| Summary: | The German Army cameraman on the eastern front not only witnessed World War II's greatest land battles, but was also a first-hand observer of life in Russia after 20 years of Soviet rule. His films of conditions inside Stalin's state were skillfully arranged by Hitler's propagandists to present a bleak picture of the Soviet paradise. Its citizenry are represented as starving children, youthful gangs, cowed laborers and wretched peasants barely existing on dilapidated collective farms or in overcrowded city slums, or even homeless on the barren steppes. A deserted university and desecrated crypts of an abandoned church form dismal monuments to knowledge and faith forsaken. Although scarcely impartial, this Nazi film offers us a unique picture of the Russian interior, compiled by the only cameramen ever unrestrained by Soviet censors.
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