Steiner - Das Eiserne Kreuz

I first saw this movie when I was very young and it has since then remained as one of the best movies I have seen and perhaps the best war movie ever. My grandfather fought and died in the useless war against the Russians in 45 and one of my uncles as well as my mothers father were both veterans of those battles. The Germans who fought alongside the Finns in World War II were not heartless nazi monsters or a band of murderous aryans - they were men who had been taken from their homes to fight a pointless war which destroyed everything and gave nothing. Peckinpah portrays this in a truthful way when the German patrol tries to make its way back to their army group. The scene where Anselm rips a Russian female soldiers shirt in an attempt to rape her before being stopped be Steiner is something never before or after seen in a movie - a seemingly friendly and well behaving man turns into a beast when he sees a woman from the enemy army. War is hell and it brings out the best and worst in us - something that Hollywood should remember before making the next Saving Private Ryan.