MovieChat Forums > The Good German (2007) Discussion > Who is the good german in this move?

Who is the good german in this move?


Who is the good german in this movie? Is it the mathematician husband?

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yes, it was the husband, there is a line saying he is a good German

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Yes The Hubby
Every other man woman and child in the entire nation is shown to be utter utter bastards.

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Not quite true. The little boy with the sailboat was all right.

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Hmm, I haven't seen the movie yet but in the book the mathematician is not good at all and the title refers to the ex-cop Gunther who dies in the end....

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If that's what the book says. I was under the impression it was Clooney's view on Lena. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Germans

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Anybody got any thoughts on why the George Clooney character -- the AP reporter -- didn't close out the film by churning that mother lode of notes that Cate Blanchett gave him into a Pulitzer Prize article? Otherwise, why make him a reporter? Would have been the scoop of the year. Also would have been a better ending than the one we got.

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yep. according to the novelist:

Joseph Kanon: Jake saves Emil for Lena's sake, but also for ours. One side or the other is going to use his scientific skill. Whatever the moral quandary, it is better that it be ours. I don't see it as Darwinian, though the Occupation became complicated and compromised. The good German is the one useful to us.

Emil is "good" because he's useful. The nation elected, supported, cheered Hitler. There's no way to separate good from bad, so practical considerations determine who is useful, or "good."

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Bettmann, the scientist, is the Werner von Braun stand-in, not Emil. Emil has the information that would have put Bettman on trial for war crimes. If the "good German" is the one useful to us, it's Bettmann.

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In the "real world," the "good German" seems to be Werner Von Braun; here's the cogent portion of his Wikipedia entry:

SS General Hans Kammler, who as an engineer had constructed several concentration camps including Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality and had originated the idea of using concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers in the rocket program. Arthur Rudolph, chief engineer of the V-2 rocket factory at Peenemünde, endorsed this idea in April 1943 when a labor shortage developed. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon.[12] Von Braun admitted visiting the plant at Mittelwerk on many occasions, and called conditions at the plant "repulsive", but claimed never to have witnessed firsthand any deaths or beatings, although it became clear to him that deaths had occurred by 1944[13]. He denied ever visiting the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp itself.

Adam Cabala reported (Ref 3):

[...] the German scientists led by Prof. Wernher von Braun also saw everything that went on every day. When they walked along the corridors, they saw the prisoners' drudgery, their exhausting work and their ordeal. During his frequent attendance in Dora, Prof. Wernher von Braun never once protested against this cruelty and brutality.

and

On a little area beside the clinic shack you could see piles of prisoners every day who had not survived the workload and had been tortured to death by the vindictive guards. [...] But Prof. Wernher von Braun just walked past them, so close that he almost touched the bodies.

On 1944-08-15, von Braun wrote a letter (Ref 2) to Albin Sawatzki, manager of the V-2 production, admitting that he personally picked labor slaves from the Buchenwald concentration camp, who, he admitted 25 years later in an interview, had been in a "pitiful shape".

In Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space numerous quotes from von Braun show he was aware of the conditions, but felt completely unable to change them. From a visit to Mittelwerk, von Braun is quoted by a friend:

It is hellish. My spontaneous reaction was to talk to one of the SS guards, only to be told with unmistakable harshness that I should mind my own business, or find myself in the same striped fatigues!... I realized that any attempt of reasoning on humane grounds would be utterly futile. (Page 44)

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I fell asleep half way through but I think it was Jurgen Klinsmann.




Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right; greed works.

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Emil Brandt is the good German, he wanted the truth to be told (about the slave
labour camp Dora) which would reveal Bettman as a war criminal. The Americans
wanted Bettman and had to shut Brandt up.
But you could also give credit to Cate, as she gave Brandt's notes to Clooney,
an American journalist and he could do a smear job on Bettman later on but that's another story. Yeah poor Cate sold out 12 people but if she didn't, she'd
be dead...kind of a no-win situation but self survival is a basic instinct.

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Without any outside research or reading the book, I'd say it's a layered answer. Emil Brandt is the obvious "good German;" he's called such by his wife, and the evidence he has can be used to hold people (or at least Bettman) accountable for crimes committed.
Bettman is another; as stated above, he's useful to the US--as long as his past is suppressed.
And then there's Lena; after struggling to survive the war like many Germans and Jews, she tries to atone for the crimes she committed. She's trying to be a good German, not a Nazi.

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I don't think Lena tried to atone for anything; unless I missed a scene. If she is trying to get her husband to safety it is only to save her own neck.

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No one. The title is meant ironically.

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the dead ones??

"don't tell him pike!"

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I almost agree with pivokocka, and also with Dr Kitten...

I'd put it this way: the title is a sort of question. How far are all Germans collectively guilty for Nazism, WWII and the Holocaust, and how far should we consider individual situations, choices, responsibilities?

Soderbergh keeps these questions pretty much 'in the air' throughout the movie, in fact beyond the movie - which is, I suppose, the point of this title.

OK, Lena calls Emil 'a good German': he'll spill the beans on the use of slave labour in the rocket programme, and accept his responsibility for his part in the crime against humanity, in order to promote the values that Germany once stood for, that the war was supposedly fought to preserve, and which the Nuremberg tribunal was about to reassert for a global audience. The Americans who think Bettman's value to their postwar military programme is more important than his accountability for crimes against humanity are themselves, ironically, guilty of the 'end justifies the means' morality, or immorality, that they supposedly fought WWII to defeat (ever the World's Top Nation for sanctimonious hypocrisy and duplicity).

But Emil knowingly contributed to the lethal (in every sense) rocket programme and wrote the death sentence for thousands of slave labourers. Not too good, even if he was 'just obeying orders.'

Someone mentioned Clooney as a sort of Cary Grant figure. Seemed more Bogey to me - embodying the moral confusion at the heart of the film, just like the film's title. Berlin under occupation could almost have been Casablanca, and Emil that other husband who had to be smuggled out of a complicated situation in a complicated town. Wasn't the closing scene in effect a direct quote from the closing scene of that other film?

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Berlin under occupation could almost have been Casablanca, and Emil that other husband who had to be smuggled out of a complicated situation in a complicated town. Wasn't the closing scene in effect a direct quote from the closing scene of that other film?

I was under the same impression....that the closing scene was a reference to Casablanca.

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^Seconded. I think there are a couple of lines where Lena explicitly states that helping her husband was part of her being a good German.

After all, "a good German" is one of the most ambiguous phrases imaginable put in the context of this movie and the times. You can turn it whatever way you want.

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The absence of consensus about whom the title refers to speaks volumes about the whole film.

Is it Gunther the German ex-cop (who has no lines I can remember and whose undeveloped character hardly embodies a paragon of goodness)? Emil (whom Lena calls a "good German" and who gets killed by Gunther for trying to protect Franz Bettmann, the Werner von Braun character)? Bettmann (whom some think "good" because he was furthering US interests — in exchange for having his past whitewashed and avoiding trial)?

Why wouldn't it be Lena? She remained in Germany with Emil, despite being Jewish and subject to SS surveillance and internment at any moment. She lied to ex-lover Jake repeatedly to protect Emil. She turned tricks to keep herself and Emil alive. She risked everything to hide him, changing residences on short notice to stay one step ahead of those attempting to get to Emil through her.

Kind of depends on what one considers "good", does it not? Good in the geopolitical sense, or the prosecutorial sense. Or good on the personal plane, in the sense of having the character to overcome endless adversity and compromise her principles daily to keep her commitment to her husband, subordinating self-interest to integrity.

That a Jew, married to a German who seconded Bettmann and his work in slave-labor munitions factories, would remain impeccably loyal to him adds an ironic dimension to the title. Only after Emil died did she finally allow herself to find a way out of Germany. Jake would have arranged her departure even sooner.

If the good (however imperfect) German is not Lena, then the film is even more flawed than it seems.

Historical aside (confirmed by a friend married to a German and living in Germany, among other sources): Even today, German culture encourages women who are mothers not to work outside the home. (Angela Merkel has no children.) But during the Second World War, while American factories were teeming with women (many were mothers), Germany, despite severe labor shortages, did not encourage women to join the general labor force. That was counter to the ideal of the German family. Their role was in the home.

Which sheds further light on Lena's "goodness" ...

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