debor044

Part I: Polish-Soviet War, 1919-1920 In early August 1920 the Polish-Soviet conflict had finally arrived at the concluding final months of major combat operations on what the Soviets considered then (and where historians the Western (Polish) Front. Staged to attack and overrun Warsaw the capital of Poland, the Red Army of General Mikhail Tukhachevsky was prepared to conquer Poland with its considerable military might defending the Vistula defenses from north to south. Advancing quickly from Galicia and the South-West Front in the Ukraine in the first week of August the Konarmiya waited to gather strength and for the artillery to be brought up so they could cross the Vistula and take the city for the Proletariat and for comrades Lenin and Trotsky. Polish machinegun crew during the defense of Warsaw August 1920 For the Red Army on the Western (Polish) Front in early August 1920, a massive shift of armies and fronts occurred in which Poles reformed lines while Tukhachevsky ordered his gen...

Cross of Iron, directed by Sam Peckinpah. EMI Films, 1977. 132 minutes.   Based on The Willing Flesh by Willi Heinrich (1955). Reviewed by: Ben Sparks, Worcester State University 2012 Famed 1960’s and 1970’s director Sam Peckinpah’s, Cross of Iron, is a gritty, dark, violent, and yet highly stylized and analytical film, detailing the daily struggles and dangers faced by Wehrmacht soldiers stationed on the Eastern Front during World War II from 1943-1945. In particular the audience experiences the deeds of anti-hero Sergeant Rolf Steiner, played by James Coburn, and his ragtag platoon during their deployment in Russian at the Kuban bridgehead in 1943.  The title of the film comes from the other lead, Captain Stransky, played by Maximilian Schell who is an ambitious aristocrat of the Prussian officer corps. He sought transfer to the Eastern Front in order to win the Iron Cross. This “heroic horses ass” as he calls himself in jest, helps to carry much of the later plot of the fi...