14 Matches Found
A reassessment of the role Albert Speer played in the Third Reich. Speer, who was ultimately convicted at the Nuremburg trials and served a 20-year prison sentence, was known for designing many of the Third Reich's buildings and for being Hitler's minister for war production.
The story of a group of Berlin youths from the post-war period to the post-reunification era. A gripping story of friendship, love and betrayal against a global political backdrop, told in a three-part documentary drama. Friends Kurt, Lotte, Jakob, Silke and Bernd experience everyday life together in post-war Berlin in 1948: between rubble women and the black market, rival youth gangs and first love. Thirteen years later, as the flow of refugees to the West increases, they try to hold on to their friendship. But the estrangement becomes ever more apparent and the gang members lose sight of each other. Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 do the former friends finally find each other again and have to ask themselves whether they are still bound by the vow they once made: "Nothing can separate us, not even death"...
"Die Kinder der Flucht" is a three-part German docudrama that portrays the harrowing experiences of children and young people during the final months of World War II and its aftermath in Eastern Europe. The series weaves together dramatized reenactments, archival footage, and poignant interviews with real-life survivors to tell three distinct yet interconnected stories of displacement, survival, and resilience.
In 1944 many Germans in Eastern Prussia believed like Lena von Mahlenberg, daughter of a local aristocrat, that Hitler would surrender and spare them from being invaded by the vengeful Russian Red Army. He didn't and they had to flee.
The Battle of Stalingrad, which cost the lives of at least a million German soldiers, Red Army troops and Soviet civilians, was the bloodiest of the decisive battles in the "war of extermination" which Hitler had unleashed. This three-part documentary, employing previously unreleased film footage and brutally frank statements from survivors on both sides, explains exactly how the catastrophe came about and describes the gruesome consequences of the battle for the soldiers and the inhabitants of the city.
When American troops started their final invasion of Nazi Germany in February 1945, cameramen were at their side and complied over a thousand reels covering 12 weeks in Germany until the ultimate collapse of the Third Reich including stories on the road from the Bulge over the Remagen Bridge to the Eagle’s Nest. Michael Kloft has selected the most striking scenes for his two-part documentary.
In 2002, Munich born Maurice Philip Remy produced a three-part documentary film, Mythos Rommel ('The Rommel Myth'), for German TV with a book of the same name, chipping away at the Rommel legend dramatically. In the manner of Jeremy Isaacs' award-winning World at War series of 1973, Remy's exhaustive 'Mythos Rommel', later released with with an english-language soundtrack, relies on much pre-war and wartime newsreel footage of Rommel, skillfully weaving in interviews with surviving members of the Field Marshal's staff including Heinz Werner Schmidt; his nurse in North Africa; soldiers who fought for and against him, including Field Marshal Lord Carver; one of Churchill's former secretaries; the unrelated but intriguingly named Italian soldier Mario Rommel and both his grandson and granddaughter Helen and Joseph Pan, and Erwin's son Manfred also are making important contributions. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was the most famous and celebrated German military commander of the Second World War. He was revered by the Germans, respected by the Allies and nicknamed 'The Desert Fox' for his tactics in the Western Desert - and yet he would die in secret disgrace. Rommel is the most detailed film biography of the German commander ever made. It follows his military career through the Great War to his daring tank assaults during the Blitzkreig of 1940, which brought him to the attention of the Nazi leaders. Goebbels thought him an ideal subject for propaganda, and the German public thrilled to his initial victories in North Africa with the Afrika Korps. However, as the war dragged on, Rommel became ever more tired and disillusioned. The darling of the German newsreels realised that the Nazis could not win the war. Discovering the horrors of the Holocaust, he called his senior command 'tragically filthy'...and started to realise that something had to be done about Adolf Hitler. The story of this fascinating, complex and tormented man is told through original wartime archive film, newsreels and exclusive interviews. Members of his own wartime staff, his son, his driver and veterans from the Afrika Korps and the 8th Army all offer revealing insights into the 'Desert Fox' - and provide a vivid portrait of a man torn between his military values and loyalties and the Nazi regime he served.
