Stukas (film)

Stukas is a 1941 Nazi propaganda film, directed by Karl Ritter and starring Carl Raddatz, which follows three squadrons of Luftwaffe divebomber Stuka flyers.

Stukas is an example of the Nazi contemporary film, or Zeitfilm, a type which Ritter, the scriptwriter and director, largely invented and championed as an answer to Russian revolutionary films. The film was commissioned by the Luftwaffe and presents participation in war as a joy. As a contemporary critic wrote, Sheer enthusiasm transfigures the danger.... For the dashing leader of the Bulls Squadron,... fight is like intoxication, while for the squadrons captain of the cavaliers,... it is the elixir of life for the captain of the Ninth,... it is spirit, distance, concentration. Howard K. Smith wrote more disapprovingly in Last Train from Berlin It was a ... film about a bunch of obstreperous adolescents who divebombed things and people. They bombed everything and everybody. That was all the whole film was. The film emphasises comradeship and self sacrifice we are shown the young pilots learning to deal with comrades deaths for the greater good. As one character says to another, A man doesnt really think about his comrades death any more, only about what they died for. Like other Nazi war films, it makes heavy use of song in a famous scene at the end, the squadron leader informs his pilots of their new mission against England and its dangers, we then see them seated in their aircraft, and the camera zooms in on their faces and then cuts to the clouds as they begin ecstatically to sing the StukasliedAlways prepared and ready to attack We the Stukas, Stukas, Stukas. We dive from the sky We advance onto defeat England ........

Source: Wikipedia