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When Orson Welles first saw Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron (1977) he cabled Peckinpah that it was the best anti-war film he had ever seen about the "ordinary enlisted man". Although Peckinpah's earlier film Major Dundee (1965) deals with some of the ramifications of the US Civil War, Cross of Iron establishes its story firmly in the front line of war, depicting its horrors and the psychological damage it inflicts on its participants. Made in Yugoslavia on a low budget, this sombre and claustrophobic film deals with a German reconnaissance platoon involved in the retreat from the Russian front. A commercial failure in America, it was released in Europe in the spring of 1977 to rave reviews. In Germany it was awarded a Bambi and, ironically, it became the biggest grossing film in Germany and Austria since The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965).

["I am 17, going out Nazi-ing, Baby, no time to Vait-"] -PWP