Superb film, only one reservation

Although I agree with you about Julien being a fast decision maker, in matters of grief, I don't think one can just go about the business without first being paralysed by numbness and shock.

I wonder if the confusion of the German soldiers was both historically accurate and necessary to the story?

While the German Army at the front could be formidable right to the end, behind the front under threat from partisans things could be different. In France, once the Resistance declared open war, individual German units in what had become hostile territory were liable to be nervous, ill organised and dangerous. Similar tales are told of US troops in Vietnam and Iraq.

The film is however recounting not just a literal battle but several symbolical battles. Julien, the doctor devoted to healing, takes up arms to avenge his beloved wife and child, the blameless villagers slaughtered by the evil Nazis and by extension all of suffering France, groaning for liberation. His knowledge of the terrain, of an ancient landmark that stands for continuity, enables him to outwit and pick off the alien invaders who had no right to be there and whose horrific deeds cry out for punishment. His purity of motive (“these men must die for what they have done”) and his ever-alert intelligence contrasts with the drunken bumbling self-pity of the trapped Germans.

Indeed a brilliant made movie but keep in mind that Noiret fights not a general German army platoon (or the Wehrmacht) but a unit of the feared Waffen-SS, a ruthless and crack team of hardened soldiers. Which all makes it the more implausible that he deals with them in such a swift and easy way.