[2] The story follows a group of U.S. soldiers through Europe during the Second World War, from Britain in 1942, through the fierce fighting in Italy and the invasion of Normandy, to the uneasy peace of occupied Berlin.
It is adapted from a collection of short stories called The Human Kind by English author Alexander Baron, based upon his own wartime experiences.
The Victors features an all-star cast with fifteen American and European leading players, including six actresses whose photographs appear on the posters with the caption, "the six most exciting women in the world... in the most explosive entertainment ever made!"
One truckload of GIs is chosen out of a convoy to witness the execution by firing squad of a GI deserter in a snow-covered field near a chateau at Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines on Christmas Eve.
A newcomer to the squad, a misfit named Weaver, adopts a dog even though another man in the unit tells him that it is against regulations.
Trower brings her parents imported goods from the PX (military Post Exchange) when he visits their apartment, noticing a mezuzah on the doorway.
Her current lover, a Russian "commander", has given her an expensive fur coat that she flaunts in front of Helga, their parents, and Trower.
As the camera pulls back to show seemingly endless ruins, we see that the position of the allied soldiers' bodies suggests the letter 'V' for Victory.
In May 1957, he announced a slate of productions he wanted to produce under a deal with Columbia in England, including an adaptation of The Human Kind.
[8] In August 1961, Foreman said the project would be titled The Victors as he felt the theme of the book was that in war the winners are also the losers.
"[11] Sophia Loren and Simone Signoret were originally cast, but dropped out and were replaced by Jeanne Moreau and Rosanna Schiaffino.
[14] Mercouri admitted in her memoirs that "I gave Carl Foreman a hard time" during the shoot but said this was because she was physically unwell.
Among the sequences cut was one where an 11-year-old boy, Jean Pierre, propositions the American soldiers to exchange sex for food money.
[17] American film executives encouraged Foreman to include a nude scene with Elke Sommer, already in the version released in Europe and Britain, when he submitted it for a Production Code seal.
Foreman submitted the more modest version of the scene that had been shot for the American market and the film was passed without incident.
George Hamilton argued it "was way too dark, foreshadowing the great paranoid movies of the later sixties, ahead of the bad times that seemed to begin with the Kennedy assassination.
"[19] Filmink wrote "Kind of forgotten today, the movie has scenes of tremendous power and Peppard is excellent (as is co-star George Hamilton).
In November 1963, Dell Publishing issued a novelization of the screenplay by critic, author and war veteran Milton Shulman.
The book's presentation is idiosyncratic, as it is both unabashedly a tie-in edition, yet seems to cautiously sidestep labeling itself an adaptation of the script per se (though within Shulman's sensitively internalized retelling, it is quite faithful to the film's dialogue and structure).
Both the cover and title page proclaim "Carl Foreman's The Victors" under which the byline is "by Milton Shulman, based on The Human Kind by Alexander Baron."
The latter would seem the more likely, given Foreman's possessive over-the-title billing, and that the short story collection providing the source of the screenplay is itself an established work of fiction.
The resultant novelization sold well enough to earn at least a second print run, indicated on that identical edition's copyright page, issued in January 1964.