Most Brits have seen Basil Fawlty’s endless tirade against the Germans in Fawlty Towers which contains those immortal words “…don’t mention the war…”. The poor Germans at the table simply say “we didn’t start it….” They just want to forget..
If you have been brought up on films like Saving Private Ryan, The Great Escape or the BBC's Allo Allo it might come as a surprise to learn that the German film industries bothered to make any films about the war at all. In the English speaking world it might appear, that apart from Der Untergang, German film makers took Basil’s advice and “don’t mention the war.”
But this isn't true at all. From the very first year of peace, while German cities lay in catastrophic ruins German film makers like Wolfgang Staudte, Helmut Käutner, GW Pabst and Kurt Maetzig directed the first films explored their own tortured past. For these and other film makers Germany's defeat was the catalyst for the making of dark, expressionist films. Fans of Carol Reed's The Third Man or Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair will find mirror images in the German films of the same period.
Since the war German film makers on both sides of the "Iron Curtain" and even since unification have made combat films, melodramas, rubble films, love movies, suspense thrillers, holocaust films and resistance movies. And yes in answer to Basil's charge they have have even made comedies about the war.
This site attempts to chart the major ebbs and flows of the German war film, and identify stereotypes, genre's, phases, high points and low points. I hope that the website will introduce the the German war film genre to an English speaking audience and readers will strart to look at German film in a new way.
The the films have been devided by period and cover the films made under occupation, division and reunification. To be included on the site I have tried to find films that are availble and have sub titles so that they can be enjoyed by an English speaking audience.
