Cast a Giant Shadow 1966

Marcus, Kirk Douglas, a recently released Army Reserve Colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, is living in New York City when a Haganah agent, Maj. Safir, James Donald, asks him to help train Israeli troops defending the newborn state against invasion. The Pentagon refuses to grant him permission to go unless he travels as a civilian, so the Haganah provides him a false passport under the alias “Michael Stone.”

Marcus, who previously parachuted into occupied France during World War II and helped organize the relief mission for one of the first Nazi concentration camps liberated by American troops, arrives in Israel and is greeted by a Haganah member, Magda Simon, Senta Berger. He is initially viewed with suspicion by some of the troops, but his leadership begins to win them over after he leads a commando raid on an Arab arms dump and assists in the landing of illegal refugees.

After training the troops, he returns to New York where his wife has suffered a miscarriage. Despite his wife’s pleas, he goes back to Israel and is given command of the Jerusalem front with the rank of Aluf (General), a rank not used since biblical days. He faces a harsh reality: the men under his command lack proper training, weapons, and a formal system of ranks, yet they possess fierce spirit and determination. He sets to work transforming the situation by organizing the construction of the Burma Road, a route that bypasses Latrun to ensure convoys can reach besieged Jerusalem, where the population teeters on starvation.

The troops are mostly newly arrived and eager but still untrained, whom Marcus affectionately dubs “the schnooks.” His experiences with them rekindle a sense of identity and pride, and he begins to feel proud to be a Jew. But just as the convoy to Jerusalem is about to depart, he is shot by a lone sentry who does not speak English—the last casualty before the United Nations imposes a truce. The coffin carrying his body is carried down the Burma Road by an honor guard of the soldiers he trained and inspired.