The Third Blow (Russian: Третий удар, romanized: Tretiy udar) is a Soviet 1948 war film directed by Igor Savchenko.
After a fierce battle, the Soviet forces destroy the German and Romanian units defending the peninsula and retake Sevastopol.
As all the artistic documentaries concerned with the war, The Third Blow consisted mainly of battle scenes, strewn with staff meetings of the Red Army's generals and Stalin.
[2] The film, in compliance with Stalin's cult of personality, presented the Soviet leader in a highly favorable manner, centering on his role as the supreme commander.
"[5] In the Nikita Khrushchev years, after the de-Stalinization, many of the scenes involving Stalin were edited out of the film and it was re-released at 1965 under the title Southern Knot (Южный узел).