Generation War
Generation War (German: Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter, translated as "Our Mothers, our Fathers") is a 2013 German World War II TV miniseries in three parts. It was commissioned by the public broadcasting organization ZDF, produced by the UFA subsidiary TeamWorx, and first aired in Germany and Austria in March 2013. The series tells the story of five German friends, aged around 20, on different paths through Nazi Germany and World War II: as Wehrmacht soldiers on the Eastern Front, a war nurse, an aspiring singer, and a Jewish tailor. The narrative spans four years, starting in 1941 Berlin, when the friends meet up for a last time before embarking on their journeys, enthusiastically vowing to meet up again the following Christmas. The story's conclusion is set shortly after the end of the war in 1945.
Generation War
Stefan Kolditz
Philipp Kadelbach
Fabian Römer
Germany
German, Polish, Russian
3
Benjamin Benedict
Nico Hofmann
Jürgen Schuster
David Slama
Bernd Schlegel
90 minutes per episode
TeamWorx
17 March –
20 March 2013
When the series was first aired in Germany, each episode garnered around 7 million views. Generation War has generated much controversy. The Economist stated that hardly any German TV drama ever caused so much public debate.[1] Critics have acknowledged the series to be well crafted, intense and unsparing in its depiction of combat on the eastern front.[2] However, aspects such as the portrayal of the Polish resistance movement as anti-semites, the scant depiction of Nazi Germany's objective to purge the Reich of Jews,[3] and the blurring of differences between non-German victims and German perpetrators have been deplored by others.[4][5][6]
Main characters[edit]
Wilhelm Winter[edit]
Wilhelm (Volker Bruch) is the narrator of the story. He provides the opening monologue for the episodes, and when the plot jumps forward in time his voiceovers describe the course of the war. In the pilot episode he states that he has served in the invasion of Poland as well as in the invasion of France. He is somewhat aware that Charlotte has feelings for him, but tells his brother and fellow soldiers that he doesn't want to get her hopes up, presumably as he could be killed on the front lines before he could reciprocate.
Wilhelm firmly believes he is bound by honor to fight as a soldier for his home country. Consequently, he is determined to do what he considers his duty as a Wehrmacht officer commanding an infantry platoon and he executes a prisoner in accordance with the Commissar Order. As the war goes on he is awarded the Iron Cross 1st class and promoted to Oberleutnant[7] but the hope for a quick victory evaporates and so does his naïve idealism. Facing the death of his whole platoon to achieve a questionable objective, he walks away from the front line after suffering from a concussion caused by a Panzerfaust anti-tank explosive. He then takes refuge in an abandoned lakeside cabin where he is arrested as a deserter by Feldgendarmerie officers. Instead of being executed, he is placed in a Strafbattalion (Penal Battalion). He is continually broken down further, through the actions of his sadistic platoon leader. Charlotte encounters him as a member of the Penal Battalion and is incredulous that he is alive, but they are quickly separated. Later he kills his platoon leader and escapes with a fellow soldier, making his way to Berlin.
At the series' end, he, Charlotte, and Viktor gather in the rubble of the bar where Greta worked in occupied Berlin and toast Greta and Friedhelm.
Charlotte[edit]
Charlotte (Miriam Stein), referred to as "Charly" by the circle of friends, secretly loves Wilhelm. When the war begins she volunteers as a nurse. She initially cannot bear to witness the suffering of wounded soldiers, but over the course of the campaign she hardens considerably. After being expelled from the operating theatre for dropping a scalpel, she is reassigned as a general nurse. Because the medical staff are overworked and in short supply, she is allowed to get assistance from local Ukrainian medical workers. She employs a Ukrainian assistant named Lilija who, when asked, denies being a Jew. After morphine goes missing, Charlotte investigates and discovers a photograph of Lilija's family standing in front of a menorah. She confronts Lilija, who admits to being a Jewish born medical doctor. Upon hearing this admission, Charlotte wrestles with her conscience but in the end decides to report her to the authorities. However, shortly afterwards, when she sees Gestapo officers approaching the ward she tries to warn Lilija to run away. But before Lilija can act, another German nurse points her out to the authorities who are "looking for a Jew hiding in the hospital" and they take her away. Charlotte's grief is further compounded when a wounded Friedhelm claims that Wilhelm was killed in action and she has an affair with the chief surgeon. Things only get worse when Wilhelm later turns up as a Penal Battalion soldier at her field hospital as the German Army is retreating on the Eastern Front. She angrily pushes Wilhelm away after confessing she is in love with him, and runs away to cry. When she regains her composure to try and speak with him again, she finds that he is gone.
As the front very quickly closes in, Charlotte, a local aide, Sonja, and a group of seriously wounded soldiers fail to evacuate and are left behind to face the advancing Red Army, whose men kill the rest of the wounded soldiers in their beds and proceed to arrest Sonja as a collaborator and attempt to rape Charlotte. Just then Lilija, having been freed by the Soviets and now in their service as an officer, shows up, saves Charlotte from rape and from further harm (execution) by arranging her inclusion as a nurse in the Soviet field hospital. She does however proceed to shoot Sonja, stating there was nothing she could do to alter a death penalty for a collaborator, noting that she has at least saved her from suffering sexual abuse at the hand of the soldiers.
At the war's end, she, Wilhelm, and Viktor have a solemn reunion in the rubble of the bar where Greta worked.
Greta Müller[edit]
Greta (Katharina Schüttler) is a bartender at a local tavern in Berlin, and an ambitious singer who wants to succeed by any means. When the Gestapo officer Martin Dorn crashes their going-away party (in the pilot episode), she admits to possessing the Teddy Stauffer swing-dance record the five friends are dancing to in order to stall the officer and prevents her Jewish boyfriend Viktor from being discovered out past curfew. She starts a love affair with Dorn to try to worm out of the charges of incitement; Dorn, in return, promotes her career for propaganda efforts. When she becomes a threat to his own marriage, he organizes a USO-like road show in the midst of the Eastern Front. She is briefly reunited with Friedhelm, Wilhelm, and Charlotte in her improvised dressing room after her performance, but cuts short the reunion (much to the other friends' dismay) to attend a private party held by the senior commanders.
Greta is stranded when her driver and pilot leave her behind at the start of the Battle of Kursk as she takes too long to pack her belongings. Charlotte forces her to help tend to wounded Heer soldiers at her field hospital, and the experience clearly traumatizes Greta. By chance she manages to return to her bar in Berlin, where she openly expresses her doubts in the Endsieg to a group of partying soldiers, and angers Dorn by revealing their affair to his wife, both of which lead to her getting arrested and imprisoned for Wehrkraftzersetzung ("subversion of the war effort") and defeatism. When she is arrested, she reveals that she had become impregnated by Dorn. He is shocked by this and then punches her in the stomach hard, to end her pregnancy. She is imprisoned and eventually executed by a firing squad in the final days of the war.
Viktor Goldstein[edit]
Viktor (Ludwig Trepte) is Greta's secret lover. Because of his Jewish background both of them live in constant fear that they will be accused of Rassenschande ("racial shame", "racial defilement", or "racial pollution"). Attempting to help him escape deportation, Greta manipulates Dorn into giving him a passport to the US, but Dorn double-crosses him and on the day of his departure Viktor is arrested by Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp. On the way there he escapes from the train, along with a Polish woman named Alina, and joins a group of Polish Armia Krajowa partisans. During his time there he has to keep his Jewish background a secret due to widespread anti-Semitism within the group. As the group is about to carry out an ambush on a motorized Wehrmacht squad, Viktor, by chance, recognizes Friedhelm as one of the drivers, and feigns his participation in the attack allowing Friedhelm to pass safely through the ambush and inadvertently saving the life of Hiemer, his SD officer passenger. Later, the group ambushes and raids a German train for weapons, whereupon they discover that a large part of its cargo is Jewish prisoners, whom they refuse to free. A conflicted Viktor decides openly to defy them and frees the prisoners, angering the other partisans who consider executing him. However, their leader, having become sympathetic towards Viktor, allows him to walk away from the group in peace. Just after Viktor leaves, the partisans are betrayed and their hide-out is attacked by Friedhelm's squad, but Friedhelm recognizes Viktor and allows him to escape amidst the confusion, having shot SD officer Hiemer who has also appeared. After the end of the war Viktor returns to Berlin to find out that both his parents and Greta are dead, that new residents have taken over his family's apartment, and that Dorn is now a member of the allies' postwar administration under the protection of U.S. army, much to his fury. At the end of the war Viktor reunites with Charlotte and Wilhelm in the rubble of the bar where Greta worked.
Production[edit]
Generation War is an UFA production, formally known as TeamWorx. It was filmed in sound stages and backlots at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam[8][9] and on location in Germany and Lithuania[10][11] as well as in Latvia.[12]
Originally, Viktor was to escape to France and finally to return as a regular soldier with the US Army. This part of the script was changed to a solution which could be produced on already available locations.[13]
International sales[edit]
RTÉ bought the Irish rights and began its broadcast on Sunday 17 November 2013 in the prime-time slot of 9pm on their more youth-focused station RTÉ Two. The show was broadcast with English subtitles.
The Australian broadcaster SBS showed the series on three consecutive Sunday nights at 8.30pm on SBS One starting on Sunday 12 January 2014 using their own subtitles.[14] A 2 disc DVD set was released in Australia on 12 February 2014.
The BBC acquired the UK rights and showed the series subtitled on BBC Two over three weeks starting on Saturday 26 April 2014.[15] It is the first foreign language programme on BBC Two since the second series of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom in 2001.[16][17] Sue Deeks, the BBC's head of programme acquisition, has stated that the series has "a truly epic sweep and emotionally compelling narrative".[18][19]
The US distribution company Music Box has picked up the US rights and hopes to give the series a theatrical release before releasing it for TV and DVD.[20]
Italian state broadcaster RAI showed the series divided into two parts on the Rai 3 channel over two consecutive evenings on 7 and 8 February 2014. Audience figures were 1,431,000 (5.36% share) on the first night[21] with a slightly higher figure on the second night (1,548,000 / 6.2%).[22]
When shown by Swedish public broadcaster SVT in late May 2013, it received very high viewing figures, the highest ever for a non-English language import.[23] When aired in Poland, the series scored record ratings, in spite of the Polish criticism.[24]
Flemish public broadcaster VRT aired the series in six parts on Canvas starting Tuesday 4 February 2014 both in standard and high definition.[25]
Croatian public broadcaster HRT aired the series in six parts beginning Thursday 13 February 2014.
Danish public broadcaster DR aired the series over two consecutive evenings beginning 9 May 2015. It was aired on its culture channel DR K.
Portuguese public broadcaster RTP aired the series in six parts beginning Monday 14 August 2017.