This could be the greatest tank film ever made. And it’s German
German director Dennis Gansel remembers an incident that would ultimately inspire his war film The Tank (original German title Der Tiger ), about a five-man Tiger I tank crew following Germany's defeat at Stalingrad . As a child, Gansel spent an evening in a pub with his grandfather, a German soldier in the Second World War , and his grandfather's friend, a former tank commander.
Before that night, the men would spin familiar war stories. "It was this old, old soldier talk, like, 'We'd been to North Africa. We fried eggs on top of our Tiger tank when we were in Rommel's army before the Brits came in,'" recalls Gansel. But that evening in the pub, as young Dennis played cards with his grandmother, the old men got drunk. "The next moment, they had tears in their eyes. They shared darker stories about the Second World War, especially about Russia," he says.
Dennis asked his grandmother whether she had heard these stories before – stories about churches being burnt and tanks diving underwater. "My grandmother said, 'I'm hearing it for the first time.'" They never told the stories again. "It was like they opened a book and then closed it again. I never forgot it," says Gansel.
Their experiences are woven into the Amazon film The Tank , written by Gansel and Colin Teevan, which tells the otherwise fictional story of Lt Gerkens (David Schütter) and his crew. After an explosive retreat from Stalingrad, they are sent on a rescue mission into no man's land to retrieve a mysterious colonel from a Nazi bunker. It plays like a German equivalent of the Brad Pitt tank film Fury , depicting walloping tank-on-tank action and the sweaty, traumatising conditions endured by the men inside the Tiger. It also has a touch of Saving Private Ryan , with the crew questioning the point of their mission. "Orders are orders," says Gerkens. Indeed, The Tank is unusual – perhaps even controversial – in depicting Nazi soldiers as everyman protagonists.
But Gansel's film also moves into strange territory for a war film, a shift that has proved divisive and may disqualify it as a "realistic" depiction of war for some viewers. Gansel laughs about the online reaction. "I expected a little discussion, but it's more intense than I imagined," he says. "Right now, with the ending getting some backlash, I'm doubting some decisions."
A huge amount of research went into the production – not just eyewitness accounts of real events but also the specifications of the Tiger I. Gansel explains that he visited the Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset, which holds the world's only running Tiger I. The interior of the film's version is an exact replica. "We wanted to build a real Tiger tank but it was too expensive," says Gansel. "We used a Russian tank and built our Tiger on top of it. Our measurements are not quite right – people who really know tanks will see it. The tracks were also not right, but we fixed them with CGI. We put artificial wheels on it, which is what makes the Tiger distinctive."
According to Chris Copson, a historian at the Bovington Tank Museum, the Tiger I was a "game changer" when it first appeared in 1942. "It was able to knock out any Allied tank at long range – 1,500m," he says. "Allied tank crews were terrified of the thing."
He adds: "If you were in a Sherman or a T-34 [Allied and Soviet tanks] and you came round a bend to find a Tiger looking at you, that was a very bad day at the office. One on one – a Tiger versus a Sherman or T-34 – the Tiger came out on top every time. It had a better gun, better armour and a better fire-control system."
Copson credits The Tank as one of several modern war films – including Fury – that make an effort to portray tank warfare realistically. The biggest complaint from historians about older war films is the use of the wrong model vehicles.
"If you look at things like Patton or The Battle of the Bulge , they're using totally the wrong equipment – post-war American tanks pretending to be King Tigers and things like that," says Copson. " A Bridge Too Far is half-and-half – some convincing vehicles, but the Panzers crashing across the bridge are post-war Leopards dressed up a bit. Now they're putting much more effort into getting these things right. Audiences used to be undiscriminating about this stuff, but these days film-makers get such a blizzard of complaints that they have to get things right."
Fury (2014), starring Brad Pitt (centre), is frequently praised for its gritty portrayal of life inside a Second World War tank - Giles Keyte
Dennis Gansel says he has received letters from eagle-eyed tank aficionados . He admits to making the gun of the film's SU-100 – a Soviet tank destroyer – slightly bigger than it was in real life.
Copson has reservations about The Tank 's ultimate destination but appreciates its overall technical accuracy. "The Tiger itself, inside and out, is pretty convincing," he says. He also credits the film with capturing the "feel" of being a crewman inside the Tiger. "It was a filthy, nasty, oily place to be," says Copson. "Not a comfortable way to go to war."
He points to Death Traps by Belton Cooper, who served in the US armoured division in Normandy. "He described tank interiors as hot and cramped, and reeking of oil, exhaust fumes, sweat and cordite," says Copson. "Crews in combat seldom got the chance to wash, so the smell built up, and dirt and mud was tracked in from outside. If anything, Soviet tank crews had it worse. The T-34 was so uncomfortable inside that the crews' most prized possessions were the tarpaulins they slept under outside the tank."
In one tense sequence, the Tiger escapes the SU-100 by diving into a river and sitting underwater. It seems like a creative liberty, but the Tiger I really was capable of diving. "Deep-wading gear did exist," says Copson. "It was trialled and found to be effective, but seldom issued, and I don't think it was used operationally."
The German crew say as much in the film as the SU-100 hunts them down. "We've only done that in training, never in combat," says one of the crew.
"Seems like the right time to do so," says Gerkens.
Gansel admits that his biggest creative liberty was the idea of a Tiger on a lone, long-distance rescue mission. "A Tiger tank would never be alone," he says. "You would never use a Tiger for a rescue mission." A real Tiger I had an operational range of around 110km and would have needed refuelling (as it does in the film) and maintenance.
The Tiger I tank was praised by historians for its technical accuracy, though some elements were adapted for narrative purposes
Gansel worked with an expert on Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The historian agreed to sign off on the lone rescue mission inaccuracy – excusing it for narrative reasons that Gansel will not spoil here – but told him to "make sure the battles are right".
The battles were then put together with the help of a real tank commander from the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, and Wolfgang Schneider, a Tiger tank expert. The eventual confrontation between the Tiger and the SU-100 is a thunderous combat sequence , one that offers a glimpse of how terrifying it must have been to be locked inside a tank during such fighting. As Copson explains, a tank is "a big parcel of propellant charges, shells, fuel and oil", and the primary fear was "brewing up" – in other words, going up in flames. "If a tank cooked off, any crew who hadn't managed to escape – very difficult – would be carbonised remains in the bottom of the tank."
Beyond the Tiger itself, The Tank grapples with Nazism and the realities of ordinary men – not necessarily card-carrying members of the SS – who fought for the Nazi cause. The crew snigger at Hitler, calling him "the Austrian", and are quietly horrified when they stumble across an SS officer burning villagers alive to save on ammunition. "Our little contribution to the great cause," says the officer.
On the surface, this might appear to be an easy, anti-war get-out clause, depicting the crew as soldiers simply doing their job. It recalls the non-Nazi U-boat crew in Das Boot (Gansel directed 11 episodes of the recent television version). It is more complex than that, however. Lt Gerkens may appear horrified by the atrocities he witnesses, but his commitment to following orders barely masks his struggle to come to terms with his own role. At the same time, he fears the fall of the Third Reich.
"I consider Nazis to be people who believe in the ideology," says Gansel. "I think Gerkens is a Nazi. He believes in it – not 100 per cent, perhaps – but enough to follow the orders. What my grandmother and grandfather taught me was, 'We were all part of the system. We don't deny it. But not everybody was a Nazi.' We tried to give the audience a group of characters that helps them to understand that."
The Tank depicts ordinary German soldiers and the moral compromises of fighting for the Nazi cause
Gansel says it is unusual for a German film to depict Nazi soldiers as protagonists. "It's unusual, and every time you do it there's a big discussion about it," he says.
In 2004, Downfall , about Hitler's final days in the bunker, caused significant controversy for "humanising" Hitler. Gansel explains that German films more commonly tell stories about those who opposed the Nazis. When The Tank was first released in Germany last September, responses were mixed. News magazine Der Spiegel noted that war films are burdened in Germany by the difficulty of telling heroic stories. Elsewhere, the film was criticised for jettisoning its morality in the end, but also praised for exploring new territory with its portrait of ordinary German men.
Gansel has tackled the complexities of Nazism in previous films – Before the Fall , about an elite Nazi school, and The Wave , about an out-of-control classroom experiment in fascism. "I was familiar with having German soldiers or Nazis as protagonists," he says. "And why? Because my own grandfather was very Right wing. I think he was aligned with Nazi ideology and remained very Right wing until he died. When you look at German films, you might think, 'Was everyone in the resistance?' I said, 'We have to make films about these people.' Not to have sympathy for Nazis, but to have a deeper understanding of how it can happen."
Gansel even questions how he himself would have fared at the time. "I've been very Left wing my whole life," he says. "I'd like to think I would have been in the resistance, but I can tell you right now I wouldn't have been if someone had threatened my family. I might have gone along. That's the uncomfortable truth."
The Tank is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video
