RTE2 have been showing this german WW2 mini-series - concluding part was tonight. i'm not sure whether it's been shown in the UK. apparently it was a big ratings success in germany, which doesn't surprise me - it's a decent piece of work.
SPOILERS AHEAD
the original german title is "our mothers, our fathers". it seems they thought this title would be too confusing for an english-speaking audience (our mothers... whuh?), so it's lamely retitled "generation war".
the original title suggests what the series is - an effort to understand the experience of the german generation that fought the war, and mostly didn't talk much about it afterwards. at the end, the dates of the characters are given as though they are real people - only one of them is still alive - and the implication seems to be: why don't you go ask grandad what he did in the war, pretty soon you won't have the chance.
the problem with the show - and i did generally enjoy it - is that if the wartime experience of most germans was like this, they probably wouldn't have kept so schtum about it afterwards. they would have written books and told their stories around the world, and the world would have said "how could we have got you guys so wrong?"
germany has been exemplary in terms of how it has faced up to its own war crimes, at least compared to almost all other countries. however, i do find german treatments of the war do have a tendency to shy away from confronting how morally compromised many germans really were. in the german movies on this theme there's usually an otherness to the evil, scarcely less than in the old american WW2 movies. i'm reminded of the nervous glances albert speer throws saround the room whenever hitler says something anti-semitic in "downfall".
would it have been too much if just one of the five central characters in this show had been an actual nazi? i'm starting to wonder whether hitler was the only committed nazi in germany, and the rest of the country just sort of went along with it for 12 years because they were embarrassed for him and couldn't think what else to say.
in "generation war" even the character who becomes a dead-eyed killing machine on the eastern front has got a heart of gold. we know since the moment we see him shooting civilians that he's unlikely to survive to the end of the story, but we also understand that his savagery ultimately stems from his desperate weltschmerz, his all-too-acute sense of the void. ultimately he redeems himself, first by fragging his officer to save his jewish friend, then by walking into a wall of bullets to show the fanatical 12-year olds in his command why they should now surrender to the russians rather than walk into a wall of bullets.
we also know that the story of greta, the only one of the german characters who doesn't do her duty for the fatherland, is probably going to end badly, because she snuggles up to the regime to boost her own career in a "mephisto" kind of way, and because the gestapo major she gets involved with is so obviously a murderous psychopath. but she's always ignorant rather than malignant, and she too ultimately gains insight and dies with a clean soul.
a somewhat annoying feature of the show is the extent to which the story is structured around an unlikely series of fateful chance encounters. the silliest of these comes close to the end, when decent-skin nurse charlotte is about to be raped by a russian soldier, only to be saved by the sudden arrival on the scene of a senior female soviet officer - who happens to be the same jewish doctor charlotte shopped to the SS several years before (which she's obviously been eaten up with guilt about ever since).
the doctor/officer looks magnificent - years of hard fighting have seemingly only added layers of gloss to her lustrous raven hair (in fact, most of the characters' hair looks pretty awesome throughout). it turns out that she is the only officer in the red army who is also a committed disciple of gandhi: she forgives charlotte her betrayal because otherwise, "it will never end". i think most of the russians had another idea of how it was going to end.
it's not that this show flinches from depicting war crimes or tries to get the germans off the hook (though apparently some poles were annoyed by the portrayal of their partisans as anti-semitic). and i liked the twist at the end, where the jewish character is appalled to discover that the allies have hired the gestapo major to help run the new police force in the full knowledge of who he really is.
it's that it doesn't ask: "why?" it's a show about ordinary people trying to make the best of a bad situation in their different ways, and i'm not sure it adds much to our understanding of what happened. i mean, you don't get the war on the eastern front out of the aggregate effect of millions of ordinary people trying to make the best of a bad situation. somewhere along the line a great deal of malice and hatred came into the mix.
there is malice and hatred in this show, and it all flows from secondary characters - that gestapo major, the hatchet-faced nurse, the awful woman who moves into the jewish family's apartment after they're sent to the camps, a series of berserkers on the front... none of these characters are properly drawn, we don't have any sense of their motivations or the basis of their malice. they must be other people's mothers, other people's fathers. i hope so, because it would be awful if you asked grandad what he did in the war, and it turned out he was one of those guys.
SPOILERS AHEAD
the original german title is "our mothers, our fathers". it seems they thought this title would be too confusing for an english-speaking audience (our mothers... whuh?), so it's lamely retitled "generation war".
the original title suggests what the series is - an effort to understand the experience of the german generation that fought the war, and mostly didn't talk much about it afterwards. at the end, the dates of the characters are given as though they are real people - only one of them is still alive - and the implication seems to be: why don't you go ask grandad what he did in the war, pretty soon you won't have the chance.
the problem with the show - and i did generally enjoy it - is that if the wartime experience of most germans was like this, they probably wouldn't have kept so schtum about it afterwards. they would have written books and told their stories around the world, and the world would have said "how could we have got you guys so wrong?"
germany has been exemplary in terms of how it has faced up to its own war crimes, at least compared to almost all other countries. however, i do find german treatments of the war do have a tendency to shy away from confronting how morally compromised many germans really were. in the german movies on this theme there's usually an otherness to the evil, scarcely less than in the old american WW2 movies. i'm reminded of the nervous glances albert speer throws saround the room whenever hitler says something anti-semitic in "downfall".
would it have been too much if just one of the five central characters in this show had been an actual nazi? i'm starting to wonder whether hitler was the only committed nazi in germany, and the rest of the country just sort of went along with it for 12 years because they were embarrassed for him and couldn't think what else to say.
in "generation war" even the character who becomes a dead-eyed killing machine on the eastern front has got a heart of gold. we know since the moment we see him shooting civilians that he's unlikely to survive to the end of the story, but we also understand that his savagery ultimately stems from his desperate weltschmerz, his all-too-acute sense of the void. ultimately he redeems himself, first by fragging his officer to save his jewish friend, then by walking into a wall of bullets to show the fanatical 12-year olds in his command why they should now surrender to the russians rather than walk into a wall of bullets.
we also know that the story of greta, the only one of the german characters who doesn't do her duty for the fatherland, is probably going to end badly, because she snuggles up to the regime to boost her own career in a "mephisto" kind of way, and because the gestapo major she gets involved with is so obviously a murderous psychopath. but she's always ignorant rather than malignant, and she too ultimately gains insight and dies with a clean soul.
a somewhat annoying feature of the show is the extent to which the story is structured around an unlikely series of fateful chance encounters. the silliest of these comes close to the end, when decent-skin nurse charlotte is about to be raped by a russian soldier, only to be saved by the sudden arrival on the scene of a senior female soviet officer - who happens to be the same jewish doctor charlotte shopped to the SS several years before (which she's obviously been eaten up with guilt about ever since).
the doctor/officer looks magnificent - years of hard fighting have seemingly only added layers of gloss to her lustrous raven hair (in fact, most of the characters' hair looks pretty awesome throughout). it turns out that she is the only officer in the red army who is also a committed disciple of gandhi: she forgives charlotte her betrayal because otherwise, "it will never end". i think most of the russians had another idea of how it was going to end.
it's not that this show flinches from depicting war crimes or tries to get the germans off the hook (though apparently some poles were annoyed by the portrayal of their partisans as anti-semitic). and i liked the twist at the end, where the jewish character is appalled to discover that the allies have hired the gestapo major to help run the new police force in the full knowledge of who he really is.
it's that it doesn't ask: "why?" it's a show about ordinary people trying to make the best of a bad situation in their different ways, and i'm not sure it adds much to our understanding of what happened. i mean, you don't get the war on the eastern front out of the aggregate effect of millions of ordinary people trying to make the best of a bad situation. somewhere along the line a great deal of malice and hatred came into the mix.
there is malice and hatred in this show, and it all flows from secondary characters - that gestapo major, the hatchet-faced nurse, the awful woman who moves into the jewish family's apartment after they're sent to the camps, a series of berserkers on the front... none of these characters are properly drawn, we don't have any sense of their motivations or the basis of their malice. they must be other people's mothers, other people's fathers. i hope so, because it would be awful if you asked grandad what he did in the war, and it turned out he was one of those guys.
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