Generation War: our mothers our fathers

[winkywinkola]

Anyone watching this?

It's brilliant.

My DH bought me the book as a present because we liked the TV series so much. It was a bit heavy going even for my tastes though- a case of the TV being better than the book on this occasion.

No snooker this week - I rather enjoyed that programme about women Pop artists, too, that came jut before.

I am going to work through some of my ironing pile while watching.

I am gripped by the series, and I love the comments on here and have learned a lot from them.

My mother's side of the family are German and her cousins had to fight for Germany, although none of them supported the Nazi regime.

My mum was a rebel and caused my grandmother a lot of problems, she even joined the Hitler youth - and her father was Jewish!

Luckily the family managed to leave Germany before things got too difficult for them and became naturalised British citizens before the war, so they avoided being interned. It must have been difficult for them speaking English with German accents during the war.

My mum joined the Free French during the war. I still have her badge - France Libre, and am proud that she did her bit for her adopted country.

That was a bit harrowing.

I want to know if Wilhelm and Charly managed to get over everything they'd been through and get together.

And I wonder how they all coped with Berlin after the war, and whether they were in east or west Berlin.

Did anyone see the discussion programme afterwards? I thought they were too critical of the author saying that it couldn't have happened and that we are viewing it with eyes of the present.

But we are viewing it with the eyes of the present. History is all about the present, and they were right that this would never have been made before 1989. I wondered also if choosing the eastern front, while a much harder war - there's a thread through to the present day, although it was made before the current issues with Ukraine and Russia's behaviour there. And there were the points they raised about it being anti-Polish, not that I entirely agreed with that - I didn't see all the partisans as unclean and not good-looking as the Polish ambassador who they interviewed was saying. Not to the extent he had seen it, anyway, but then perhaps that is because I am British and he is Polish, and maybe it proves my point about viewing it with the eyes of the present, in the light of our own histories and knowledge.

I wondered if it had been made 30 years ago, (which it wouldn't have been anyway,) would they have had all the women in combat, like Lilja and the Jewish partisan girl (whose name I have forgotten) with Viktor? I know there would have been women, but I suspect it would have been a storyline which would have been passed over a generation ago, whereas there's more focus on equality these days, so that's why they were showing that bit.

We were also seeing drama - I think Greta had to die for having been a bit too collaborative, and Friedhelm for having crossed so far from having been a poetic type to someone who could shoot a running 5yo with barely a pang of conscious, it seemed. Whereas Charly and Wilhelm, having started out as more in favour of the regime and serving the fatherland, they seemed to end up seeing things far more ambivalently, so it was okay for them to survive (plus Wilhelm was the narrator, so we always knew he'd make it through.) I think though that it did a good job of showing that whatever propaganda you might have had, people are pretty much the same, whichever country, and they're all mixed up, not all good, not all bad, though all in different amounts.

It was an interesting discussion, though, and it would have been dull if they had all agreed! They were also right in that there is so much written about WW2, you couldn't do a complete history of such a long, complex subject, so just concentrating on parts of it through the lives of people is the only way to do it, really. It may not all have been accurate, but it wasn't grating in the way some historical dramas can be.

And I got through my whole ironing pile.

Just caught up with it but haven't watched the analysis programme yet. I think they chose the Wastern front for many reasons, one of them being not confronting the sensitivities of the British, Anericans and the rest of Western Europe. Why did they say that the Americans had invaded Normandy and not the Americans and British and/or Allies?

I have just managed to catch up with it. What a fantastic drama.
I would put this up there with Das Boot and Heimat - brilliant.

The Winter brothers were a bit of alright as well

Why did they say that the Americans had invaded Normandy and not the Americans and British and/or Allies?

Because we couldn't have done it without the Americans. About half the Allied forces were American and the rest were British and other places. Canadians probably got counted as American and so on.

Had a very confused conversation once with German ex about what they called D-Day. (We were down at Portland, so I was talking about the mulberry harbours.) I first had to explain what I was talking about. The conclusion was he had no idea if the called it anything.

But the eastern front was much more decisive and if their resources hadn't been taken up there, the results of D-Day could have been different. I don't really think it was about western sensibilities, though, just the potential for more drama on the east, and that was where they were mostly focussed after 1941.

The Winter brothers were a bit of alright as well

I'm getting old - I mostly felt motherly about them.

I still don't see why they only mentioned the Americans in relation to D-Day

You would think they would have referred to the Allies - but maybe they talked about Americans because they had more contact with the American military than the others? In the closing scenes, where Viktor confronts the Gestapo officer now in a civilian job, by showing an American Officer standing by, it didn't really portray the Americans in a good light.

I too thought it was an excellent series and shows that it's by no means as black and white as we think e.g Axis Bad, Allies Good, but is much much more nuanced, and shows how difficult it would be to know what would be the correct course of action to take.

Loved this series. The brothers were amazing looking and great actors. I loved the nurse Found Greta so irritating and then felt really guilty at what happened to her :(

really great series. I thought Friedhelm looked just like James McAvoy (which is no bad thing)

:) amazing bone structure.

I thought it was very good too - I suspect the Eastern Front has more impact in the minds of most Germans - people who failed were sent to the Eastern Front weren't they?

There were too many coincidences of course but hey it's fictional, and the look of it, and the acting more than made up for that. I wonder if it was a fairly good representation of the war for most Germans - focusing on their lives, and survival and those of their friends. Maybe if they didn't know any Jews, or gays or communists they wouldn't have known that much about the camps - did they mention in the follow up programme?

Very, very good series. I have only just caught up with episode three today. Does anyone know where I can find the discussion that followed on?

Tough viewing.
I haven't seen all of episode 3.
I often wonder how Germans truly feel about the Holocaust / World War 2.
They certainly have come back strong in Europe.

The discussion should still be available on IPlayer or Virgin catch up. Still haven't watched it yet

It's not on iPlayer if I search for 'Generation War'. Was the discussion called something else? No Virgin.

I found the discussion on iPlayer, after searching for 'Generation War'. No denting the Producer's self confidence...

It was an interesting discussion and despite the historical inaccuracies the historians did agree it was very good TV, and did make some good points.

Oh! it's there now. Generation War: Fact and Fiction.

Wasn't there this afternoon. Thank you.

I often wonder how Germans truly feel about the Holocaust / World War 2.

One of my German colleagues who is now early-mid '30s, said he felt terribly guilty about it all, after what they covered in school. There are a couple of them now mid-40s, who I can talk about it with quite openly, because we get on well, and they know I'm interested in history, and a couple of older uncles were born before the war, and their grandparents were alive then. One remembered his grandmother telling him about the town where a lot of his family still lives, the valley flooding after the Dambusters raid (she lived up the hill, so was okay.) Unfortunately, none of them watched the programme when it was on in Germany (or haven't admitted it), because I'd have liked to have discussed what they thought of it.

We had a German trainer come over to give us some techy training, and the first thing he did was apologise for the war, which I thought very odd - too young to have been involved himself. One guy said, "don't worry, we wouldn't have the History Channel without Hitler." Fortunately, we soon got down to the techy stuff we were meant to be doing. I do think it's important to remember, so the same things don't happen again, but I am not sure they should carry so much guilt about it, unless they actually get involved with it happening again.

It may make a difference that they're all west German, the ones I've spoken to about it. I wonder how east Germans felt about it, what they got taught in schools, at least up to 1989. I don't know if they have a national curriculum in Germany, or if it's up to each Land or just each school. Actually, it was more interesting to talk about things like one of them was in the Luftwaffe doing military service when the Berlin Wall came down, and they didn't know if they were going to end up in a civil war, whereas to me, it was just something on the news, and interesting because I was doing history, but not real in the same way. It helps bring it home to me how Anglo-centric we can be.

The US has done a good job via film and TV series to convince the world that WWII was an American victory and everyone else were also rans.
There's no question that the Allies could have won the war without US and Canada, but the Amerians seem determined to write everyone else out of the narrative...

The scene with Viktor & Gestapo man was absolutely spot on - American soldiers didn't necessarily know who had been Nazis and didn't speak German well enough to find out, and I'm not sure they cared either. Guys from the Mid West really necessarily understand the political situation in Germany - the difference between Nazis and the rest. So - many Nazis managed to keep their heads down and be assimilated back into normal life. A surprising number of German firms with Nazi links such as Hugo Boss, Siemens, Bayer, Volkswagen just continued...

I would have liked to have seen more focus on the tension in the German armed forces between the career soldiers who had been trained in military academies with their codes of honour - and the Nazis. Some German soldiers refused to carry out Nazi orders and were antagonistic to Nazism. Why so few...

In the words of a German General Dr Rudolf Muller-Romer, bugged as he was interned in a UK PoW camp:

"History will hold German Generals responsible for not having unanimously stopped all that dirty work which started at the outbreak of war, simply by protesting and laying down their arms."

^ Para 2, line 2 should say: 'Guys from the Mid West didn't necessarily understand the political situation in Germany'.