Generation War

I purchased this movie just recently and found it jaw-dropping and hard to turn away from, despite what some other people have said in their reviews.Basically, 5 friends meet in a bar in Berlin, two of them brothers and another of them Jewish, which is hard to believe, but not unheard of, right before the start of the German invasion of Russia in June, 1941, and pledge to meet back there again after the final victory is assured by Christmas. Almost immediately, their little farewell party gets unwanted attention from a Gestapo officer, who comes in claiming he's been complained to that they're dancing to swing-dance music, which is now considered forbidden by Germany's laws, and also dancing with a JEW, the unholy crime.One of the girls, aspiring to be the next Marlene Dietrich, and who is dating that Jewish guy, who is a second-generation tailor, kinda warms up to the Gestapo officer and even sleeps with him, hoping she can suck up to him enough to get her boyfriend legal papers getting him out of Germany and to the USA before the final roundup of Jews begins.That doesn't do the trick at all, and her Jewish boyfriend is rounded up in December, 1941 to be sent to a concentration camp. But he and one other manage to bug out of the train taking them there by prying up enough of the floorboards in their car and dropping down across the tracks, a risky move when you think about how fast the train is going.The two brothers witness a lot of action in the Eastern campaigns against Russia. Each scene marks their advance as they get closer to Moscow, and while the older brother is a lieutenant commanding a platoon, it's not lost on him that his younger brother, an enlisted man, is not well thought of by the other men in their unit, with a poor attitude regarding soldiering, and accused of being a coward. After that brother seems to deliberately give away their position by freely lighting up a cigarette in the dead of night and marking that position to an attack by Russian aircraft, he gets jumped by several of the men in the platoon and badly injured as a result. One of their friends, Charlotte(Charly, as she is called by others)is a field nurse located not far from them, and still getting used to the multiple wounds of soldiers from their side that she has to treat daily.Part 2 seems to skip through quite a bit after that, going from January, 1942 to right before the beginning of the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. The older brother, Wilhelm, is still a lieutenant, which is questioned by some people in the reviews as to why he isn't a captain by then, like many would be promoted to considering the time he spent in the field and the mass casualties the Germans are taking. Considering that this lieutenant has several times DOUBTED their "final victory" right in the presence of his superiors and looks like he's leaning towards defeatism, I guess his superiors wouldn't have promoted him for that either, regardless of their losses and needs for experienced officers. The Gestapo has been known to give such officers a fate ending at the end of a firing squad if they spouted defeatist remarks.Their "Marlene Dietrich" visits the front lines as well, performing songs for the German soldiers before they're to be sent against the Russians at Kursk as fuel for the meat-grinding machine of war. Kursk goes badly for the Germans, and this singer knows it since she was too late to catch her own plane out of there before the battle began, and is temporarily working alongside Charlotte as a nurse and stretcher-bearer. Once back in Berlin, she makes the ultimate mistake by chiding several soldiers in a bar loudly enough to voice her opinion that "the Final Victory has been cancelled, so you better go back to fight while you still can." In my observance of this scene, some of the soldiers were a rowdy lot, looking at her as if they wanted a piece of ass, got angry at her speech, so in no time flat, they turn her in to the Gestapo as a defeatist. In 1943 Berlin, flapping your gums out loud in public about how Germany was losing the war could only have ONE consequence of your actions, and sleeping with a Gestapo officer and threatening to tell his wife about their affair doesn't make it any better.Wilhelm nearly gets killed at Kursk, and seems to stumble in a daze away from the fighting and takes up refuge in an abandoned cabin before he's found and arrested by the local military authorities some time later. His younger brother mows down a squad of Russians single-handedly, gets cut off from his unit, and has to put on Russian military clothes to get through the trap even though his fellow soldiers mistake him for a Russian and shoot him. He nearly dies, and clings to life thanks to Charly and her skills. When coming home on leave, his father treats him like dirt, as if blaming him for still being alive while the Favorite Son is still missing and presumed dead. He coldly tells his father, "I'm sorry the bullet missed by two inches" and cuts his leave short to be the soldier he hadn't been in the beginning.Wilhelm is sentenced to death, but the powers that be change their mind and sentence him to a penal battalion of defeatists and other questionable soldiers, where their task is to be thrown in where the fighting is fiercest as cannon fodder for the war machine. Around this time, the Jewish former tailor that escaped the Train of Death is now working for Polish partisans for the Home Army. The partisans have opinions that are strongly anti-Jewish, so he keeps his true origins to himself until that identity is given away after his fellow partisans ambush a German train that is packed with Jewish inmates heading to a camp. The partisans are agreeing to the fate of leaving the Jews locked inside the train while they make off with everything else of value. He unlocks the doors and lets all the inmates out to give them a chance at staying alive. Thereafter he is banished from his fighting group, and led into the forest by the leader at what appears to be a personal execution, but the leader tosses the gun down at him and turns away back into the trees.Reviews have complained about the Polacks' so-called anti-Semite opinions, and how the Home Army had units that even saved Jews, but this movie is not far from the truth. Many parts of Poland even before 1939 were having anti-Semite laws that limited the numbers of Jewish people from attending universities. Jews were not very well thought of by the general Polish population, some of which collaborated with the Germans gleefully to help get rid of the "Jewish problem". The Home Army even questioned why they should try to supply the Jews with their limited weapons for the '43 Uprising in the Jewish ghettos of Warsaw, since "Jews don't make good fighters." The facts are, even though many Poles bent over backwards to help rescue Jews during the war, there was no shortage of Poles who didn't care about the fate of Jews in any way and some stated that "they're getting what they deserve." There definitely was no future in Poland for those Jews who survived once the war was over. That fact was well-documented.All in all, it's a great movie, and really has a way in showing another part of the war which wasn't revealed in any other WW2 movie. Well done!!!

This is a German mini-series about a group of friends that experiences World War II. One is a captain in the Army who starts out being very dedicated but runs on hard times by the end. His brother is an enlisted guy who isn't super dedicated and is kind of the butt of jokes among the other guys at first. Another guy is the son of a Jewish tailor who runs into trouble trying to escape the Nazis. One of the girls is an army nurse who is very dedicated to her job and the cause. Another one is an aspiring singer who briefly becomes very famous for a popular song.There are three long episodes. The story starts right before the invasion of the Soviet Union and ends right after the end of the war. That's a lot of time to cover and the episodes jump large portions of time here and there. The cinematography is pretty good and the actors do a decent job with their parts. The series does a decent job of covering some of the big events from the perspective of the Germans, but it cannot obviously cover everything. Here and there it seems to get a bit bogged down and overplay certain themes.This has been billed as a German version of Band of Brothers. I would strongly argue that it is not. It is probably more similar to the American series Winds of War and War and Remembrance, albeit much shorter. Only some of the action has to do with army units and combat experiences. There are other slices of life that also get a lot of screen time. Also, the stories are interwoven in a way that creates an interesting narrative but not necessarily a historical view of the action in the same way Band of Brothers does.If you like World War II stories, you will probably like this. It is well done and interesting. If you are looking for a German version of Band of Brothers, you may be disappointed.

***MINOR SPOILERS***Contrary to the other reviews, this is not Germany's answer to "Band of Brothers," although the combat scenes are strikingly similar. "Generation War" is a production somewhat reminiscent of the German film "Stalingrad" if it were crossed with "Doctor Zhivago" (the latter for the way circumstance plays out and how the characters run into one at opportune times.)To give a basic summary, we follow five friends on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, 1941. We are introduced to: Charly, who has just joined the German Red Cross; Greta, who is destined to become a famous singer; Viktor, Greta's Jewish boyfriend who is deeply concerned for the welfare of his family; Wilhelm, an officer in the Heer and his younger brother, Friedhelm, a reluctant enlisted soldier under his brother's command. What transpires over the course of this three-part miniseries is a glimpse of how life under a totalitarian government -- and the war it has started -- irrevocably changes these five individuals. All of them are tried in harrowing ways, and almost none make it through their personal war without having committed a regrettable or grievous act.Nonetheless, at some point, the viewer will have no choice but to sympathize with each and every one of these characters and how the war shattered their dreams...and their lives.What really sets "Generation War" apart from other WWII films is that no belligerents involved come out with clean hands. The SS, SD, and Einsatzgruppen are depicted as brutal, but the regular German soldiers are shown engaging in heinous acts as well. Civilians are used to clear a path through a minefield; homes are destroyed; suspected partisans lined up and executed. Speaking of partisans, a group of Polish Home Army resistance fighters don't come off as squeaky clean heroes -- Viktor joins them and must hide his religious convictions because of vicious antisemitism among them. Red Army soldiers are shown following the orders of the NKVD to commit ruthless atrocities. Ukrainian collaborators are seen helping German police battalions round up Jews at one point.Even America doesn't get a free pass -- a former member of the Gestapo is seen working in an administrative capacity for the US Army during the postwar occupation. And if anyone thinks this kind of clemency wasn't granted to Nazis, look up "Operation Paperclip" -- or consider the slap on the wrist given to Joachim Peiper, one of the most notorious war criminals who ever lived.The uniforms and weapons are 90% correct...much better than Hollywood has ever done in costuming the cast of a WWII film. I spotted a few gaffes, but nothing that really ruined my viewing experience.Although not quite on par with Band of Brothers (not much is), this is an absolutely jaw-dropping cinematic accomplishment and makes for a riveting watch. I bought this on Blu-Ray based on word of mouth alone, and am glad I took the leap of faith. I'll watch it again and again.

Absolutely magnificent German (and German made) p-o-v mini-series of WWII. No punches are pulled in the view of Germans at war with the protagonists quite clearly understanding their part. Terrific acting and very tight writing has the viewer glued for the entire four and a half hours (in three 1.5 hour ""episodes").The story covers the lives of five friends who "do their duty" from just before Operation Barbarossa until just after the end of the war. Two brothers are soldiers, one an officer and one who would have been a conscientious objector in virtually any other country involved and we go through their "growth"." The other male friend is a Jew, simply, initially, striving to survive, the fourth is his girlfriend who is determined to become the next Greta Garbo (or simply star when she realises being the next GG actually won't go down well in Nazi Germany). The fifth, another girl is full of the belief of the German Woman and her place in the Reich and becomes a front-line nurse where her beliefs are gradually eroded. Their lives remain intertwined in various manners until the war finishes.Powerful, emotional and gritty, this is a film that should be seen by anyone with an interest in "the other side" of the war.Unless you speak German (or Russian, Polish and I believe Yiddish) you must read the subtitles but they are easy to see and read without impacting upon the visual. Probably the best sub-titles I experienced so don't let this put you off.Watch it.

Well, it certainly shows WW2 from a different perspective...that of the ordinary Wehrmacht soldier. Hitler's brainwashing of the German population is tangible as is the manner in which millions of ordinary people are still brainwashed by despotic leaders even in the 21st century. Throughout history there are numerous examples of this.Some viewers seem to think of this as being about the Holocaust. It is mentioned and one of the 5 characters, Viktor, experiences the treatment of Jews from a personal perspective. It isn't really about the Polish partisans either, although they are not treated in the most positive light.For me, the ethos was described perfectly towards the end of the series. One of the soldiers hiding in a barn with Wilhelm states: "To begin with we were heroes and now we're just assholes". Isn't that the way with any ordinary conscript in a defeated army in any century? It reminds us also that Hitler's 'jugend' were still brainwashed into fighting at the end even though the war was already lost.The series is beautifully shot with a few original newsreel films intermingled with the story. The acting is excellent....especially by Volker Bruch I thought. There are several parts which are most unlikely as plotlines. Mainly how the five main characters meet up/cross paths throughout the story. There are also minor sub-story scenes which are pretty much taken from other WW2 films...Anthropoid being one such example.Ultimately, it's a drama, a story and not an historically accurate representation. Very few 'stories' ever are. Shakespearian historical plays aren't accurate and yet they are lauded.As entertainment I thought it was excellent. The mental, emotional and physical decline of the characters is beautifully portrayed and acted.Does the storyline have drawbacks? Definitely.Is it 100% historically accurate? No, but then it's not an historical documentary.Would I recommend it? Without question.

The DVD of 'Downfall', a much lauded and impressive German-produced film covering the final weeks of Hitler's experiment, led me to seek other films covering the war from the Germans' perspective. In particular, what faced decent citizens who had no alternative but to join the Nazi war machine. We glimpse experiences of five young friends and their families for the period 1941 to 1945. 'Generation War' brilliantly, ingeniously and savagely shows the Eastern Front campaign. As a counterpoint, over time the narration of a young Wehrmacht officer links different locations or violent scenes and changing fortunes. Wilhelm's quiet voice shows growing despair as the tide of Russian armies sweep westwards; as the German units in disarray retreat through Poland to the Fatherland.Parts of the film are not for the faint-hearted. While end credits rolled the stark message I took on board besides feeling respect for the honesty of the film-makers, was : "There but for Fortune...go you or I".

This German dvd was the best I have seen about the war in Russia. At last a very true version. The scenes of destruction were horrific and real life.The Germans and the Russians fought the greatest battles in history. The tank battle set in Minsk in Russia was the decisive battle that changed the 2nd World War, and was the biggest tank battle scene ever, with over 7,000 tanks taking part.The Germans had most of their tanks destroyed by the Russians, and from then on the Russians advanced rapidly towards Germany and the defeat of Nazi Germany.The way the Germans killed Jews and partisans in huge numbers was typical of the Nazi outlook.During that time I was a young boy in the UK and plotted the armies on a war map on the wall in the 1940s.It was good to see the German dvd as they, the Germans, fought this war with Russia.90% of the German army was stationed in Russia.The shocking winter in Russia with deep snow caught the Germans unprepared. Planes could not fly, tanks refused to start with frozen oil.I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

This is a mini series about 5 friends with different paths during WW2. It is from the German side with the ideals, hopes and outlooks at the height of the German advances into RussiaThe story lines and battle scenes are excellent and detailed very much as good as‘Saving Private Ryan’If you enjoy good drama and Great War scenes then I highly recommend this series