Die Flucht

You see, it is different to be an American than to be a German. Americans won the war. Germans lost it. I've had to deal all my life with my father's flight from Silesia to South America running away from the Russians. You never had bombs falling on your head. You were not an East Prussian, A Silesian... You didn't live in Dresden when the bombers came. You didn't loose your home, your parents, your sons, your neighbors, your country. But my family does know because it was there.

When I read your words, as well intentioned as they may be, I understand why the History Channel shows so many American and British WWII aces shooting down German pilots to bring peace and order to the world. Because they were right. Because they were good. Because there's no doubt that their goodness and rightness was the real goodness and the real rightness that, thank God, won over evil and reigns victorious in the world today...

Because that's what you think, isn't it? It gives you peace and so does it to many millions more. How good you can sleep at night and teach those that were directly underneath your bombs how to behave today. Because, that's all too clear, they have still a lot to learn, a lot not to forget. Keep your righteous words coming. The world needs them. We Germans need them. We are eager to hear them. Thank you so very much! By the way... I loved the film. Though it saddened me deeply to watch it.

In 1933 Germany elected Adolf Hitler as Reichschancellor, and with him came the downright criminal Nazi-government. Among many other atrocities, Hitler started the most devastating war in history of mankind: his campaign against Stalin's Communist Soviet Union. The year was 1941.

Inspired by genuine racism, the Germans behaved terribly in the part of the Soviet Union occupied by them. Consequently Soviet revenge was equally terrible when in January 1945 Stalin's victorious army invaded East Prussia, Germany's most Eastern province. To make things worse, Hitler stubbornly refused to evacuate East Prussia's civil population.

'Die Flucht' (= German for 'the flight, the escape') is about this invasion. I am impressed by the historical correctness applied by the German filmmakers: after all, for many Germans the loss of East Prussia still is a highly emotional issue. Add to that the excellent quality of its shooting and acting, and all these ingredients make 'die Flucht' an epic and excellent film.

Some people here write about Soviet "barbarism" and "genocide" against the Germans. Really? Almost 14 million Soviet civilians died in that war.

German soldiers committed inhuman atrocities in the Russian land.

On the other side, German civilian population losses were about 2 million, mostly from the American-British airstrikes.

This movie doesn't show much suffering. I was 4 years old when my family fled Moscow in October 1941. I can tell the creators of this soap opera what REAL suffering means.

Germans claim that Soviet soldiers raped about 2 million German women. Maybe next time when Germans are poised to start another war they will think more about the plight of their wives and daughters.

But be weary of the only review to-date.

One should be skeptical of any claim that a film fails in that it references the crimes of Germans during WWII. While it is high time to openly talk about the refugees from the eastern territories, the sinking of the Gustloff, the allied air raids, the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and the tragic fates of individual Germans, (etc.), one must do everything to prevent collectivizing Germans as victims or undermining the last 40 years of dealing with the crimes. If Germans of the war generation are victims of anything collectively, it is of their own ignorance and aggression. While German suffering must be brought into official histories and representations of that era, so as to not collectivize Germany as a nation of absolute perpetrators (then and now), we cannot lose sight of the greater picture: the majority of Germans welcomed the rise of the Nazi party and Hitler; very few did anything to resist the regime, even after they were disillusioned by the horrors of war and the crimes of the Nazis; the crimes were silenced immediately after the war, as the average German sought to move on and rebuild. Increasingly since the 1970s, and some argue not adequately until the 1990s, Germans have attempted to come to terms with these immense failures. The price has been de-emphasizing their own suffering. But focusing on the suffering they caused first is not only commendable, but the real reason they have become a leader and example in the international community! (Imagine if our president publicly apologized to the leader of another country for past crimes he/she had no involvement in, and even bowed before him!!) Germans must avoid sentimentalization and reductionism when dealing with such topics. They must maintain a critical distance and account for the greater context of WWII, or they run the risk of oversimplifying, catering to nationalistic and xenophobic entities still present, and/or undermining all they have accomplished in the way of coming to terms with their very complicated past!! If this film manages to incorporate suffering into the greater context of perpetration, all the power to it! Those who criticize it for not being comparable to a sentimental Hollywood war film in which there is a clear distinction between victim and perpetrator/ hero and villain... well, read up on German history and stop and think about your own... The world isn't that simple, why should serious, seemingly historically accurate films be????

In Part 1 it is mentioned that Ferdinand serves in France, but by then, that war theater was in crisis and the last thing the military would allow is that a soldier would leave his post. The same happens when Lena and her fiancé dance in the mansion: the first waltz to be heard is one of Tchaikowsky, a Russian composer, and that kind of cultural uttering was forbidden and quite punished.