MovieChat Forums > Dresden (2006) Discussion > Question for German Readers...

Question for German Readers...

posted 16 years ago by nowlang
18 replies | jump to latest

I have read most of the comments to date and noticed that many Westerners appreciated the movie whereas Germans readers were more critical of it. Can readers help me on this? I am a professional military and have utmost respect for the cost of war and human suffering on on all sides. I know that after the collapse of Germany, the Allied took care of monitoring if not writing the German history books for the new generations of German children. Since the reunification of the German state, I am interrested in learning how the "German Baby Boomers" see this movie,
Thank you,
Lancelot (Canadian-American)

[–] uniproton 16 years ago

Well, I can't speak for all Germans of cource. But I liked the movie. It has some flaws, especially cinematic ones, but the storyline is okay. It's quite a balanced storyline, guess the reasons for the bombings and the doubt about that within the RAF or the British Government could have been explained better, but ultimatly this was about the people of Dresden and not the geopolitical and military reasons for the attacks.

I guess you can argue about whether it's okay to display the Germans as victims of the war as well and on the other hand you can argue that those area bombings a crimes of war (they are know IIRC but not at the time, concerning articles were added to the international law in the 1970s)... but I wouldn't do that.
The message is quite clear: whenever there is war, the uninvolved citizens will suffer the most for the failures of the political and military leaders. Dreden was "just" another city with the same horrible fate as Guernica, Warschau, Coventry, Leningrad, but also Hamburg, and ultimatly Hiroshima. Those city are not alone in the present, think of Grosny, Sarajevo, Mogaduishu, Kabul and Baghdad.
The message of the movie is a message of peace and that there isn't just "good" and "evil" but a lot of shades in between. Quite a good message I think.

And yeah, I don't really think that our history books have been kinda altered by the Allies. On the contrary... the German people where able to surpress their responsibility for the war and the atrocities commited in POW-Camps, KZs, occupied territory, etc. It needed the student revolts of '68 to get started with the real reprocessing what happend during Hitler's regime. I guess we're still not finished with that... and not just us Germans. The whole world can learn quite a lot by understanding how it was possible to commit such crimes and have a whole people turn the other way and pretend nothing happens.

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] SaudiUtah 14 years ago

Well said.

There are many examples of one human population subjugating/exterminating another human population.

Germany doesn't have the monopoly on that. We Americans certainly have our own sordid past with that kind of atrocity.

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] SaudiUtah 14 years ago

Preaching to the Choir bro.

But the Jews were there before Truman settled the holocaust victims. Zionists had been immigrating there before World War I. The break up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, that was overseen by France, UK, Belgium, and the US is a big contributing problem to the difficulties now.

Lines were basically drawn on a map forming the nations we have today not taking into account of religious and racial issues.

And one of the few countries that was given to the US to oversee, which happened to be Saudi Arabia, is certainly slightly better off stability wise.

Sorry chief, you are trying to educate a person with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies.

[–] waldenpond88 8 years ago

What I particularly liked was that feeling of authenticity supported by an adequate score. Very often young film makers think that they can make a movie on the 1930's or 1940's and use modern music (???) as a background like the song by Céline Dion in "Titanic" or the pop song in "The Three Musketeers" with Kiefer Sutherland (One for all). That just doesn't fit!
I appreciate scores that are picking up musical elements typical for the time in which the historical movie takes place (for instance baroque music in the "Angélique" soundtrack by Michel Magne).

[–] richimorton 14 years ago

I have not seen this yet (it's on tonight) but what i can say with some authority (my Nan survived the Blitz of East London by the Nazi's) is that the firebombing of Dresden by 'Bomber Harris' near the end of the war was , and is , a shamefull episode in British history. It was evil .

That which does not Kill me makes me Stranger . . .

[–] Thusnelda 14 years ago

I have not seen this yet (it's on tonight) but what i can say with some authority (my Nan survived the Blitz of East London by the Nazi's) is that the firebombing of Dresden by 'Bomber Harris' near the end of the war was , and is , a shamefull episode in British history. It was evil .

Thank you.

Yours,

Thusnelda

Revolt of the Masses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13dgLzmHsnM

[–] Theo Robertson 14 years ago

Oh dear - moral relativism . The Nazis murder 6 million Jews , slaughter millions of Poles and other Slavonic people for being the " wrong " type of Europeans and people start talking about the bombing of Dresden as a " war crime "

Most of the " facts " about Dresden aren't facts at all - they're ure inventions of David Irving well known holocuast denier

[–] Thusnelda 13 years ago

???

It is rather those who still try to justify the war crime and murder of very many tens of thousands of innocent women and children who have a problem with “moral relativism”, as you put it.

And no, it’s not “ring wing extremists” who say this
- this is even in acknowledged in the politically-correct left-wing liberal mass media of the BRD, e. g.:

"What was peculiar about the Potsdamer Konferenz, is that here a war criminal trial was decided by victors, who - according to the standards of the later Nürnberger Prozess - would have had to be hanged altogether. Stalin at least for Katyn, if not anyway. Truman for the completely unnecessary bombardment of Nagasaki, if not already for Hiroshima, and Churchill at least as chief bomber of Dresden, at a time when Germany was already finished. All three of them had decided re-settlements of population in a crazy scale, and all three of them knew in what criminal a manner they were executed." --
Rudolf Augstein, editor (!) of the "Spiegel", "Der SPIEGEL", No. 2/1985, p. 30

Yours,

Thusnelda

WHY THE USA IS GOING TO FALL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_6AaHT7ZSQ

[–] Theo Robertson 13 years ago

If " Germany was finished " as Augstein put it why didn't the Germans lay down their arms and surrender ?

Would it not be the fact that they murdered millions and millions of men , women and children , effectively that they knew there was expected come uppence that made them continue to fight ?

Interesting that in DER UNTERGANG we're shown Germans fighting to the last man or commiting suicide . Even more interesting is that the film never hints as to the reason why they're doing it - because they've nothing to lose after the atrocities they've inflicted upon the people fighting against them

Any neutral and sensible observer can say hand on heart that millions of Germans got off lightly when the war ended . One debate that might hold relevence is why wasn't The Morgenthau Plan implemented ? rather than why weren't the allies prosecuted for war crimes ?

[–] NoRevisionism 10 years ago

well, at least you don't have to worry about Thusnelda responding to you Theo Robertson. she exists now only in ancient, dated, IMDB posts.

& she was a complete whackjob

[–] Jack Doyle 11 years ago

innocent? why hadn't they overthrown nazis? why should more allied soldiers die if a bombing campaign can make their advance easier, surely the preference should be to protecting the lives of those young men and boys fighting desperately to remove the terrible evil Germany had wrought on the world?

All evil needs to triumph is for the good to do nothing.

and you know after the Germans bombed the cities and people europe for so long having their skies blocked out by bombers is kust Karma, and Karma is a bitch.

[–] fivestarmichael 11 years ago

"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal."

Curtis LeMay (Four-Star General)

Lemay was well aware of the fact that the Americans were committing war crimes by bombing civilians.

[–] indy_go_blue44 10 years ago

Lemay was well aware of the fact that the Americans were committing war crimes by bombing civilians.

No, LeMay was just aware of the fact that the Japanese were a hell of a lot less merciful on the losers than Americans (allies) were. After all, they beheaded 3 of the captured Dolittle raiders who acted "perfectly legally" by the standards of the time, a hell of a lot more "legally" than the Japanese at Shanghai, Nanking, Chunking, Singapore and a lot of other cities they bombed.

[–] fivestarmichael 10 years ago

I cited a direct quote from Lemay, he said it, not me. The Japanese committed horrible atrocities, but all war is horrendous and every side committed atrocities. I have no love for the Japanese but American leaders knew they were going over the line bombing civilian targets.

[–] fdbjr 10 years ago

The hope of Lemay and Harris was to end the war by a demonstration of unassailable air power - not unreasonable, and it finally succeeded at Hiroshima.

There is no comparison with the tactic as a weapon in a war of racist aggression.

[–] waldenpond88 8 years ago

Great great TV drama!!!
Watched it for the 4th time, this time with my hubby who rated it 6 stars. He's American, I'm a German Baby Boomer.
I grew up in the sixties and the horrors of WW II were still very present and discussed a lot on both sides of my family (both grand-parents, my parents and their siblings and friends talked about it).
None of my folks lived in or near Dresden, but I met a few people in my life who's parents survived the Dresden bombings and told them about 2/13/45.

Before I finished high school in 1974, history lessons skipped WW II.
Since the German media became a lot more open about WW II after the airing of "Holocaust" (with Meryl Streep and James Woods) in 1980, there were many Holocaust and WW II survivor interviews late at night which I recorded on VHS to watch it at a reasonable time when nothing of importance was on TV.
Ever since I've watched hundreds (I dare say thousands) of WW II documentaries and movies and read hundreds of books on this topic.
For me "Dresden" is one of the best anti-war movies ever made.

We watched the bonus features and were impressed about how much research on Dresden has been done upfront, the international stellar cast that was selected and especially the British side of the story which gets told equally.

I see your post is from 2008 and you might not even see it, but maybe somebody else will.
Would like to hear other people's opinions on "Dresden".