Stalingrad

Stalingrad (1993) is Joseph Vilsmaier's German war drama, and you can watch online on iFILM. In the winter of 1942 a platoon of elite Wehrmacht soldiers is thrown into a city reduced to rubble, losing half its men almost at once. This is the battle seen from the side that lost.

The survivors fall under a sadistic captain, and army discipline curdles into something worse than enemy fire. Starvation, freezing cold, the howl of Soviet rocket artillery, and a tightening ring of the Red Army around the ruins. The lieutenant tries to lead his soldiers out of the trap. Among them are the men played by Dominique Horwitz and a young Thomas Kretschmann, watching every ideal they carried east crumble.

Vilsmaier shot no triumphant combat picture but a grim study of how the order to hold to the last man becomes a death sentence for the ones obeying it. No heroics, just mud, despair and the unraveling of resolve. It's for viewers ready for hard anti-war cinema rather than battlefield spectacle. Stream Stalingrad (1993) online on iFILM.