The Boy from Stalingrad The Boy from Stalingrad The Boy from Stalingrad is a 1943 American film. The plot centers on Russian youths in the path of the German army's assault on Stalingrad, who are forced to band together and rely on themselves to survive. They set fire to the grain harvest, rescue and care for other abandoned children, sabotage a tank, and fight back against the Nazis as best they can. The actual Battle of Stalingrad ended at the beginning of February 1943. This pro-Soviet film belongs in the same class as the better-known 1943 "Mission to Moscow" from Warners', RKO's 1943 "The
Battle of Stalingrad from the Stalingrad Front's Political Department on 8 October 1942 that: "The defeatist mood is almost eliminated and the number of treasonous incidents is getting lower" as an example of the sort of coercion Red Army soldiers experienced under the Special Detachments (later to be renamed SMERSH). On the other hand, Beevor noted the often extraordinary bravery of the Soviet soldiers in a battle that was only comparable to Verdun, and argued that terror alone cannot explain such self-sacrifice. Richard Overy addresses the question of just how important the Red Army's coercive methods were to the Soviet war effort compared