I probably wouldn't have made this post had I realized the film did some serious box office. I help care for a disabled gent who's movie nut and it's my job to know what's out there. I knew the movie existed but considering the cast thought it had just sunk like a stone. It didn't as indicated by the earlier thread. (Tracked down the tank vets role in making the flick and will watch that tonight.)
Let me tell you why I think the movie was extremely good. First I must confess to being a military historian - major writing has been on the Pacific War and Vietnam, but I've talked with a lot of ETO vets - US, UK and even a few Germans. (Doesn't help at all when modeling.) I'm also finishing an excellent book about the Bulge called "Snow and Steel" by Peter Caddick Adams - anyone that's up to 900+ pages of top notch military history might check it out. That was the book I was reading when I saw Fury - and I thought the movie evoked some very important portions of late war combat in Europe that Adams was detailing and that fit nicely with my view of the era.
1. First: concerning the dark and gloomy mood followed throughout - that is absolutely on the mark. Combat in WWII was an ugly proposition anywhere (one vet told me that history's worst battle was the last one you were in). But by the late war things were getting very ugly. The line Adams makes continually that the longer the war lasted in Europe the more barbaric it became is reinforced by the great work of historian Omer Bartov "The Eastern Front, 1941-45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare." The argument was that the uniquely vicious war-making developed on the Eastern Front was brought to the West by veteran German units especially the SS. The influence of these Ost Kampfers on the largely raw German forces launched into the Ardennes was considerable. The killings at Malmedy get the press but they were a tiny tip of a huge iceberg and when the allies had stabilized the front (lots of humiliation, lots of dead friends, obvious atrocities - most against civilians - gave hundreds of GIs the gentle shove necessary to join in OstFront style total war). And the SS troopers were target #1, but any German would do in a pinch. Important to note though, that US forces did not show the relentless cruelty that because the hallmark of the SS and certainly emulated by many in the Wehrmacht. Stonewall Jackson once claimed 16 year olds would be the perfect soldiers because they didn't understand death and many were attracted to adrenaline. Probably describes some of the Volkstrum GIs were encountering in 1945. (The Germans were inducting 17 year olds into the Volksgrenadier units raised in late summer 44 until the end.) The men fought with German bravery but the tactical finesse dropped along with the extensive training given to German soldiers prior to Kursk.
2. The movie is set in April 45. If you check the "Final Report" of US Army casualties in April US killed was 9,293 - a number very close to the monthly totals suffered since Normandy. But the war was odd. In April 45 a GI would have been finishing off the Ruhr pocket (don't think that was the case here) or with about 2/3ds of the Army that was covering as much ground as possible to smother not the German Army but Germany. (Patton was in Prague on VE Day - long way from the Rhine.) This meant that US forces were spread out like a pack of hunting wolves. Ike and Marshall believed this was the fastest way to win the war (probably right) and the US was desperate to finish things up: US manpower management worked - barely - and in retrospect we can see that there were too many men in the USAAF and USN and too few in ground forces (and you can guess where the sharpest went) What resulted was a month long series of ambushes and many battles of encounter in a huge battlefield that didn't really have a front line. (As I understand it, the average US tank destroyed in the ETO in tank battles was lost at about 300 yards.) According to Wikipedia the film's makers may have had the battles in mid-April around the small city of Carlshiem in south central Germany as the location. There was a rail hub and airbase there and one of the US flying columns grabbed it, only to lose it the next day to an SS counterattack. (Natch - the SS didn't last long.) In this environment there was a very ugly chemistry brewing. US soldiers knew the war was won (Berlin was under attack) and yet as the casualties indicated Germans were still fighting desperately. So the Americans thought they were put in the danger of death for an utterly pointless cause - but the Germans did continue to die. (I'm in print arguing that the military environment in the Pacific had been poisoned by the insane German attempt to resist once the Rhine and Oder were breached. It was not a good argument for a rational man model of the universe.) In Fury you have some relatively small, uncoordinated attacks over insignificant objectives that all added to the butcher's bill. This explains why a clerk ended up a machine gunner (absolutely true starting from about October 44). It also explained why the crew was suffering from extreme stress and fury directed at the enemy. It also explains why the last SS attack was botched. (I'd argue that the false note there was WarDaddy's refusal to abandon his tank and head for the hills. But as Caddick-Adams points out there were hundreds of examples of small US units engaging superior German forces throughout the Ardennes - indeed, this was a prime reason why the drive to the Meuse was grossly behind schedule within three days. On other occasions US forces retreated to the rear at warp speed despite no mortal threat. Strange atmosphere no doubt.) Adams also points out that late war Waffen SS were mostly draftees and often showed a shocking lack of tactical finesse when assaulting positions. (Skorzeny after the war lamented that the quality of German troops in late 44 could not be compared to the men who stuck into France in 1940.) So would a US tank have tried to slow down an infantry column despite obvious risk of annihilation? It certainly happened. Would the Germans react badly initially - that too happened. Although I think it may be worth pointing out that the last battle scene could have been a 20 minute affair - not exactly the Alamo.
3. I think Shia LaBeauf's character "the Bible" is not only sympathetic but very true to the period. He's not selling Bibles or preaching holy war - he's pitching a kind of fatalism that many men found almost necessary to withstand sustained combat. (See Eugene Sledge "With the Old Breed" a brilliant memoir written by a retired English professor about his youth in the 1st Marine Division on Peleliu and Okinawa.) Indeed, I think thoughts like "if it's your time, it's your time" or "it's all in God's hands" would have been widely found in all combat soldiers. And if "the Bible" was extremely good at his job I find it perfectly reasonable that he'd say his gift was "God given" and go about his task to destroying the enemy. These guys aren't pacifists. (The religious or metaphysical part of war is a fascinating subject. You don't think of Vietnam as a holy war, but every time I've visited the Wall, I've seen visitors treating the "Black ***" like a holy object.) As for the rookie gunner I found absolutely no contradiction between initial bewilderment, then after getting into some fights telling WarDaddy that he was beginning to enjoy killing Germans and, at the end, really wanting to escape certain death. Interesting moment when he runs into one German soldier that is probably as tired as he is and quietly lets him escape. As far as the Germans not bypassing the tank as I recall the whole idea WarDaddy put together on the fly was to convince the Germans that the tank was abandoned. And it does take place at night - it would have difficult to buy the idea of German infantry on the road during daylight in good weather.
4. The biggest down side concerning realism was the age of the actors. Wonder how many WWII tank commanders were 50 like Brad Pitt. Average age in the Army was 26 but that counted officers, engineers, aircraft ground crew, G2 types. I'd guess the combat arms were around 22 - I know for a fact that we had 25 year old fighter squadron COs - what a way to spend your youth. And lots of teenagers.
A lot of gents remarked it was "Hollywood" or "just a movie." Obviously true to a degree. People don't make films without expecting a profit. And boring the audience is not part of the plan. But think about it. What kind of movie makes money? Here's a movie almost without sex (like Private Ryan) but actually less violent than many a flick or cable show I've seen in the last few years. The battles are episodic - perfect for the period - and I don't think they stretched credulity to the extent that Spielberg did in the mega battle in Private Ryan. (Everything hinging on a sticky bomb to knock out a tank and close a street and saved at the last moment by Jabos?) This thing worked because it, in a deep way, showed empathy for a generation of men, now largely gone, that was largely true to the historical moment.
I think this one will join a very small collection of war movies that I like and receive a view once every other year or so: included are Action in the North Atlantic, Gettysburg, Private Ryan, Iwo Jima and most of Band of Brothers.
Eric