We see Khruschev heroically entering Stalingrad in "Enemy at the Gates," but the real Khruschev was leaving it about that time: He got permission from Stalin to move his HQ across the river. Whereas the movie Khruschev demands the suicide of a Soviet general, the only general fired by Khruschev in that campaign survived and complained to Stalin about it. Khruschev's actual role in Stalingrad was much more marginal than it would appear from the movie. He was very good at oppressing the peasants, though.

Well, Hollywood history is Hollywood history, and Enemy at the Gates was a truly crappy piece of cheese, but Bob Hoskins' performance as Khruschev was one of the best things in it. I love the way he referred to Stalin as "the Boss," and you can bet all the junior political officers were literally scared to death of him.

Of course, as a child of the 1950s, I've always had a soft spot for Fat Nikita, the only actual worker and peasant ever to rule the USSR -- and it showed. The American press made a real character out of him.

...a soldier. you are out to lunch and dont know your ass from a hole in the ground. here are the facts. every Soviet fighting unit, at the squad level, had a political commisar attached to it. in Stalingrad the fighting was cellar to cellar, room to room, for months on end. everybody was a frontline soldiers in the firefight, including Soviet commissars. the intensity of combat and the heroics pulled were on a level that is unknown to americans. deeds for which US soldiers got congressional medals of honor for were daily expected combat activities for Soviet and German soldiers. The chances of a Soviet POW in Stalingrad surviving in German hands was 0. The chances of a Soviet Commissar surviving on the entire Russian front was -100000000000000000. There was a standing order that Soviet Commissars are executed in a Standgericht. Basically, immediately. At Stalingrad, there were no prisoners taken. You could, if you burned out, stand up in the open, and get executed expertly and immediately by a sniper. Otherwise your choice of death was not pretty and the worst thing that could happen to a German or Soviet soldier was to get wounded to the point where control of a firearm was not possible. Even after the formal capitulation in Stalingrad, of the German POWs known to go into captivity, like 100,000, only a small fraction ever saw their homeland.

Krushev was a combat veteran, in a war whose intensity was nothing an American has ever seen or will ever see.

Americans don't know what a war is.

Intersurfa: "Krushev was a combat veteran, in a war whose intensity was nothing an American has ever seen or will ever see."

".. or will ever see" : I'm glad somebody can tell the future, I sure hope you're right!

Unfortunately, American soldiers are right now "seeing" pretty intensive combat and they also did so and suffered many casualties in previous wars (Vietnam, WWII ...). It's the US population that has been spared and thus many American civilians don't have a gut understanding of war. If we did, perhaps our country wouldn't be stuck right now in two unwinnable wars.

I was three year old in Budapest hiding with my mother and a score of other civilians in a basement while the Russians and Germans fought a house to house battle and the bombs kept on dropping and there was no food. All the other children in that basement died and so did many adults..... the most numerous casualties of modern war are civilians.

What the Hell are you talking about and what does this have to do with the above comment? The abuses and horrors inflicted by the Soviet State on its own people during World War II are quite well docmented, thank you. That said, Khruschev was not a combat veteran in the commonly-understood meaning of the term. He was a high ranking political official -- he wasn't fighting on the front lines.

In any case, the comment about Khruschev about his not being a combat soldier is more to make the point that he was a rather high-ranking official during the war, just like his Cold War antagonist Eisenhower. He didn't somehow miraculously rise from the ranks to become the Soviet Premier - he was part of Stalin's inner circle.

intersurfa:

here are the facts. every Soviet fighting unit, at the squad level, had a political commisar attached to it. in Stalingrad the fighting was cellar to cellar, room to room, for months on end. everybody was a frontline soldiers in the firefight, including Soviet commissars. the intensity of combat and the heroics pulled were on a level that is unknown to americans. deeds for which US soldiers got congressional medals of honor for were daily expected combat activities for Soviet and German soldiers. The chances of a Soviet POW in Stalingrad surviving in German hands was 0. The chances of a Soviet Commissar surviving on the entire Russian front was -100000000000000000. There was a standing order that Soviet Commissars are executed in a Standgericht.

Right. But none of that changed the fact that Khrushchev was never attached to an infantry squad in Stalingrad or anywhere else during WW2, was well away from the front lines (which were pretty static in Stalingrad, as I'm sure you're aware) and, unless Stalin decided to make an example of him, stood little more chance of being captured than Doug MacArthur did in downtown Brisbane.

He was, of course, on the front during the Civil War.

As for intensity of combat, I urge you to broaden your horizons a bit and read up on battles like Tarawa, Peleliu, and Okinawa, or for that matter Bastogne or the Huertgenwald. It is true that the US was fortunate enough to be spared from having the war fought on its soil, and that unlike the Russians, Germans, and Japanese it declined to gas, starve, torture, freeze, or work prisoners to death. It also refrained from murdering the cream of its officer corps during the 1930s, so it was able to fight and win battles like the above without having to spend the lives of its soldiers like Zimbabwean dollars. Both the German and Red Armies' horrendous losses had as much to do with the inexperience, incompetence, contempt for military professionals, refusal to face facts, and inhuman callousness and cruelty at the top of the chain of command as the intensity of the fighting.

"Khruschev was not a "Soviet infantry soldier" during the Great Patriotic War."

My point was that Krushev was not only an infantry soldier, but had the best (worst?) combat experience. His life experience must have weighed on him when he faced Kennedy and the brink of nuclear holocaust. Unlike a young man, Krushev gave an inch, and saved the world. For which he lost his job.

intersurfa:

"Khruschev was not a "Soviet infantry soldier" during the Great Patriotic War."

My point was that Krushev was not only an infantry soldier, but had the best (worst?) combat experience.

If by that you mean he had combat experience at Stalingrad or anywhere else in WW2, your point is mistaken. Commanding from a bunker across the river from all the fighting does not qualify as combat experience.

Khruschev had the rank equivalent of a three star general. As a high level political officer, his job was toh keep an eye on the generals for Stalin. He was less an infantry soldier than George Patton was a tanker, and he no more experienced combat than any other 3 star general.

Now if you wanted to say that his job gave Khrushchev a good look at war and its aftermath, and that the experience shaped what he did in the Berlin Crisis and also the Cuban Missile Crisis, I'd agree with you.

One reason Enemy at the Gates was so bad is because the producers did not buy the rights to The War of the Rats, a first rate novel about Zaitsev the sniper, and you can see where they were constrained to write around it.

It's best viewed as a formula boxing B-movie from the 1930s: it has the Fighter (Zaitsev), the Manager (Danilov), the Girl Who Comes Between Them, the Sinister Promoter (Khrushchev) and, of course, the Fearsome Opponent. It's also the only movie I've ever seen where a guy tries to charm a girl into bed with a smoked sturgeon.