"See you at Christmas in Berlin!" With this hopeful phrase, five friends bid farewell to each other in 1941. Duty calls. Much like at the start of World War I, a brief conflict was anticipated. We follow the lives of brothers Wilhelm and Friedhelm, Viktor, Charlotte (Charly), and Greta, who have been friends since childhood. Charlotte becomes a nurse on the Eastern Front. Viktor is Jewish and manages to escape from a train headed to a concentration camp, eventually joining a group of Polish partisans. Greta is a singer who stays in Berlin and out of trouble the longest, until she performs for German soldiers at the front, one day before the Battle of Kursk. As an officer, Wilhelm is the most disciplined, but he faces so much trauma on the Eastern Front that he deserts. His younger brother Friedhelm is the first to realize the dire situation they have found themselves in Russia. The storylines are fascinating, confronting, and moving. We see developments from a German perspective. The senseless continuation of the fight long after the war was lost, the use of twelve-year-old soldiers, and the imposed German discipline. The series paints a realistic picture of the horrors. No expense or effort has been spared. The cinematography and screenplay are astonishingly good. The actors each deliver an impressive performance.Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter is not just a gem, it's a historical document and should be mandatory in secondary education. I was born and raised in Renkum and have lived in Heelsum for over 30 years. Literally a stone's throw from the dropping zone of the Airborne Division during the Battle of Arnhem. World War II has always played an important role in this region. And it still does, as evidenced by the many commemorations in September, the Airborne walking tour, and schoolchildren laying flowers at the graves of Allied soldiers at the Airborne cemetery in Oosterbeek. It pleases me that the commemorations are very much alive here. On the other hand, there is unfortunately a hollowing out of the National Remembrance Day on May 4th. Education about World War II and particularly the Holocaust is not what it was during my youth. This is not only deplorable, it's downright threatening.
It's truly unbelievable that a gruesome classical war is once again taking place on our continent in Ukraine. We humans, with our intelligence and ingenuity, consider ourselves superior to animals. Do we actually deserve this status? In Star Trek, a world is depicted where wars are a thing of the past. There's no more famine thanks to technological advancements. Humanity has evolved. I fear it remains science fiction.
In any case, the series has deeply affected me.
Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter is available on YouTube via the channel 2dewwdoc.
