4 real historical locations · Russia
Sam Peckinpah's brutal 1977 film follows a German sergeant on the Eastern Front who despises his officers' ideology more than he does the enemy. One of the few major WWII films told entirely from the German soldier's perspective, capturing the nihilistic horror of the Eastern Front.
CinemaMapped has mapped 4 real historical locations where the story takes place, spanning Russia.
A cynical German sergeant fights the grinding war of the Kuban bridgehead in 1943 — Peckinpah's brutal deconstruction of war heroism.
The Kuban bridgehead was Germany's last toehold east of Crimea, held from early 1943 until October 1943. The Wehrmacht conducted 16 large defensive operations against Soviet attacks in the Kuban. The eventual evacuati...
View location →The key Black Sea port contested by Soviet amphibious landings and the German mountain troops holding the Kuban bridgehead.
Novorossiysk was the scene of the Malaya Zemlya beachhead where Soviet Marines held a tiny bridgehead for 225 days under constant German attack. A young political officer named Leonid Brezhnev served here.
View location →The German Blue Line — a prepared defensive position across the Kuban bridgehead that Corporal Steiner's platoon must defend and then retreat through.
The German Blue Line in the Kuban was one of the most elaborate defensive systems on the Eastern Front. Its orderly evacuation in October 1943 across the Kerch Strait was one of the Wehrmacht's most successful withdra...
View location →The German retreat across the Kerch Strait to Crimea — the end of the Kuban campaign that the film builds toward.
Over 250,000 German and Romanian troops were evacuated across the Kerch Strait to Crimea in October 1943 despite Soviet air and sea attacks. It was a remarkable logistical achievement that prolonged the war in the sou...
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