Die Flucht

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.

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

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.