Introduction

Generation War (German: Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter, translated as “Our Mothers, our Fathers”) is a German World War II TV miniseries in three parts.

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Outline

A Different War (Ein anderer Krieg).

The Soviet army is pushing toward Berlin. Not just the war but also National Socialism’s existence are doomed. Wilhelm’s death sentence is reduced to probation and he is assigned to a disciplinary battalion. A sadistic sergeant abuses Wilhelm, who Wilhelm eventually kills before escaping the battalion.

Charlotte befriends a Russian nurse named Sonja. After liberating prisoners from a train on the way to a camp, Viktor is expelled from the partisans, because they have found out he was Jewish. Charlotte sees Wilhelm again and has an emotional breakdown, because she thought he was dead.

Viktor crosses paths with Friedhelm, who kills an SD commander, enabling Viktor to escape. When the field hospital is overrun, Charlotte is captured and almost raped by the Soviets but is saved by Lilija and is forced to become a nurse for them. She sees Sonja being tortured as a traitor and then being executed.

After the German army falls apart, Friedhelm dies while leading a group of German militia, sacrificing himself to make his troops surrender. In the war’s last days, Greta is executed by the Nazi German authorities for her speech crimes, and her possession of incriminating evidence about her former Gestapo lover – who, it is intimated, has ordered her execution.

Shortly after the end of the war, the three survivors, Wilhelm, Viktor, and Charlotte, meet in the ruins of the same pub as before and grieve together for their lost friends, but without any sense of triumph over their survival.

Generation War Series

You can find a full index and overview of Generation War here.

Production & Filming Details

• Release Date: 20 March 2013.
• Running Time: 90 minutes (per episode).
• Rating: 15.
• Country: Germany.
• Language: German and English (subtitles).

Video Link