As the dulcet gravel ofRon Perlman’s voice has told us time and time again at the beginning of everyFalloutgame, “war never changes.” No matter the setting, the context, or the duration,war is always a maelstrom that usually only serves baseless and selfish political purposes to the detriment of all citizens. If you’ve grown up experiencing American cinema’s depictions of war, then you probably have an idea of how frequently it drifts into extreme jingoism. You’d be hard-pressed to find American directors interested in portraying the enemy’s perspective,let alone the perspective of the literal Nazis. But that’s whatnoted renegadeSam Peckinpahdid with his World War II movieCross of Iron, taking a group of German footsoldiers and using them to tell a story of ugly motivations and pathetic execution.
Cross of Iron
Set during World War II on the Eastern Front, this war film follows a platoon of German soldiers as they battle Soviet forces. The story focuses on the moral and physical struggles of the soldiers, particularly a sergeant who clashes with a Prussian officer.
What Is Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Cross of Iron’ About?
Corporal Rolf Steiner (James Coburn) is a living legend among his Werhmacht brethren,living up to their myth of the Aryan soldier, which is ironic, since he privately despises everything to do with military structure. The Captain of Steiner’s battalion, Stransky (Maximilian Schell), is a presumptive coward who seeks personal glory at all costs,seeing it as his destiny to earn the prestigious Iron Cross medal by any means necessary. When the position the German army is holding is attacked by the Russian army, the German counterattack is led by the much beloved lieutenant Meyer (Igor Galo), while Stransky is busy hiding away in a bunker out of fear, which leads to Meyer’s death, despite the counterattack being successful.Stransky seeks to lie and claim he led the counterattack,and in order to “prove” his case to their ranking officer, Colonel Brandt (James Mason), he needs multiple witnesses to corroborate his claims. He turns to Steiner, due to his high standing among the soldiers, and Lieutenant Treibirg (Roger Fritz), due to blackmailing him with the knowledge that Treibirg is a closeted homosexual. But Steiner won’t back down from his principles, andthat leads to a warthat will lead to the deaths of numerous innocent soldiers.
But are they truly innocent? While Peckinpah may have a reputation for antagonizing audiences with his depictions, it would be callous to think he’d fully embrace a Nazi perspective uncritically. Given the way he contemplated and examined the poisonous influence of fascistic violence inStraw Dogs, one of his most dangerous films, it stands to reason that he views the characters ofCross of Ironthrough two different lenses. On the one hand, theyallow Peckinpah to indulge in his love for grungy menclawing and carousing their way through life’s constant battles, with his signature primal rage at unnecessary societal strictures. On the other hand,he frequently emphasizes the senseless depravity and casual cruelty that the soldiers engage in, be it how most of them physically bully each other or how Stransky clearly views everybody below him as pawns in his own game of ladder-climbing. In the vein of theStanley KubrickclassicPaths of Glory,Peckinpah exposes the way military structures incentivize higher-ranking individuals to throw lower-ranked members under the busfor the sake of their own ego and/or social progression. While it’s commendable that Peckinpah is perceptive enough to point this out, it’s not really enough to overcome the big invisible goose in the room: that the film isn’t really up to the task of effectively critiquing soldiers serving for the Nazi forces.
Sam Peckipah’s ‘Cross of Iron’ Mishandles Its Politics
Give credit to Peckinpah for the initial guts to pursue a story set firmly where it is, but the narrative makes it feel like he couldn’t fully commit to all of its implications.The film has essentially no discussion or acknowledgment of the political philosophy or underlying goals that the Nazis pursued, besides Stransky being offended by the notion of being called one after Steiner criticizes his worldview. Stransky and Steiner both maintain that they’re members of the Werhmacht and notofficial Nazi party members, essentially shrugging off any moral responsibility for serving them. Furthermore, Steiner goes out of his way to lament the cruel no man’s land that soldiers find themselves in, rambling borderline incoherently about being at the mercy of “an accident of hands,” mindlessly going from “one extreme to the other” ineffectively.
Given Peckinpah’s lackadaisical focus on the sociopolitical ramifications of his premise,this can only be interpreted as Steiner shrugging and suggesting that all soldiers are at the mercy of the specter of war, unironically invokingElaine Benes’summation ofWar and Peaceas “war, what is it good for?” It reeks of Steiner falling into the trope of the “One Good Nazi,“when a member of a hate group acts or becomes enlightened about their bigotry in a remarkably callous and unrealistic manner, and even James Coburn’s committed and aggrieved performance can’t overpower the hollow platitudes he espouses. It’s hard to view Coburn’s character as all that honestly sympathetic when we have no sense of why he’s even in the Wehrmacht in the first place and doesn’t bat an eye at being surrounded by enormous swastika flags.
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It would be gauche to claim that the problem is simply that Peckinpah made his characters Nazis and called it a day, aswe can find examples of films about characters with Nazi affiliation that are still fully fleshed out.Downfallmanaged to depict Adolf Hitler (Bruno Ganz) himself in a way that was psychologically insightful, treating him like a deeply pathetic and delusional human being, while also highlighting the way he managed to exist in a bubble built by his family and closest supporters, seeing themselves as brave souls going down with the Titanic.Schindler’s Listfirmly establishes Oskar Schindler’s (Liam Neeson) unashamed Nazi Party affiliation before he goes on his journey of spiritual reevaluation and uses his factories to rescue over 1,000 Jews from the Nazis, leading to one ofSteven Spielberg’s most accomplished and critically praised films.The BelieverhadRyan Goslingplay a Jewish man committed to the Nazi cause in a film that received praise for its handling of the irrationality of hateful ideology.These were films that directly confronted the flaws in Nazi beliefs and peeled back the layers of self-deception necessary to buy into them,and that’s whereCross of Ironstumbles. The cast feels interchangeable with the lovable scamps and tragic youths of American war films from the 1940s, and the lightly applied German accents and green-gray uniforms can’t fix that. But where Peckinpah stumbles with the politics, he excels in the carnage of war.
‘Cross of Iron’ Shows the Ugly, Unrewarding Sides of War
A Sam Peckinpah action movieis usuallydefined by abject chaos and being drenched in the juices and grime of violence. He loves practically showering his characters in mud and blood and sweat, dragging them around by their fingernails until they’re barely left standing. WhileCross of Ironisn’t as graphic in its violence as some of his other films in terms of its use of blood (possibly due to the film’s notable budget issues),it succeeds in itsanti-war intentionsby having all the combat scenes feel sucked of any glory or glamor. Soldiers scurrying across battlefields are haggard and desperate, and explosions send them flying while hollering pathetic cartoon screams. The combat zones are so drenched in debris and smoke that you can barely see what’s going on, adding a layer of smog that makes it hard to get any kind of thrill, since you’re so busy squinting to see what’s going on. If anything, it makes the Germans look like scared crabs scuttling around, at the mercy of karma itself.
That karma comes back around on all the characters — and on Stransky most harshly. After Stransky intentionally orders Steiner and his men to stay put so that oncoming Russian soldiers can slaughter them, Steiner and his menfight through the forcesin order to get back to HQ. When they finally make it, now disguised as Russian soldiers,Stransky uses that as a convenient excuse to order his men to friendly fire on them, so that he may have the only people who could rat on him be wiped away. That barely works, as Steiner survives and the two seem like they’re going to have a standoff, only for Steiner to insist they should forget it and fight their way out together. The two eventually go their separate ways, withStransky being held up by a Russian child soldierwho barely knows how to hold a gun, andSteiner leaves him to die while laughingin satisfaction at the absurdity of what’s happened. With the film closing with a montage of photos of military officers executing civilians throughout history, Sam Peckinpah finally drives home the idea that, regardless of nationality or cause, no military force is exempt from the capability of using their power for selfish brutality. It’s just a bit of a shame Peckinpah didn’t think further about which side would be most effective to make that point.
Cross of Ironis available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.
