"Ignoramus10903" wrote in
message news:-7-

The history shows that much of the time, disasters and wars
dispossess
people of their homes.

i

From what I've read of WW2 that was true in Russia but not in Germany,
except for the Eastern areas like Courland. The population apparently
didn't flee the Western armies. I've seen a monument in a small German
town commemorating those lost in its defense.

Some towns surrendered peacefully, some fought, which complicated our
advance. One effective answer was to lob in a few shells -before-
phoning the Burgomeister. There is a story that when we called a
resisting town to ask if they'd had enough, the person who answered
said that all of the houses had been damaged by tank shells except the
one belonging to the instigator of the resistance, and could we please
send in a few more to get his too.

All Soviet accounts I've read are clearly rather simplistic one-sided
propaganda. This American book favors the Russians somewhat but
doesn't inflate them into supermen/women:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...y_at_the_Gates
Read the reviews.

The sniper duel in the movie is only a minor event in the book.

jsw