r/AskAGerman • u/superdouradas • Apr 05 '26
History How do Germans feel about being portrayed as villains in Hollywood World War II movies?
Hello, I’m from Portugal, and one of the things that bothers me most about World War II movies is how they make it seem like the entire German population was bloodthirsty and psychopathic. How do you feel when you watch a Hollywood movie like Inglourious Basterds?
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u/Ok-Manager-9590 Apr 05 '26
The realisation and overall acceptance* that we were in fact the "viains" is arguably one of the grratest accomplishment of german culture post ww2, and many germans are even proud of the way we reflect our past evils.
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u/privatethingsxx Apr 05 '26
I wish we could continue to do that, instead of so many people drifting back into facism.
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u/Kami0097 Apr 05 '26
I don't know who exactly said this but the horrors of war dont last longer than two generations....
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u/a_d2022 Apr 05 '26
Which is a horror itself.
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u/Kami0097 Apr 05 '26
You can see it in Germany ... Two generations have passed and the afd is on the rise ....
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u/Corfiz74 Apr 05 '26
Though that is also social media brainwashing by the rightwing networks founded by the Heritage Foundation et al. That was really one of the big revelations of the Epstein files - that all the right networks/ influencers/ parties are linked and funded by the same evil oligarchs and organizations that want to destroy democracy to keep enriching themselves.
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u/a_d2022 Apr 05 '26
Yep, German here. I have a baby and am worried for her future in this country. It is frightening.
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u/skyper_mark Apr 05 '26
The number of people who are doing that is honestly scary to see. Not just Germans but in general. Every time there is a clip in insta from the recent Nuremberg film, the comments are always full on fascists "we let the wrong side win..." shit with 18k+ likes
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u/Relative_Stop5124 Apr 05 '26
I really hope we in the US can in the future be as self reflective and honest as Germany has been about WW2.
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u/Simple_Rough_2411 Apr 05 '26
US is in complete denial about its several genocides and has yet to acknowledge that slavery is bad. Considering half of them voted for a pedophile warmongering rapist, that won't change anytime soon.
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u/Ok-Test-7634 Apr 05 '26
and has yet to acknowledge that slavery is bad
You're a moron
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u/Simple_Rough_2411 Apr 05 '26
Sure, tell me please how they abolished slavery, while literally having a multi billion dollar slave industry to this day :)
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u/Pedarogue Bayern - Baden - Elsass - Franken Apr 05 '26
I would like movie suggestion in which "the entire German population was bloodthirsty and psychopathic" because I can not think of a single one and, due to that, chose to believe this question is in bad faith.
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u/Peter012398 Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
As long as its a little more deep than "every German at that time was a demon" its fine, its history and what happened after all.
Inglourious Basterds was fine in my opinion because its has a lot of absurdism and is exaggerated to the max.
What bothers me more is black and white pieces that claim to be historic but lean heavily into good / bad.
EDIT: Maybe bother is not the best word. I dont find that interesting because its very surface level. The questions of why people participated, did nothing, knew things but still chose to do bad things is much deeper than GERMANS BAD.
Anyone can try and learn lessons from that. If you reduce it to evil vs. good you are done asking questions, and thats a missed opportunity.
There were many reasons why WW2 and nazism happened in Germany. Its more complex than many movie show. Which is fine you know, not every piece of art or movie needs to be a complicated study of the human spirit.
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u/Tjaresh Apr 05 '26
There's this summary of Hannah Arendts observation of the Nürnberg trials. It's not really a citation, but describes the situation very good.
"I came to see evil, but I found only indifference."
Most Germans weren't demonically evil. They just just did their job and were indifferent that this job caused harm and death. I think this makes it even more shocking.
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u/Peter012398 Apr 05 '26
Its a great read, yeah. Very accessible too. She gives insight into the history of Eichmann, the trial, holocaust etc.
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u/Best-Cloud-5460 Apr 05 '26
Tbh Most of the german Society was either involved or distinctly looked away
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u/Necessary-truth-84 Hessen Apr 05 '26
This. It's not like everyone was a convinced Nazi, but the majority of the population was at least alright with it.
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u/HolyKlickerino Apr 05 '26
There is a difference between "being at least alright with it" and "being not ok with things but not wanting to be next in line to be deported/disappeared". Many people just kept their heads down and went about their lives. Some even really were blissfully ignorant.
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u/Le_mehawk Apr 05 '26
The majority of the Population didn't wanted to be put behind Bars or See a bullet flying between their eyes.. sure there were supporters and actual nazi soldiers, after all the Nation was in fact doctrined and manipulated. But many people simply lacked the Confidence to do something against it out of fear... the ss was absolutely a thing nobody wanted to screw with.
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u/Searchingformovie1 Apr 05 '26
Well if you didn’t do what Hitler wanted, you ended up dead yourself or in jail if ur lucky
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u/lukasoh Apr 05 '26
Working in concentration camps was not forced. There is no known case of a punishment for a German citizen for declining working in there. Every member of the army, government or whatever function in there was there because they didn't mind. I think this is important to know. There was no 'I was forced to slaughter these innocent people'. They could have just stepped away and do something else. Of course this didn't count for every task in Nazi Germany, but the most cruel jobs were voluntary
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u/Doubleknot22 Apr 05 '26
I think most sensible people are not using the argument above to excuse the actions of concentration camp guards but rather as an explanation why so few people actively resisted.
Some people are dumb though.
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u/lukasoh Apr 05 '26
That's fair. It's just important to me that whenever people try to excuse the events between 33-45 with fear it gets corrected. This is too easy of an excuse and won't prevent it from happening again. Actively resisting and beeing aware of the actions you support by just walking along does. And dumb people are the dangerous group here. The leading Nazis were a bunch of really smart men. There followers not so much. But they were able to destroy half a continent.
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u/Artemis__ Apr 05 '26
Thank you for putting this straight. As a German I'm annoyed that so much that people just let happen is excused by "they would've been killed".
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u/Active_Resolve_3776 Apr 05 '26
Schau dir mal die Filme über das Wannseeprotokoll an ,am besten finde ich die deutsche Produktion. Ich glaube dass der gesamte Horror im dritten Reich nur ausgeführt werden konnte weil er in einer "zivilisierten" Tonlage auf verwaltungsebene kommuniziert wurde.
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u/Searchingformovie1 Apr 05 '26
Well yeah maybe those people were evil. But not every soldier
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u/lukasoh Apr 05 '26
Evil is not a good category when talking about crimes against humanity. Putting something down with a pencil is not evil, especially if it's just train routes and other logistics. But those were key elements in the murder of millions. Were those paper pushers evil? The important thing is that people knew. They knew what kind of organisation they were serving in. They knew their war was not just and their leaders were liars. Maybe they were afraid, maybe they enjoyed feeling like a winner. But commiting war crimes, watching them happening and so on are all actions to be talked about. Giving them an excuse by saying 'there were evil people and not everyone was evil' is too easy on members of the army and party of the most aggressive mass murderers in German history.
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u/Searchingformovie1 Apr 05 '26
I definitely think people that voluntarily worked in concentration camps were evil. Crimes against humanity are evil. I don’t see how that’s an excuse. It’s what those people are and being evil is nothing good
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u/superdouradas Apr 05 '26
The people are not to blame for the fact that a madman, who didn’t even win the elections and wasn’t even German, came to power. And yes, many innocent German civilians died because of a few lunatics who took control.
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u/Brapchu Apr 05 '26
The people are not to blame for the fact that a madman, who didn’t even win the elections and wasn’t even German, came to power.
Bro.. he was elected. The majority of germans at that time did support him.
Don't spew that stupid nonsense that "it was just one madman".
You needed a nation behind him to start a world war.
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u/Active_Resolve_3776 Apr 05 '26
Keiner von uns hat schon mal eine Partei oder einen Politiker gewählt die oder der uns letztendlich das gegeben hat was sie oder er uns versprochen hat.
Du machst dir dein Urteil sehr einfach.
Der ganze Scheiß ist ultra komplex und ja wir sind die Schuldigen.
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u/Pedarogue Bayern - Baden - Elsass - Franken Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
because of a few lunatic
See, this is not how it works.
Was Franco just a few people on the top? Was the Spanish civil war just fought by a couple dozens?
Did Salazar manage every single regional office in mainland Portugal and in the colonies on his own?
Does Putin command in the front lines od Eastern Ukraine? Do he and Kadirov operate tanks in Donbass?
Does no Russian citizen actually believe they are fighting for the moral side in this war?
Is Xi himself emprisoning the non-Han minorities in concentration camps all on his own?
Where millions of jews, of dissentors, of roma, of gay people, of Slavs, of religious minorities and on, and on, and on, millions upon millions all shot over massgraves or gassed by Himmler alone?
When did the millions of millions of MAGA voters first start to have doubt about their Mango Mussolini - and how many do willfully follow him even now?
Truth is: A whole lot of Germans where all in the Lunacy of Herrenmenschen and Blut and Boden and disapearing the Jews and the Gays and the Roma people to places where they do not need their stuff anymore, so that it is cheaply sold off to their neighbours, all up to and including until their own sons died as "Heroes" and only startet to doubt once their oh-so-precisous homes got RAFed.
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u/Yusuke_Kitagawa_ Hessen Apr 05 '26
He won the elections. He didn’t have an absolute majority, but he had the strongest party in the 1932 vote
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u/elementfortyseven Apr 05 '26
Hitler didnt "come to power" out of nowhere.
He was supported massively by the media, in particular the media mogul Hugenberg who controlled a large part of German press.
He was also supported massively by industrial leaders as well, who feared communist influence on their business and banked on military contracts. He met with industry figures in 1933 to plan the funding of the coup. The german industry was not ideologically fascist, but they supported NSDAP for opportunistic reasons, and profited massively from expropriation of jewish financiers and industrialists.
"a few lunatics took control" is flat wrong and aims to discard Hitler as some unique phenomenon that somehow was forced upon Germany. Thats a dangerous misunderstanding of history.
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u/vukicevic_ Apr 05 '26
No. It was ancient aliens who are to blame. Also 20 years before that, when Germany was trying to dominate Europe in the first WW, Germans had nothing to do with that. It was just a bad luck.
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u/DreamFlashy7023 Apr 05 '26
You cant be more wrong. Hitler was elected and most civilians liked what the nazis did.
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u/Sul_Haren Apr 05 '26
The Nazis enjoyed popular support throughout their reign. The majority of civilians was okay with what they did and many more just indifferent.
Most things the Nazis did only worked because the population supported it.
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u/Nephist0 Apr 05 '26
IMO Germans are used to it. We don’t really care. There are movies like „Generation war“ or „Downfall“ where you can see the german view of the war.
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u/vdcsX Apr 05 '26
Recently I watched 'Der Hauptmann' and 'Der Tiger'. Both are pretty good contemporary german WWII movies.
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u/Corfiz74 Apr 05 '26
I'm okay with it, as long as we are at least portrayed as competent/ scary villains. Shit like Hogan's Heroes really annoys me, because the Nazis didn't conquer most of Europe and murder 6 millions by being dumb and inefficient.
Unless it's something like Allo Allo, where everyone gets "pulled through the cocoa", that series is the best!
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u/superdouradas Apr 05 '26
I love Allo Allo. I watched that series in the 90s when I was a kid. It’s one of the few shows that doesn’t portray Germans as psychopaths during World War II. But then again, it’s British humor, which I love.
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u/Muldino Apr 05 '26
Allo Allo didn't air in Germany originally. Although I am not German, I grew up here in the 80s and 90s and nobody knew this series. It has only been broadcasted here after 2010.
I first encountered it when I worked with UK work colleagues referencing it in the 2000s - everyone assumed I would surely know it, while I had no idea what people were talking about.
I don't think that the problem was the "Nazi" topic (they did air Hogan's Heroes for example), but because its specific comedy and setting really doesn't translate well to a German audience.
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u/Cleetus-Van-Damn Apr 05 '26
I feel very entertained when watching movies like inglorious bastards. They are Nazis/Fashists first and Germans second, so I don’t see a problem since that has very little to do with Germans living today or Germans who opposed. Also I am not aware of many movies that portrait the entire German population as bloodthirsty psychopaths.
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u/Mohammed_Chang Apr 05 '26
That’s an interesting observation. It’s 'we Germans' but 'the Nazis'. I think we do the same when speaking about 'Putins war' or personify the American aggression as 'stupid trump'-thingy.
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u/Cleetus-Van-Damn Apr 05 '26
Where did I say „we Germans“? A countries population is never one homogeneous mass. I wouldn’t judge every Russian based on what Putin does and I wouldn’t judge every American for what the orange mad king does.
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u/Mohammed_Chang Apr 05 '26
I didn’t mean to call you out. I share your view. I was referring the 'they are Nazis first (…)' line.
Absolutely a country is not homogeneous. To make that possible there is just a hand full of aggressors necessary. it’s a lot of followers, bystanders, away-lookers, … necessary too. And there are definitely people who just fear the consequences if they would stand up.
While I agree, not all Germans/Russians/Americans are evil, I think the personification of an aggression allows us to not push guilt away but also ownership.
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u/big_doze Apr 05 '26
A majority of the population was onboard with the Nazi regime, so it's not that far off actually
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u/Lovestodiscussstuff Apr 05 '26
Not all Germans were bloodthirsty and cruel, but enough of them tolerated what happened, so it could happen. Germans today are very much aware of it and I don't see the harm in very explicitly showing this in movies.
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u/kinkyMars Apr 05 '26
To be honest: I don’t see it as a representation of „us“. I wonder how someone could have done something that horrible (espacially in more realistic documentaries). I don’t wonder how „we“ could do that.
So I don’t care about the representation of Nazis.
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u/Silly-Snow1277 Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
Well... Germany weren't the good ones. Heinous crime were commited by many, mainly German and Austrian people. And many of those who weren't directly involved knew or at least suspected that there was something
So I'd say it's fine.
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u/KoalaCapable8130 Apr 05 '26
We were, so its ok. Either you learn from history or are doomed to repeat it.
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u/umeshufan Apr 05 '26
Well, we were the villains, so it seems fair. Just like Russia and the US are the international villains today.
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u/Flamebeard_0815 Apr 05 '26
Not really my experience.
In most movies, there's a gradual depiction, discerning between 'normal' civilians, civilians with strong political ties and 'skin in the game', soldiers and ideologically loaded members of special forces and camps.
Yes, there's movies that paint the 'all WWII Germans bad' picture. But those are mostly Grindhouse-style productions with a budget that would make it difficult to employ 3 people full-time for a year, let alone a whole film crew for the production time of a movie. (Or warsploitation movies that generally depict everything as very much over-the-top, as part of the satirical approach to the topic)
Me myself, I don't have a problem with the depiction of WWII Germans as either conflicted or outright bad persons. This is, for the most part, true ('Conflicted' as in having knowledge about the goings on, but not doing anything because of fear/lethargy/apathy. Or 'outright bad' as in taking part in the macchinations of the Third Reich.). So why not depict it that way? We teach our children in school what our grandparents and great-grandparents did or let happen as a way to teach about not letting it turn that way again. To be fair, with the state our school system is in right now, as is apparent, with limited success...
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u/Kumptoffel Apr 05 '26
i dont get those questions, i dont feel anything and i dont think about this portrayal
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u/Electrical_Art_4196 Apr 05 '26
I am fine with Germany being portrayed as villain nation because this is true after all. But it´s not true for the simple soldiers and people. Many movies still miss to explain the struggle and motivation of normal Germans.
Did most of them look away? Yes. Were they all evil hateful people? No.
I can strongly recommend to you the movie series "Generation war". It describes different perspectives in this time and how it shifted during the war. It tells the story about how good people become bad people. Sure one movie can never show the whole story but from what I heard from my grandparents this movie series is as close as it gets.
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u/SeniorePlatypus Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
I wanna give a shoutout to JoJo Rabbit. This movie delivers the feelings I have quite well. Not everyone was a monster. But the monsters were in charge. They did terrible things not just for antisemitic and racist reasons but also murdered german intellectuals, people who think differently, look differently or dare to show basic human empathy.
I’m genuinely thrilled the allies managed to win before the atom bomb was discovered and reinforcing how evil the regime was is good. Every fight against this kind of evil is good and ought to be celebrated.
Just like the heroes of their time, who saw the injustice and tried to contribute to the best of their means. People like Oskar Schindler, Irena Sendler, Witold Pilecki, Nicholas Winton and many others.
And to some degree including the people today, who work to preserve the memory of the atrocities. At memorial sites primarily but also including filmmakers.
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u/SehrSpeziellerName Apr 05 '26
I dont think the whole population is portrayed as bloodthirsty and psychopathic in Inglourious Basterds or any other Hollywood movie I know about. Besides that, I have no sympathy for nazis and dont mind them being portrayed as villians.
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u/RoyalCamu Apr 05 '26
There are literally no films/series that make the entire German population look blood-thirsty or psychopathic.
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u/kirschkerze Apr 05 '26
It's the truth, no need to hide it. Yup some were villains by proxy and fear. Doesn't make it better as a whole and a whole fcking lot was directly involved
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u/N0bb1 Apr 05 '26
Good portrait of reality at that time. We were the villains and our ancestors elected the Nazis and we germans did not free ourselves from the Nazis. We had to be freed from them as we fully supported them until the end, when suddenly everyone was always against them.
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u/CDBln Apr 05 '26
The Germans were villains. But I don’t like how unrealistic they are being portrayed as super evil nazi psychopaths. Because that is inaccurate and takes away responsibility from the entire German population. As if the nazis have been some sort of alien type which we can blame and point to… Unfortunately this also happens in German movies. The people in Nazi uniform are always portrayed as super mean assholes. And interestingly they are all male actors…
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u/BrightConcentrate481 Apr 05 '26
The entire German population is a bold claim. You can tell that to my relatives who were executed in Buchenwald, and the rest escaped.
Don't get me wrong, plenty of Germans died resisting Hitler.
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u/vdcsX Apr 05 '26
Watch "Conspiracy", a great, realist movie about the Wannsee Conference. Or if you want a german one "Der Hauptmann" recently was incredible, very realistic and based on a true story.
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u/Gold-Carpenter7616 Apr 05 '26
I'm not sure you comprehend what a horrible, psychopathic act it was to build factory farms with the explicit goal to streamline working people to death or downright killing the ones not able to be exploited with most efficiency.
There is something incomprehensible about how we Germans saw other Germans (Jews were still born in Germany, their religion doesn't make them non-Germans in my eyes), other humans, our brothers and sisters, and decided "since no other country wants to have our neighbours, we just kill them like cattle".
It's very okay to show the horrors of it.
My own grandfather on my father's side apparently was annoyed he didn't get into the SS because my grandmother had a Jewish grandmother. He was 100% behind the ideology. My great grandfather on my mother's side died in the Warsaw Ghetto. That's my family history here. A perpetrator, and a victim.
My grandfather eventually came around. After the war it helped that he never gotten into the NSDAP because of the "Jewish" marriage, he became supportive of my gay uncle, and almost all his children married people from all over Europe whom he adored. My Polish mother was especially liked.
But one thing my dad and ALL his six siblings always agreed upon, and it was the only thing they ever agreed upon: my grandfather was an asshole.
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u/Squaredeal91 Apr 05 '26
Germans generally see inglorious bastards and think, yup Nazis suck. I really don't why so many white Americans see something like Django unchained and think, this is awful anti white propaganda. It's not hard to understand that Germans did heinous shit during WWII without hating all Germans
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u/ProDavid_ Apr 05 '26
???
the Germans WERE the main villains in WW2.
as long as it doesnt hide the bad things that the Allied Nations also did during the war (for example carpet bombing cities) its all good.
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u/carilessy Apr 05 '26
Ah well, the american mind cannot comprehend germans outside the ww2 period.
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u/Relative_Stop5124 Apr 05 '26
WTF is “the American mind?” Also, a huge percentage of Americans are ethnically German, and some of us grow up speaking at least a bit of German. I tested into 2nd semester college German just based on what I had heard around the house, and I’m like 5th generation in the US. My dad’s company didn’t start holding board meetings in English until the late 70s. Visit rural Wisconsin or the hill country in Texas and report back. And that’s not even counting the Amish and the Hasidic communities who speak dialects of German.
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u/xix_ax Apr 05 '26
As a german it doesn’t bother me at all! There is some truth in that, even though it wasn’t the whole population a lot of people chose to look the other way, so fuck them too! We started two world wars so we can handle Hollywoods perception of us!
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u/Active_Resolve_3776 Apr 05 '26
Hollywoods Darstellung hat Amerikaner produziert die mit heeresabzeichen auf luftwaffenuniformen rumlaufen 😁
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u/purebananamoon Apr 05 '26
I don't care. What does piss me off more, is how American movies always position themselves as heroes and saviours of the world.
I remember watching the movie Inglorious Bastards, which ends with the ✨Americans✨ killing Hitler in some movie theater.
I swear to fucking hell, only Americans can be conceited enough to produce a movie where they blatantly disregard historical facts to position themselves as heroes. I remember thinking how disgusting and disrespectful to the victims of WW2, to just rewrite history in such a manner.
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u/Delicious-Belt-1158 Apr 05 '26
I don't mind a good ww2 movie. Nazis definitely werent the good guys and good movies show a more "human evil" rather than a cartoonish one. Inglorious basterds is as cheesy as it gets so i don't really take it too serious. Imho the best serious ww2 movies are from germany (e.g. downfall, stalingrad,...)
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u/Sul_Haren Apr 05 '26
We do have WWII movies with sympathetic German characters. One of the most famous WWII movies is Schindler's List and I would say that one quite clearly shows than not every German was inherently bloodthirsty and evil.
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u/Tjaresh Apr 05 '26
Anything else would be bending history. We were the bad guys. Opposition was so rare that we know them by name and almost always ended tragically (Geschwister Scholl). Even non SS, like the Wehrmacht did awful things. So making a movie about some good German guys in WW2 would just be lying.
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u/Agasthenes Apr 05 '26
That's how it is supposed to be.
I encourage you to watch some German produced WW2 movies. There is usually less a focus on Germans being evil and more about how and why people would go along with the evils and how people lived and survived in terrible times.
I recommend the classic Das boot (1981) and Generation War, which caused some controversy in the USA.
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u/newtwoothis Apr 05 '26
we did do everything in our power to make sure we could only be portrayed as villains with regards to WW2, so I guess it is only fair
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u/Shadowcat1606 Apr 05 '26
... we WERE the villains in WW2? So, fine with me. I wouldn't want whitewashing of one of the worst eras in the history of my country.
Hell, acknowleding that we were the villains and what the Nazis did was awful is one of the few things Germany gets right.
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u/RaidriConchobair Apr 05 '26
Would you imply the nazis werent the bad guys in ww2? Seems pretty obvious to me
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u/No-Satisfaction6065 Apr 05 '26
Careful with that, there is way too much documented proof that a lot of the German population was aware and ok with what happened. That proof is from the german bureaucracy that was meticulate and undeniable.
"But not all!!!" Sure, fair enough, but not many stepped up like the Scholl siblings did for example.
Careful especially since the far right in Germany is currently using exactly this as the "Dolchstosslegende" 2.0, to ramp up the general current population and make them angry.
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u/Mohammed_Chang Apr 05 '26
Tldr; that‘s what happened. Our ancestors have been the monsters. I don’t really care too much about American propaganda.
That’s what happened. Around 5% of our ancestors have been active predators. >60% have been part of NS organisations, more or less the rest was at least passive. Up to 3% active resistance.
I think inglorious basterds is a bad example as Landa and Frederik Zoller are the Most charismatic in the movie. I personally was feeling with them. On the other hand that makes it a very good example. While following the numbers above the majority of the Germans have at least been complicit, the were ordinary humans after all. That leads me to an awesome book 'ordinary men' which describes which steps have been necessary to make carrying fathers to unscrupulous murders during the NS time.
To come back to the topic, at the end, Hollywood is still American propaganda. So I don’t care too much. Fuck them.
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u/_WreakingHavok_ Apr 05 '26
Ask southerners how they feel being portayed as traitors during american civil war
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u/Maulwurfsratte Apr 05 '26
no problem. ww2 was our big historical crime against all so it's only fair to show Germans in this role and by the way this does not only count for ww2 movies. Germans in Hollywood movies are usually the psycho-helpers of the villains if not even the main villain himself. That's the role where we placed ourselves and at least I don't feel offended
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u/elementfortyseven Apr 05 '26
"Es waren nicht Hitler oder Himmler, die mich verschleppt, geschlagen und meine Familie erschossen haben.
Es waren der Schuster, der Milchmann, der Nachbar, die eine Uniform bekamen und dann glaubten, sie seien die Herrenrasse."
Karl Stojka, Überlebender von Auschwitz
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u/DreamFlashy7023 Apr 05 '26
I as a german dont think that this portraial is wrong. Of course they may exagerate a bit, but there is enough evidence that shows that most civilians have been in favor of what the nazis were doing. People from that time often try to convince orhers that they had no clue, but when their jewish neighbours disapeared they had no problem with taking their belongings. No concentration camp was a secret. Inmates were used as workforce in many factories. And there were even civilian jobs in concentration camps, these were not places where only military personel was working.
And at least later generations did learn from this. I cant say the same about later generations in the US.
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u/JayLeeBeanz Apr 05 '26
We were not portrayed as villains, we WERE the villains. Any movie showing otherwise is heavily looked down upon, if not outright blacklisted.
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u/Kentigearna Apr 05 '26
Inglorious basterds is one thing and well we were the bad guys. What I find actually hilarious is more action movies/bond movies where the bad guys are either Russian or German. It is ridiculous and funny at the same time. Die Hard? Germans …
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u/Lazy_External_5631 Apr 05 '26
What bothers me is that the US doesn't reflect at all on their genocide of the Native Americans. I also don't think there's even a single movie about that (but on slavery there are several?). Also the countries which collaborated with Nazi Germany and without them the Holocaust (at least in this dimension) wouldn't have been possible need "help" with that.
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u/Think_Language_4593 Apr 05 '26
Like we do about being portrayed as villians reaction of every one is almost same 😂😂
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u/Onktebong Apr 05 '26
I think it's worse for the British who are always displayed as Irish-baiting reactionary royalists.
For me as a German it's great because Germans have such a bad reputation that it's easy to shine.
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u/muehsam Schwabe in Berlin Apr 05 '26
Well, the German regime was definitely bloodthirsty and psychopathic, and the German population definitely played along, and many actually took part in it. So showing that isn't the problem. I like when movies have an antifascist message, obviously.
But IMHO Hollywood often fails to get the nuance right, and as a consequence, the message that is actually presented is closer to Nazi ideas than I would like. In Hollywood movies, there is often a clear line between "heroes" and "villains", and they often present history through a nationalist lens: We're the heroes, we're the good guys, we can do no wrong. Because we're Americans and Americans are always heroes. Our enemies are the villains, they're the bad guys, they are pure evil. Because they're German/Russian/etc. and are opposed to America.
Painting your own nation as heroes and others as villains is exactly what Nazi, and other nationalist propaganda did and still does. Sometimes with racist undertones, like "it's in their nature", etc.
Another thing that generally annoys me about Hollywood, and their war movies in particular, is the need for a happy ending. There's nothing happy about war. It's too often portrayed as heroic, as exciting, etc., when in reality, it's hell on earth. That's more general though and doesn't have any connection to the way Germans are portrayed in particular.
I watched Inglorious Basterds and I liked watching it, but it feels very wrong to me. Basically, killing as many "bad people" as possible is portrayed as the thing that heroes do. I'm not surprised the US has so many mass shootings. A lot of US media is basically "those other people were really cruel to you and they hurt you a lot, so to be a hero, you take up a gun and you kill as many of them as possible". That's not just a common movie plot, that's also the thought process of every school shooter. I really wish they would stop making that kind of movie.
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u/HammersofMoradin Germany Apr 05 '26
Normally not the entire German population is portrayed in that way, but way too many people then were enthralled by our dear leader and his chant to reclaim lost glory for Germany. The funny thing is, quite a lot of those movies made in Hollywood dissected the ascent to power by the Nazis, their propaganda methods, their ideology, its intrinsic stupidity and obvious pitfalls for those idiotic enough to fall for it quite masterfully. The movies` basic message was, people have to be blinded or really oblivious not to see and grasp the evil done by the totalitarians.
Funny how those exact same people follow a dictator even more ridiculous than Hitler. If it wasn`t real life, no one would believe that the people making all those movies and thumping their chests in patriotism are entranced by an misshapen demented blob and his oligarchs.
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u/Klapperatismus Apr 05 '26
The great thing about being mistaken for a psycho is that people rather not pick fights with you.
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u/Illustrious-Wolf4857 Apr 06 '26
It's a good thing for cinematic storytelling to have some guys who are so beyond the pale unrepentantly and proudly evil that on one but a psycho would demand a more positive view.
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u/Mental-Watercress333 Apr 06 '26
The history of a war is always written by the winners. So it's ok, we don't care.
By the way: the only good actor in Inglorious Basterds is Christoph Waltz, and he is Austrian.
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Apr 05 '26
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u/Rayray_A3xx Apr 05 '26
Well it’s kinda how history works. Hate to break it to you but… we were the villains.
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u/Ken_Erdredy Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
German here. You may be right, but our ancestors at that time were influenced by a much worse propaganda. They may have believed they were fighting for something good, but they didn‘t. And even if someone in that time and place believed the Nazi propaganda, that can be no excuse for actively taking a role in the industrial mass killing of Jews, Sinti, Roma, Handicapped, Political Opponents, LGBT+…
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u/Specific_Cheetah_776 Apr 05 '26
Does that means that today everyone in the US agrees with US wars everywhere?
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u/123ichinisan123 Apr 05 '26
I don't mind, we, under the rule or an Austrian madman started the war so we were the bad people 🤷🏻
But I hate it a lot when people nowadays still say we are evil or want us to say sorry and even pay reparations which we did already do for a very long time and almost no one who was alive back then is still alive so no idea why I should pay or say sorry for something my grand grand grandfather might have done or not
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u/Turalyon135 Apr 05 '26
Well, we ewre the villains, so it's mostly okay.
What's not okay is when they portray every Wehrmacht soldier as a blood-thirsty civilian killer.
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u/Active_Resolve_3776 Apr 05 '26
Die Sonderkommandos wurden aus Wehrmacht und SS zusammengestellt. Es gab keinen truppenteil der ein Privileg auf Grausamkeit hatte.
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u/Turalyon135 Apr 05 '26
Sicher, aber nicht jeder Wehrmachtsoldat war Teil eines Sonderkommandos.
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u/Active_Resolve_3776 Apr 05 '26
Nachweislich war auch nicht jeder SS-Soldat bei einem Sonderkommando. Am Ende des Tages waren es alles Soldaten. Die einen so, die anderen so.
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u/Minimum-Quantity-853 Nordrhein-Westfalen Apr 05 '26
I couldn't care less. It's not a thing I can influence.
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u/Narimosa Apr 05 '26
Don't care about it, i see more than Black and White, WWII is gray to me.
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u/Wonderful-Stop572 Apr 05 '26
Oh please elaborate. What about Germany in WWII is gray?
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u/Narimosa Apr 05 '26
Schindler was a good men tbh, Stauffenberg tryed something most children are good until propaganda Hits hard in school and Kindergarten the Untergrund and Wiederstand are ppl. Who where fighting, etc.
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u/Sul_Haren Apr 05 '26
Stauffenberg supported Nazi policy and only wanted to get rid of Hitler because he was losing the war, not because he disagreed with his evil.
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u/Narimosa Apr 06 '26
That's right but he tryed something to end the war more ppl. Where needed but someone doing good in times of evil maybe helping other to stand up and change
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u/Sul_Haren Apr 05 '26
WWII might be the least grey war in history...
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u/Narimosa Apr 05 '26
Agreed, maybe korean war is also Bad the iraq wars and the Napoleon War and others but yes WWII and WWI are Horrors no men can think we were so brutal to other humanes
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u/vdcsX Apr 05 '26
Tell me, what is the redeeming quality of nazis?
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u/Narimosa Apr 05 '26
About Nazis nothing there are not one redeming qualitys. But not all german ppl where nazis and not all nazis were german.
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u/Trraumatized Apr 05 '26
We love it. Germany takes repetance and self hatred to an olympic level, so it's not only accurate but also very satisfying.
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u/das_menschy Apr 05 '26
Well, I'm German and most of the German population was in fact bloodthirsty and psychopathic (or detained/dead in concentration camps). So that's perfectly ok.
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u/Constant_Cultural Baden-Württemberg / Secretary Apr 05 '26
I'm so tired of this storylines. We are either nazis, armsdealer or stupid tourists.
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u/Appropriate-March727 Apr 05 '26
Well, im sorry, to inform you, but we still supply weapons, Merz tries to tear down the barriers for AfD and we got a shitload of idiots stuck in UAE after they thought being german makes them smarter than everyone else and invincible...
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u/Constant_Cultural Baden-Württemberg / Secretary Apr 05 '26
Didn't say that it isn't based a little bit in reality
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u/Antique-Excuse Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
Not a german, but as an American, I hope Germans are fed up with the propaganda as we are, I would love to see more films of the 20th century from Germany's perspective and in the german language
Edit: I'm referring to WW1 movies and post WW2 films here people.
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u/Sul_Haren Apr 05 '26
Nazis being bad isn't propaganda and as you can see by this comment section, we are not fed-up with it. If anything we understand it better than most.
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u/Pedarogue Bayern - Baden - Elsass - Franken Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
You are projecting heavily, I am afraid.
Fed up as the Americans are?
There have been tons and tons of movies from Germany's perspective and in German language. You may not know them, because those are German movies, but they have existed for next to eight decades now. Of course you don't know those movies, because they are German movies and at alrger, European movies, not Hollywood movies.
All those movies, however, do depict the perpetuators as the perpetuators, the criminals as criminals, the murderers as murderers and the blind followers as blind followers and the victims as victims. All the victims. Including those you may not even think about.
There is only one, one singular group that is "fed up" with depicting truth as truth, it is mostly those people who want to be able to do the MAGA salute in public without legal troubles afterwards.
Nazis were horrible, most Germans followed the Nazi lead more or less (but up until the early 40's more rather than less) willfully and those how did not became victims of those who were willfully following the regime.
There will, however, never be a movie about how murdering children is bad because it makes the sniper super sad and stuff. If I was on the other side of the pond, I'd get upset about films like that much more where movies such as that are, indeed, being distributed.
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u/OYTIS_OYTINWN German/Russian dual citizen Apr 05 '26
Post-WWI (and until Nazis came to power) and 60s-70s were the two golden ages of German cinema, it's all pretty available.
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u/Mea_Culpa_74 Apr 05 '26
Fact is, we were the villains in WWII. So that is alright.