Generation War (2013)

I recently watch this movie (called "Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter" or "Their Mothers, Their Fathers" in German.) Even though it's a made for TV mini-series I thought it was well-made and gave a good Overall summary of what the ordinary Germans knew and went through during World War 2. The mini-series follows five friends from Berlin who are Setting off in different paths in June 1941 when they make the promise to meet back in Berlin by Christmas. Willem (played by Vocker Burch) is an officer in the Wehrmacht who fought in Polish Campaign in 1939 and then goes off to fight in Russia with his brother, Friedheim (played by Tom Schilling) in 1941. Willem begins the war believing in the Nazi/German cause and at the end of the war he has changed his opinion and gets placed in a Punishment Battalion for deserting. His brother, Friedhelm, Begins the war as a shy guy  who loved to read and ends the war as a hero fighting the Partisans. Another one og the friends is Charlotte, played by Miriam Stein. She joins the German Red Cross as a frontline nurse. She befriends a local Ukrainian woman and turns her into the Gestapo when she learns that she is Jewish, At the end of the war she is left behind when the Germans evacuate before the Soviets enter the hospital. She is saved from certain death only when the Soviet offical (the Jewish woman she betrayed) helps her. The fourth friend is Greta, played by Katharina Schuettler, goes from working at a bar to a famout German singer thanks to her affair with a Gestapo officer. She goes through most of the war in luxury and it's only after visiting the Eastern Front that she goes back home and gets arrested for defeatist talk. The fifth friend is Viktor, played by Ludwig Trepte. Viktor is Jewish and also Greta's boyfriend. Greta gets him a fake identity card (from her Gestapo lover) to leave Germany. As Viktor tries to flee he is arrested by the same man and sent to a concentration camp. On a cattle car to the Aushwitz Death Camp he meets a Polish, Christian woman who helps him get off the train. They both join the Polish Underground and fight the Germans until his Partisan group finds out he is Jewish (by liberating other Jews from cattle cars.) Two of the five friends are killed in the war and never make it back to Berlin. Those that do return are changed from the care-free youth who had the future ahead of them to a conquered People (in more ways than just the Allied victory.)

I have heard criticisms about the mini-series, but having a studied World War 2 (especially the European Theater and the Holocaust) and having worked at the Holocaust Museum I know that this movie is pretty accurate.with regards to the events and timeline of the war. I know many Poles didn't like how they were portrayed as anti-Semites. In reality Poland had anti-Jewish laws long before the Nazis inavaded in 1939. They had strict quotas and bench-seats for Jewish along with pogroms. The Poles at the time abused their Christian beliefs to discriminate and attack Jews. There's a reason the Germans built all of their death camps in Poland and it wasn't solely because of the isolation since the occupied Soviet Union was also isolated and held more Jews. The Poles were so anti-Semitic that even after the war they continued to discriminate, attack and murder Jews - well into the late 1960s. I say all of this having Polish, Christian ancestry. As for how the Germans viewed this movie. I'm not suire it did much to open a dialouge especially within families about their past, but everytime a movie like this (especially a German-made one) comes out it helps to show the younger German generations what happened in their own country and how the actions of their grandparents and their parents changed the world forever.