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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 1

Publication Date: January 25, 2023

DOI:10.14738/assrj.101.13762.

Álvarez, J. M. S., (2023). The Russian Movie T-34: A Duel Between Soldiers and their Tanks. Advances in Social Sciences Research

Journal, 10(1). 121-147

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

The Russian Movie T-34: A Duel Between Soldiers and their

Tanks

José Maurício Saldanha Álvarez

Fluminense Federal University,

Niterói, Brazil

ABSTRACT

The aim of this essay is to exploratory analyze the Russian film Russian War T. 34,

by Alexey Sidorov, as a metaphorical duel between two individuals, a Nazi German

and the other one Soviet, employing their tanks, their backgrounds, their industrial

cultures, and ideologies. The Dominant Explain Comes from the Curzio Malaparte

reports that, at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa of 1941, advocated Nazi

defeat. We use the works of Steve Zaloga dissects the use of tank as a combat

machine, and John Erickson and Brandon Schechter's reading explains the victory

of the Red Army and the USSR, mobilizing industrial, human, and cultural means

employing, according to Lewin, the memory of Russian victory over Napoleon in

1812. Our Findings indicate that the consolidation of an accelerated industrial

mindset produced a new ethics where Tank Crews were soldiers and mechanically

inspired and, like an elite, along with industrial technique, employed tricks as a

tactic weapon, according to Michel de Certeau. Narrating the dynamic plastic of the

battle between tanks, Sidorov's film holds the viewer's attention by employing the

narrative aesthetics of silent cinema and visualizing his scenes dispensing with the

reading of Russian subtitles. The film puts the tank, the top product of the 1930s

and 40s celebrated industrial development, as a complex war tool whose

employment requires exceptional individuals endowed with cunning and

technique of fighting, simultaneously soldiers and mechanical.

Keywords: Tank, Sacer, Industry, Tank, Crew, East Front. Combat.

The council that Sun Tzu would give the German generals at the beginning of Operation

Barbarossa: "There are roads that you should not walk, armies that you should not attack, cities

that you should not beside, positions that you should not dispute with the enemy, and orders

of the ruler that you should not follow." Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

"If I had to know, the figures for Russian tank strength which you gave in your book were, in

fact, the true ones, I will not- I believe-ever have started this war," Adolph Hitler. (Stahel, 2009).

INTRODUCTION

A tank. A Duel. Two young men, a Soviet and a German officer. In this article, we will debate

Alexei's Russian movie T-34 (2018), which tells about the war between German tanks against

the Soviets ones. To analyze the film, we will employ the remarks written by Italian writer and

journalist Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957) about the mechanized war and the bitter fighting in

Operation Barbarossa in 1941. A correspondent from the newspaper Corriere della Sera, from

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 10, Issue 1, January-2023

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Milan, Italy, Malaparte noted Soviet and German soldiers educated in industrial modernity,

endowed with the Tanks crew's modern factory ethos. The report of the events witnessed in

1941, was published in the book, The Volga Raises in Europe.

German industrialization in the first half of the twentieth century incorporated avant-garde

technology. After the economic crisis of the 1920s and 1930s, the Nazi Party directed the

German industry for rearmament. The Nation acquired excellence in the heavy, chemistry,

aeronautical and metallurgical industries.

Meanwhile, in the USSR, French sociologist Georges Friedmann witnessed the prodigious

expansion of his industrialization due to economic planning and five-year plans. The Gosplan

wrote the Five Year Plan for the years 1928 to 1933. The Soviet economy collectivized

agriculture by providing support for accelerated mechanization. [1] Industrial modernity in

both countries influenced military culture by endowing its soldiers with a simultaneously

mechanical and warrior ethos. The tanks and machines that incorporated the most advanced

military products of their time dominated the battlefields.

The tank commander and some member of the crews incorporate the sense of the Homo Sacer.

This expression, studied by Émile Benveniste and updated by Giorgio Agamben, defines a type

of individual with the ambiguity of the sacred. I.e., he is half human and half divine. He is a being

of life but voted to death—managing a tank between cleaning and dirt, between the sacred and

the damn. The tank struggle imposes the risk of brutal deaths and mutilations for his crews and

opponents. These shining and imposing machines hide oil, grease, debris, fire, smoke, and

explosives suffocating in their bowels.

We select readings designed to understand the functioning of mechanized armies in Operation

Barbarossa. We employ Matthew Cooper's work on Wehrmacht's armored weapon. At the same

time, Wolfram Wette explained the ideological war of extermination that the German army

fought in the USSR. Steven Zaloga's works are essential for understanding tanks and their

complex operation as a weapon of war. Schchors reading tells us about the Red Army and its

transformations throughout WWII.

Malaparte's articles finally illustrate how to combat the crew member of the tanks of Germany

and the USSR, critically portraying the first battles of the East Nazi war. He saw her destined for

failure, for the fierce Soviet resistance and the limitations of the German army fighting in this

big theater of operations.

The tank was, for Malaparte, the human continuity body of these new mechanized soldiers.

They handle the tank following ritualized knowledge mediated by industrial work ethics.

Expensive and complex machine and only experts should employ him. Many soldiers can be

crewman. However, only the best develop hunter or cunning hunting instincts by taking

advantage of the machine they drive. Those who are born with these qualities and perfect them

overcome the duel of war, maneuvering the tank to perfection.

Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) considered the war a duel between nations. Sidorov's film

makes his film an individual fight waged between two challengers, German Klaus Jäger and the

Soviet Nikolay Ivushkin. When they wage a battle between themselves, they employ

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Álvarez, J. M. S., (2023). The Russian Movie T-34: A Duel Between Soldiers and their Tanks. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(1).

121-147

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.101.13762

sophisticated tank warfare techniques and instincts to win. The film's theme of Sidorov is a duel

between two men, two cultures, two régimes, and two kinds of tanks.

From the German Empire to Nazi Germany

The Nineteenth-Century crises broke out in the First World War of 1914-1918, resulting in the

revolutionary agitation that shook the following decades. The Armistice resulted in the Treaty

of Versailles, imposed by countries devastated like France. The Treaty resulted in a vindictive

and petty peace whose exaggerated war reparations led to the fear of annihilation of the

destruction of German productive life.[2] The problems of Europe and the World remained

latent. After the 1929 crisis, the market system and political liberalism collapsed or almost in

many countries in the World. For some contemporary observers, a modern and advanced

industrial economy like German would only conquer confidence with the politics of National

Socialism. [3]

The Nazi economy was an antagonist of the free market economy. There were great

contradictions in the relationship between the National Socialist and industrial owners, as

Gustav Krupp, in 1938, wished to produce civil goods but was forbidden to do so. Hermann

Goering mocked the initiative, saying industrialists seemed more interested in producing pots

chamber than cannons. [4]

German Business adherence to the Nazi militarization did not prevent the Schacht Plan, or

1934, from decreasing price freezing. The practice of Nazi anti-liberal policy and economic

decisions currently raise heated academic debates. For Overy, the traditional view established

in the 1930s makes Nazism a docile tool for monopolistic capitalism. German entrepreneurs

were eager to recover markets and profits and quiet the works. Nazism could seem like the

paradise of significant capital, but private property had no absolute legal right. Often Nazi

authorities interfered with large companies. Disregarding owner capitalists, they behaved as

ifs enterprises belonged to the State, as it reads in the criticism developed by Ludwig van Mises,

for whom fascism was an "emergence makeshift."[5]

The III Reich preserved private production and investment, ensuring increasing efficiency in

production.[6] For Hitler, the Economy was an instrument of political power, not a place to hire

money. It was the tool producing the war material designed to support military achievements.

Reich owned all industrially produced goods. A government office determined its price. The

Nazi State heavily taxed the profits made by the War industry; distributing incomes raised

broad popular support.[7]

Krakauer, Industrialization and Mass Reproduction

In 1935, the same year Luftwaffe was born, the first Germans panzer formed three mechanized

divisions. [8] For Siegfried Krakauer, the inculcation of the slandered processes of the mass

industry influence and personal drive the worker's manufacturing: "The Forces leading toward

mechanization of not aim beyond space and time. Blessed with an intellect that knows in

mercy." So this form of rational thinking developed in the armored forces. They shaped a new

form of mechanical war, employing fire and carefully calculated movement for unlimited

expansion. Its participants, generals to soldiers, were convinced that "The rationalization of life

that would accommodate it to technology." [9] The industrial worker has become a virtuoso for

the thinkers Georges Sorel and Thorsten Veblen. [10]