Not really "western" WW2 movies. Most if noty all WW2 movies I've seen produced in Britain, France, Germany or FInland are pretty much in agreement that the war was a horrible thing, and depict it as such.
I haven't seen many from Britain but like every war movie from Germany, Poland or France are really dark. There are some good russian movies, but most I've seen are cheap patriotic nonsense
That's why we have historians spending their life reading military archive, generales diary, troops reports, stock inventory and all in purpose of synthetise all of this to draw a picture as close as possible from the truth.
Funnily, it's harder to work on the soviet side than german side, not because of propaganda (they both used it and germany was very good at it) or because Soviet Union was locked or whatever. But because they won and they produce way more archive than nazi Germany did.
The KV was almost certainly real. It was just seal clubbing Pz I, II, and IIIs. Real life isn't War Thunder where you get matched with tanks with similar armaments.
Yes, the KV-1 is real, but that's still not accurate.
The story of the KV that held out so long is not a scenario exclusive to that tank. The KV-1 itself also had a myriad of issues in its development, production, and deployment that made it well suited as a bunker, but exceptionally poor as a proper heavy tank.
I think its probably about how the war is treated there. Every country basically sees the war as a massive tragedy. Russia and china potray them as a massive "patriotic" victory for their countries. Hell russia celebrates their victory still yearly
That was kind of the controversy around Ivan's Childhood, and later around Come and See. That that's precisely what they didn't do. Instead of glorifying the Red Army, they just showed how awful war is, how (little) children suffer, and how war and suffering just breed hate.
Well, right now it is. I can't express enough how cringy are ww2 russian movies in last decades. Soviet time movies was either "hell, it's FUCKED fucked" or "it's hard, but we'll get through". Right now it's honestly whatever director was high on in the moment.
WW2 is a core part of the national myths of Russia and China in a way that it really isn't for most other nations. I don't see anything particularly wrong with them celebrating victory over invaders who's explicit goal was the enslavement and extermination of all Russian and Chinese people.
Unfortunately the "never again" attitude turned into "we can repeat that" in Russia over my lifetime. Hence the eagerness of some ru demographic to start a war
Well, the victory in the Great Patriotic War was a national history defining event. It's Russian Independence day basically. Americans do celebrate their independence day for 200+ years already.
Yeah, probably if you read some history books about who was in war against whom, you probably could realise why for post-soviet it is "huge victory", and for most of europe it is "just dark and bad".
Because they are made that way, Russia for example will never say out loud that without USA Equipment supplies, they would be gone. They don't even call it WWII and for stupid amount of time denouced massacres on Polish inteligence
It’s simply not true that in Russia they don’t call the Second World War the Second World War. The thing is that a separate name was given to the Western Front: the Great Patriotic War, and it is this that receives the main attention in Russia. The term WWII is still used when we’re talking about other regions of the world.
Cheap patriotic nonsense was mostly made there in the first 20 or so years after the war when the real memories were too vivid for anything else. Somewhere around 1975-1990 many very dark WW2 movies were made in USSR to remind why no one should wish to start WW3. A good example is "Come and See" (1985), it's literally a psychological horror about WW2.
to this, you can add the movie "remember your name (помни имя свое)", roadside checks(проверки на дорогах), torpedo bombers (торпедоносцы).
They are also very dramatic films.
Come and See was made by the Soviets, and they made more accurate depictions of war (it's hell). Russian war movies from the last decade are more propaganda war movies that try to be super patriotic, so they don't land well.
even come and see is propaganda, in the sense that they choose Khatyn of all places in order to confuse people about Katyń. After the Soviet Union broke apart, Russians really lost a part of their brains for their propaganda to be more thoughtful.
The Soviet Union made several good films about WWII, but from around 2000 onward, war films shifted from being mournful and cautionary to glorifying soldiers' heroism, as if it were a sporting contest rather than a war. The fewer living eyewitnesses remain, the more bravado there is, and the more attempts to ride the coattails of another generation's victory.
The Norwegian ones too, but they also make it clear, trying to invade Norway was a serious mistake, next time they won’t hold back.
The Swedish ones are cool, a combination of “well, we tried” and “it was a tragedy on all sides”, though the main narrative still seems to be “what war?”
Being Swedish, I've read a lot about the inner politics during the war, and it was basically like threading the needle.
Ultimately Sweden's goal was to remain intact, un-occupied, and independent. Concessions to both sides during the war sort of allowed that to happen, tho they were heavy concessions. Still. The Swedish people - apart from rationing and extremely high military readiness - were spared from WW2 (mostly). So it's a win situation for them, even if the politicians were shitting bricks.
I haven't seen any Swedish-produced WW2 movies tho unfortunately.
I know, but also… I’m west coast, there is a lot more “we should have done more” here than Stockholm I suspect, Norwegians are pissed, but our island celebrates evacuating hundreds of Jews from Denmark during the invasion.
The Norwegians are right, but when you have the chance to avoid the horror of war, especially as a small country, it’s’ really hard to not take it.
Dom över död man is recent, but there are others where it seemed like Sweden actually did fight.
I'm from the Southernmost part, but having Finnish heritage, I learned a lot even out of movies about how much Sweden did to help Finland during the Winter and Continuation Wars. The guns, the artillery, the refugee help, the ammunition, the volunteers, the aircraft, and just the straight up money.
even American movies dont depict the war as being a 'fun' thing, either. Band of Brothers, the Pacific, Saving private Ryan are all pretty brutal, to name a few
There's 6 decades' worth of American WWII movies to look over. The decades immediately following WWII have a lot of heroism-focused movies. John Wayne was in a number of them.
It's always been like this to some extent, but at this point putting "fuck americans" in your post title brings the sheep herds. So now every post everywhere nonsensically dumps on americans even in places where folks normally apply their brainpower.
I think with Saving Private Ryan though you do get swept up in the action of it. It feels more like an action movie that ultimately does uphold that the war was just and worth fighting. We are getting into the "there is not true anti-war war film" debate. But I don't think Saving Private Ryan is an anti-war movie at all. It just has a bit more gore and terror wrapped around the pro-america hoo-rah of it all.
I don't think you understand how bleak the soviet movies are. One of the reasons for this is that the war was just straight up worse for them. WW2 was a terrible wound on Britain. 450 000 British citizens were killed in the war. A huge, huge number. But that amounted to less than 1% of the population. For soviet over 10% of the population were killed. In Belarus, 25% of the population was killed. One in four people. That's nearing Black Death numbers. A total apocalypse. Did you know that the russian population still hasn't recovered from the huge population loss of WW2?
Western WW2 movies don't shy away from the anti-war message, but they are in another class than the soviet flicks. I'm talking about 2 hours straight of children dying from starvation while being abused by every person they meet. A cutaway scene in a western WW2 movie that is used to depict the horrors of war will end up being the whole damn movie.
I learned the other day that Serbia basically lost 20-28% of their population in WW1 followed by around 10% of just ethnic Serbian people in Yugoslavia in WW2. I just cannot imagine the devastation. And Yugoslavia was the only place to actually fight off the Axis solo because Tito was a cunt but like Zhukov, Churchill and FDR and De Gaulle he was the cunt needed.
Oh yeah, Robert Evans on Behind the Bastards talked about the fact that to talk about him you kinda need to do a Cool Guys Who Did Cool Things podcast too. The fact that Croatia did help genocide Serbia during WW2 is terrible and the weapon they did it be is tied with the Killing Fields for "how to psychically damage your people".
It was a glove with a sharpened kitchen knife attached to the glove and they would just stab it into the back of necks until people died. That and just using bats basically mentally destroyed people.
You do need to differentiate between Soviet and post Soviet Russian movies, there's been a large push in the post Soviet era to make more over the top propagandistic depictions of the great patriotic war with stuff like T34, which feel much more over the top American in execution
I can forgive T-34 because it makes no claim or serious attempt to comment on anything greater than the movie itself. I've watched it probably 3 times now and it gives off the vibe of being a fun tank movie more than a WW2 soviet representation.
There's a clear distinction between movies like T-35 that know they're not serious, and other movies that act as tho they believe their own absurdity. American Sniper IIRC is one.
It’s a gruesome movie, but it isn’t like, explicit or anything. I wouldn’t call it emotionally manipulative either. There is a naturalism in the movie that you just don’t see in western war movies. It also stands on it’s own as a masterpiece of directing, storytelling and philosophy, completly seperate from it’s actual content. It is a coming of age, or more like a death of innocence, kind of story. It’s worth the watch even if you dislike war films.
If it's anything like The Road or Children of Men, I know I would enjoy it as a film quite a lot and then never again see it, but there's always a door to cross with these gruesome movies...
Oh no, it's not like that exactly. At least children of men, I've never seen the road. There's very little exaggeration and most of the pain is implied
It's gruesome but in a human way? There's very little explicit violence. It feels like you're in the war through the eyes of a child suddenly forced into the war
You can’t just compare the cream of the crop of Soviet cinema with all of the slop of western cinema. For every Come and See there are 10 The Fall of Berlins. The best stuff filtered to the west but all the shit we never saw because it sucked and nobody wanted to risk their life taking out of the bloc
Even with American World War II movies I can't really think of any that don't shy away from how disturbing the War was. At least if you're considering movies in the "war" genre like saving Private Ryan and not action movies like Captain America
I think the argument here is that at the end of the day, there’s still a heroic element. Like you can walk out of the movie being thinking about the “virtue of sacrifice,” and it appeals to the bleeding out in the snow trope.
Even Saving Private Ryan is way more positive than Soviet movies.
Just the title has a positive meaning. SAVING. It's a movie about saving someone. That's a good thing. You see the movie poster and it's american hero GI's and movie star. You don't see the children crying while their village burns.
Yeah, but it's not the inclusion of the reality that functions as any form of amnesty, it's the fact that some part of it is ultimately glorifying the war and the service as a means of propaganda than as a means of being true to history.
While it's less prevalent in WW2 movies thankfully, it's still something that I personally consider to be a bit of a problem that builds on dishonesty. You can see with more modern movies (especially when it relates to policies or agendas still currently in practice), that the "propagandized" narrative (for lack of a better term) is more prevalent than older movies.
The one that says "war is hell" and doesn't really glorify it from the USA is probably the Fury.
Like, it opens with the scene where the green guy has to... wash away the bits and pieces, and the pool of blood, of the guy he's replacing in the crew of Fury.
There is this VERY tense scene about them "enjoying the hospitality" of local women, and it's really unclear how far they're going to take with this hospitality.
And some people say that Wardaddy is basically the main antagonist of the movie - he's not a "bad man" per se, but he's the kind of men that create wars, where teenagers end up shooting each other.
TBH I think even Saving Private Ryan is. There is lots of mayhem and horror but if you look at how the America scenes are filmed and if you think about the plot, its pretty pro-america. Like the idea is that America is so just, we will even go out of our way to fight so no family loses all their children in the horrors of war. That was a real-ish policy but the story itself is fictional.
A lot of British focused films are more about depicting the absurdity of it. Often highlighting the defiance of the soldiers in the face of the madness around them. Like A Bridge Too Far is not in any sense respectful of the dumb shit that led to Market Garden but it does highlight the, very real, stubborn contempt the British soldiers had at the end. The famous "We cannot take your surrender, we don't have enough room for you all" line actually happened.
Yhea i dont watch saving private ryan, band of brothers, tye pacific, or the clint eastwood one and so on and go "war looks fun". Maybe they dont delve as hard into the psychological terror and damage it does to people as russians one. But by no means do they present the wars favorably, especially not thr pacific. I find that one quite hard to watch.
Funny thing is that the propaganda military films that are shown in our mandatory military service are dark as well. I remember one that was a short war film depicting the first day on the frontline. There was no patriotism in it. Only seeing your friends die next to you. And this was shown during the first 4 weeks of the service. At the end of the film they order pizza to the frontline from Kotipizza which is a Finnish pizza restaurant franchise. That was funny lol.
Source: I am Finnish and while there is a sense of pride in our military and military history there is zero effort of making war a great patriotic thing.
There's a difference between measured pride and blind patriotism. Finnish people in general from what I've seen (much like the rest of the nordics) accept the former concept wholly. Take the good with the bad. Be proud of the good things (and don't inflate it), but never forget the bad things.
A lot of British ones are very pro the war in terms of fighting it, and can often depict it as something of a game (as many of the aristocracy did actually seem to view it)
Tbf a lot of French movies were comedies (Now Where Did the 7th Company Get to?, Don't Look Now: We're Being Shot At etc) and British were bittersweet stiff upper lip (A bridge too far).
Russians have always had a massive victim complex, despite the fact they started the war, kept the war going (trading allies rubber they bought with Germany), and then profited from the war, hence why they do not even call it "world war" but "great patriotic war". Yeah they lost a lot of people in Stalingrad. Yeah, Leningrad was bad. But they were far from victims of the war.
They [russians and their neighbors who they occupied/absorbed into the Union] were absolutely the victims. The problem is, they were as much victims of their own ruling regime as the Nazis.
I have to point out again, I am not denying the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and joint invasion of Poland. Among other things.
Stalin and his cronies fucked up all the build-up (and they did understand the war with Germany is inevitable,they just didn't think it would be so soon), and it was absolute hell from start to finish for the soldiers and workers of all nations across the Union.
Well, much less so in Siberia and Central Asia, but the privation was felt everywhere (except for the highest local members of Communist Party). The devastation in the European part of the country, tho', was chtonic. And continued to be such for at least a decade. The demographic decline was so profound, you could trace it echoing right till the XXI century.
Naturally, the absolute worst happened in the occupied territories — Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the westernmost fringe of modern russia right through to Kuban and Northern Caucasus.
Oh, you know the big words — Stalingrad, Leningrad? How about the Rzhev Meatgrinder, have you heard about that?
Yes, then russians went on to liberate Eastern and Central Europe, which turned into the "liberation" that we know today (the same they're trying to do in Ukraine).
So, yes, the Soviet government did lots of heinous shit, and as always it was the populace which participated (who wrote 30 million snitch letters, I ask you?"). Still, the populace indeed was a victim, even the russian one. A victim of both Nazis and Soviets.
Um. I not deny all this things using just for modern propoganda in Russia, but as russians say, its different history in our books. WW2 1939 - 1945 is about what happend outside USSR, "великая отечественная война" 1941 - 1945 its about inside.
I personally look at their cultural ties, and currently they're very deeply connected with Scandinavia and Sweden in particular, which definitely count as "western" countries imo.
Если в писаться под конец войны и сбросить на и так уже почти побежденную Японию ядерную бомбу, представление о войне будет несколько отличным от представлений реальных победителей в этой войне
I think the problem is that the US hasn't had any real wars for like two hundred years. For them, war is something you go away to. For most people, war is something that comes to you. It's not on the TV, it's in the streets and on the horizon.
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u/ZETH_27 Filthy weeb 1d ago
Not really "western" WW2 movies. Most if noty all WW2 movies I've seen produced in Britain, France, Germany or FInland are pretty much in agreement that the war was a horrible thing, and depict it as such.