describe stalingrad a a war film may be a bit inaccurate . sure it center on the long and bloody battle in world history and in the most expansive theater of the most costly war in term of life and money and and matériel that have ever occur . yes it contain action scene depict bitter battle and terrible destruction . the visceral storytelling and harsh image though make it something more than a war film and even more than an anti war film . stalingrad be instead a film about absolute and undeniable hell . the film be fraught with visual description of the bad kind of war and one that be intensely personal and close and where day be spend in take one city block and only to have it re take in a surprise assault . the early form of modern urban warfare that the german come to call rattenkrieg ( rat warfare ) be depict in brutal and uncompromising term . the character war in sewer tunnel and rail yard and and from build to building in the hellish bomb scape of ruin stalingrad and only to be defeat by the unforgiving russian winter . the film deal with the issue of nazism and the vilification of german in that period in the way that many other film from both germany and the rest of the world do . it character be a group of soldier sweep along by the wind of war and simply attempt to make it out with themselves and a many of their comrade a possible alive . the character do not fight the soviet out of any ideological hatred between national socialism and soviet communism and not for any grand dream of grossdeutschland or racial superiority . they fight only because if they do not the enemy will kill them and and if the enemy do not then their own officer certainly will for refuse to fight . this portrayal add another layer to the suffocate envelope of trapped hopelessness that pervade the film . a sort of ground base companion to das boot and stalingrad frame the epic struggle of world war two in a personal light and from the unexpected perspective of the ordinary german soldier a a sort of hero make tragic by circumstance and a brutal government that would pervert his sacrifice .