Generation War

This hard-hitting, controversial and ground-breaking German WW2 drama recently aired on BBC2 to critical acclaim. Generation War depicts the lives of five Berlin-based friends, and how the horrors of war will change their lives and their friendships forever.

Spanning a period of several years (starting in 1941 and ending with the German capitulation in 1945), the three-parter focuses on the life of five bright young things living in Berlin, all of them inseparable friends since childhood. At the forefront are Wilhelm Winter (Volker Bruch), a honourable army officer adored by his father, and his younger brother Friedhelm (Tom Schilling), who would rather spend time reading books and philosophise about pacifist ideologies than go to war. Then there is idealistic Charly (Miriam Stein), who vows to do her bit for the fatherland by becoming a volunteer nurse in a field hospital. Her friend Greta (Katharina Schüttler) on the other hand has aspirations to become a singer and the next Marlene Dietrich. Last but not least, there is Viktor (Ludwig Trepte), a Jewish tailor and Greta’s boyfriend – despite the interracial prohibition laws during the Third Reich. Together they celebrate one last party before Wilhelm and Friedhelm head off to the Eastern Front, with Charly following soon on her way to a field hospital. Despite the looming terrors to come, the friends are in good spirits for they believe the war to be over by Christmas, meaning they will all be united again. The farewell-do is briefly interrupted by party pooper SS Officer Dorn (Mark Waschke) knocking on the door amidst reports of Swing music (also prohibited during the Third Reich) blasting from the apartment. Greta is ordered to appear at Dorn’s office the next day. At the end of the night, the five friends take a group photo with the camera’s self-timer; with each friend receiving a print to keep/to take with them to the front.

When Greta enters the SS office for an interrogation by Dorn, she plays naïve and starts flirting with him… in return, he promises to make her a ‘star’ and to help her record her first song. They embark on an affair, though it is evident that Greta only does so to enhance her own career prospects. Above all, she hopes that Dorn will issue her with safe-passage documents for Viktor, so he can flee the country before it is too late. Dorn gives her indeed the papers, which she delivers to his parents with a note for Viktor to meet her at the train station. Viktor later goes to her place to thank her for the documents and to surprise her with a red dress as a farewell present, a dress which he made for her. But when he finds her flat empty it dawns on him as to how she obtained the papers in the first place… Later on, an increasingly disgruntled Greta makes ever more diva-like demands on Dorn, who is a married family man, and is furthermore overheard making belittling comments about Hitler’s war politics. These comments prove to be her downfall…

Viktor, broken-hearted but at the same time thankful for the papers, sets off to catch his train to freedom and to Marseille. But unbeknownst to him and to Greta, he has been double-crossed by Dorn and instead finds himself on a train direction Auschwitz (he escapes from the train together with a young Polish girl). On their way back to the border they join a group of Polish partisans, although they too turn out to be anti-Semitic.

Meanwhile, we follow Wilhelm and Friedhelm to the Eastern Front and into the unspeakable terrors of war, where every day in the trenches is not only a battle fought for the fatherland, but a battle for pure survival. As the body count rises and morale diminishes, the brutality and violence that surrounds the two brothers has a different effect on each one. Whilst Wilhelm initially is the leader of his unit and courageously obeys orders, he soon grows more and more guilty and disillusioned, which in turn seals his downfall, at least his military one. Friedhelm, on the other hand, starts out cowardly and reluctantly, at constant loggerheads with his brother’s eagerness to lead his troupe to victory and push ever further into Russian territory. At one occasion, when Friedhelm deliberately lights a cigarette which then sparks an enemy attack, he gets beaten up badly by his comrades. Somehow, this changes his character completely, and slowly he morphs into a terminator who doesn’t bat an eyelid when asked to shoot a child. Friedhelm’s transformation from pacifist to soulless killer is perhaps one of the most harrowing but also the most poignant portrayals in the film. As Friedhelm prophetically remarks at the beginning of the film: “This war will bring out only the worst in us!”

Charlotte, aka Charly, gets a rough wake-up call too when at first, she is too faint-hearted and too clumsy to fulfil her duty as a nurse at the military hospital. As her skills improve, so do her feelings for Wilhelm, who at one point turns up with his battered soldiers at the hospital. Later, it is a badly wounded Friedhelm who ends up in the same hospital where she works. Later still, when Friedhelm is fit enough again to fight, he encounters Viktor during an attack in Polish territory and spares his life. With the frequency the friends happen to bump into each other, you’d swear that Russia and Poland are itsy-bitsy tiny countries indeed, and that Nazi-Germany could afford only one military hospital! Charly also starts to grow disillusioned with the war, being constantly surrounded by horrifically wounded soldiers. Worse, she grasses up a female Jewish doctor working at the hospital and who helped her out on something. Later, a remorseful Charly gets the chance to redeem herself (if ever) by befriending a Russian nurse called Lilja.
By the end of the third episode, only three of the five friends re-unite again in a bombed-out bar in Berlin… though by now they are changed people…

Generation War (original German title: Our Mothers, Our Fathers) makes for compelling viewing, with superb and convincing acting throughout. The mini-series is available as a 2-disc DVD & Blu-ray box set as well as digital download.