Die Flucht

This film deals with the plight of Germany's former eastern population at the end of World War II. Most Americans are unaware of the brutal and criminal expulsion of some 14 million Germans from their homes in what is now Poland. Millions of innocent men, women and children were murdered by the advancing Red Army. The Germans tried to flee, but their treks were rolled over by Soviet tanks and they were mowed down by a hail of machine gun fire. We will not discuss how the Russians treated German women. Those Germans who did not flee were forced to either become Polish or leave their homeland. Most of them decided to leave since they were already being treated like second-class citizens (examples: German language forbidden, economic sanctions, etc).

Many people have been waiting for a film like this to break the silence. For years no one dared mention the expulsion of the Germans. German war crimes got plenty of air time, but the evil that was brought down on innocent German civilians never seemed to be of much importance.

The film is about a woman who, at the start, is living in West Germany. She has a daughter, and after hearing that her father is sick, she moves back to East Prussia to help him. As the story moves forward, the Russians are getting closer and closer to Eastern Germany. The family decides to build a wagon and flee, which is against the law. The Nazis did not want the people to show any signs of defeatism, so they forbade the population any type of retreat.

The film could have shown more Soviet atrocities to show what hell it really was for these poor people. The film shows some of the horror, but a couple of times it focuses back on German crimes, which we hear about every time we turn on the History Channel.

That should suffice for a general idea of what the film is about. No spoilers are needed here. Spoilers really do ruin a film.

Watch the movie and learn something about German history.

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????

My comment is more directed to the previous comments from Mr. Rob Ogan.

Mr. Ogan's comments are very accurate however there is a simple explanation as to why the Soviet war crimes where not more accurately depicted. A national shame for the crimes committed by the Nazis is still carried and will be carried by the German people for as long as Germany is a nation. Nazi war crimes are taught and discussed from the fifth grade on, with one common thought: We will never forget/It must never happen again.

I agree with Mr. Ogan when he says "The film could have shown more Soviet atrocities to show what hell it really was for these poor people. The film shows some of the horror, but a couple of times it focuses back on German crimes, which we hear about every time we turn on the History Channel".

However it is simply unacceptable to depict the Soviet Military accurately without making references to how the German Wehrmacht treated the Russian peasants during the initial invasion and the following pullout, of Russia. Natually such a thing would require adding another 20 or more minutes to an already lengthy film.

My final word is this, most everyone here in Germany where shocked and at the same time pleased that Arte and BR had the courage to produce such a film. If the reader is a History fanatic, you will enjoy the opportunity to glimpse a most personal perspective of the second world war.

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.

All of my family were part Die Flucht and the film captures much of their experience in a fair degree of accuracy. I managed to watch the film with my mother before she died and she felt it was true to the story though because she was in the Poznan, their escape was on train in January 1945.

One of my aunts was on the roads in January 1945 with her parents and grandmother. The were caught by the Soviets. Her father, my grandfather, was shot of out of hand. She said the story was accurate in the portrayal of the events.

The one thing my mother and aunt did not like in the film was the added love story between Maria Furtwangler's character and the French POW. They felt it added nothing to the film was only a pointless distraction