SOURCE: Bauke, J. P. “Defeat on the Volga.” Saturday Review 50 (30 September 1967): 43-57.

In the following review of The Battle, Bauke maintains that Kluge's documentary style of fiction functions to demystify the Battle of Stalingrad and lay “bare the absurdity of that and every other battle.”

No battle in modern times has agitated the Germans more than the one they lost at Stalingrad in 1943. The annihilation of the Sixth Army jolted the German masses into the realization that the tables were about to be turned, and for the first time during the war even fanatic Nazis had their optimism put to the test. Goebbels's ministry of propaganda, while carefully doctoring the factual information on the disaster, engaged in a rhetoric of superlatives when the news had to be broken to a stunned country.

The defeat was officially proclaimed as “the supreme epic in German history,” an event “that outshines...