War in the Western Direction (Season 1)

War in the Western Direction (1990) is a Soviet military series you can watch online on iFILM, based on Ivan Stadnyuk's novel of the same name and directed by Grigory Kokhan and Timofey Levchuk. 16+.

Summer 1941. German forces cross the border along the entire front simultaneously. Soviet units fall back without orders, communication lines snap within hours, and officers at every level make life-or-death calls without knowing where the line even stands. The series follows the Western Front chain of command — generals, battalion commanders, foot soldiers — through the worst weeks of the opening months of the war. Mikhail Ulyanov, Arkhil Gomiashvili, and Andrei Tolubeyev head the cast.

Stadnyuk's source novel was considered one of the most unsparing fictional accounts of the 1941 collapse published in the USSR. The adaptation holds to that standard and never offers a comfortable explanation for what went wrong. Stream War in the Western Direction (1990) online on iFILM.