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This was an otherwise excellent production, but there were some errors in the artistic license, and the worst among these were the numerous chance encounters amongst the 5 central characters throughout the war, the most absurd of these being Viktor and Friedhelm squaring off in a Polish forest, with the evil SS commander standing nearby, giving advice. But showing intensely anti-Semitic Polish partisans while Viktor and his parents lived in Berlin in 1941, his father still remaining patriotic and believing themselves Germans was fairly ridiculous, considering they were stripped of German citizenship after 1935 and would not have been functioning as tailor's in everyday society in 1941.
If you want to know about those who risked their lives in Poland and Germany to save Jews, this is an excellent and uplifting work by Sir Martin Gilbert, the famed author who wrote the incredible three volume "A History of the 20th Century"
Nah, I don't think the filmmakers intention was to show "the truth". After all it's not a documentary and the events shown are only veeery loosely based on real events.
All it does is to tell the (totally made up) story of five friends that experienced WWII in one way or the other.
But yeah, I assume it's irritating for people suffering under the Nazis that they showed Germans that are not completely evil in character. Especially after all the WWII movies we are used to.
And by any means, there were only a handful of Germans in that film that were nice and showed mercy. Friedhelm was completely crazy, Greta was a bitch, the family that took over Viktor's apartment pretty much fulfilled every German stereotype, that Bewährungsbataillon Feldwebel was a looney, ...
Well, that's the way it was advertised here, maybe that's the source of my confusion. Of course I realize I'm hardly objective here, but there was quite a bit of media hype before it came out here, historians were discussing what should be shown and what the creators of the series said they wanted to show. People were waiting for a more .. serious ? yeah, I think that's the right word, a more serious production. One that would tackle all these difficult issues from several perspectives maybe, instead here it was perceived as a well made, but a "feel good" production that's somehow taking the blame off of Germans.
This is how it was perceived in the media, personally I thought it was ok. These accusations seem somewhat silly to me, as almost every single war movie/tv series is full of propaganda, often significantly more visible and aggressive.
Well, just think about it as a Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan from an Axis perspective. I mean, you certainly don't watch those movies to learn more about WWII.
Well, just think about it as a Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan from an Axis perspective. I mean, you certainly don't watch those movies to learn more about WWII.
I agree 100%. The problem is, just before it launched people responsible for it had no problems bragging about how objective, historically accurate etc it will be in every media outlet they could find. That's the main issue, from a Polish perspective at least.
Well I watched all three episodes on Netflix over the weekend. I didn't see it as comparable to "Band of Brothers" or "Saving Private Ryan" at all, since it only two of the five main characters were formally soldiers. It wasn't bad, but I did have a problem with the reality of all the chance encounters with the major characters. I was ready for one of them to speak out "small war isn't it".
Also a problem was, not the Polish anti-Semitism, but the happenstance lack of guilt of the five main German characters. It's as if the bad guys, the Nazi's, are all "these other guys". Sure they are shown shooting civilians, etc, but it's as they are forced into the act and thus have no shame or guilt. So we just have happened, of a sample of five soldiers and citizens in Germany during this time, we ran into five innocent anti-Nazi citizens (and yes I realize one was a jew, that just happened to have 4 german non-jew best friends).
The truth was somewhat different. If you are a German, your grandparents were complicit in mass-murder and the destruction of Europe. There is no refining that. There is no revising that. There are just too many reports - German's in towns having concentration camps with the odor of death in the air, claiming to not knowing what was going on...German's that claim to never have supported Hitler after the end of the war, while less then 10 years earlier the Nazi party obtained 99% vote.
The program touched on that near the end, perhaps without fully realizing it given it's scope: at the end of the war "we stopped becoming Nazi's, and became German's once again". If that is so - they should have given us an accurate portrayal of a common citizen of that time - not a victim of Hitler, but a tool of Hitler.
Well I watched all three episodes on Netflix over the weekend. I didn't see it as comparable to "Band of Brothers" or "Saving Private Ryan" at all, since it only two of the five main characters were formally soldiers. It wasn't bad, but I did have a problem with the reality of all the chance encounters with the major characters. I was ready for one of them to speak out "small war isn't it".
Also a problem was, not the Polish anti-Semitism, but the happenstance lack of guilt of the five main German characters. It's as if the bad guys, the Nazi's, are all "these other guys". Sure they are shown shooting civilians, etc, but it's as they are forced into the act and thus have no shame or guilt. So we just have happened, of a sample of five soldiers and citizens in Germany during this time, we ran into five innocent anti-Nazi citizens (and yes I realize one was a jew, that just happened to have 4 german non-jew best friends).
The truth was somewhat different. If you are a German, your grandparents were complicit in mass-murder and the destruction of Europe. There is no refining that. There is no revising that. There are just too many reports - German's in towns having concentration camps with the odor of death in the air, claiming to not knowing what was going on...German's that claim to never have supported Hitler after the end of the war, while less then 10 years earlier the Nazi party obtained 99% vote.
The program touched on that near the end, perhaps without fully realizing it given it's scope: at the end of the war "we stopped becoming Nazi's, and became German's once again". If that is so - they should have given us an accurate portrayal of a common citizen of that time - not a victim of Hitler, but a tool of Hitler.
Wow, you realize that's quite offensive to those Germans that lost family members themselves in concentration camps?
Wow, you realize that's quite offensive to those Germans that lost family members themselves in concentration camps?
Quite offensive to Germans? Excuse me? Are you serious? Any German who ended up in a concentration camp were deemed "undesirables" by Nazi Germany - jews, homosexuals, communist, gypsies, and common criminals, etc. Thus one could argue they were not part of Germany in WW2.
That should answer your question, more specifically - you can exclude them although I would have hoped I didn't need to be that obvious, I otherwise stand by my remark.
Quite offensive to Germans? Excuse me? Are you serious? Any German who ended up in a concentration camp were deemed "undesirables" by Nazi Germany - jews, homosexuals, communist, gypsies, and common criminals, etc. Thus one could argue they were not part of Germany in WW2.
That should answer your question, and I stand by my remark.
Let me get this straight: My great-grandfather's brother got killed, because he was a Catholic priest and member of the Christian Social Party. My great-grandfather was "expelled" from society first and was forced to fight for the Wehrmacht later on.
I'm confused now: Do you mean that my grandfather's family wasn't German/Austrian to begin with? Or were they complicits, because they took part in a fraudulent referendum in 1938, that's only rivaled by the one that took place in Crimea earlier this year?
What you are basically saying is: "Oh well, let's face it. Everybody who's an US citizen has grandparent's that were white supremacists. Including those that are actually black."
Let me get this straight: My great-grandfather's brother got killed, because he was a Catholic priest and member of the Christian Social Party. My great-grandfather was "expelled" from society first and was forced to fight for the Wehrmacht later on.
I'm confused now: Do you mean that my grandfather's family wasn't German/Austrian to begin with? Or were they complicits, because they took part in a fraudulent referendum in 1938, that's only rivaled by the one that took place in Crimea earlier this year?
Your confusion appears to be internal. The questions should be with your grand-parents, not with me. It's just strange that every German from that period, if questioned now, says he never accepted Nazism. Every child born after that time is given the talk from their parents "yes it was a terrible time, but I (or 'your grandfather') was not part of all that."
Germany has done a good job of accepting and facing the evils of it's past, something that Japan has never been able to do. But the challenge for today's generation is to accept that their own family was part of that evil. I have no idea of the authentication of your family history - that's a private matter for you alone.
Its interesting that the reviews of this mini series seem to focus on the evils of the AK, Polish resistance army to the German occupation. The five German actors were cast very well, indicating that friendship is sometimes deeper then bigotry, and the film is engaging, however the "slant" of the film is decidedly kind to the German and not so much to anyone else. Afer all it was made by Germans. If anyone else has complaints, then make a mini series slanted to your point of view. Personally, I am Polish and lost 15 family members to the Germans, so I would make a different movie.
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