The Boy from Stalingrad

The Boy from Stalingrad is a 1943 American film. The plot centers on Russian youths in the path of the German army's assault on Stalingrad, who are forced to band together and rely on themselves to survive. They set fire to the grain harvest, rescue and care for other abandoned children, sabotage a tank, and fight back against the Nazis as best they can. The actual Battle of Stalingrad ended at the beginning of February 1943. This pro-Soviet film belongs in the same class as the better-known 1943 Mission to Moscow from Warners', RKO's 1943 The North Star, and MGM's 1944 Song of Russia. They were all pieces of wartime propaganda, officially approved and encouraged by the U.S. government, which wanted to keep the alliance with the Soviets strong. The films would prove painfully embarrassing to their producers just a few years later, when the U.S. went back to treating the Soviet Union as an adversary.