Commandos
98 minutes
1968

reviewed by mim3@mim.org, December 4 2005

A part of the plot is revealed below. We mildly approve this movie.

"Commandos" brings out some idea of the cost and intensity of World War II. Yet 
there is no sense in the movie why the goal of defeating Nazis and Italian 
fascists is worthy. Quite the contrary, the point of the movie is standing in 
the shoes of the other side. Based on just one night's fraternization and 
without knowing it, a German officer decides to sacrifice his life in order not 
to take the Amerikan officer's life on the other side. The end result of the 
movie is devastating, the kind that Stalin said would make people pacifists. 
While we disagree with the movie's view of the one good war the Amerikans fought 
in the 20th century, imperialist country pacifism is an ally of the 
international proletariat. In a highly symbolic ending, the last two men 
standing barely avoid killing each other--all in connection to some water 
supplies the Germans blew up and that the Amerikans did not want anymore anyway.

Credit is due to Lee Van Cleef for his gritty performance as U.S. Army Sgt. 
Sullivan in World War II. We see some Vietnam War influence, because Sullivan 
himself finds himself pulled from the Asian front against Japan to the North 
African front facing Germans and Italians. The questions on his mind were much 
on the minds of Amerikans in 1968, but for Vietnam, not World War II.

Fearful of officers that have no combat experience, Sullivan brings out a 
contradiction in all organizations of our time. At the end, even the officer 
that Sullivan fears ends up overruled by officers above him. The unit below is 
stuck mid-mission having lost six people but with the goal of the mission 
canceled. On the one hand, having an international war and fighting in North 
Africa goes to prove that there have to be high-level goals concerning places 
and matters that no one can have "experience" in. On the other hand, some of the 
lower-level soldiers will contemplate life without officers and without calling 
it anarchism. Sullivan says to his men in the middle of the mission that the 
captain without experience above him has "fooled" them, and that people "like 
him" always survive while people like Sullivan and his men pay the price--an 
implicit idea about rank and class in the military.

For MIM, Sullivan is an excellent representative of the labor aristocracy and 
how that class regards war. When the cost of war gets high enough to the labor 
aristocracy, it starts to ask questions as we see in the Iraq War right now: 
what is the goal, how can we understand it and what is the progress. 

The sense that the officers of the officers of the officers above the men at 
Sgt. Sullivan's level might not have a clear goal or might fight for something 
no one understands takes its toll. For example, the original goal of the 
invasion of Iraq has not been achieved and it looks like it will not be 
achieved, but troops on the ground in Iraq do not know it yet. The goal was to 
have the Iraqis finance their own reconstruction with Amerikan contracts, but 
that instant goodwill expected from instant revolution to be implemented by 
Charles Graner and Lynndie England did not happen and George Washington and 
Thomas Paine were unavailable for the gig. The chances for the goal passed 
somewhere in the midst of contractor bodies hanging on a bridge in Fallujah. So 
now Bu$h has to change the goals: 1) Saddam Hussein did not use weapons of mass 
destruction against him in any massive way, so there was nothing significant to 
disarm; 2) Bu$h's contractor support is much weaker than he would have liked at 
this stage in the war simply because the insurgents took the political step of 
targeting Amerikan civilians in Iraq.

Bu$h would like to change the goals midstream somehow out of a delusion about 
Amerikan power being able to define and redefine the goals of the game, but now 
come the Murthas who tell him privately that the military is going to break 
down. So now the only viable goal is to prop up the puppets and exit just as in 
Vietnam, with a regime that may or may not be able to stand without Amerikan 
troops and with that result also threatening Afghanistan in a true domino sense 
this time.

In peacetime, the Sgt. Sullivans are impossible for MIM, a major obstacle. 
During wartime, all realities have to be constantly evaluated and re-evaluated. 
It occurs to Sullivan that he may even have to kill his officer to survive and 
in that light he will see his political allies in a much different light than 
usual. Right now it may seem that the Amerikan political ether is filling with 
the voices of millions of Sullivans. Yet without the violence to get to that 
point, Sullivan would have no reason to re-evaluate his officers.

Sullivan's questions about overarching goals are an even greater disadvantage to 
the proletariat than the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie survives in the midst of 
disunity, but the proletariat needs an overarching approach to unite and 
displace the bourgeoisie. When all but three died in his unit fighting Japanese, 
Sullivan found himself in a position we refer to as "re-proletarianization." Not 
surprisingly, re-proletarianization appears as post-traumatic stress syndrome or 
some other disorder when someone long belonging to the middle class suddenly 
finds a different station in life. Needless to say, we will gain some allies 
this way, but it's not the most promising way to go. The classic social force 
for revolution is the proletariat. The self-destruction of the imperialists can 
go so far, that as in this movie, three people may be left after a battle, only 
to go on to another battle where there will only be two survivors.

No one can coddle Sullivan to the German side or a proletarian outlook. That is 
why it is wrong for the international proletariat to attempt to co-opt his 
demands. His role only changes in the face of violence, down-to-earth violence. 
If we tried to win him to the international proletariat with persuasion, he 
would despise us or become confused. If he does not become confused, he will 
only confuse us and turn our own organizations into junior partners of the imperialists.