In terms of realistic procedures, I've heard it said that anything beyond relatively small scale infantry warfare would be impossible as the audience would have no idea what anyone was doing. This probably makes it quite difficult to mix any kind of story with, say, a dramatic recreation of the Battle of Kursk down to the last Evolution in Soviet Military Tactics, or some such thing. This would require kicking the History Channel up the backside and having a good quality series of documentarie. The problem with history nerds getting anal about accuracy is that it would be impossible to be that accurate within the remit of a piece of entertainment around 2 hours long and still have a decent story.
While I can't stand gory movies, I was drawn to this topic to see if anyone caught onto this problem. Easterling's comments about re-enactors are quite good. However, I would add a caveat. While it was possible to have oodles of extras in a movie like The Ten Commandments, they weren't engaging in battle (well, God did it for them

) - it's true that re-enactors would be very helpful but from what I understand, re-enactors don't have enough members int heir clubs to do the whole battle. So, when they re-do Gettysburg, for instance, you don't have the same number of people there; I think I read you might get a third at the most, but I wouldn't quote myself on that. (My Yogi Berra way of saying I'm not totally sure.

)
So, it's hard fior me to understand what is meant by real tactics becasue there is so much witht he big armies that 's hard to capture on film. The idea fo Leningrad is good, but instead of a horror movie, I would suggest instead that the problem be solved through CGI and have something like the Battle of Britain.
The Battle of Britain would not require massive amounts of troops movements. It would allow for quite a few extras in the bomb shelters with focus on a few. instead of blowing up everything in sight you could actually keep costs down by showing that the number of bombs falling was actually pretty low compared to what we think of today, and the targetting was nothing like with today's smart bombs.
Meanwhile, the CGI part could be used to show the number of planes int he sky at once, however many they were. It would be possible to show dogfights without having the immense blood and gore, and with CGI you wouldn't be wasting money on models and such. If you need to show *which* character's plane is going down, well, talk before could show who is fighting.
So, intersperse the scenes on the ground and in the air. Have it take place over the weeks that it occurred. And voila, "Their Finest Hour" (an allusion to Churchill's comment) could be done.
It would solve a lot of the problems mentioned here - not as much horror as Leningrad, no need for thousands of ground troops in armies so big you can't see what individuals are doing, and so on. And, the CGi is such you won't have the danger of seeing the strings on the model airplanes.
