In the summer of '43, an English bomber was shot down...
...and the wreckage ended up in a meadow near our village...
...Schabbach in the Hunsrück.
It was mentioned in a special report from the Führer's headquarters.
We all rushed out to have a look and we took photos.
"We are at war and this is the homefront"...
... Wilfried Wiegand kept saying to women...
...whose men were at the real front.
Kath stood up to him.
She used to say...
..."If your dad wasn't so old, he would smack your ass."
Kath was brave enough. That's her in the photo.
And next to her, that's her husband, Mathias, the village blacksmith.
That's a nice family photo with all the children around them.
That's the Simon's house.
It is about 200 years old. The forge is on the right.
That's Maria, she saw them all leave home.
First, her husband Paul who went to America...
...then her sons, Anton and Ernst went off to war when they grew up.
And last Otto, the father of her son Hermann.
She didn't know where he was.
She didn't even know he was in the army in a bomb disposal squad.
That's in November '43.
Maria is going to Kirchberg to fetch Martha from the station.
Martha is from Hamburg and was engaged to Anton.
"It is as if Anton sent me a message through the child in your womb"...
...Maria told Martha.
They got on very well together.
That's a proxy marriage.
Martha, Anton's fiancé...
...was married to Anton while he was at the front.
And the telephone call was filmed at the front for the newsreel.
How we celebrated in the village!
We were all in Wiegand's parlour and took photos.
There is the bride on her own in all of them.
The bride's groom was only there on the cake.
Then Ernst flew down in his fighter plane...
...just 5 meters above the village.
He nearly hit the church and dropped 50 red carnations for the bride.
We all ran into the street waving to him...
...and shouting Ernst, Ernst...
And in the war Anton got close to what he always wanted to be.
He became an assistant cameraman for the newsreel.
He was always interested in optics.
Sometimes I wondered...
...if the moon that shines down on Schabbach...
...really is the same moon that shines over Russia.
Sometimes you just can't imagine it.
SOLDlERS AND LOVE
Come on, Mengershausen.
Let's see what's left of our Arri camera.
- What's this? - We were lucky, Captain.
In filming an attack, we got a direct hit.
- You call that lucky? - Yes, sir. It ricochetted.
It just missed my left eye and it went through the magazine.
The camera lens narrowly missed the assistant's ear.
- What about the film? - Ruined, sir.
- A day's shooting? - Yes, 120 metres.
Theorist!
Dear Herr Geschrei.
My name's Gschrey, sir.
You are an old sweat.
A good quality for the infantry...
...but a rotten one for art.
Think about it.
You needn't always take your camera where the mud's flying...
...where they shoot holes in your face.
The idea is to get something on film that moves the heart.
When I'm in the thick of it, Captain...
...I can't stand aside...
...I share the same conditions as my comrades.
You use that camera like a gun.
That's a common error.
Did Dante really enter his lnferno?
Did Bosch see the Garden of Earthly Delights with his own eyes?
No!
But the divine spark was in them...
...of which you are ignorant, Herr Geschrei.
"The artist sees things with his personal inspiration."
Do you know who said that?
Our Doctor Goebbels. That surprises you, eh?
We're not in Babelsberg, Captain...
...making The White Dream or The Great Love.
Here people really die.
Wrong.
Not feature films...
...but war newsreels are the real art of the twentieth century.
Our units have shot more than 2.8 million metres of film.
Over ten years' feature production...
...more than a thousand features.
We manage to imprint the war...
...into people's souls more forcefully...
...than the power of their own eyes ever could.
We achieve that with our camera...
...if it remains undamaged.
Captain, I can repair it.
I'll manage.
That won't make the world extinct...
Captain, is this the camera position?
I don't know.
Usually he goes on about the camera not being a gun.
But today...
We'll use the telephoto lens.
Anton, adjust the lens.
-What's the matter? -lt's jammed.
-What's jammed? -The iris.
We'll use an 85, then, while you repair it.
Ready? Camera!
Simon, log it: 60 metres, exterior, day.
Don't send it with the other material.
Take it at once to the lntelligence Office.
Which laboratory, sir?
Arnold and Richter, Munich.
Don't forget to seal it properly.
See that?
Blotches, scratches, flashes - every fault possible...
...but they film in impossible conditions.
Our processing is not to blame.
The court is now in session.
Chief lnspector...
...tell us how the film we are going to see was made.
It's terrible.
lgnore the content. Watch for technical faults.
That's what you are here to learn.
The film aided police investigations.
We reconstructed the crime in the house of the accused...
...exactly where it happened.
We made use of the Professor's ability...
...to imitate Crippen.
For the part of Mrs. Cora Crippen we found an actress...
...who closely resembled the murdered woman.
We can begin with the projection.
Inspector, please provide the necessary elucidation.
Silence, please. Please, sit down, ladies and gentlemen.
On the last evening, Mrs. Crippen didn't feel well.
The guests had departed.
Mrs. Crippen had sent the maid to bed.
Dr. Crippen and his wife were now alone.
Look, Pieritz, that's Schabbach.
Like peacetime.
Yes, Herr Wohlleben, those were the days.
What a car!
Aren't you Jürgen? You've grown.
Stay here, Pieritz.
Maybe we'll go straight on.
Good day, Frau Simon.
How nice that you've come.
In uniform, too.
Maria! Guess who's here!
I met Ernst.
He recognized me straight away.
The boy's a terrific pilot.
Yes, I know.
I saw him when he flew over the house.
He dropped a bouquet.
Typical.
Why stand out here? Go into the kitchen.
I found the way easily, it's still familiar.
They've got prisoners-of-war now, in Anton Jakob's big room.
We've thirty French prisoners in the village.
Most of them work at Wilfried's.
You know, at Wiegand's, the one in the SS.
My brother.
There are no men here at home any more.
They're doing the work for us now.
But the house, it looks...
...as if I went upstairs only yesterday.
Nothing's changed.
Only Granny, she's aged.
Where's Grandad?
In bed. He's not very well.
His eyes are bad and he's fragile now.
Do sit down, Otto.
I thought I'd never see you again.
So did l, Otto.
Ernst told me everything.
I thought you ought to see him at once.
This is little Hermann, Otto.
Believe it or not, I knew you'd come.
Here I am.
I am on my way from Hermeskeil to Koblenz.
It's the first time I've seen the completed Hunsrück highway.
Already full of potholes, only six years after we built it.
You can't imagine the traffic it's seen this last year.
The whole army's travelled across it.
Well, Hermann, will you shake my hand?
You're not from around here, I can tell.
I'm from Bochum.
And that's my sister Lotti, she's from Bochum, too.
Mother's stayed home in Bochum.
She works in a bomb factory.
Ursel! It's called a munitions factory.
And Father sends me postcards from the war.
He's in Russia.
He's got a motorbike and sidecar.
- Know a bonbon factory? - No, it's called a bomb factory.
No, a bonbon factory. Look, I'll explain.
There's a huge factory in Paderborn...
...with 3,000 little girls like you...
...sitting in a row at a conveyor belt.
Every girl has a box of sweets on her lap...
...but they're all square.
Yes, square.
On the word of command...
...they put the bonbons in their mouths and suck them.
Because bonbons have to be round.
- Right, Corporal? - Right!
And when they've sucked the sweets until they're round...
...on the word of command, they spit them out.
- Want one? - No, it's got spit on it!
There's room in the house for you, we can spend the night here.
That's your room.
We're alright again, eh? Together, like old times.
Pieritz, just get into your room.
Off with you.
I'm giddy.
This little radio show is presented by an actress...
...whose name is closely linked...
...in film and radio with request programmes...
...llse Werner.
This is a "Thank you" for our soldiers.
Dear boys, as you know...
...I always answer soldier's letters first...
...and on many a free afternoon I invite a soldier to my home.
She can invite me any time.
But you must realize I can't write long replies...
...or invite you all home.
The whole army would be a bit much.
I read all your letters.
They make me happy, grateful...
...a little proud, often sad.
I will never forget a story...
...one of your comrades told me recently.
A soldier had taken his portable gramophone to the front.
Maybe as a talisman...
...maybe to entertain himself and his friends.
Eat, or your soup will get cold.
Whenever there was a break, he put on my record...
..."Sing a song if you feel sad".
Once more, the record played.
Once more, you listened to me.
Then the alarm sounded.
My song faded in the noise of the attack.
- The soldier rushed forward. - Or backward.
He woke up in hospital.
Thank God, it could have been nastier.
According to his story, as he opened his eyes...
...a little melody that made him smile...
...was still ringing in his ears.
The little woman in his ear.
And how beautifully one of you...
...has told me in words and drawings about your party to celebrate...
- I wonder what. - I wonder who.
...the christening...
...of a strapping gun...
...to whom you've given the name of llse.
Martha, is the baby kicking inside you?
A bit, now and then.
May I feel?
It just kicked.
Lotti, I've written a poem for you. Want to hear it?
Yes, Specht.
Two legs prop up my machine-gun, and those I must align.
Two legs that ache too much to run, unfortunately they're mine.
I know two legs so slim and smart, I'll think of them when we're apart.
And those, my love, are thine.
And when those lovely legs I see, I think, my darling you.
I think, "Why doesn't my MG got legs as lovely, too?"
Did you think of me when you made that up?
Must you go now to your gun?
At night we can't do anything with our little gun.
When you think what a weight of iron is flying through the air up there.
That's nothing to do with nature any more.
lron, steel, explosives and phosphorus.
I've got used to it.
That droning in the dark every night.
It really makes me drowsy when I listen to it.
First it gets louder and louder.
Then for a while, it's constant.
Then it gets quieter and quieter...
...and my eyelids just close.
You've such lovely, firm shoulders, Maria.
Come to bed, Otto, you'll catch cold.
Often we fell asleep together...
...with my lips on yours.
In the morning, that's how we woke up.
And your warm feet.
I've never known you with cold feet, never.
You warmed me, Maria.
In my life, I've loved three women.
Each time it was different.
Each time it was stronger.
I'll never again love anyone as I love you.
Sometimes, I didn't wash for days.
I wanted to sense you still beside me.
Come to bed, Otto.
All the years without you...
If you were an animal, what would you be?
You'd have been a swallow.
The most beautiful birds.
They always say when they fly, "Dear, dear Maria."
I've laughed when I've thought about your feet.
Do you know you've got flat feet?
Lovely little flat feet.
You've become much more beautiful than before.
If you could make me so small...
...and stick me in your apron pocket...
...then we could always stay together.
So small.
Lie beside me, Otto.
You know, Otto...
...I've lain awake in this bed for hours...
...and imagined...
...going away...
...to far-away places.
Like in novels...
...where people just go away.
I've never really been away anywhere.
I really wanted to.
And I've been travelling all around.
The places I've been...
In France, in Brittany, along the whole Atlantic coast.
I was in Salonika, in Liège and in Bergen.
I was on the island of Bornholm...
...in Czeslochowa and Brno.
Once I was in Brescia, in ltaly.
I liked that best, that's a U-boat supply base.
And everywhere I felt alone.
People all around me, and I was alone.
For a while I woke up every other night...
...because I was crying in my sleep.
They've all gone away from me, when I think about it.
Paul went away.
Then the two boys when they grew up, Anton and Ernst.
And you went away, too.
With each of them there was a different reason...
...you must admit.
Don't be unfair.
You made me go away.
I didn't know what I was doing.
I was just so scared then.
I thought it was the end of the world.
You know, you and l...
...and then Paul after so many years, after twelve years.
I waited for him every day.
For twelve years, I was the only one who believed he was still alive.
They'd all given him up for dead. His own mother thought he was dead.
They laughed at me when I said Paul was still alive.
And then, after twelve years, the letter from America.
At the very moment I was able to forget him for the first time.
That was happiness.
That was real happiness
while we were building the Hunsrück highway.
I didn't care that we had to hide everything from the world.
And then I looked at my hand on my drawing-board in the hut...
...and I thought...
...this is the hand that caressed you last night .
I want you to understand me, Otto.
The night before I went to Trier...
...I really believed Paul was dead.
And then I was so scared...
...because I really imagined...
...him drowning...
...going down with the ship from New York to Hamburg.
And then I was so ashamed when I was with you in Trier.
I really believed I'd killed him.
And that's why I had to go?
I must show you something.
All that belongs to my mum and grandma.
Because of the bombs, you see.
That's genuine Rosenthal china, and real linen, real damask.
It's beautiful.
If you take that, then you must take me, too.
What an idea!
I can't burden myself with all that in wartime.
Go into the kitchen.
Grandad's so ill and he can't sleep.
Otto, come to bed, you'll catch cold.
You're shivering.
I thought at that time I'd die because of you.
Why, I thought, why does this woman want to be rid of me?
It's like killing someone when you get rid of them.
I did to you what Paul did to me.
Yet that's the very thing I didn't want to do.
I didn't want to go on living.
Do you know that's why I volunteered for the bomb-disposal squad?
Just think, Otto...
...we've had a child.
I can't believe it. I can't take it in.
For four years I've roamed as if terminally ill...
...and had no idea.
To think you can't sense that as a man.
That you don't see it in a dream, or somehow get a sign.
A child like that is really a person in his own right.
Do you remember how we all wore those death's-head rings?
And they scared you.
I remember that as if it were today.
None of you thought anything of it before the war.
Actually, we never thought much at all.
And you were as thoughtless as the rest.
I've just thrown the ring away.
After I met Ernst, I threw it into a crater.
It's lying 1,000 metres down.
It took so long to do that.
I could get a transfer.
The Todt Organization is taking on everyone they need.
Nobody looks at the right type of nose anymore.
Away from bomb-disposal to the Atlantic Wall.
I'm a good engineer.
Go to sleep.
Asleep already?
Here, Herr Pieritz, here's something for the journey.
I'll peep at them.
And best wishes to Grandad. I hope he'll soon be better.
I don't think you'll see him again, Otto.
Maria, nothing's going to happen to me.
I meant Grandad.
Where is the little beauty?
Over by the turntable.
Under the goods van?
Tell those soldiers to get away.
Will you defuse it or explode it? The engine-shed has been cleared.
We'll look first.
- They're just kids. - Germany's last hope.
A 250-pounder, Herr Wohlleben.
Are you sure, Pieritz?
Could be a triple five.
Herr Wohlleben! A thirty second fuse, probably.
Let's hope so. This thing here must be shifted.
We need someone for the turntable.
Turn it, so we can get at the bomb.
- Nothing will happen, will it? - Course not. Come on.
- Really not? - We're still with you.
More.
Now take cover. Thanks.
It's about time I had a go.
No, Pieritz, you're still doing theory.
Don't bother me.
In ten minutes we'll both be over in the café.
I've enough coupons for a hot drink and they've got good jam tarts.
Go and get the tools.
That alarm's overdoing things a bit, but that's your business.
Your gloves, Herr Wohlleben.
Are those tattered things the best you can offer?
Shouldn't I come with you?
No, stay with the grandads and look after our truck.
-What are you doing here? -I'm checking this stretch.
Or, rather, I used to check this stretch of track.
Are you on duty now?
I'm always on duty.
What are you doing here?
Defusing the bomb.
So that's what a bomb looks like.
Yes, it's a 250-pounder.
Well, let's get on with it.
Better get back a bit.
Can't I stay here with you?
You've been here far too long already.
-Then I'll go now. -Yes.
-Has anything happened to you? -No. Why?
What's burning?
They jettisoned their bombs.
I was watching from the window.
One of our night-fighters got through...
...and shot the Tommy in the belly.
The fire's over at Kaisergarten.
Katharina, what was that?
There's a fire at the Kaisergarten.
Specht wrote me such a lovely poem.
It was about legs.
About his legs.
No, about my legs.
Two legs prop up my machine-gun, and those I must align.
Two legs that ache too much to run...
Is he really dead, Grandma?
Yes, Ursel, he's really dead.
The crater's bigger than the one in Gillweiler.
It's even got water in it.
Jürgen, get over there, I'll take your picture.
More to the middle. Mother, Karl, Mäthes-Pat.
Now look into the crater, it's big enough.
Just look at it.
ENTRY OF AMERlCANS lNTO SCHABBACH...
...ON 18TH MARCH, 1945.
H. MUCH AND H. SPECHT KlLLED lN ACTlON, 12.3.46
Lucie, where are you?
Lucie, what have you done to yourself?
I thought when the Yanks come...
Edu, what's up with you?
I had to hand over the Leica.
We must leave the house, too.
- What? - lt's commandeered.
We've just ten minutes to get out.
Leave everything behind?
What do I do now?
What can I take?
Only what we're wearing.
I must wear my fur coat.
The blue, no, the green silk dress.
Rubbish, I'll wear all my dresses on top of one another.
Wilfried. You've had it now.
My fur coat, too.
Germany, Germany above all!
Wilfried, that's blasphemy, just pack it in!
Shut up!
Be quiet, you'll get us all killed.
We've lost everything we've built up.
Thank God it's over.
But we weren't big shots.
We, too, got nothing but suffering out of it all.
Look in the mirror. See what those years have done.
But, Lucie, I was the mayor of Raunen.
So what? There always have to be mayors.
- Really? - Sure.
I must take a look.
Maybe we can get something going with the Yanks.
Wilfried, you must clear out!
SOLDlERS AND LOVE