Unsere Mutter, unsere Vater

[para]

Yes - enemy at the gates was truly awful. Stalingrad was better - if you are comparing the two - but still a pretty dire movie.

The biggest problem a war film from the german pont of view faces is the attempt to elicit any sympathy for any of the german characters which for most watching will utterly fail. Unless you are german of course. Der untergang was the best german war film I have seen - but thats largely because it didnt rely on any emotional attachment to characters - it was more just a documentation of history. Band of Brothers worked so well not only because of the superb battle scenes but because people we cared about were heading into them.

It would likely be a cold day in hell before I felt the same for a german character as I did for an american or british one.

Not even Corporal Steiner?

[agusto]

Another movie that came to my mind and that hasnt been mentioned yet:

A Bridge Too Far

Doesnt show the german perpective, but i found it still interesting because my grandfather was at Arnhem.

[mjkerner]

Are you guys talking about the 1980's color version of Stalingrad? The 1950's black and white version was pretty decent...at least it was 30 years ago when I last saw it.

[agusto]

Are you guys talking about the 1980's color version of Stalingrad? The 1950's black and white version was pretty decent...at least it was 30 years ago when I last saw it.

Hmm. At leat i was talking about the 1993 movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzYE5dlY28o

Link above = full movie, german with polish subs.

[Rokko]

Yes - enemy at the gates was truly awful. Stalingrad was better - if you are comparing the two - but still a pretty dire movie.

The biggest problem a war film from the german pont of view faces is the attempt to elicit any sympathy for any of the german characters which for most watching will utterly fail. Unless you are german of course. Der untergang was the best german war film I have seen - but thats largely because it didnt rely on any emotional attachment to characters - it was more just a documentation of history. Band of Brothers worked so well not only because of the superb battle scenes but because people we cared about were heading into them.

It would likely be a cold day in hell before I felt the same for a german character as I did for an american or british one.

Shouldn't be a problem for an open-minded person who's ability to feel empathy and compassion for fellow human beings is not blinded by patriotism and nationalism.

Edit

That may sound a little more harsh than intended. I guess it's normal to feel more empathy with people you share the same language, culture, heritage with.

But that shouldn't exclude the same for persons who were enemies to other persons a long time ago.

And I generally don't like patriotism a lot.

[WynnterGreen]

Shouldn't be a problem for an open-minded person who's ability to feel empathy and compassion for fellow human beings is not blinded by patriotism and nationalism.

My first reaction too Rokko.

[JRMC1879]

Shouldn't be a problem for an open-minded person who's ability to feel empathy and compassion for fellow human beings is not blinded by patriotism and nationalism.

Edit

That may sound a little more harsh than intended. I guess it's normal to feel more empathy with people you share the same language, culture, heritage with.

But that shouldn't exclude the same for persons who were enemies to other persons a long time ago.

And I generally don't like patriotism a lot.

Its got nothing to do with nationalism or culture or heritage or for that matter open mindedness.

Talking from a military rather than civilian point of view I am not sure where my empathy for german soldiers would come from considering what even the most reluctant of them were fighting for. I am not one of those who subscribe to the revisionist present day german view of things that they were as much helpless victims of hitler as anyone else - and especially not where their military were concerned - and that includes down to the level of ordinary soldiers.

Its simply the fact that I feel more for a US soldier fighting for freedom in the ardennes than a german soldier fighting to facilitate opression and genocide. I am not sure where that "empathy" you refer to would come from in that respect.

Those are just facts of history and not something a film is going to change and certainly not one that would distort facts of history to such an extent that it even had a chance to do so.

[Rokko]

Well for me I try to see them as human beings just like me and everyone else. Compassion really. If I see poor Johan crack under heavy depth charge barrage in Das Boot I feel just as sorry for as I do for Adrien Brody in The Pianist after his family got sent to Treblinka.

Society is just too big for most individuals to resist really I think. Unless you are really an exceptional person how can you resist against living in and fighting for a violent and criminal regime.

So how can I condem an ordinary person for fullfiling the role the society he lives in has considered him for. I can't really. I can't condem a young German man in his early twenties at best for being ordered into an execution unit as I can't condem a young African boy in Liberia commiting the most heinous atrocities (just recently I watched a documentary about 90% of the Liberian population have eaten human flesh).

And honestly I think there is some sort of self-rightousness in most "Western" contries (i.e USA, Britain, Canada, etc.) that comes from "being the good guys" (which is right of course to some degree) which distorts the view on many events in history and also in present time.

[JRMC1879]

Well for me I try to see them as human beings just like me and everyone else. Compassion really. If I see poor Johan crack under heavy depth charge barrage in Das Boot I feel just as sorry for as I do for Adrien Brody in The Pianist after his family got sent to Treblinka.

Society is just too big for most individuals to resist really I think. Unless you are really an exceptional person how can you resist against living in and fighting for a violent and criminal regime.

So how can I condem an ordinary person for fullfiling the role the society he lives in has considered him for. I can't really. I can't condem a young German man in his early twenties at best for being ordered into an execution unit as I can't condem a young African boy in Liberia commiting the most heinous atrocities (just recently I watched a documentary about 90% of the Liberian population have eaten human flesh).

And honestly I think there is some sort of self-rightousness in most "Western" contries (i.e USA, Britain, Canada, etc.) that comes from "being the good guys" (which is right of course to some degree) which distorts the view on many events in history and also in present time.

Well, taking your example of the execution unit ... if you read widely on the subject you will find that much research has found that there was very little, if any, peer presure to be part of such units and official sanctions for refusing duty in those units virtually non existant. Again, it is revisionist history that suggests there was some kind of coercion and convenient for modern germany to forward that myth. The simple fact is - an awful lot of contempary germans believed in what hitler was saying and the majority of soldiers didnt find great moral objections to what they were doing. The german army simply wouldnt have fought as well as it did and for as long if they didnt. If germans turned against hitler it was when he began to lose the war not through any moral objections to what he was doing.

I am not sure where self righteousness comes into it - the western allies spent huge amounts of blood and treasure freeing europe from hitler and largely handed back those countries to democratic governments. And to me it is the role of the german people and forces and their complicity in hitlers rise to power and the war which is distorted these days not the other way round.

[Rokko]

While it is correct that there was no real coercion into commiting war crimes I do not think you can dismiss the effect of peer pressure so easily.

I have read Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning and it has that now famous story of the CO (a major) of a German police batallion used in an extermination role in Poland offering any of his men how felt he was not up to the task to step forward and be excused from having to shoot and only a handful of men out of some 500 did actually step forward. And that situation implies huge peer pressure if you ask me.

That old story you often hear from German veterans that "They'd be put to wall as well" had they not complied is proven false of course since no man has ever faced severe punishment for not taking part in executions, war crimes, etc. (though I don't think that means that everyone knew they would not be punished).

On the other hand, people who generally refused to join the army or follow orders in general did get incarcerated or sentenced to death (Jehova's witnesses for instance).

Generally I just believe the political aspect is overstated. I don't think politics or political believes did matter all that much in day-to-day life just as they don't today (especially if that life was a potentially very short soldier's life on the front lines). It's all about socialisation and the society you live in, wether that is a Communist, Nazi or Democratic society.

And the problem with pre-WW2 German society was that it treasured duty and commitment so awfully much. Nazi ideology was just born out of that.

I recently read a statement by von Rundstedt where he said he would never have participated in the July 20 plot because the outcome of the war would have been the same which left me absolutely stunned. He is right of course, Germany would still have suffered total defeat but he could have potentially spared the lives of millions of Germans as well as the lives of millions of Russians, Poles, Jews, etc. but that's just how people were back then.

Also, make no mistake, I do not try to excuse what they did, I just try to understand why they did it and how they came to be the way they were.

[umlaut]

there should be umlauts.

You just about made it to my sig line

[Nidan1]

And honestly I think there is some sort of self-rightousness in most "Western" contries (i.e USA, Britain, Canada, etc.) that comes from "being the good guys" (which is right of course to some degree) which distorts the view on many events in history and also in present time.

If we are talking strictly about the human reaction and emotional investment given by people who lived during that time, you would have to ask yourself who were the better men at the time, those who landed on the shores of France to liberate an enslaved continent, or those who defended those shores?

Soviet soldiers also considered themselves to be "good guys". Where do they fit in to our present day perception of who is more self-righteous, in light of how the world evolved following the war.

[agusto]

Soviet soldiers also considered themselves to be "good guys". Where do they fit in to our present day perception of who is more self-righteous, in light of how the world evolved following the war.

Considering that the soviet soldiers in WW2 were defending their country against an unprovoked attack by an invader that was seeking to enslave and kill the russian people, they were on the moral highground, independent of their countries questionable political system.

[Sublime]

I have to agree with Agusto. Though I wouldn't count 'Soviet Soldiers' as say NKVD shooting Poles in Katyn. And during the war there was a lot of questionable acts by Soviet troops. More so, at the end,it was heavily encouraged by official orders, statements etc. I'd also say that perhaps (there's just no way to know) the lack of more evidence of Soviet atrocities for most of the war is due to their being the victors (perhaps just like evidence of US/Brit atrocities) and also because most of the war in the SU was fought over land that was part of the SU. Troops aren't nearly as likely to commit atrocities in their homeland as in a foreign country. Their record after they crossed into Poland and the rest of the Europe is quite a bit less than sterling. You can of course justify it by what the Nazis had done, which I don't agree with at all. The Soviet State encouraged mass looting, rapes, and murders at the end of the war, just nowhere on the scale of the Nazis.

However hypocritical Western righteousness is (and it is, USA vs American Indians, Vietnam, more recent stuff, Brits vs Ireland, India, etc. France in Indochina, etc) DURING WW2 the West, AND the Soviets, WERE the good guys. Theres just no way around it. It doesn't mean every German was bad, but it DOES mean that A LOT of Germans and Japanese not only participated in, or knew full well about war crimes, openly racist ideas, and wanted their nations to subjugate and conquer as much of the world as possible. And thats only officially, under official capacities. This does nothing to explain how common it was for Japanese officers to have head chopping off contests. Or the rape of Nanking. Or orders from OKH getting pissed because German infantrymen had fun shooting rifles at PoW columns for sport. Or German troops ASKING to participate in Einsatzgruppen 'actions'. The fact is for every isolated case of gang rape by Americans or Brits, or even common stories of Russian rapes and brutalities, there is nothing on the scale, official or unofficial, and nowhere near as accepted and common as almost a part of the military/national culture, as the pure evil that symbolized Nazi German and Japan during WW2.

[Rokko]

I would really suggest you (or any person for that matter) to pick up Ordinary Men if you wish to understand better what might causes such behaviour patterns.

Also, if you happen to speak German you can find a highly interesting lecture here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-A6N-KyP8U

No subtitles unfortunately.

So much of human behaviour is just situational and dependent on what is considered normal by the society you live in which is also why you often find persons who commited such horrible acts can be loving husbands, caring fathers and really just good citizens without ever resorting to violence ever again afterwards.

Here you have another documentary on a particular case, unfortunately only in German again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyUoAl1WI3w

[JRMC1879]

I would really suggest you (or any person for that matter) to pick up Ordinary Men if you wish to understand better what might causes such behaviour patterns.

Also, if you happen to speak German you can find a highly interesting lecture here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-A6N-KyP8U

No subtitles unfortunately.

So much of human behaviour is just situational and dependent on what is considered normal by the society you live in which is also why you often find persons who commited such horrible acts can be loving husbands, caring fathers and really just good citizens without ever resorting to violence ever again afterwards.

Here you have another documentary on a particular case, unfortunately only in German again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyUoAl1WI3w

Its funny how perceptions are different. I have read ordinary men a couple of times. Probably one of the most difficult reads there is with some of the descriptions.

I seriously took a completely different meaning from what he wrote in that book and it was so much an illustration for me as to how much ordinary germans bought into the whole superiority thing. I didnt take at all he was suggesting peer pressure was what drove those men to do the things they did - quite the opposite in fact. Indeed it was for me all about the title - and how ordinary men put in the right situation will willingly commit barbarous acts with the knowledge they act with impunity. If anything ordinary mens most powerful point was the Lack of an adequete explanation as to why they did what they did and if anything he argues against peer pressure as an explanation. To me that was the salient point of the book.

The salutory lesson from the book is that most of us would like to think that any "ordinary" man would find something in himself when standing face to face with a ten year old hes about to put a bullet in the back of their head but even with the exit routes they had available, which didnt require any particular courage, they didnt.

[WynnterGreen]

Dehumanize your enemy, EVERYONE does it.

It's more easily achieved when racial and cultural divides are greater.

Easier still when their's a history of conflict between the parties.

Westerners do gloss over the atrocities commit by the Russians, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or because it was 'justified' as 'payback'.

Soldiers are trained to support their mates, no matter what and through anything.

It doesn't matter if it's Marines covering up murders of Civilians in Iraq to support their squadies, or soldiers destroying entire villages in Vietnam out of rage and frustration.

The majority of German soldiers turned a blind eye to the atrocities perpetrated by a minority who'd been enlivened and encouraged by an ethos of National and racial superiority because they were told to.

Very few people who know anything about the reality of war want to take part in one.

Fewer still want to kill people because of the colour of their skin or their cultural identity.

But it still happens, in civilian life, let alone war.

Put a uniform on *******s who've been indoctrinated to hate, give them a gun and tell them that they're being a patriot by killing human vermin. Some will do it, some will even enjoy it.

The majority will not, but they're caught in the machinery of the military, to decent is to break cohesion, cohesion is survival.

In the case of the Germans during WWII, the encouragement from the very top to perform 'dampnum', total war against both civilians and soldiers became more and more normalized as the military moved further into territories held by nationalities and cultures the Germans were able to dehumanize through social and racial divides.

As the casualties mounted for the Germans and the war became one of survival, rather than conquest, things deteriorated further.

There's no excuse for what happened, but it is understandable.

It would likely be a cold day in hell before I felt the same for a german character as I did for an american or british one.

Statements like this highlight how it easy it is to dehumanize, even at a range of 70 years and from the comfort of home.

[Ts4EVER]

I never had the feeling that the characters in the series were all that sympathetic. I mean just look at how fanatical and racist the nurse is at the beginning.

[JRMC1879]

Dehumanize your enemy, EVERYONE does it.

It's more easily achieved when racial and cultural divides are greater.

Easier still when their's a history of conflict between the parties.

Westerners do gloss over the atrocities commit by the Russians, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or because it was 'justified' as 'payback'.

Soldiers are trained to support their mates, no matter what and through anything.

It doesn't matter if it's Marines covering up murders of Civilians in Iraq to support their squadies, or soldiers destroying entire villages in Vietnam out of rage and frustration.

The majority of German soldiers turned a blind eye to the atrocities perpetrated by a minority who'd been enlivened and encouraged by an ethos of National and racial superiority because they were told to.

Very few people who know anything about the reality of war want to take part in one.

Fewer still want to kill people because of the colour of their skin or their cultural identity.

But it still happens, in civilian life, let alone war.

Put a uniform on *******s who've been indoctrinated to hate, give them a gun and tell them that they're being a patriot by killing human vermin. Some will do it, some will even enjoy it.

The majority will not, but they're caught in the machinery of the military, to decent is to break cohesion, cohesion is survival.

In the case of the Germans during WWII, the encouragement from the very top to perform 'dampnum', total war against both civilians and soldiers became more and more normalized as the military moved further into territories held by nationalities and cultures the Germans were able to dehumanize through social and racial divides.

As the casualties mounted for the Germans and the war became one of survival, rather than conquest, things deteriorated further.

There's no excuse for what happened, but it is understandable.

Statements like this highlight how it easy it is to dehumanize, even at a range of 70 years and from the comfort of home.

Its got nothing to do with de humanizing germans - they succeeded at that quite well enough on their own by their actions and more importantly the scale of them. Its simply about the original question with regard to films and sympathizing with the plight of the german soldier from the basis of what they were fighting for. Read or watch most memoirs from the german soldiers point of view there is an acceptance that they bought into hitlers view of untermenschen and jews and that was a feature of their war - ie it was idealogical in a way the western allies werent and why they accepted the atrocities around them and participated in them.

There is never any attempt to say they understood at the time what they were fighting for was wrong - it is always the reasoning thet they were duped into believing they were right.

And whilst all armies have their "bandits" nothing approaches the scale of how the germans behaved in every country they invaded.

To empathize with the german soldier as much as an allied one from any point of view does not show more humanity but a profoundly innacurate view of the differences in the motivations for fighting the war and what they were prepared to do in the war.

Had Hitler beaten the russians and british and america sat in their own continent and he ruled over europe for the last 70 years what fundamentally would have happened in germany - mass revolt on moral grounds ? How would he be viewed today in germany had he been successful instead of leading the country to destruction ?

Read any detailed study on the Nazi state and you will quickly see how dependent it was on the support of the people. And how careful it was to keep it.

The fact is whilst some in germany saw him for what he was - after the victories in europe the streets were filled with people who genuinely believed he was making germany what it should be irrespective of how he was doing it. The german people were complicit in what he did they were not victims.

The western allies did not treat the germans badly at all when they occupied their country. And that represents a fundamental difference in ethics and the people of the uk and us from those in russia and germany during the war and how they fought it.

your arguments to me just smack of apologist reasoning for a scale of involvement and complicity that goes well beyond a Mai Lai or more usual war atrocities.

Hitlers fundamental view was that germany was due greatness and conquest and fundamentally whilst he was successful most germans had no problem with it or how he went about it.

[WynnterGreen]

your arguments to me just smack of apologist

It wasn't and isn't my intent to be an apologist.

I'd prefer to see my view as humanist, in both the best and worst sense of rationalizing what people are capable of, and capable of becoming, given conditioning and circumstance.

represents a fundamental difference in ethics and the people of the UK and US from those in Russia and Germany during the war and how they fought it.

Both the British and Americans only fought expeditionary wars against an enemy that hadn't been dehumanized the way combatants had been on other fronts and in other theaters during WWII.

Fighting in your own backyard changes the rules. Cultural, social, racial and historic animosity fueled hatred in a way that wasn't as evident in the conflict between the US and Germany.

Fighting in the Pacific took on a different tone, partially because it was easier to dehumanize an Asian enemy.

While my opinion smacks of being the apologist, to me, yours smacks of the very jingoism and moral superiority that causes nations like WWII Germany to feel entitled to invade a neighbour.

[JonS]

Fighting in your own backyard changes the rules.

But ... Germany wasn't "fighting in their own backyard" until 1945, so they don't even have that excuse. From 1939 till the end of 1944 they were fighting a series of expeditionary wars.

The difference (well, one of the differences) is that only they* were waging an aggressive war of conquest, while everyone else - including the Russians - was waging a defensive war. All the way to the ruins of Berlin, at the strategic level the Allies were fighting a defensive war**.

Jon

* The wider 'they' here, which includes the assistance of Germany's allies. And in Europe. Obviously Japan was waging their own, different, war of aggression on the other side of the world.

** and the ruins of Tokyo too.

[Sublime]

Exactly. All the bombing of Japan would NEVER in a million years have happened without Japan going on a rampage to build an empire in the Pacific. Even that wasn't enough to force war, we just cut off their oil. It took a surprise attack to bring us into the war. Their treatment of civilians, PoWs, etc. means I do not feel the firebombing B-29 raids nor the atomic attacks were unjustified or wrong. I feel even less bad after learning up Japanese cultural and educational treatment of that period in their history. At least the Germans seem to own up to it quite a bit more.

Its the same song in Europe. While I can have sympathy for German soldiers, the average guys who probably weren't bad guys and committing atrocities. (and this is purely because they were raised in a nation and had their worldview shaped by it. I can accept that argument as far as being conscripted or joining a military of millions, and serving. But not atrocities.) The civilians, I feel bad for, even though I know most were probably rabidly or at least somewhat pro Nazi, especially the young children and old folk. But that being said? Everything that happened in Germany, was a result of German actions. And I think they still managed to suffer appreciably less than several nations they invaded. I don't buy the we didn't know crap at all though. I'd rather someone confess they felt helpless to stop the actions of the regime, than have them claim they didn't know something was up. The ones who rounded up the Jews, or were killing them, or involved in the camps, I think should have gotten worse than the noose or bullet they ended up with though.

I could never feel the same sympathy though for Germans as the nations around them involved in the war as the Allies though, because as was stated, it was a defensive war. Even when it technically was offensive, and in Germany, it was a matter of exterminating a dangerous enemy. In the den of the fascist viper and all that.

edit: Of course this doesn't mean that Japanese children, or soldiers who didn't commit atrocities weren't in an equally unenviable position. Still it's a similar case - huge amount of the population rabidly in support of the government, its ideas, and the war. I could never feel as bad for them as the dead GIs, Brits, Anzacs, Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc etc.

[WynnterGreen]

I'm aware of that Jons, and I didn't qualify, or make, the statement properly.

I was actually talking about the Russians fighting in their own back yard, coupled with the other things mentioned, cultural, racial etc, that helped fuel the ferocity and animosity in that theater.

Things which contribute in varying levels to the capacity of one protagonist or another to dehumanize their enemy.

[MG TOW]

I just finished watching the series. It was not a BOb, but still a good drama, some good action in the second episode. But not in the war flic sense. It does not make excuses for why the characters did what they did. Just that they played their part. The backdrop and uniforms were very authentically done so bonus points there.

[BLSTK]

It would likely be a cold day in hell before I felt the same for a german character as I did for an american or british one.

Then "Schindler's List" was made for you.