This weekend’s Reasonable Movie comes with a little World War II history lesson. We just passed the 80th anniversary of the start of Operation Barbarossa, the start of the German offensive against Russia, on June 22, 1941.
While the United States has largely rewritten the history of World War II, historians recognize that it was the Soviet Union that won the war against Nazi Germany. While The Hill’s Rising has become a bit of a joke since Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti left and started their own program, Breaking Points, the one good thing to come out of it since then is this episode where Ryan Grim embarrasses his cohost Emily Jashinsky giving her a history lesson about World War II. The look on her face is when he describes how the Soviets won the war is priceless.
The film Battle for Sevastopol is more of a biopic on Lyudmila Pavlichenko, one of the most successful snipers of all time. Where Hollywood gave us the highly fictionalized and rather sexist Enemy at the Gates, Russia cinema has given us a less fictionalized representation of Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko and her complex history. The protagonist of Enemy at the Gates was based on Vasily Zaitsev, who killed 225 enemy soldiers including 11 snipers. Lyudmila killed 309 Nazis including 36 snipers or as she put it:
Every German who remains alive will kill women, children and old folks. Dead Germans are harmless. Therefore, if I kill a German, I am saving lives.
And when speaking in the US in favor of the opening of a second front:
I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?
No movie can truly do her justice, but Battle for Sevastopol does an adequate job.
You can watch it on TubiTV here: