Dresden (2006)

It took me a little while to see the whole 2 part movie (because I had to wait for Netflix), but it came today and I just finished watching it. It is a German movie with English subtitles about the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945.

I have to say that it was really well made. The acting was good as was the action and blending of original war footage with the modern.

As for the story it is focused on a German nurse (Anna) and her well-off family. Anna's father is the head doctor and so is her fiancee. Anna meets a man (Robert) who turns out to be a half-German, half-English bomber pilot who was shot down over Germany. The two fall in love despite the Gestapo, the military and Anna's father and fiancee chasing after them. In the midst of all this is the bombing of Dresden.

Of course the movie brings up the question (several times) as to whether the Allies had to bomb Dresden or if it is a war crime. The movie answers this if you look closely (although I don't think it's the answer the German director wanted you to see.) First it is the way that the majority of the ordinary Germans were living after 6 years of war - especially in Dresden. They had prospered from the war and while the Germans were murdering innocent men, women and children the German homefront was carefree. Second is the numerous scenes of anti-Jewish discrimination. There is the scene of the children chasing and shouting at a Jewish man (wearing the Star of David he was forced to wear) and then the Block Warden not allowing the Jews from the air-raid shelter. For all those Germans alive at the time and said they knew nothing about the Holocaust (either against the Jews or all the other "sub-humans") it is oblivious they are lying to make themselves look and feel better. Even as late as 1945 there were open displays of anti-Jewish acts - not only in the camps, but also in the cities (like Dresden.) Third is best answered by one of the scenes where Anna asks Robert how he can kill innocent women and children and he replies "Didn't you start the war and bomb our innocent women and children first? Or have you forgotten?" That right there proves that the bombing of Dresden or any German city is not and never will be a war crime.

It is so convenient for Germans living back then to "forget" what their leaders, their fathers, their mothers their husbands, their wives their sons and their daughters did to all the millions upon millions of Russians, Poles, Jews, Dutch, British and all the other nationalities that the Germans occupied and/or bombed during the war. From the German's bombing Warsaw in 1939, to Rotterdam in 1940 to them bombing the UK during the Blitz the Germans not only started and supported the war, but also were the first to bomb cities, by airplanes, over innocent targets. The British and the Americans only followed the Germans' lead and just because we were better at it then the Germans were we should not have to ever justify ourselves. Every bomb that was dropped by the Allies was one day closer to ending the war in Europe and freeing all those enslaved and starved by the Germans (both in the concentration camps, the POW camps and the places that used forced-laborers.) It makes me sick to hear a German (even one that wasn't alive back then) to say "We may have done horrible things in the camps and the occupied countries, but we are victims too." There is no excuse for what the German Government (which was fully supported by all aspects of ordinary German life - from the railways, to the bakeries) did during the war and fact is that the majority of Germans were not victims. The only German victims of World War 2 are those who were 17 or under in 1945, German Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, Freemasons and the handful of German resistance groups (ie the White Rose.) All the others are guilty - if nothing other than supporting and following the racist policies of a few.

I believe this German-made film meant to show the horror and unjust bombing of Dresden during the war yet, as I stated above, while it was a good movie it did nothing to show me that the bombing wasn't deserved to end the war nor that the Germans were ever victims.