In December 1941, just outside Moscow, Red Army Junior Lieutenant Nikolay Ivushkin (Alexander Petrov) is driving a ramshackle truck and trailer with a young private beside him. A German Panzer III tank appears over a hill and opens fire on them. Nikolay, who has been trained as an amour officer, maneuvers skilfully and they escape unscathed. Nikolay is assigned to command a damaged T-34 tank whose commander was killed, with orders to delay the Germans' advance with only the single tank and a small number of supporting infantry. Nikolay is a new recruit to the tank division but knows his tanks very well. He pushes the crew to be ship-shape and ready for battle, even though morale is low. Nikolay and his crew lay an ambush for a platoon of German Panzers commanded by Klaus Jäger (Vinzenz Kiefer). Through a combination of guile (They use a fake anti-tank gun to bring the Germans out in the open and break formation) and bravery, their T-34 destroys six Panzers, but in a final duel with Jäger's command Panzer, both tanks are disabled, and half the Russian tank crew is killed, and Nikolay and driver Stepan Vasilyonok (Viktor Dobronravov) captured. Three years later, in 1944, Jäger, now a Standartenführer, gains permission from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (Robinson Reichel) and General Heinz Guderian (Mike Davies) to recruit an experienced tank crew from Soviet POWs in a concentration camp to act as opponents for training the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. The Russians are at the German border and urgent steps need to be taken to train the Germans who will repel them. Nikolay has been a prisoner for three years, and has refused to give his name, but Jäger recognizes his photograph from the camp records. Jäger proposes the idea to Nikolay through the camp's interpreter, bilingual Russian prisoner Anya (Irina Starshenbaum). At first Nikolay refuses but agrees after Jäger threatens to kill Anya. Nikolay picks out three other tankers from the POWs - driver Vasilyonok, loader Serafim Ionov (Yuriy Borisov), and gunner Demyan Volchok (Anton Bogdanov) -- to crew a T-34/85 that the Germans just captured. At first, the other tankers refuse to take part, but Nikolay says he has a plan to escape. The Germans first order the Soviet prisoners to clear out the rotting and burned bodies from inside the tank, but as they remove the bodies, they unexpectedly find a small number of remaining live shells and hand grenades. Granted permission to bury their comrades, they hide the munitions with the bodies in a cairn on the edge of the training grounds. Jäger doesn't trust the Soviets & orders anti-tank mines laid around the entirety of the training grounds. Anya convinces Nikolay to let her escape with them, as only she can steal a map from Jäger's office showing a safe route out of the area and gain a pass letting her out of the camp for a day. Before the training exercise, Nikolay and his crew retrieve the munitions (6 shells from the graves of the buried soldiers) and create a smoke screen to mask their movements. Believing the T-34 is unarmed, the Germans are unprepared when the trainees' first Panther tank is destroyed, and a second shell is fired directly into the observation tower, killing most of the officers inside, except for Jäger and Guderian. The T-34 boldly storms through the training grounds' car park (crushing many of the officers' staff cars) and breaks through the main gate, avoiding the minefield. The tankers pick up Anya at a bus stop outside the camp; with her map, Nikolay plots a course toward Czechoslovakia and back to the Red Army's lines. In the first town they come to, Nikolay and his hungry crew find badly needed fuel, new clothing, and fresh food. They burn their ragged prisoner clothes as they drive out of town. At first, Nikolay suggests abandoning the tank and splitting up, believing they have a better chance of survival if they separate, but the crew insist on staying with him. Before dawn, knowing that the Germans will be hunting them, Nikolay puts Anya out of their tank and tells her to make her way east on foot through the forests. Jäger meanwhile takes to the sky in a Fieseler Storch to find Nikolay's T-34. He then takes command of four Panthers and prepares an ambush in the small town of Klingenthal. At night, the T-34 enters the town and stumbles into the first of the four Panthers. Instead of trying to pierce its front amour, Volchok fires a shot (3rd one) under its hull that ricochets off the pavement and penetrates its underbelly. Nikolay realizes they are surrounded by the remaining three Panthers, including Jäger's. Knowing they need to distract the other crews, he sends out Volchok, armed only with a grenade, to disable one. Vasilyonok crashes their T-34 through building walls before unexpectedly colliding with one of the other Panthers. The Russians manually turn their damaged turret and get a shot off just as the Germans are about to fire. Unfortunately, the two other Panthers have arrived on the scene, and one takes aim at Nikolay. However, Volchok manages to fire a shell out of the German tank he just captured. The third Panther is disabled, but Jäger quickly disposes of the captured Panther, badly wounding Volchok. Both Jäger and Nikolay emerge from the cupolas of their tanks. Jäger throws down his glove, inviting Nikolay to a duel. Nikolay asks for five minutes to pick up his wounded comrade. Both tanks then move outside the town and face off over a narrow stone bridge across the river. As the tanks charge at each other, Jäger fires several shots at the T-34, but fails to disable it, while Nikolay waits to fire their last shell directly through the driver's vision port. As in 1941, the two tanks fire simultaneously, badly damaging but not disabling each other. Out of ammunition, Nikolay orders Vasilyonok to ram Jäger's tank, pushing it to the edge of the bridge. Jäger crawls out of his Panther while Nikolay aims a stolen rifle at him. Jäger shouts for Nikolay to shoot him, but Nikolay offers his foe mercy. Jäger extends his hand, and the two adversaries exchange a handshake of respect. Nikolay tries to pull Jäger to safety, but Jäger lets go, allowing himself to fall to his death as his Panther tips over the bridge and plummets into the river. With their tank's treads disabled, the crew reunites with Anya outside the town, carrying the wounded Volchok on a makeshift stretcher, and they make their way towards the Russian lines on foot. The film ends with a dedication to the Red Army tank crews of the Great Patriotic War, all of whom earned the status of heroes for fighting against the invasion of their country.
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