General for two devils
The documentary reviles the story of the Red Army General Vlasov and his collaboration with Hitler?
Patriot or traitor? More than one-half century after his execution, General Andrei Vlasov remains one of the World War II's most controversial figures. A brilliant Soviet commander, General Vlasov played an important role during the defence of Moscow at end of 1941. Arrested in 1942 by the Germans, he changed sides. But it was only on September 16, 1944, after an interview with Himmler, that he received the official authorization to create his own Russian Liberation Army, whose first division was created as early as 1943. Vlasov idea was to free Russia of Stalin regime with guaranteed freedoms for its people. He sought to attain his goals through German Nazi sponsorship. These plans ran up against Nazi dogmas of Lebensraum and Slavic inferiority. Vlasov spent much of the war under house arrest. Only in the last months of the war did the Germans consent to sponsor a truncated version of his Liberation Army, with predictably futile results. This new documentary offers newly-found film footage extensive interviews with Vlasov's surviving associates, lieutenants, and foot soldiers, including Igor Novosiltzev, Constantine Sacharevitsch, Nikolai Kozlov, Nikolai Numerov, Nikolas Vastchenko, and Nikolai A. Chiketov. The views of Vlasov's German backers are represented by Hans von Herwath, Robert Krötz, and Helmuth Schwenninger, while William Sloane Coffin, Arthur Cowgill, Frank Roberts, and Tom Dennis comment upon the U.S.-British supervised repatriation of Vlasov's surviving troops to the Soviet Union in 1945. its multiple perspectives and rich visual documentation, this solidly-researched film provides the clearest picture yet of this difficult subject, revealing Vlasov's tortured legacy in its many dimensions.
