Coming from Germany, this is a brave and moving mini-series about what war does to friends and family
Innocence lost … Greta, Wilhelm, Charly, Friedhelm and Viktor in Generation War
I think it's the red dress that does it for me, starts me off in Generation War: Our Mothers, Our Fathers (BBC2, Saturday). It's often the little things, a moment of loveliness when everything else is getting so very unlovely, a reminder of beauty, tenderness, humanity. Like the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List. Red clothes, they make you (me) cry.
The dress is from Viktor the tailor who has been making it for ages for his girlfriend, Greta. He leaves it on the bed because she's not there: she's off with the Nazi officer, betraying Viktor. (Betrayal crops up a lot in Philipp Kadelbach's epic three-part German mini-series). But Greta is also saving Viktor, bravely and selflessly, because she loves him; the Nazi officer could be Viktor's ticket out of there, a chance of survival. This is Berlin, 1941; Viktor is Jewish. He's going away, to America he hopes, she hopes, we hope. Whatever, it will be very hard for Greta and Viktor to see each other ever again.
Greta, Viktor, brothers Wilhelm and Friedhelm, and Charly are five twentysomethings, friends since kindergarten who – perhaps strangely, given what's going on around them – feel optimistic about life, immortal, as if the future belongs to them. Wilhelm promises his mother that he'll bring his bookish younger brother back when they set off for the Eastern Front. Charly, too, is heading that way, to volunteer at a field hospital, do her bit and help people. The five have a farewell evening together, with booze and jazz, love and laughter. And a group photo. They'll see each other again soon, Christmas in Berlin, pick up where they left off. Nothing will ever come between them …
Except it does, of course. A barbaric regime and a terrible war tear them apart, strip them of their innocence and their optimism, harden and dehumanise them.
The two soldier brothers, pushing into Stalin's Russia, don't just witness atrocities, they take part in them. Well, Lieutenant Wilhelm does; he executes a Russian prisoner – he has to. Friedhelm is seen as a coward and a traitor by the company. They beat him up; Wilhelm allows them to. Wilhelm is the commanding officer now, not the protective elder brother. But then later it's Friedhelm's idea to get the prisoners to walk ahead to detonate mines. "I was right," he tells his elder brother, "this war would only bring out the worst in us."
There is one more moment of brotherliness for them, a play fight in the snow, a brief reminder of happier days (and more tears here, obviously). But Wilhelm's promise to their mother is looking less and less likely to be kept. As does the one made between the five friends, about staying friends, and about Christmas in Berlin.
Some way back from the front, at the hospital, Charly, too, is encountering the horrible reality of war and death. And betrayal – on her own part. She turns in the woman – a Jewish doctor – who has not just helped her, but been a friend as well. Nooooo!
That's what Generation War is about, and why it's so powerful. Not just a gripping, moving (weepy) drama about friendship and family and what war can do to them, plus a rare (for us) look at it from a German perspective. But also one that isn't afraid to confront the question of how normal, clever, educated, likable people could somehow have become blinded by and swept up in such barbaric inhumanity. Yes, they are victims too (Viktor especially). But as the drama, and the war, goes on, and one sort of innocence (of youth and peace) is blasted and frozen away, another sort of innocence (the opposite of guilt) becomes less clear.
It's bold and brave – both in itself, and especially because it was made in Germany. It almost certainly wouldn't have been until recently and shows a confidence to confront the past. Any later, though and it would have been, if not too late, then certainly less meaningful and less powerful. I don't know how this is all going to end up. But if Greta, Viktor, Wilhelm, Friedhelm and Charly were real and in their early twenties in 1941, then it's just possible that they could still be around today. Certainly, for many Germans, they are still Their Mothers, Their Fathers. Generation War isn't over.