucks) in many scenes are painted in 1960s camo of the Spanish army, who loaned some of the vehicles for filming.
Factual error: The US spotter plane used in the film is a Cessna Birddog, the prototype of which first flew in 1949.
Deliberate mistake: In the scene inside General Kohler's command center when Kohler is giving Colonel Hessler a tour of the war room he points out to Hessler a clock on the wall whose increments represent 1 hour and that the attack has to be over within so many hours. Later in the movie, just when the attack starts, this dormant clock's hand immediately springs forward and ticks through 2 increments, thus representing 2 hours passing in 2 seconds.
Continuity mistake: When the German saboteurs dressed in American MP uniforms jump out of their plane, all the parachutes are black, except two that are white. When the scene cuts to those soldiers on the ground gathering their parachutes to hide them, they are ALL white.
Revealing mistake: In the scene where a tank is being pushed to the side by another, it's clear the tanks are miniatures.
Factual error: The Malmédy Massacre was not carried out by specially-prepared machine-guns hidden in the back of trucks, but by the guards surrounding the prisoners.
NecrothespFactual error: The German panzergrenadiers follow the tanks on foot right from the beginning of the advance. Panzergrenadiers were armoured infantry and travelled in halftracks, only dismounting to fight. Even ordinary infantry advancing with tanks would have used trucks - to do otherwise would have slowed the tanks down to a crawl and rendered them ineffective. There was a shortage of fuel in the Ardennes campaign, but the panzergrenadiers did use vehicles during the advance (except for a couple of battalions which used bicycles).
NecrothespOther mistake: The camera focus is on Lt. Weaver during the German armor attack, but off to his left (barely in the scene) Sgt. Duquesne drops a live rifle grenade as he is foolishly flipping them in the air before securing them to his rifle and firing them at the Germans.
Scott215Other mistake: One of General Grey's orderlies begins to leave the room before he even issues the order for the orderlies to vacate the room.
Scott215Factual error: When he meets the general at the beginning of the film, Hessler refers to Conrad as 'my corporal'. He actually wears the rank insignia of an Unterfeldwebel, equivalent to a sergeant in the British Army and a staff sergeant in the US Army.
NecrothespContinuity mistake: Before the massacre scene, a German truck is reversing with a German soldier walking with it on the left side of the screen. When Lieutenant Weaver looks to his right, the same truck is backing up, and the same German soldier is now on the right side of the screen. The film was obviously flipped.
Scott215Factual error: At German Army headquarters, the General tells Hessler of the new Tiger tanks that will be used in the offensive, which takes place mid-December 1944. Presumably, these are the Tiger II (King or Royal Tiger) models. At this point in the war, 'King' Tigers were not new, having fought against the British and Canadians in Normandy back in July of 1944, and against the Americans at Aachen in September of 1944.
Scott215Let's be honest, one of the most thrilling aspects of war films are the scenes of battle. Yes, war is hell.
Yes, many soldiers die horrible deaths. But yet, there's some part of us as war film buffs that enjoys the visceral experience of seeing a massive battle on-screen. The bloodier the better.
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I suppose there's a dark part of the human psyche that appreciates carnage (though somehow it's always more exciting when safely viewed from a television set!) So without further ado, here is a list of some of the best battle scenes of all time. The opening of Saving Private Ryan was shocking for audiences. It opened with one of the most visceral, realistic, re-enactments of the D-Day Normandy beach landing ever put to film: The boats churn toward the shore, the soldiers inside vomiting from anxiety, their hands shaking. And then, as soon as the ramp starts to lower, machine gun fire mows the soldiers down, many of whom jump over the sides of the boat where bullets rip through the water, which is quickly stained crimson with blood. Many soldiers drown, held down by the weight of their own gear. And for those who survive and get to the beach, the real battle has just started. Interestingly, another one of the greatest battle scenes of all time also occurs at Normandy.
Instead of a though, this time it's a war movie about aliens. Edge of Tomorrow pits Tom Cruise against an alien horde and the first battle of the film (actually, the only battle of the film) is epically massive in scope.
The camera pulls back to the sky to reveal miles of thousands of soldiers engaged in fierce fighting, each pixel of the screen moving simultaneously. It's too much for the eyeballs to take in and absorb.
It's the sort of scene that requires repeated viewing, if only so that your eyes can attempt to focus on a different part of the battle. After a dozen viewings or so, you'll probably be able to claim that you absorbed at least a quarter of the battle.
If the Americans had Omaha Beach on the western front, in the east, the Russians had the, a do or die moment for the Russian country - if they lost Stalingrad, they'd likely lose everything. What makes the battle of Stalingrad so terrible, and the opening of this film so memorable is that the soldiers who fought in this war were so poorly equipped that they didn't even have rifles. The Russian military leadership simply threw bodies into the fight, attempting to achieve victory through a war of attrition, knowing that Mother Russia had an endless supply of poor peasant boys that could be sacrificed for the war effort. The Russian soldiers were considered so disposable that only every other soldier received a rifle, the guy behind him received five bullets and was to pick-up the rifle when the first soldier died. With the entire town leveled, and artillery falling all around them, the Russian soldiers run into machine gun fire to certain death.
Roars a speech about freedom, his face painted in blue war paint. The 'fight for freedom' speech is usually fairly trite and cringe-inducing, but in this film, it's thrilling. And then the battle starts.
And this is battle at it's most violent, most brutal, and most horrible - old-fashioned battle, hand-to-hand with swords and axes. Whereas most Hollywood films traditionally would show an enemy soldier slashed with a sword and then simply fall to the ground without showing the blood, in Braveheart the limbs go flying, and the blood runs in rivers. Has never been portrayed so violently on film before. (Realistic violence in war films is one of my '.' The Battle of Hoth, which opens the second film in the Star Wars saga is one of the most iconic scenes in cinematic history.
A meager line of Rebel soldiers dressed against the cold look to the horizon through binoculars to see massive Empire war machines walking towards them. Add in spaceship fights, a ground war, and hundreds of rushing Arctic gear covered stormtroopers, and you have one of the most thrilling moments in cinema history. For an early 1980s audience, it was spectacle beyond belief. Not much needs to be said about this real-life, except that it involved 400 Calvary soldiers facing off against 4,000 North Vietnamese soldiers.and the U.S. Soldiers were ultimately victorious. The battle, which takes up most of We Were Soldiers, is violent and intense, as one might imagine.
Of particular notice is one scene where Mel Gibson's character has to call air strikes at 'Danger Close,' which is to say, practically on top of his own soldiers who are at risk of being overrun. When an errant air strike takes out a squad of his own soldiers, Gibson quickly brushes it off and continues on with the battle. I'm not sure whether that's sociopathy or courage, but it's certainly a sight to behold.
Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans is a gritty, violent, intense re-imagining of the little portrayed French and Indian War. Especially thrilling is the attack on the English column which starts with the British marching in single file through the woods as they do (this is the same Army that engages in battle by forming straight lines and firing). Then, from the wood line, there is the shriek of Indian war cries and then the massacre begins as the Indians, who feel no need to form orderly rows in order to fight as the British do, decimate the ranks of the orderly queues of British infantry. The scene is so vivid that it's one of the few battle scenes where you feel as if you were there.
The chaos seems real. And most importantly, the choreography of the battle makes sense.
Almost two decades later, this remains one of my favorite battle scenes of all time. The iconic flag-raising photograph over is one of the most famous images of the 20th century.
And we've all heard of the battle, but few films have captured its ferociousness as well as the HBO mini-series The Pacific. At the time of the battle, the island has been reduced to mud and rubble, as U.S. Marines charge head first into the yawning mouth of Hell as machine gun fire and mortars explode all around them.
It's also a battle that lasted for an entire month! - and cost the lives of some 26,000 Marines. As a former infantry soldier from Afghanistan, I can't imagine experiencing this level of war or combat, and it's the sort of vivid re-enactment that gives me a whole new respect for the veterans of the Second World War.
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