The last letters

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Movie
German title The last letters
Original title Последние письма
Country of production USSR
original language Russian
Publishing year 1966
length 30 minutes
Rod
Director Harry Stoitschew
Sawwa Kulisch
production Mosfilm
camera W. Shanow

The last letters (original title: Последние письма , Poslednije pisma ) is a Soviet documentary film by the Mosfilm studio by Harry Stoitschew and Sawwa Kulisch from 1966 .

action

At the end of January 1943, the last German aircraft left Stalingrad . On Hitler's orders it landed in Novocherkassk , where seven mail bags containing letters from German Wehrmacht members were confiscated from the Stalingrad pocket. These were the last letters from German soldiers and officers of the enclosed 6th Army . They were opened and the names of the recipients destroyed. Then they were classified according to their content and general mood and then handed over to the Wehrmacht, where a documentary report on the Stalingrad battle was to be written. The Wehrmacht High Command had hoped to be able to justify its defeat with these letters and army documents. The letters, however, clearly stated something different: the service for military information statistically found a drop in morale in the Wehrmacht. The following picture emerged:

a) Doubts about the governance in Germany: 4.5%, b) Negative attitude towards the governance: 57%, c) Hostile attitudes towards the governance: 3.4%, d) Indifferent attitude towards the governance: 32%, e) Loyal people Attitude towards governance: 2.1%. The letters were destroyed by order of Joseph Goebbels , but the copies were found after the war and kept for future generations.

A few of them were selected for the film and read aloud. These letters were accompanied by photos of German cameramen in the boiler as well as photos from home, in which parades of the Wehrmacht and the Hitler Youth could be seen. In addition, there were recordings of sporting competitions for war amputees, young women typing typewriters and other pictures from their "healthy" homeland. Pictures from a concentration camp were also shown, if only briefly.

Production and publication

The last Letters was shown for the first time in June 1966 during the Krakowski Festiwal Filmowy in Poland and was regularly released in theaters in 1968.

criticism

Horst Schiefelbein remarks in New Germany :

“This film is an extremely effective montage of original recordings by fascist cameramen about the contents of the last mail items sent by German soldiers from the enclosed Stalingrad. The material served the documentarists Sawa Kulitsch and Schiari Stoitschew to a moving representation of the military, but above all the moral: the defeat of fascism. "

Helga Radmann wrote about this film in the Neue Zeit :

“The two Romm students Kulitsch and Stoitschew knew how to use letters from Hitler soldiers trapped in Stalingrad, impressive photo montages and sparse commentary to convey an impression of the moral collapse of fascism, of the causes, from the thoughtless marching to the bitter End to point out ... "

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neues Deutschland from June 28, 1966, p. 4
  2. ↑ Neue Zeit of July 3, 1966, p. 6