Maartje: (00:14)

Welcome back to Rosie the Reviewer. This week we are talking about a movie called Der Tiger, or The Tank in English. It’s a German movie that came out in 2025. It was directed by Dennis Gansel, with the script by Dennis Gansel and Colin Teevan. It’s the story of a fictional German tank crew embarking on a special mission on the Eastern Front in 1943. It’s our second tank movie – the first one we watched was Fury, which you can also listen to on Rosie. This movie is available on Prime. What did you think of the movie?

Sam: (00:50)

From the beginning, even before I fully had put together what was going on, it felt like a ghost story. And I love that because I’m super into horror, and I especially like the kind of surreal psychological horror where you don’t necessarily know what’s real. There’s like an off-key note that’s slowly getting louder in reality, but you don’t really know what it is yet. It’s kind of a mystery and you have to kind of follow along to figure it out.

They try and pull that off in this movie. And I think in some places it works better than others, but broadly I really enjoyed my watching experience. They’re isolated – and not just in the context of this little five-man world represented by the tank crew, but they’re also cut off from their unit. No one really speaks to them. Our main character gets his orders on a piece of paper. And so the only people who ever exchange dialogue with them are people who seem a little too in on the joke, so to speak. They’re moving through this haunted landscape by themselves. They have enemies whose faces they never see, their footsteps are dogged by the dead, and so it’s this really spooky atmosphere. I was saying during our Thin Red Line episode that I wish more war movies would take a big swing, and I felt like this movie did. There are some parts that work better than others – I thought the ending was really over-explained, for example – but broadly I was happy. I was like, ooh, this is not what I expected. What about you?

Maartje: (02:13)

Well, as you know I’m not a big horror fan, but this one is – it’s tense and a little scary, but it’s not jump-scary horror. It’s more like “what’s going on” horror. It’s kind of eerie horror. And I also really enjoyed this. I will say the bar for me watching tank movies is really low because I rated Fury a 1 out of 10.

So this was only ever going to be better. But I hadn’t read the synopsis for this or seen the trailer or read anything about it other than that it was about a tank crew, and I really, really, really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the camaraderie between the tank crew, which apparently is like this famous thing, right? Tank crews are really close because they are literally close. Yeah, I just really enjoyed it. I agree with you that some things could have been maybe left up to the imagination a little bit more, especially at the end. And even some in-between giveaways were a little bit clearer than I’d have liked. But overall, I just really had a good time watching this movie.

Sam: (03:23)

I do want to mention that when I was looking at the synopsis for this, it specifically mentions – I don’t remember the exact wording – but it’s something like the methamphetamine-fuelled Wehrmacht. And I laughed because in this movie, a couple of times you do see them popping pills. So yes, they are taking their so-called tank candy, but it really has no bearing on the plot. I was just kind of surprised – going in I was like, ooh, maybe that’ll really feed into their paranoia and psychosis. And then it just didn’t. They didn’t draw that link very well.

Maartje: (03:56)

The only thing I guess it did for me was – by this point I had already figured out what was going on. So it didn’t really add to the mystery. Or it could be like, wait, are they just losing it because they’re on drugs, or are they no longer alive?

Sam: (04:11)

Yeah, so for casual history listeners: the Germans developed an early prototype of methamphetamine during the interwar years, and it became really broadly socially popular. The military used it for their purposes as well. And a lot of historians credit the speed of the Blitzkrieg – the speed at which the Germans were able to sweep across Europe in the early days of the war – to this methamphetamine use, because you can cover a lot of ground if you don’t have to sleep.

However, by 1941, the German army was really tightly regulating access to methamphetamine, because it’s not, as it turns out, a performance-enhancing drug. Not only are you not necessarily clear-headed while on it, but imagine you’ve been awake for a couple of days and you’re coming off of it and you’re paranoid and exhausted. You’re not really putting your best foot forward on the battlefield.

Maartje: (04:38)

Ha! No, I did enjoy it though. There was something a bit cavalier about it.

Sam: (05:06)

Well, you gotta take your tank candy with your friends.

Maartje: (05:10)

In your tank. In your fancy Tiger tank.

Sam: (05:14)

Yeah, before or after you eat your tank pomegranate.

Maartje: (05:17)

What did you think of the tank as a character? Because obviously in Fury it’s about as much of a character there as it is here. I think it’s even more deliberate in Fury than here. For me, at least.

Sam: (05:30)

Yeah. I will say in this movie, our first shot is of the tank – boom, it’s right there. And obviously their lives just completely revolve around this tank. The tank did some cool tank stuff in this movie, which we will talk about. And I don’t know if you can make a tank movie without incorporating the tank in that way, because it’s literally their whole world. It’s their home away from home. But yeah, definitely something we also saw in Fury.

Maartje: (05:55)

Yeah, but man this movie is so much better.

Sam: (05:58)

Yeah, I mean, I think even just from a writing perspective, we’re not being mired down in this caricature of masculinity the entire time. I found Fury really exhausting in that way. This movie was not.

Maartje: (06:10)

They were actually nice to each other, like the tank crew. They seemed to just be – I know that they’re Germans, and we are more sympathetic than the Germans, but at least they seemed to be, to each other at least, decent people.

Sam: (06:23)

Yeah, and there’s not like a 20-minute-long sexual assault scene in the middle of the movie. That was nice too. Enjoyed that.

Maartje: (06:29)

There’s not a lot of women in this movie at all.

Sam: (06:31)

I know. One of the things I was going to mention was: if I see one more mute smiling woman standing in a meadow, I might just jettison myself into space.

Maartje: (06:42)

Alright, are you ready to get into the movie?

Sam: (06:45)

Yeah.

Maartje: (06:45)

Let’s get into the movie!

We get an opening card. It says: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Which is a quote by George Santayana. We also know that we’re on the Dnieper front in 1943. It’s eight months after Stalingrad and the German army is in retreat.

Sam: (07:14)

George Santayana was a writer – a novelist and essayist – and he was also famous for saying: those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. I think that was him.

Maartje: (07:24)

That’s a famous quote.

Sam: (07:26)

Yeah. And this quote is a great opener because if you’re paying attention, it tells you a lot about what we’re going to see in the rest of the movie.

Maartje: (07:32)

That’s interesting! I hadn’t even thought about that!

Sam: (07:34)

Yeah, it didn’t occur to me until I started figuring out what the movie was about. I’m like, oh yeah. That quote.

Maartje: (07:40)

Huh.

Sam: (07:42)

The Dnieper River flows through Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, roughly north to south and into the Black Sea. The Germans had finished getting their asses whooped at Stalingrad in February 1943 – and you can listen to our Enemy at the Gates episode if you want to hear more about that – and then they got whooped again at the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. The Battle of Kursk is notable with regard to this movie because it was the largest tank battle ever. And that makes sense because it was also the largest battle in the history of warfare. We absolutely need to find a movie about it because I’m dying to know more about the Battle of Kursk. It reinforces for me how little I still know about the Eastern Front. But anyway – now the Germans are on the back foot. They’re retreating all across the Eastern Front, back towards Germany. At the Battle of the Dnieper, across a front that stretched 1,400 kilometres, the Germans fortified and attempted to hold the eastern bank of the river on Hitler’s instructions. There were four million troops involved across both sides. And of course, as you can probably guess based on how the war ended, the Soviets were ultimately victorious, but the losses were extremely heavy.

Maartje: (08:46)

I cannot begin to think how you even coordinate that many troops. It’s crazy. Four million? Crazy.

Sam: (08:54)

Yeah, it’s wild. Just the absolute scale of everything happening on the Eastern Front just boggles the mind.

Maartje: (09:00)

So we see the tank first, as you’ve already said. It’s big and massive from the rubble of warfare. It’s a Tiger I, a German heavy tank used extensively in Africa and on the Eastern Front until its production was phased out in favour of the Tiger II in 1944. It’s a terrifying beast of the modern battlefield, and it looks terrifying too.

As the Russians draw closer, the Tiger tank crew attempt to hold them off so that the remainder of their escaping troops can flee to safety before the bridge across the river is blown, in hopes of cutting off the Russian advance. The tank captain, Lieutenant Philipp Gerkens, played by David Schutter, delays the order to retreat to the point where the tank is caught on the bridge when it blows and catches fire. This whole scene is pretty long and pretty tense. You’re like, come on, get out of there, hurry up.

Sam: (09:57)

Yes, and it will be extremely relevant later that he’s the one who wants to hang around. All the other guys in the tank are like, dude, we have to get across the bridge before it blows. And he’s like, no, we’re going to stay for another minute or two. He’s the one insisting that they all remain there.

Maartje: (10:13)

And he also seems really, really out of it at this point, right at the beginning of the movie. He’s slow to respond and he’s staring off blankly into the distance through his little visor in the tank, and you’re like, what’s this commander doing? He’s not being very commander-y.

Sam: (10:33)

Yes. And the reason why will make itself clear as the movie progresses.

Maartje: (10:37)

Yes.

Sam: (10:38)

The Tiger I weighed in at about 57 metric tons and had 100mm-thick, near-impenetrable armour. It was a pretty sophisticated design for its time, though it had some issues with reliability and was pretty expensive to build. It was mounted with an 8.8 centimetre gun derived from the famous 88 artillery piece, which had been so successfully used as an anti-tank weapon and was so feared by Allied troops. If you watch Band of Brothers and The Last Patrol, the massive shells coming in through the building and making the whole room rock – those are the big 88s.

Pretty handy if you can affix one of those to a vehicle that moves. Kills at three kilometres were reported, which is impressive. The Allies were slow to respond with similar vehicles, so the Germans had a technological advantage early on. They were used from the fall of 1942 to the spring of 1944, usually in separate heavy tank battalions. The Tiger I was phased out in favour of the Tiger II in August 1944. The Tiger II was heavier – one of the heaviest mass-produced tanks ever – and had sloping armour, which was much harder to penetrate. As the war went on, the tank divisions dwindled. The supply chain had been weakened by Allied bombing, it took six months to train crews, and the resources weren’t available to maintain them at full strength.

Over 1,300 Tiger Is were produced, but fewer than 500 Tiger IIs. And the tank we see in the movie is actually a modified Soviet T-55 – a tank developed near the end of the war – with the tread and a few other details changed to make it look like a Tiger I.

Maartje: (12:34)

That’s neat. And I wonder if the other reason fewer Tiger IIs were produced is also because it was 1944 and the war only lasted another year.

Sam: (12:45)

Yeah, probably partly that, but genuinely – no steel, no fuel, the trains weren’t running because the Allies bombed them. It was just very difficult to build things at the pace they needed.

Maartje: (12:57)

They look really difficult to build anyway because they’re so massive. I wonder if they made them look bigger for the movie. In the opening scene it looks like a freaking elephant.

Sam: (13:07)

Yeah. Well, they are 57 metric tons. They’re pretty huge.

Maartje: (13:20)

I guess the only time I’ve seen them – well, I’ve seen them a couple of times actually – they are huge. They could fit about maybe 100 of my wheelchair? Maybe? Maybe not 100, maybe 50. I don’t know why I’m making this comparison.

Sam: (13:31)

That’s such a hilarious metric. You’re like Americans measuring things in hamburgers.

Maartje: (13:37)

Well, at least this entire movie and your notes speak about kilometres, which I’m pleased about.

Sam: (13:44)

Listen, we love a kilometre over on these parts.

Maartje: (13:47)

The retreat in the opening scene must have been a very close call. We next see Gerkens travelling in a truck with a new book of orders in his hands. He looks at them and he looks kind of pensive and weird. At this point I don’t know what it is he’s taking – I don’t know if they’re his tank candy or something else. They make a point of showing you the bottle but I couldn’t figure out what he was taking in the truck. Maybe it’s just the uppers, I don’t know.

Anyway. He looks at these orders and then he catches up with his crew, who are fixing their Tiger tank. They have been given a special mission called Operation Labyrinth: to go alone into no man’s land and retrieve one Colonel Paul von Hardenberg, played by Tillman Strauss, who is trapped behind enemy lines after everyone else retreated. Not only does von Hardenberg have crucial paperwork that would be disastrous if it fell into enemy hands – it’s also a personal mission, because he’s the godfather to Gerkens’ son.

Sam: (15:04)

Yeah. We get a few flashbacks to them hanging out, with the mute wife – supposedly von Hardenberg introduced Gerkens to his wife, so it’s a whole little family affair.

Maartje: (15:16)

The fact that she’s described as the mute wife made me laugh. We don’t know if she’s actually a mute, but she doesn’t speak in the movie.

Sam: (15:23)

That’s what I mean. We only see her in flashbacks where romantic music is playing and she’s spinning in a meadow and whatever.

Maartje: (15:33)

It’s beautiful! They’re happy together!

Sam: (15:36)

Yeah, but she’s not like a person. She’s like a prop.

Maartje: (15:40)

Exactly. She is a figment of his memories.

Sam: (15:44)

To a certain extent, she and the son exist to humanise Gerkens as well, which is something we’ll probably talk more about – German soldiers in World War II.

Maartje: (15:54)

I’ll say something about that, actually. When I was watching the movie, because it’s so focused on them as a crew, I didn’t think too much about them being German. Well, not until later anyway, when there’s a big revealing scene that’s very important to them and their trauma as well. But until then I didn’t really think about the fact that they were German during German people days.

Sam: (16:20)

Yeah, and I was reading some of the reviews online and that was a major criticism some people had. They were like, well, if you’re going to make a movie about German soldiers, can you make a movie that just depicts them as soldiers and takes them out of that broader context? So that was definitely a matter of debate.

Maartje: (16:35)

And I find that an interesting debate. Because I think you can – but then the point about just following orders rubbed me the wrong way. It’s like, you had the choice of making it just about them as people, and then you introduced the “just following orders” bit, which is obviously a big criticism of the Wehrmacht during World War II. So many people said: well, I was just following orders. Which I guess could be the point they’re trying to make, that that’s how bad stuff happens if people just follow orders. But at the same time – you could have just gotten really close to them and not introduced the order bit. I don’t know.

Sam: (17:17)

Yeah. It feels a little bit like they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too there.

Maartje: (17:21)

Yeah, agree.

Sam: (17:22)

So he finds his team. They’re not that excited about travelling alone without their unit, but they get ready to go and head off. They’ve obviously all known each other a long time – I think they mentioned they’ve been together since Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941. The tank crew are: the Gunner, Christian Weller, played by Lawrence Rupp; the Driver, Helmut, played by Leonard Koons; the Radio Operator, Keilig, played by Sebastian Erzendowski; and the Loader, Michel, played by Jörn Leiker.

Michel, as the loader, is kind of the least skilled guy on the tank crew and also the youngest. Helmut gives him a hard time, but Helmut has a teenage son who was killed in the war – which kind of explains why. We get to see the crew sit around a campfire and chat about their lives a little bit.

Maartje: (18:06)

I did like all the characters and how they managed to make them all very different. Even though we don’t get into them as characters in great depth, I still found them interesting enough to care about. And for a movie that basically only has them and enemies without faces, that’s important. Why else would you keep watching?

Sam: (18:33)

Yeah. The Weller character was a vintner in his previous life – he’s from Austria. And the Keilig character used to be a Latin teacher. So they come from a very diverse array of backgrounds.

Maartje: (18:45)

Yeah. I enjoyed Michel. He was so tiny and cute. And I don’t know why, but I like when they give characters in World War II films glasses. They just always look sophisticated to me. It’s weird.

Sam: (19:02)

I see. For those of you listening to the audio version: one of us is wearing glasses and it’s not me.

Maartje: (19:10)

Am I saying I’m more sophisticated than you? No. But also, people with glasses deserve more praise.

They’re passing silent, rough-looking soldiers on the road, which later give way to corpses. It’s all very spooky. They hear an eerie-sounding Latin mass being broadcast on the radio, and nobody explains it. They’re just like, turn it off, turn it off. And then they have a close shave when they nearly run over a mine. It’s a pretty tense scene. And for more information about these mines and booby-trapped mines, you can listen to our Land of Mine episode. I enjoyed this little scene between Michel and Gerkens.

Sam: (20:09)

Yeah. Gerkens is like, I’m just going to very gently defuse this. And then as he’s lifting it, Michel sees the grenade underneath and he reaches under and holds the grenade in his hand. So now he has to continue holding the grenade there until they can figure out how to defuse the thing. And in the meantime, Gerkens is like, the priority is the tank. We can’t let the tank get hurt. So he makes Helmut reverse the tank. And as soon as Helmut fires up the engine, this massive tank is making the ground shake and you’re like, man, this kid is going to be a grease smear on the grass.

Maartje: (20:46)

I thought that too, especially because I’d seen Fury and you just know that if anyone’s left behind even slightly, they’re going to die. But this movie is not like that.

Sam: (20:56)

Yeah. Luckily they both survive, but it’s pretty apparent that Gerkens is like, well, if I have to choose between Michel and the tank, I’m choosing the tank.

Maartje: (21:05)

Tank life. Tank is life.

Sam: (21:07)

Yes.

Lieutenant Gerkens is daydreaming about his wife when they are fired upon. It’s an SU-100, a Soviet tank they refer to as the Tank Killer, because it was specifically designed to destroy Tiger tanks. More are coming, so instead of taking them on, they must hide in the woods and prepare the Tiger to dive. And I had no idea tanks could go underwater.

So they do go underwater. They have to kill the engine because the engine makes bubbles on the surface. They spend a harrowing period of time underwater until the tank begins to leak and they must leave the river – but they’re afraid that if they leave, the Soviets will be waiting for them. So it’s all very tense.

Maartje: (21:50)

I want to comment on this tank going underwater. It feels like a horrible idea, first of all. I think it’s their exhaust pipe that’s out of the water – so if they left the engine running, it would create smoke. But it would also be so weird to just see an exhaust pipe coming up from the river.

Sam: (22:12)

I know. And they show a drone shot from the sky – this nice calm river with just a steel pipe poking out of it. I’m like, yeah, I’m sure the Soviets didn’t spot that at all.

Maartje: (22:26)

The only thing I was thinking the entire time is, thank god this river wasn’t half a metre higher or they would have just drowned.

Sam: (22:34)

I’m also like, is the bottom of this river made of concrete? How come their tank didn’t just sink down into the soft muck until it was irrevocably trapped?

Maartje: (22:43)

It did a little for a while and then it settled and stayed there, and I was like, Jesus Christ. Also, this is probably my worst nightmare, because it’s water and it’s a freaking tank and it’s a tiny space. I’m just claustrophobic as hell watching this scene.

Sam: (22:50)

Yeah. Because in order to get the hatch open, the only way would be when the pressure equalises. So they’d have to wait for the tank to fill completely with water before they could get the hatch open and get out.

Maartje: (23:14)

Two of them can’t swim, as well. So they’d be done.

Sam: (23:19)

Yeah, not ideal. When they enlisted in the army, no one asked them if they could swim.

They mentioned in the movie that they’ve only ever done this in training. That’s because some prototypes of the Tiger I could be submerged in up to four metres of water. The idea when designing this was that these tanks would be too heavy for a lot of European bridges, so if they wanted to cross rivers, this would be a necessity. But it took the crew half an hour to prepare the tank for such a manoeuvre. So obviously this wasn’t very useful on the battlefield. There was also a really high risk of mechanical failure and zero visibility once submerged. It ended up being discarded from subsequent designs, and there’s no evidence it was ever actually used in combat.

Maartje: (24:02)

So they were escaping these Tank Killers and it would have taken them half an hour just to get the tank ready to enter the water, even though in the movie they decide in a split second. So it doesn’t work.

Sam: (24:18)

Yeah.

Maartje: (24:18)

The logic is flawed. But I’ll give you a spoiler: logic doesn’t apply to this movie.

Sam: (24:24)

I will also say it was cool as hell. When they were going into the water, I was like, what?

Maartje: (24:30)

Yes, I agree. And then the tank started leaking. So that was really frightening.

Sam: (24:38)

Yeah, not great when you’re in the tank and it starts filling with water.

Maartje: (24:43)

So they do come up again and they’re no longer being chased. Then as they go on, they see light up ahead. At first they think they’re in trouble, but they’re relieved to hear German voices. They approach what I think is a village to request fuel, because they’re slowly running out. They then realise the people there are an Einsatzgruppe, and they are punishing the village for helping partisans. The SS commandant who runs them makes a creepy remark – asking Gerkens if he remembers the fire, quote-unquote – and you’re like, what is he talking about? Because he’s locking people inside a shed and it’s horrible.

Sam: (25:35)

Yeah. The Einsatzgruppen were SS-led death squads that engaged in a scorched earth policy in the wake of the German advance on the Eastern Front, particularly in Poland and the Soviet Union. They mass-murdered civilians considered to be enemies of the regime – predominantly Jews, but also communists, academics, and anyone they deemed to be helping the partisans, as we see in this movie.

They were led by enemy of the pod, Reinhard Heydrich. And if you want to listen to him get his just deserts, you can go listen to our Anthropoid episode. But this small group of 4,250 men killed around two million people. They were a major part of the so-called Final Solution. And they had their own Einsatzgruppen trial in the wake of the Nuremberg trials in 1947 and ’48. Eight of the leaders were ultimately executed.

Maartje: (26:23)

So scary. And also, Scorched Earth in this case is quite literal, because they just burned the entire village down.

Sam: (26:31)

Yeah.

They get out of there. They’re obviously disturbed by what they’ve seen. They spend the night in the tank, not specifically talking about it, but you can tell it’s got them antsy. They’re drinking and chatting. Gerkens reminds them that orders are orders and they’re all they have – because at this point the guys are starting to feel like this whole thing is a little dicey. He’s like, guys, we have to follow our orders. And this becomes our running theme. This movie ends up being a meditation on the concept of just following orders, so we’ll definitely talk about that more.

Maartje: (27:02)

I think they did go that route. But I think they could have gone a little harder. They could have been more contemplative about it. They keep repeating it but keep it kind of on the surface. I feel like they should have questioned it more rather than just keep bringing it up.

They don’t have a very long respite before they find themselves in another firefight with the Tank Killer. Gerkens is very skilled, directing their victory by manoeuvring them around the flank and shooting it. But unfortunately they do get hit by a round, and Keilig is hit and dies very tragically on top of their tank.

And the men are all spooked because when they go over to see the destroyed Tank Killer, they see the bodies of the dead crew. But they are a little too burned for comfort. They should not have burned that quickly or that completely.

Sam: (28:11)

Yes, very spooky. The one thing that got me was: Keilig has been hit by shrapnel and he knows he’s dying, and they’re all asking if he’s okay, and he just says, take me out into the sunshine.

Maartje: (28:22)

Yeah, that made me sad. The little tank man just wants sunshine before he dies. In general, I thought Keilig was kind of a gentle man.

Sam: (28:28)

Yeah.

The SU-100 had a powerful 100mm gun that could penetrate the armour of heavy German tanks at ranges of around two kilometres. As we see in the movie, it traded a rotating tank turret for thicker armour and a lower profile. So if it wanted to shoot someone, it had to turn the whole tank around – but it was a smaller target and therefore harder to hit back.

It was an improvement on the SU-85, which had been specifically designed to take on the Tiger. But the one thing to note is that the SU-100 was not finished being developed until late 1944, so its presence in this 1943-set movie is anachronistic.

Maartje: (29:22)

Did you notice that the Tank Killer was covered in hay? And I was like, if I can’t see it, I can’t bloody well shoot it, can I? It’s what I thought immediately.

Sam: (29:37)

Band of Brothers callback.

Maartje: (29:38)

Yes. I don’t know if that’s on purpose or not, but it might be. I thought it was funny.

Sam: (29:43)

I would probably guess it was common to try and camouflage your tank in some fashion.

Maartje: (29:49)

The other guys don’t really want to continue. And Weller, one of the tank crew, actually orchestrates a near mutiny. But the other two remaining crewmen, including sweet Michel, have just enough faith in Gerkens to decide they will complete the mission. Gerkens says to Weller: we’ll just never talk about it again.

Sam: (30:09)

It’s like, Michel, he prioritised the tank over you. You don’t owe this guy any loyalty. But I want to tie a ribbon around this little argument because I want to talk about it later when we discuss the ending.

Maartje: (30:19)

Sure. And spoiler alert, they will never talk about it again.

Sam: (30:24)

Soon they’re on the homestretch of their mission. They park the tank and approach on foot the bunker where von Hardenberg is supposedly hiding out. It’s very atmospheric. They’re passing the bodies of dead paratroopers. And when they arrive, there’s this small, incongruous group of German soldiers and women having a little party in the bunker.

One of them leads Gerkens to his friend, and they go down this really long hallway. It’s dark in there. Very horror movie-esque. And someone says something like quite elaborant – which, if you haven’t twigged yet, this callback to the mission name should probably start telling you what’s going on here.

Maartje: (31:01)

The paratroopers’ bodies were also in deep levels of decay already, which I thought was interesting. They do it first to the tank crew and then also to the paratroopers. There’s not much left at this point.

And things are immediately, again, very off. Von Hardenberg and Gerkens have an odd interaction when von Hardenberg calls back to Gerkens’ attitude that orders are orders. And that’s when we find out that back at Stalingrad, Gerkens brought orders to von Hardenberg to fire on a factory – and he was reluctant to do so – and it turns out he was right to be reluctant, because the factory was full of women and children that we can hear screaming.

And it’s Gerkens who insisted that orders are to be followed. That’s when we see a vision that Gerkens has been having throughout the entire movie: these factory windows engulfed in flames. And it’s so scary to look at.

Sam: (32:01)

Yeah. So Gerkens realises that von Hardenberg died in the rubble that day. He’s not here. There were no orders to come here. Indeed, he never came here at all. On the day of the Dnieper debacle, he had received word that his wife and son were killed in an air raid. Through the whole movie we’ve been seeing glimpses of him getting a letter, but we didn’t know what it said. He then delayed the order for his tank to retreat for way too long because he just didn’t care if he lived or died at that point. And his tank plunged off the bridge where it exploded, carrying his entire crew with it.

Maartje: (32:35)

Dun dun dun. Even in that hall where he’s with von Hardenberg – there’s food on the table the first time, and the second time he gets to see the table, all the food is decayed and gone. And spooky. And he’s looking at this oven, which is clearly another callback to the fire but also possibly hell.

The only thing I thought was funny was that von Hardenberg did indeed have one hand, because in the story it goes that he had to cut off his own hand to get out from the rubble – but obviously he never did. And I also like how they just show you Gerkens’ order papers and it’s just a blank sheet. It’s a bit on the nose, but I did like it. I think they could have been more ambiguous about it and still made it obvious.

Sam: (33:33)

Yeah, I agree. It was pretty clear even by the time he was coming into the bunker that this was sort of how it was going. I want to say that the von Hardenberg actor really gave me the creeps in this scene. I thoroughly enjoyed that performance. And I really liked thinking back over the movie and seeing all the flags – starting with that opening quote about how only the dead have seen the end of war.

Also: when they see the dead Russian tank crew, they’re looking at themselves.

Maartje: (34:03)

Oh my god! That’s been giving me chills! I didn’t see that! I’m going to have to go back and look again!

Sam: (34:09)

Yeah. There are little parts like that all through the movie. The part where the SS commandant asks him if he remembers the flames – and the windows and the shed look similar to the factory. Even the part where he’s having the argument with his own crew about whether they should go back – where someone says, we should vote on it.

And then he gets to win that argument with himself. So he gets to stifle any of his own nagging doubts about whether he’s doing the right thing by projecting it as: here’s an argument I won, full stop. And this whole “just following orders” thing he’s so committed to – his whole thing is that if he follows orders and does what he’s supposed to do, he’ll be able to protect his wife and son. And then his wife and son died in an air raid. So at that point it’s like: is anything I did actually justified? And if the things I did aren’t justified – that’s horrifying. I have to grapple with that now. And ultimately, the ultimate consequence of just following orders is you die in a fiery inferno.

Maartje: (35:22)

And so do all the people that you possibly still care about. Let’s hope.

Sam: (35:28)

Yeah.

Maartje: (35:29)

I’ve been sitting here thinking about the role that Michel plays in all this, because he’s constantly talking about ghosts – there’s ghosts in the woods, there’s ghosts everywhere. But I haven’t figured out what he means to Gerkens specifically. I’m sure there’s a meaning there that I’ve just not figured out yet.

I don’t know, maybe he’s not a conscience kind of thing – he’s not telling him he’s not doing the right thing. But I’m sure there’s something, because he’s the one constantly kind of narrating what’s happening. He’s like, there’s ghosts in the woods – when they are actually in the woods and they’re ghosts. It’s an interesting way to use a World War II story and turn it into a ghost story. For me it’s the perfect combination. I love World War II stories and I love ghost stories. So it’s perfect.

Sam: (36:28)

Well, if there was ever going to be a ghost-generating event, probably World War II.

Maartje: (36:35)

Yes. Surprise.

Sam: (36:35)

I did notice that this definitely had some major callbacks to Apocalypse Now. There’s this sort of “it was all a dream” ending – not specifically that, but the trope is quite similar to the well-known short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, where I think it’s a Civil War soldier who thinks he’s escaping a hanging. And then it turns out everything since the escape is just his life flashing before his eyes.

Maartje: (37:08)

Mmm, similar. I’ll have to look that up. I’ve never read that story, nor have I seen Apocalypse Now.

Sam: (37:15)

Add it to the list.

Maartje: (37:16)

Add it to the list! The list is so long.

Interesting. I think that’s the end already, and I don’t think we have additional notes because obviously this is not a real story. I do appreciate you teaching me a bunch more about German tanks and tank destroyers. That’s fun.

Sam: (37:34)

Yeah. We don’t talk about vehicles and weaponry too much on this podcast because we’re often more focused on, I guess, people and events and that kind of stuff. But sometimes it is fun to read about tanks.

Maartje: (37:41)

People.

It’s narrow enough that I enjoyed it for an episode. I wouldn’t want to speak every week about tanks, but to have it for one episode that’s not based on a true story – that’s fun.

Sam: (38:01)

Yeah. Imagine if we had a weekly tank podcast.

Maartje: (38:04)

I’m sure we’d have loads of listeners. I feel like there are a lot of men very interested in this type of content.

Sam: (38:10)

Yeah, but you can’t have a podcast like that because the comments would be full of guys being like, actually, the tank tray you described as four millimetres is actually 4.2 millimetres. Who has the time to do that much research?

Maartje: (38:25)

And also, my tank is better than your tank. Kind of discussions.

Sam: (38:30)

Yeah, people love to argue about which tank was better than which other tank. And a lot of this stuff really depends on context.

Maartje: (38:36)

Yep. True.

Well, we have to rate this movie. But before we do, I’d like to remind you that you can follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a review – I read them all, I promise. And you can also send this episode to a friend!

Sam: (38:59)

Every time you send this episode to a friend, you get to eat a pomegranate in a tank.

Maartje: (39:03)

Right, we didn’t even talk about the pomegranate in the tank at last.

Sam: (39:07)

I just thought it was so funny. I don’t even remember who it was – it was like Helmut or Weller – but they were sitting there and just very neatly eating a pomegranate, with the skin bent back and just eating the pips out of it. I was not expecting that to be what was happening.

Maartje: (39:25)

Also, where the heck would you get a pomegranate? At that point in the war.

Sam: (39:30)

I don’t know. I guess it’s not real. It’s all inside Gerkens’ head. So he’s like…

Maartje: (39:34)

Why is he thinking about pomegranates?

Sam: (39:38)

I think this guy should have a pomegranate.

Maartje: (39:40)

So, let’s rate this movie. How many submergible tanks out of 10, Sam?

Sam: (39:46)

I’m going to rate it… honestly, okay. I’m going to rate it 7.8. Which I think maybe objectively is a slightly better rating than it deserves, considering how well it pulled off all the things it was trying to pull off. But I just really liked it. It was right in my wheelhouse in terms of kinds of movies I like. And like I said at the beginning, I want more war movies to take a risk. And this one definitely did. And if I’m comparing it to Fury, the script was much better. I didn’t feel like I was having cartoonish masculinity rubbed in my face. It felt more natural. It was fun storytelling. I had a good time. What about you?

Maartje: (40:30)

I agree with you. I’m going to also give it a 7.8 submergible tanks out of 10. Because I similarly enjoyed it. I can see the flaws in it and some of it is a bit on the nose. And I guess maybe some people will find that this isn’t a serious World War 2 story. But I don’t give a damn. I enjoyed ghost stories and I thought it was interesting to see. And I also liked that it wasn’t too scary for me to watch. So it just wins on all fronts – even the Eastern Front. I enjoy it.

Sam: (41:11)

Even the Eastern Front.

Maartje: (41:15)

Anyway, that brings us to the end of this movie discussion. It’s Liberation Day today in the Netherlands as we are recording. And I feel like I want to say something to people. I think we should all celebrate our freedoms that we have today. So if you’re listening to this – go celebrate your freedom by doing something crazy.

Sam: (41:36)

Hell yeah.

Maartje: (41:37)

Yesterday was Remembrance Day, so there’s that too. But also: celebrate your freedoms while you have them. They’re important. They should be celebrated.

Alright, I’ll call it then. Thank you again for listening to yet another episode of Rosie. You can follow us wherever you get your podcasts and give us five stars. You can send this episode to a friend. You can follow us on Instagram at rosiethereviewerpodcast, or you can visit rosiethereviewer.com for more information.

And we’ll see you next week!

Sam: (42:10)

Bye.