MovieChat Forums > De tweeling (2002) Discussion > Anna and her SS-Officer… not Nazis… how ...

Anna and her SS-Officer… not Nazis… how idiotic.


I saw the movie 'Die Zwillinge' on DVD and really liked it.

But I was surprised about Anna and her SS-Officer. As far as I know from my Grandparents all SS-Soldiers were open Nazis, brutally backing Hitler and not naive little boys. Everybody knew that. Anna was obviously NOT a Nazi and her husband also not really one. The scene was very unrealistic… to marry an SS-Officer is a crime. I would have understand the scene if Anna married an ordinary Wehrmacht Soldier.

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Unrealistic?

In the period before the war, and even further back to the middle ages it was very common and even quite 'logical' to hate and despise jews in every corner of europe. Ask any person with a jewish background how'matter of fact' and casual it was(and sadly it still is> antisemitism) to blame jews for everything that's wrong with their society. Pogroms, razzia, dehumanization of an entire population, it's all there throughout european history.

So what's my point? From Anna's point of view, from the german point of view, they don't see themselfs as being wrong about the war, jews, Hitler, joining the SS. In those days being a member of the Sicherheits Staffel is just being patriotic, being a good landsmann, being a good citizen to 'help' protect the Vaterland.
Anna married him 'cause she truly loves him, not because he was in the SS. Just as Lotte truly loves her jewish boyfriend. In live you can't choose in a number of things; wich country your born, who your gonna love and marry, who your gonna hate, what sort of live your going to lead. In the end life chooses you.

This story is so tragic about two sisters who love eachother dearly, but are separated. They experience europe's painfull history where so many suffered, died, endured, participated, commited war crimes, and much more on different sides of the fence.
Judging any of the twins would be foolish and wrong. You read the book and you feel the war drawing nearer and nearer, and you can't but hope they find eachother and find some closure and forgiveness.
Every1 should read it.

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Sorry, there was a big difference in drafted soldiers or Germans joining the terror-organisation 'SS'. Nobody was forced to join the SS, it was NOT a patriotic act… and Annas boyfriend didn't seem to be a brutal Nazi. That scene was really stupid. Someone who was in the SS was an open Nazi… that's what my Grandparents told me and they both lived during the Third Reich.

Actually the Jews were pretty accepted in Germany before Hitler came to power. Of course there was anti-semitism but progroms in Germany happened several decades ago (maybe more than 100 years).

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Then you didn't pay enough attention to the film because they clearly said in the film that he joined the ss to get more "shoreleave" so that he could see anna. When it was suddenly revoked at the training camp when she went to pick him up she said that he only took the training to get some time off.... Or else he wouldn't even had become an ss officer

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you're talking *beep* do you even know someone who served in thee Waffen-SS or did you even talked with someone who served in the whole SS?
Your grandparents are clearly not objective (from what i understand they lived in one of the occupied countries).
Where do you get that nonsense about everone that served in the SS is a nazi and that people weren't drafted in the SS?
And long before Hitler came to power people didn't trust the jews.

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Tamasumo, that is factually incorrect!
My own mother told me that six foot tall, blond, blue eyed boys where regularly conscripted (drafted) into the SS forces, purely based on their "Arian" looks. My mother was a young girl during the war and one of her neighbours and class mates, a 17 year old boy was conscripted that way. He was forced into the SS on the thread of being interned (concentration camp), and being accused of being a traitor and Jewish sympathizers. She said that this boy neither had any Nazi sympathies nor hate in him.
Of course history books rarely mention this.
It was either obey, or be put against a wall and shot!

This movie was very accurate in this respect.

"Equitare, arcum tendere,veritatem dicere."

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To marry a SS-officer is not a crime!

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agguss wrote:

To marry a SS-officer is not a crime!. Not at all, and less in the case of Anna. I really don't know whether you were only saying it based in real life or in the movie as well, but if you are considering the movie go and watch it again.

In any case, it's a story of how the two sisters saw the world. Martin certainly doesn't look like a thug, definitely not in Anna's view. She didn't have enough time to get to know him particularly well (witness their frenetic antics when together). Had she known him better, she might have found that he wasn't totally honest with her. In any case, the story is about how she thought of him ("... the best man in the world" she tells Lotte).

Many movies have far-fetched parts, but this one is quite believable for me. If you want to pick holes in it, a more likely one was the way the air-raid seemed to vanish when Anna hears the news of Martin's death. Pretty minor flaw methinks.

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To fall in love with any human being is not a crime and cannot be a crime because not a single human being, not even the worse ones are monstrous all the time and with everybody. Even the most cruel criminals can feel love for someone and to be loved by someone.

and of course neither Anna nor Martin are monsters, they just loved each other so much, what's the crime there? I fail too see any.

They who believe that the money does everything, end by doing everything for money

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Rather a silly-assed thing to say. Don't you think SS Officers liked girls? How's that a crime? The SS represented an integral aspect of the Nazi government and infastructure and a rather necessary one at times, since indeed there were assasination attmepts and they functioned in part as the Secert Service does now. As far as being Nazis go, most people carried a card with a number on it, like a political registration for a party here. It was expected in many circles, just like at least having a copy of Mein Kampt, Hitler's well known political treatise and biography. A lot of people were simply "polite Nazis" since it was expected, like saluting an officer you don't like in the military.

I finally did see the rest of "De Tweeling". In fact there is another distinction to be made here that many people who've not studied German WWII history deeply would not know and that is the distinction between Waffen SS and the Black Shirt SS. It was the black shirt SS who ran the concentration and death camps as part of the Reinhard Heindrick's "final solution". The Waffen SS were field troops, albeit better equiped than average. Sure they had political indoctrination, and were zealots. But they were often front line guys so that's just part of the picture. Anna's husband was Waffen SS. If a German soldier had a chance to get into an armed SS unit, he'd take it based on the better morale, the better equipment, and better comrades.

DMJ

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First of all, to correct someone's error: When Anna meets Martin, he is already a member of the SS, albeit still in training. You can tell by the insignia on his uniform.
Second, and more important, you could not get drafted into the SS (which is Schutz Staffel, not Sicherheit Staffel). It was designed for the elite of the "Master Race." One chose to apply, and a man had to pass a special biological test just to apply. This applied both to the Waffen-SS and the Schwarze Korps. The film is very well done regarding the Grosalie family and Anna and Martin, because it paints them neither as black or white, but gray. Anna, for instance, looks at David's picture and calmly says, "Oh, he looked like he might be a Jew." So she is not painted as an angel. On the other hand, she is clearly portrayed as a "Bystander," not an active antiSemite. While I do not completely agree with someone's comments implying that every ordinary German belonged to the Party, not everyone who was a Party Member was a virulent antiSemite either. Lotte, on the other hand, won't even give her sister a chance to explain what she had experienced during the war. She is unforgiving and rejects her own twin sister summarily. Not a noble trait. Lotte is clearly in major denial about David. She marries his brother Bram while still clearly in love with David; this is shown beautifully by her acting in the scenes when her sister arrives after the war on her facial expressions to her husband. An absolutely magnificent performance, as is that of Anna. So the story portrays 2 characters, both painted in moral shades of gray. The dialogue between the old women at the end raises the most profound philosophical questions about the nature of good and evil and human behavior. Questions to which we will probably never have an answer. A very touching and beautifully written and directed film.

Allen Roth
"I look up, I look down..."

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"Anna, for instance, looks at David's picture and calmly says, "Oh, he looked like he might be a Jew." So she is not painted as an angel."

Well think about it like this. Some Southern whites who grow up in the deep south come from a background where racism against minorities and especially blacks is not usually virulent (i.e. "KKK-style"), but just something that's ambient in the background. A joke at the dinner table about Mexican or Asian immigrants. A fellow church-goer who is a bit more openly racist, and peroidically mutters comments about black people. These people might disagree with them publicly - or just the same, just laugh along with it to be polite and think nothing of it. Stuff like this creeps up on you if you live with it daily, and over the years it just SEEMS normal. Of course, its not just Southern whites. Plenty of people in other parts of the USA or Europe or Asia or Africa are racist toward those not like them (I just used that example since its a fairly common image (the Southern racist) and most people can relate to what I'm talking about right away, within the context of a discussion about prejudice).

Anna lived in a Germany dominated by National Socialism. Anti-Semitic rhetoric was not just commonplace, but held a CENTRAL place in German public life. She probably didn't say what she said with any real hatred - it just slipped out sub-consciously because that's what was all around her. Just think about her landlady/Countesses' racist comment's about the Polish laborers as Untermenschen! It's the same.

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ParaGreen, I am really glad you cleared a few things up with your posting. I am German and my mother (who as a young woman lived through WWII) became friends with a man a few years ago, who was in the Waffen SS during the war. This man originally went to an SS-run elite boarding school as a boy to which he was admitted probably because he had an excellent physical profile, etc. It is important to stress that this guy or his working class family weren't big Nazis at all, but some guys came to this low-income family and said "Go to this elite school with a full scholarship. Imagine the later opportunities." Of course, they didn't turn it down. Now, once you were in this school, your advancement to the SS after graduation was guaranteed and even mandatory. At this time, the young man had the choice: Black Shirt SS or Waffen SS. He chose the latter, because he had somewhat of a clue of what services would be required of him in the former. Granted, neither was a great choice, but he chose going to war and facing possible death rather than concentration or death camp duty. By the way, there was a movie made a few years ago about these boarding schools. It was called "Napola" (which was also what these schools were popularly referred to; it's an acronym but don't ask me what it stood for - maybe something like national-socialist political academy). I haven't seen it yet though.

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Love is blind. So how can marrying an SS Officer be a crime?

But the film showed that Martin was forced to become an SS Officer.

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