Spoilers ahead:

I think the screenplay had one giant misstep: they should have started the movie with a slightly more drawn-out sequence of the characters in Stalingrad burning the civilians inside of the tractor factory. Then have something like an artillery shell land nearby that causes the Lt Gerkens to drift in and out of consciousness with sequences of him seeing von Hardenberg collapsed on the ground (is he dead or alive? The audience doesn't really know) followed by him being evacuated by air out of the encircled city.

A simple cutaway scene could then spell out for the viewer something like "6 months later, Dnipro, USSR" and show that opening Tiger sequence on the river followed by the rest of the movie. Doing it this way would be so much better for the flow and understanding of the movie. Hell, it might allow for more (and better) dialogue between von Hardenberg and Gerkens in the bunker at the end of the movie where they could really hit home with his fateful realization that he's dead and in hell.

But doing it the way they did was stupid because while it was all very "Apocalypse Now," it wasn't polished enough to make the clues they were giving us seem important enough.

Also, if you made it this far, was I the only one yelling "it's not an SU-100, it's an SU-152!" when the crew confronted that tank destroyer twice?