Unsere Mutter, unsere Vater

[Myles Keogh]

I thought "Generation War" was very well acted and decently directed, but that screenplay.....?  Whoa!  Talk about convoluted!  Wasn't the scriptwriter aware that the Ostfront was rather large encompassing hundreds of thousands of square miles and involving tens of millions of human beings?  Yet, he has his characters repeatedly bumping into each other and always at the most convenient of times such as to prevent a rape or death.  By Part 3, I was actually laughing as each more absurdly ludicrous scene unfolded with its truly unbelievable coincidences. 

 

The cast of young, talented, and extremely good-looking German actors/actresses deserved a better script.  (And throw in that young Ukrainian actress who played the escaped Polish slave-laborer as well.)   As did the set, costume, and production design teams.  I certainly don't think "Generation War" is terrible, but its script keeps it from being compared to either "The Pacific" or "Band of Brothers."  For a European production, it was just way too "Hollywood" in its desire to pile on "deus ex machina" plot devices to get its characters sharing screen time.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Myles Keogh

[umlaut]

^^^ I fully agree with this post.

I too have serious reservations when it come to the realism of the series - even though I do like it to some extend and think it contains many good elements. I don´t see it as an attempt to exonerate the germans, but in my view it does have some serious problems.

My main complaint is the choice of characters.

Look at the realism of the setup and the opening scene: Five friends - all of them twenty years old or less - having a farewell party in Berlin in 1941. And one of them is a jew! What are the odds?

These youngsters would have been no more than 13 years old when Hitler came to power and as such they would have been subject to the extreme propaganda of the nazi regime during their entire adolescence. From what I have learned from all my reading about the Third Reich there probably wasn´t a generation that embraced nazism more fervently than the teenagers of the reich. And you can´t really blame them for it. They were a perfect product of the society they grew up in. A society that made a very deliberate effort to brainwash it´s youth.

So what I am saying is this: I find the likelyhood that four twenty year old "aryan" germans would be friends with a jew in 1941 extremely low. So low that one can be excused for smelling a whitewash.

But actually, I think the series probably didn´t attempt to deliberately portray the germans as less anitsemitic that they really were at the time. I believe that the lack of realism is probably caused by narrative expedients, rather than revisionism. The writers needed a group of people ("aryan" and jewish) that the audience could sympathise with. And of course these couldn´t be fervent nazis. The problem is that this puts the selection of the characters of the story in the "extremey unlikely" category, in my opinion.

[Hister]

Yes umlaut and Myles, I agree with what you said but still it didn't prevent me to immerse in the story a lot. I just finished watched it yesterday.

 

Then I watched "Mein Krieg" documentary on youtube, an account of WW2 German veterans who served on the Eastern front and survived to tell the story much later. Lots of great first hand footage there and an interesting take on the story from the German soldier's perspective.   

 

 

Edit: It sure makes you chilled to the bone when you send your virtual troops to their deaths in the game after watching this. I sure as hell wouldn't be a suitable commander in real life. 

Edited January 21, 2015 by Hister

[Myles Keogh]

Umlaut:

 

Yeah, the character of "Viktor" is a bit far-fetched.  I guess we're supposed to surmise that his family had so far fared a little better than other German Jews by 1941 due to his father being a patriotic veteran of the Kaiser's army, but still his storyline was a bit hard to swallow.  One could also argue that Berlin being one of Europe's most liberal cities prior to the Nazis may also explain such unlikely friendships.  Still, "Viktor" is a rather hackneyed creation.  (And I'm not even going to his address his being quickly accepted by Polish partisans as both a German they could trust and his not being Jewish simply on the word of a Polish girl who is also completely unknown to them.  As I said, that script....whoa!)

 

A more realistic and maybe more interesting character could have been created by making "Viktor" the son of a Jewish mother and a decorated "Aryan" WWI veteran (or vice versa: Jewish war hero father/"Aryan" mother.)  Nazi lawyers argued themselves into pretzels trying to determine how such half-Jewish Germans should categorized for either "evacuation" or sterilization.  A half-Jew with a German surname and veteran father would have been a lot more believable mixing with other young Germans especially German soldiers in 1941 than a full-blooded one named "Goldstein!"  Also, the writer could have addressed the emotional turmoil of a young man who wants to emulate his father's WWI heroics and fight alongside his friends for Germany, but his Jewish blood not only makes him an outsider but also an "enemy" to his country's government which all his friends thoroughly support and believe in.  

Edited January 21, 2015 by Myles Keogh

[Hister]

Original script had Victor escape the Gestapo. Check the Wiki. Script must have been changed quickly and that part of the movie was most criticized, rightfully so. 

[Hister]

Article in The Guardian called "Generation War: what did you make of BBC2's German drama?" greatly summarized my feelings and thoughts about the movie. Google search for it. 

[poesel]

I think I already said it somewhere up this thread but this important to know:

 

the show was produced for the ZDF - a non-private (it is not state owned either) television station with the target audience of 60+. The title 'Our fathers, our mothers' is meant very literally. The actors depict the parents of those who supposedly watch the show.

For many it was impossible to talk with their parents about the war because many tried to forget or suppress their memories of it.

 

The story is simple and full of plot holes compared to modern series but quite extraordinary to what usually runs on that station. Its really a surprise they did make it at all.