Heroes of War Volume 3 (DVD) Studio Canal

Triple bill of WWII movies.

In ‘Eagles Over London’ (1969), a group of German agents use the chaos of the Dunkirk evacuation as a cover to take on the identities of English soldiers in order to gain access to England and take out radar installations along the coast. In order to infiltrate the British army, they kill a squad of English troops and take their ID tags. Army officer Captain Paul Stevens (Frederick Stafford) finds the dead men and realises that their IDs are missing. On his return to England he heads efforts to track down the saboteurs before they can inflict any further damage.

‘Cross of Iron’ (1977), based on the novel ‘The Willing Flesh’ by Willi Heinrich, follows the story of a doomed German platoon facing annihilation at the hands of the Russians in 1943. Non-Nazi German soldier Steiner (James Coburn) resents the arrival of arrogant Prussian Stransky (Maximillian Schell) as his new commanding officer. Stransky is desperate to win an Iron Cross – a medal Steiner has already earned, but considers worthless – and so promotes the highly-recommended Steiner to sergeant. During a siege, Stransky hides in his bunker, terrified of battle, only to later file a report claiming that he himself led a victorious counter-attack. However, when Steiner disputes this Stransky takes measures to remove him.

In ‘The Inglorious Bastards’ (1978), a group of American soldiers are in the process of being shipped off to military prison for a variety of infractions, ranging from desertion to murder. While they are being transported, a German artillery attack hits the convoy, killing the MPs and enabling four of the prisoners to escape. The group decides their best bet is to head to neutral Switzerland, where they can avoid both the fighting and prison. As they make their way to what they think will be freedom, they end up volunteering for a commando mission to steal a V2 warhead for the French Underground.