***SPOILERS*** After having their differences in the previous WWII epic "The Iron Cross" both Sgt. Steiner, Richard Burton, and his former company commander Let.-now promoted to Major-Stransky, Helmut Griem, are reunited, and as bitterly opposed to each other as ever,in Paris for a well deserved period of R&R, rest and recreation, from the Eastern Front.
Sgt. Steiner's R&R ended abruptly after spending his first day-and night-in Paris bedding down Maj. Stransky's French girlfriend Yvette, Veronique Vendell, when he's called by the German High Command to report to the Normandy Front. As luck would have it The allies decided to storm the French beaches just days after the battle weary Steiner arrived in that country for his first time, besides being hospitalized for battle wounds, away from the battlefield since the war began!
Doing what he does best Sgt. Steiner rustles up, and inspires, his men to fight off the Allied advance into France in a daring and at times suicidal holding pattern action that stalls the US Armys push beyond the Normandy beachheads. It's then that Steiner is told by his former divisional commander, back on the Eastern Front, Gen. Hofmann, Curt Jurgen, that the assassination of the German Fuhrer Adolph Hitler is in the works by him and a number of fellow and disgruntled, in how the war is going, German Generals. Why Gen. Hoffman would confide all this to a lowly enlisted man who can turn him in and have his entire plan scuttled is never really explained! It's only assumed that Steiner is really a Hollywood-style "Good German" in spite of his excellent combat record that shows that he's as fanatical a German, or Nazi, in the defense of his country as Hitler, who's being targeted by Gen. Hoffman to be killed,is! It's then that for no explainable reason at all that Steiner has a sudden change of heart in fighting and risking his life for the Fatherland!
Steiner decides to turn his services over to the victorious allies by selling out his own men whom he's now in command of! This shocked me in that Steiner being the loyal and dedicated German fighting man that he is would on a dime turn on his own men, as well as country, just because Gen. Hofmann & Co. are planning to do in his supreme commander Adolph Hitler! If anything Steiner, who had fought for his Fuhrer so valiantly all these years, would have turned in Hofmann for treason not, like he did, go along with him so willingly.
As history showed us the assassination attempt on Hitler was a complete dud with him miraculously surviving, off camera, the suitcase bomb explosion in his bunker-The Wolf's Lair-in the East Prussian woods. This put Gen. Hofmann in hot water together with his fellow conspirators who ended up being rounded up and shot, and in some cases hanged and decapitate, by the Nazi Gestapo. In the case of General Hofmann himself he put a bullet in his head to avoid being made to stand trail before a kangaroo-like Nazi People's Court!
With Sgt. Steiner sticking his neck out in secretly negotiating a surrender of his troops to the US Army he's now in the unenviable and dangerous position of stopping his own troops, commanded by his sworn enemy Maj. Stransky, from stopping the US armored advance by having them gunned down, by himself, before they can do it!
The film "Breakthrough" also has American actors Robert Mitchum, as Col. Rogers, Rod Steiger, as Gen. Webster, and Michael Parks, as Sgt. Anderson, in it as the GI's that Sgt. Steiner is secretly dealing with who look and act as if they would have liked to have been somewhere else. Like on a Caribbean island soaking up the sun and drinking Pina colada's instead of being in the middle of a war-zone and being shot at with only K-rations and canteen water to subsist on.
Richard Burton really looks terrible, as well as his age, as the battle hardened Sgt. Steiner. The fearless Steiner is seen running around in the movie with his German helmet looking like that of the US Marine Corps. with a canvas covering over it. The grizzled and hard bitten Sgt. Steiner is also seen wearing, for the most part in the movie, a neatly pressed and tailored military parade dress uniform not,like the men he commands, standard battle worn and dirty German Army combat fatigues! The film ended as you would have expected with the indestructible Sgt. Steiner surviving all the carnage but being left out in the cold with no country or home to go back to with him being shot on sight, by his beloved German combat trooper, if he ever tried to return.
Sgt. Steiner's R&R ended abruptly after spending his first day-and night-in Paris bedding down Maj. Stransky's French girlfriend Yvette, Veronique Vendell, when he's called by the German High Command to report to the Normandy Front. As luck would have it The allies decided to storm the French beaches just days after the battle weary Steiner arrived in that country for his first time, besides being hospitalized for battle wounds, away from the battlefield since the war began!
Doing what he does best Sgt. Steiner rustles up, and inspires, his men to fight off the Allied advance into France in a daring and at times suicidal holding pattern action that stalls the US Armys push beyond the Normandy beachheads. It's then that Steiner is told by his former divisional commander, back on the Eastern Front, Gen. Hofmann, Curt Jurgen, that the assassination of the German Fuhrer Adolph Hitler is in the works by him and a number of fellow and disgruntled, in how the war is going, German Generals. Why Gen. Hoffman would confide all this to a lowly enlisted man who can turn him in and have his entire plan scuttled is never really explained! It's only assumed that Steiner is really a Hollywood-style "Good German" in spite of his excellent combat record that shows that he's as fanatical a German, or Nazi, in the defense of his country as Hitler, who's being targeted by Gen. Hoffman to be killed,is! It's then that for no explainable reason at all that Steiner has a sudden change of heart in fighting and risking his life for the Fatherland!
Steiner decides to turn his services over to the victorious allies by selling out his own men whom he's now in command of! This shocked me in that Steiner being the loyal and dedicated German fighting man that he is would on a dime turn on his own men, as well as country, just because Gen. Hofmann & Co. are planning to do in his supreme commander Adolph Hitler! If anything Steiner, who had fought for his Fuhrer so valiantly all these years, would have turned in Hofmann for treason not, like he did, go along with him so willingly.
As history showed us the assassination attempt on Hitler was a complete dud with him miraculously surviving, off camera, the suitcase bomb explosion in his bunker-The Wolf's Lair-in the East Prussian woods. This put Gen. Hofmann in hot water together with his fellow conspirators who ended up being rounded up and shot, and in some cases hanged and decapitate, by the Nazi Gestapo. In the case of General Hofmann himself he put a bullet in his head to avoid being made to stand trail before a kangaroo-like Nazi People's Court!
With Sgt. Steiner sticking his neck out in secretly negotiating a surrender of his troops to the US Army he's now in the unenviable and dangerous position of stopping his own troops, commanded by his sworn enemy Maj. Stransky, from stopping the US armored advance by having them gunned down, by himself, before they can do it!
The film "Breakthrough" also has American actors Robert Mitchum, as Col. Rogers, Rod Steiger, as Gen. Webster, and Michael Parks, as Sgt. Anderson, in it as the GI's that Sgt. Steiner is secretly dealing with who look and act as if they would have liked to have been somewhere else. Like on a Caribbean island soaking up the sun and drinking Pina colada's instead of being in the middle of a war-zone and being shot at with only K-rations and canteen water to subsist on.
Richard Burton really looks terrible, as well as his age, as the battle hardened Sgt. Steiner. The fearless Steiner is seen running around in the movie with his German helmet looking like that of the US Marine Corps. with a canvas covering over it. The grizzled and hard bitten Sgt. Steiner is also seen wearing, for the most part in the movie, a neatly pressed and tailored military parade dress uniform not,like the men he commands, standard battle worn and dirty German Army combat fatigues! The film ended as you would have expected with the indestructible Sgt. Steiner surviving all the carnage but being left out in the cold with no country or home to go back to with him being shot on sight, by his beloved German combat trooper, if he ever tried to return.