Feldgrau.net

For me it would be about the Caen sector of Normandy. Since we're fantasizing it would include Goodwood and Spring. Sigh...Jurgen Prochnow is too old to be Meyer or von Luck but they could come up with somebody. Now who could be Pip Roberts?

Re Heydrich - there was a pretty good version of that called Operation Daybreak. The Heydrich was maximally sinister - one scene showed him at a Christmas celebration where all the little kids in the swastika neckerchiefs sang carols. Very creepy. Good action scenes too. And it showed a Himmler (Donald Pleasance should have every Himmler role - after Eagle Has Landed he owns it) who was not heartbroken to hear of Heydrich's mishap!.

cheers
Reb

A movie I've always wanted to see would be about operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain that never took place. It would be from perspectives of both - Germans and English soldiers as well.

I would also like to see a German version of BoB. Panzers would be a nice subject for a movie but you need a very high budget for it. Also I think you can make the movie more 'dramatic' if you take regular infantry.

I have been playing around with an idea for a movie for a while. Ive been to the school of Arts and 1 class was about movie making. I never wrote down this idea due the lack of time and experience. But maybe someday Ill write it down. Its an idea for a low budget movie preferable for a European movie maker. Here is a short synopsys:

At the start of Barbarossa we follow a communication/radio unit of the Wehrmacht. The unit is at start very excited about the new war. They have the feeling like whole Germany they can defeat the Bolsjevists. Pride and optimistic feelings fade away when they face the horror of war. They dont engage combat but they see the aftermath of what troops have done in the invasion. As a radio Unit they hear snippets of the German propaganda campaign, and if they see things turn out a bit differently from what they see at the front thay start to questioning what they are doing here.
Things get very hectic when they are chased down by the russians back into Germany. The unit have to engage combat to hold of the Russians while trying to reach the Elbe to the western Allies.

There is hardly any fighting in the movie except in the final stage. Its more about the feeling of the young soldiers.

Mooyman,
You should read Siegfried Knappe's book "Soldat." It has everything you just waned in a movie, plus his time in a Soviet prison.

-Rick

Thx Rick,

Ill ad that one to my Amazon wish list :)

An interesting idea would be a movie based on Paul Watkin's novel, Night Over Day Over Night. This is about a 17 year old who joins the Waffen SS and fights in the Ardennes.

In case any of you haven't seen it there already is one called The Bridge about some young HJ types called to resist the American tanks towards the end of the war. I saw it many years ago but it is apparently still to be found on some military oriented sites.

It is certainly worth seeing and while it has plenty of action it does exactly nothing to glorify war. When they actually manage to shoot down some Americans they are shocked by their own actions, particularly when one wounded keeps screaming.

The best scene (or most impressive might be a better term) is when one kid fires his panzerfaust from a window - frying the folks behind him.

Reb

How about one in which an Ukrainian man joins one of the Ukrainian security units that fought the Soviet partisans. I feel this might provide a honest look at why so many ethnic groups and nations fought on the German side against Stalinist Communism and for their own nation.

Cordially,

Freiritter

Frei

You might want to check out "Stalin" with Robt Duval. Duval was actually too good - the darn movie gave me the creeps! The guy who played Beria was enough to put me off my feed for days. Actually outclassed Donald Pleasance as Himmler (who really was good in that role).

It might be interesting to see a movie about the situation in the Baltic states as well. Those guys didn't join the SS just for the flashy uniforms.

cheers
Reb

I havent read the previous pages but `eres a suggestion;

A nice, big budget film about the battle of Kursk, from an objective viewpoint. You could follow different personalities from both sides. Or any other major eastern front clash. That would make for some good action sequences, all the while showing a lot of people a side of the war that not often get shown in pictures. And it would be great to have a nice warmovie without the lovescenes, obese patriotism and over the top sentimentality, just telling the stories of young, struggling men who lived through some nasty times.

Another nice topic could maybe be the airraids at Ploesti. It had a profound impact on the course of the war and had its fair share of drama.

Wadda ya think?

IT has sort-of already been suggested, but Id like to see a German version of the movie "Memphis Belle", with a German bomber crew as the stars.

Or how about a movie starring a Latvian, where we follow him through pre-war dictatorship, Soviet occupation, German liberation/occupation, his enlistment in a Schuma unit, Soviet re-occupation, and his stint as an anti-soviet guerilla. In the end, his entire guerilla unit is hunted down, only he manages to survive and slip back into civilian life.

You could start it off when Latvia regains independence in 1991, and have the camera zoom in on an old man in a crowd, slowly letting him tell his story.

For those that dont know: the last Baltic guerilla (in Estonia, though) was killed only in 1978. He was duped by two undercover KGB-types, caught and handcuffed, but when the KGB-types decided to commemorate the occasion by taking pictures of eachother posing with the holdout, he tore loose, dove into a river, stuck himself under a submerged tree and drowned rather than surrender.

Henrik

PS. Glad to be back after a couple months. I decided I better stay here ´till my 10-year anniversary on the board :-)

I'd like to see a movie about Joe Beyerle. For those who don't know, he jumped into Normandy with the 101st, and was captured shortly thereafter. His POW camp was liberated by the Red Army, and he convinced them to let him go play with them. He actually had more combat time with the Red Army than he did his own!

He even received awards from the Soviets!

Tom

Fascinating. Would you have a link where we can learn more about this fellow?

thanks
Reb

A suspenseful thriller involving either German, British, American, etc. any Intelligence officer from one of those, trying to "solve" a "mysterious" build-up of troops and later suddenly disappear or something. Something like that could work. I think their needs to be more "in-depth" films in WWII that are thrillers or suspenseful; too many actions, and those actions films aren't the greatest.

from my point of view i`d like to see a movie about finnish long range patrols. sorry if i`m a bit "nation-centered" (as opposed to self-centered). also a movie about Reino Lehväslaihos book `panssarisotaa` (panzerwar or tankwar) would be very interesting. the finnish members propably know this book (at least the author) and its about his own experiences as a tank gunner in the continuation-war. he has written about 30 books and the others are fictional, and in my opinion panssarisotaa is by far the best book he`s written.