jmahon-48518 A great cast, good sets, accurate historical costumes and plausible plot. All this is mired by a needless pro-collective/communist depiction of Ukraine under Stalin's reign of terror (which culminated in over 5 million Ukrainians starving to death). This happy go lucky peasant life is equivalent to Hollywood's "Step n Fetch" depiction of African Americans during this same time period. True it is a war time propaganda film but the Hollywood socialist bias and blindness to Communist terror would result in the McArthism backlash of the 50s. Film historians have rightly attcked the abuses of McCarthism but never truly come to grips with Hollywood's failure to address the mass murders and reign of terror of Communism.

gerard_bechard This is a really good example of a Hollywood propaganda film based on falsehoods about WW II. Set in Ukraine in 1941. The movie was released in the US in 1943. According to this movie, Ukrainians were a cheerful happy people serving the state before the evil Nazis show up to liberate them from Bolshevism. Nazi planes attacked citizens in horse drawn carriages and even children running in the street. One of the funniest scenes to me is Ukrainians burning down their own homes and the Nazis putting out the fires. There is a chain smoking colonel (it was illegal for a German in uniform to smoke in public and smoking was strongly discouraged even in private). Completely draining the blood from Ukrainian children to use in blood transfusions (Germans would not have used blood from non-Germans in transfusions to Germans. It was viewed as a defilement of the blood.) Here is some real history.The director of this movie, Lewis Milestone was a Jew born in Russia as Lev Milstein. The writer, Lillian Hellman was Jewish and black-listed in the 1950's for being a communist. Lillian's 2nd husband, Dashiell Hammett was also black-listed as a communist and imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing to given information to the court concerning the funding of men that wanted to overthrow the US by force and violence.The Ukrainians struggled for independence in 1917 after the Bolsheviks killed the Tsar and seized Russia. Stalin killed 7 million Ukrainians in 1928-29 with a man-made famine called Holodomor. The truth is many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis and saw them as their liberators. Germans were never at war against Ukrainians or even Russians despite WW II being called in Russia as "the Great Patriotic War." The Great Patriotic War is Soviet propaganda which is still repeated today. The Germans were at war against Bolshevism (which today would be called globalism/Cultural Marxism/International banking). There were also many Russians who refused to fight for Stalin. Refusing to fight would have got you shot or sent to the gulags. Thus, during just the first few months of the German advance towards Moscow 650,000 Russian soldiers were taken prisoner. Says a lot when so many surrender to the Germans rather than die for Stalin. The Waffen SS, on the other hand, would fight to the death.It was in 1942 that the Soviet Union's top propagandist, a Jew named Ilya Ehrenburg started a hate program against Germans. It was Ilya Ehrenburg that first made the claim that 6 million Jews had died in Nazi gas chambers. In a leaflet called "Kill" he wrote: "The Germans are not human beings. From now on, the word 'German' is the most horrible curse. From now on, the word 'German' strikes us to the quick. We have nothing to discuss. We will not get excited. We will kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day ... If you cannot kill a German with a bullet, then kill him with your bayonet. If your part of the front is quiet and there is no fighting, then kill a German in the meantime ... If you have already killed a German, then kill another one - there is nothing more amusing to us than a heap of German corpses. Don't count the days, don't count the kilometers. Count only one thing: the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the Germans! ... - Kill the Germans! Kill!"

goonbird My parents took me to see this film at the Rex cinema in Hanworth England in 1943. I was 6 years old! About half way through the film, there was an air raid. We had to leave the cinema and go to a shelter. I remember the story and especially the song, which the children were singing on the cart. The film has been shown many times on television, but I have never been able to watch it. I guess that this must have some connection with the air raid. I am now 74 years old and the film is being shown again on television tomorrow afternoon. I hope to finally be able to watch it all the way through, at long last and lay to rest whatever has prevented me doing so previously.I have finally seen this film to the end! Not bad after 68 years. I now realise why it made such an impression on me. In the film, the children and some adults were bombed and machine gunned by aircraft, after jumping from the carts into a ditch. It was at this point that we had to leave the cinema because of an air raid, having just seen children killed on the screen. I had already experienced many air raids at the age of 3 years and 9 months, during the Septmber 1940 Blitz and I still have vivid memories of the bombing, destruction and fires. Am I correct, or is my memory failing in that I believe the original title for the U.K release was 'The Red Star'???

lord woodburry I am amazed by the intensity of some of the comments.The 1943 movie North Star celebrated Stalin's dictatorship over Ukrania, presenting the joys of colectivisation on the humble peasants among whom was the veteran actor Walter Brennan who otherwise played stereotyped American personages. Where the joys of collectivization were simply leftist rot and John Wayne is said to have hated this movie, the movie correctly presents the intensity with which the Russians fought to expel the German invaders. Most German veterans of the Great Patriotic War note that Russians fought on when British or French would have stacked arms and sat by the roadside watching panzers drive by.The movie of course does not present the other side of the coin. Ukrania was a province where Stalin had his greatest problem. Resentment flared intensely against the Soviet regime particularly in the rural areas which retained their allegiance to the Church and which resented collectivization. Many Ukranians defected to the German cause.This film of course was shot in 1942 in the heat of the war. I hardly would have deemed it sane to have made a movie about citizens of an allied country who had defected to the enemy.I do recall that this film went to TV's Million Dollar Movie in the 1950s substantially edited and presented as a German invasion of Hungary and ended with a voice over reference to the Hungarian revolt in 1956.