America Outraged over Germans Living a Lie

A young woman at the back of the packed hall wanted to know if there was anything good to say about this film. She said she comes from Mexico and does not know much about European history. However, after “Generation War” — a 4.5 hour edition of the TV series currently running in a New York art house cinema — she was very impressed.

That this film is confronted with such loud criticism in America perplexed her, and so the young Mexican asked: Where is the positive?

It is true that speakers at a podium discussion in the German House — a branch of New York University — hardly had anything good to say about the successful film from Philipp Kadelbach and Stefan Kolditz. The first speaker was Andrew Nagorski, a former Newsweek correspondent, who now works for a think tank.

Responsibility Is Thrown Away

Nagorski said the historic responsibility of the Germans in “Generation War” was thrown away exactly twice: first, when the five main characters experienced a moment of moral catharsis — most clear when two German soldiers shoot their commanding officers at the end; second, the anti-Semitism is not actually attributed to the Germans, but the Poles — clearly seen in one scene, where Polish guerrillas attack a train full of concentration camp prisoners and then leave them to their fate instead of releasing them.

For this scene, said Andrew Nagorski, there was no historical precedent: It is fictitious. “Generation War” depicts a distinct step backward, as compared to the “Wehrmachtsausstellung”* from the 1990s.

Historian Atina Grossmann, who was in the audience — she has published many books about German and Jewish history, most recently, “Jews, Germans and Allies” (2007) — said, ironically, that it was obviously the right film at the right time. The story in “Generation War” is what Germans of the second generation after the Holocaust tell themselves. She used the German word, “Lebenslüge.”**

Why Was This Film Subsidized?

Even Oliver Mahrdt, whose job is actually to be an advocate for German films in America, helplessly shrugged when asked to explain the success of “Generation War.” He also did not know why exactly the German authorities subsidized this film.

And then, there are the survivors. A 90-year-old veteran of the Polish Home Army, who rescued Jews, talked in broken English about how gruesome the German operation was. An elderly woman with a fur hat, who was in a concentration camp as a teenager, haltingly said that she could not understand how a film could spread such lies.

A Former Concentration Camp Prisoner Is Disgusted

An elderly gentleman, who was a prisoner in a concentration camp, said that it was not shown once in this film how German people shoot — not a single time. He burst into tears.

Where is the positive? Actually, there is none, answered Oliver Mahrdt to the young Mexican, but it is good that we talked about it.

*Translator’s note: “Wehrmachtausstellung” is the common name for two exhibitions about war crimes committed by the German army between 1941 and 1944.

**Translator’s note: In this context, “Lebenslüge” translates to “living a lie.”