Red Dawn celebrates the era of Reagan uber-patriotism, the ominous threat of the Soviet bear, and common Cold War fears. I saw it as a kid and the first thing I wanted to do afterwards was dig a fox hole in the woods- not realizing the only legitimate land-invasion target of the Soviets back then was West Germany (and W Europe) not the US.
) The shot-down Air Force pilot informs us that (if I remember correctly) the invasion started from the South and came up through the midwest and inter-mountain west; Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming ("They made it all the way to Cheyenne..."). My reaction: "That's the worst invasion plan of all-time."
The Soviet plan was much more complicated. They disguised the first wave of Spetsnaz as commercial planes, and then dropped them in to capture/neutralize key points and the passes in the Rocky Mts. Many people don't realize that is what Spetsnaz were trained to do- get behind NATO lines and take out airfields, HQs, communication bases, etc.
Nukes were also coordinated to take out key points of communication- remember Gulf War I? If you can make your enemy's leadership blind, deaf, and mute... you've won half the battle.
The "hispanic hordes" marching up from Mexico was a secondary move once the gates were open.
Honestly, the set some very important pre-conditions for WW III otherwise it couldn't happen: 1) NATO falls apart 2) all of central America goes super-communist 3) the USSR faces intense eco pressure internally (which isn't far off base) that forces them to expand to avoid collapse.
2) I had always heard (here on THR) it was about a Russian invasion; no mention of the Cubans.
I think a key indicator of reversing what you heard was when Col Bella is speaking spanish early in the film.
We sort of laugh at Cuba today, but during the 80s they did have troops in Angola, and even took on the South African army (a highly professional force at the time) and allegedly "won" (though this is disputed).
3) The first thing the Cubans did was dispatch officers to sporting goods stores to demand 4473s in order to weed out citizens with guns. Good move on the Commies' part, and another reason to hate that particular infringement.
It is scary, but their approach follows the mold of what the Soviets and Nazis did during WWII (and the Soviets after the war). I think "Duke" mentioned this. Why run around and search houses randomly? The Nazis loved files and records- so when they went into Poland for example, they used any info they found to go after anyone who would resist German rule.
4) They included some AK-74s; Nice to see given that the film was made in 1984.
I agree- the scene where the Spetsnaz are ambushed in the snowy woods shows them carrying AKS-74 (the side folders) is awesome.
Although the commander at the end of the film (final shoot out) had some type of submachine gun.
Can anyone verify if that was a legit Warsaw pact weapon?
Practically everything in this movie is logical except where the mayor's son is captured and forced to swallow a homing device to lead the commies to the Wolverines.
What is illogical? That the Soviets would never capture and torture an American teen into revealing the location of his partisan friends? Or the actual technology of the homing bug? I'm not going to research what homing tech was available in the 80s, but you would be surprised what kind of stuff each side developed during the Cold War and stocked it on shelves.
I think the debate over whether or not to execute the captured Russian and the traitor is one of the best twists of the film, and shows a turning point of the morality of the film.
"Because we live here!" - that saying could sum up many conflicts in the world over the centuries.
Again, Red Dawn does a good job because many of the occupation concepts are based on real Soviet (or Nazi) history:
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re-education camps, used in USSR in Siberia after they went into Poland in 1939, and obviously after 1945. Communists also used these camps after 1975 in Vietnam (meanwhile the hippies were celebrating "peace", yet they had very little concern about the tens of thousands of former ARVN officers and officials who were rotting in these camps under the communists)
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use of hostages. In occupied Poland, Russia, and France the Nazis had a ratio set up, a certain number of hostages would be shot for every German soldier killed by partisans. This was exactly what they did in Red Dawn (when they mowed down the group in the field).
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inability to defeat small unit partisan tactics with conventional forces- this is well depicted in the film, and was learned by the US in Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan, and the French in Vietnam/Algeria.
* on this note, after the Hind attack the officer makes an interesting summary. He gives a high estimation of the enemy body count, when its only 1 in reality. This echoes the concept of using high estimated body counts as evidence the larger side was "winning the war." You'll notice the US has abandoned this policy in Iraq and Afghanistan (there is not the same obsession with enemy body counts).
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rapes- there is a reference that Leah Thompson had been raped (perhaps sodomized) by Russians troops. This is one of the taboo topics of the end of WWII, the scale of rapes by Soviet soldiers in eastern Germany. Ironically, they did not just rape defenseless German women ages 7-70, but liberated Jewish women, Hungarians, Polish, and other female slave workers they came across.
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collaborators- the mayor changed sides eagerly to gain advantage (even turning in his own son). This happened in France in the 40s, and in East Germany after 1945- many Nazis became the most gung-ho communists (hey the marching was the same). Obviously some former Baathists are now serving us in Iraq as well, this concept has happened in history many times.
So many people dismiss Red Dawn as an mere action film, but it does its best to present a "what if" of the Cold War based on what the communists did in many conquered and occupied countries.