Good but too one sided
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jeopardy23 — 13 years ago(June 30, 2012 09:42 PM)
Where did you get the number 50 million? That plus the 25 million killed by the Nazis would mean that 75 million Soviets were killed in the Stalin Era. The Soviet Union had a population of nearly 200 million in 1941, so you are saying that the Soviet government killed nearly one quarter of its population which is completely ridiculous. The the Soviet Government killed that many people, how did the Soviet population go from 148 million in 1926 to 168 million in 1939. The U.S. population went from 106 million in 1920 to 132 million in 1940 about the same as the Soviet Growth rate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Soviet_Union
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jeopardy23 — 13 years ago(July 01, 2012 01:26 AM)
Between the 1911 Russian Census and 1991 what was once the Russian Empire gained about 130 million people. The U.S. gained about 140 million people in that same period. The Soviet Union lost 25 million people during World War II. The high casualties during the Russian Civil War can not be blamed entirely on the Communists nor the deaths from the postwar famine.
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Chapaev36 — 13 years ago(December 02, 2012 01:19 AM)
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting it could have been more balanced by being written from numerous points of view?
This is fine, but it would have been a completely different movie.
Unless you have an issue with narratives that strictly represent a single point of view (which I think is silly), I really don't think your point makes logical sense.
Indeed I believe that you are confusing the role of narrative in art and narrative in history, rhetoric or theory. Art is not necessarily about "balance." It is not necessarily about truth either. -
leburger — 11 years ago(June 30, 2014 02:55 PM)
Agreed. The film was definitely one-sided and biased. The way the Germans were portrayed is enough to assume that. The Germans committed heinous acts, but not all of them were some kind of monsters who enjoyed the show, like it was portrayed in the film.
More so, just like the world isn't black and white, there were no "good" or "bad" guys in WW2. Each side can be blamed for all sorts of atrocities. -
dcmMovielover — 11 years ago(October 29, 2014 08:34 PM)
The film is one-sided but it is through the eyes of one character who is a Partisan and the story takes place over a 24 hour period in one geographical location - there is no bigger picture. Also the SS unit shown in the film are based on an actual unit who were not indicative of the SS as a whole or of the German army. So whilst it is 'one-sided' it is only a snapshot, and arguably a realistic 'snap-shot'. The film should not be taken as a grand portrayal of WW2 or of the Eastern Front, because it is far from being that.
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Stan_Kubricks_Mentor — 11 years ago(November 07, 2014 02:22 PM)
I know I'm probably wasting my time as this person "netrek" is locked into its absoluteness about what it "knows".. but here goes:
ALMOST 50 million Soviet/Russian people died alright but 27 million died due to hitler via the German invasion and subsequent German genocidal practices during their invasion of the USSR. AND so it isn't so SIMPLISTIC as "Stalin did it". If 50 million did die,
it occurred from 1918 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.- The total numbers of persons that died in the Russian Civil War is approximately 7 million or so; this include combatants and civilians (civilian deaths were higher).
- The best guess is that a maximum of 8 million Soviets/Russians/Ukrainians (YES RUSSIANS, millions of Russians perished too, mainly in the southern steppes farming region) died from the forced-collectivization famine in the early 1930s.
- Millions were shipped off to the gulag by Stalin and no one to this day knows how many perished in those gulags. The best guess by western researchers as well as Russian researchers is no more than 3 million TOPS perished.
Add the numbers up and you start getting close to 50 million (45 to be exact). But as someone else mentioned:
these numbers of deaths occurred over a 7 decade period and not JUST "under Stalin".
NOW, if you want to make claims of "tens of millions perished under dictator (insert name)" THAT WOULD BE MAO. Two western historian authors who wrote excellent books on "Mao's Great Leap Forward" BOTH agree that Mao's GLF famine killed at a maximum 35 million Chinese. One was American and the other was British. Both of them came up with that number of 35 million TOPS was from both of them gaining access to census records in China; with the British writer/historian admitting how surprised he was how easy it was for him to get to those records. HOWEVER, NEITHER author categorically state "that Mao killed 35 million".
That is their best guess and both say THE NUMBERS COULD BE LOWER.
"If you really want something in life you have to work for it. Now quiet, they're about to announce the lottery numbers."
Homer Simpson -
druss44121-1 — 10 years ago(August 19, 2015 03:57 PM)
The film never says that the Nazis were the only 'bad' guys
I simply do not understand this type of criticism. You're adding your own thoughts and assumptions into the film. Come and See never says that only Germans are bad people or only the Germans committed atrocities.
If anything a film such as this makes humanity as a whole look very bad, even if its focused on a particular culture. Come and See is probably one of the most historically accurate and non-political war films ever made. Simply because you are showing the sins of a person or people (ie Nazis) does not mean you are defending anyone else in that same process. If the film had scenes intercut with Russian soldiers handing out baskets full of candy to children, THEN you'd have a point. But there's nothing like that here. There are no 'good' guys. As one review pointed out, there are victims and there are perpetrators.
Also Come and See isn't Germans = bad anyway, it's war = pure horror. Very few war movies focus on civilian casualties, partly because it's the hardest thing to stomach for most people and will make even 'justified' wars appear evil and irredeemably destructive. There is no culture or religion in human history that does not have blood on its hands. What's depressing is that you could make a film like Come and See for pretty much any war anywhere in the world (for starters just look at what ISIS is doing in the Middle East right now).
I think that's ultimately what makes this film so powerful. What you're seeing is not just an isolated incident that happened once in history and never again. -
Imdb11168 — 10 years ago(August 24, 2015 11:03 PM)
There can never be any defence of Nazi Germany and the Germans, and for the Holocaust. That being said, there are a few more points
To one extant the film was one sided. The film is made in such a manner that it gives a message that the Germans had to be bloodthirsty and savage as a race to do all this. A further reading on the net reveals that most of the atrocities were not carried out by the regular German army but by a brigade of convicts called SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger ( google it ) specially rounded up for this dirty job
Thank God that Nazi Germany lost, and Hitler was a mass murderer, BUT look at the other so called civilized nations. History is written by the victors, so you have to research a bit- The regular army of Japanese - and their Nanking massacre but these Japanese barbarians are revered today as a cultured race
- The Turks - and their Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides, but we mistakenly consider Turks to be the least fanatical amongst Muslim nations.
- England - Its firebombing of Dresden, or Churchills hand in the death of 4 million Indians in the Bengal famine, but everyone talks about the Englishman's sense of fairplay.
- US's second bomb over Nagasaki, even if we were to buy their logic for dropping the atomic bomb to end future deaths, Hiroshima was enough.
- Congo, Rwanda, Cambodia, Stalin, Yugoslavia, the Pakistanis in Bangladesh,
- Just watch what the Islamic Jihadis and Chinese do in the next 10 years
60 years have passed since World War 2 and its tragedy. We shouldn't forget the atrocities commited by the Germans, but open your eyes to the others as well.
Darkness lies an inch ahead
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Lyndhen — 10 years ago(August 30, 2015 12:46 AM)
A further reading on the net reveals that most of the atrocities were not carried out by the regular German army but by a brigade of convicts called SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger ( google it ) specially rounded up for this dirty job
A further reading of academic literature and any awareness of the subject will reveal that the Wehrmacht was heavily involved in
most of the atrocities
.
This particular atrocity seems to concern Dirlewanger.
If people are still claiming that it was just the exception who were committing atrocities then perhaps we need more films like this. -
Imdb11168 — 10 years ago(August 30, 2015 01:30 AM)
One - I commented on Dirlewanger with reference to Belarus
Two - I did not condone the Nazis
Three - The other offending nations have been forgotten
Maybe we need more movies about war crimes by other nations ?
Darkness lies an inch ahead -
Lyndhen — 10 years ago(August 30, 2015 02:27 AM)
One - I commented on Dirlewanger with reference to Belarus
You actually said that "most of the atrocities were not carried out by the regular German army but by a brigade of convicts called SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger". This is not true - the Wehrmacht waged a war of genocide throughout the Eastern occupied territories.
Two - I did not condone the Nazis
I never said you did. Though you seem to deny what they did.
Three - The other offending nations have been forgotten
Really? Idi i Smotri is a very old Russian language art film which few people have seen. There are very few films that depict the German atrocities against the non Jewish populations of Eastern Europe - in fact these depictions are so rare that people often assume that the Wehrmacht fought a clean war in the east.
In contrast - most, if not all, the supposedly
forgotten
examples you give are very well known and are the subject of huge debate (ie Nagasaki, Dresden) and have received blockbuster (ie Nanking) or acclaimed (ie Rwanda) film coverage.
Maybe we need more movies about war crimes by other nations ?
well, it's clear that we need more films about what the Germans did to Belorussians, Poles, Ukrainians and Russians in the east because some people have clearly forgotten.