Particularly WW2…I don’t mean Hitlers bunker stuff. That’s well covered ground, though the bizarreness that went on is what I’m talking about
I mean stuff like this. The US trying to secure Goering. Apparently, Goering…a delusional sort…wanted to parley with the Americans. The Americans, excited to secure him, sent a lightly escorted couple of jeeps deep into enemy territory (technically the war was not quite over). They follwed a German jeep past saluting Germans and wound up at a heavily fortified SS castle. Where the SS guys were just like…“Uhh…he’s not here. We’ll call him.”
**This **is a really good movie that I fear has been largely forgotten. It gives a horrifying view of the chaos that engulfed the Third Reich in the final days of the regime.
Decision Before Dawn
I first saw it when I was in high school. IIRC, it opens with a shot of a Gloster Meteor, one of the world’s first jet fighters, flying overhead. That was enough to get my attention from the start.
It’s not exactly a war movie, but The Death of Stalin is a very grim comedy about the craziness and confusion that ensued while various Soviet functionaries jockeyed for power after Stalin ate it. Steve Buscemi plays Kruschev.
As Hitler’s designated successor, Goering expected to be received as Head of State. (Of course, Hitler had already stripped him of his various offices for what he perceived as treason.) He was shocked at the treatment the Americans gave him.
**This **is a good book, but should be taken with a grain of salt. The author (British) was an acquaintance of Goering:
IIRC, Eisenhower officially reprimanded Lt Shapiro for shaking Goering’s hand when they were introduced.
As I recall from various TV documentaries, it caused outrage that Goering was filmed holding what looked like a press conference with the first Americans to see him, which caused Eisenhower to have him arrested. The government led by the successor Hitler designated was left to twiddle its thumbs till a bit later in May '45.
As for chaotic collapses, you probably have to look outside the Anglosphere. There is a whole school of German “rubble literature”, among which I can recommend the novel Berlin Finale by Heinz Rein, but I don’t know if many movies fit the bill - the market for them must be pretty limited unless there’s a strong story to which the chaos is only the backdrop, or which focus on one specific part of it rather than the overall chaos. I suppose one possibility might be Dr Zhivago. Come to think of it, there was a movie made in Britain during WW2 set during the defeat of France - maybe a bit propagandistic for today, but it illustrates that problem of foreground/background perspective:
You should include Monuments Men in your film survey. It covers the wrapping up of the European war, and has action following the collapsing German defences.
The space race basically began in the final days of WWII. The Germans had by far the best rocketry in the world but most of the rocket factories were going to be on the Soviet side of the new iron curtain and the Americans were the ones who had secured the land. So the US plundered everything they could move quickly and easily including all the top German engineers and scientists they could find before the Russians moved in. The Soviets ended up with the factories, moulds, bits of rockets, and all the second tier engineers.
Not sure it’d make a great film though because the upshot was the space race. And that’s the start of a much greater story. Beginnings don’t make good endings.
If you can do without strict accuracy, or really any accuracy, or even seriousness, Kelly’s Heroes is really all about the chaos in the last days of WWII.
(On the serious side, was also about to also suggest Three Kings. Gulf War I was in its last days as soon as it started of course)
I don’t remember the name, but at least 20 years ago I saw a movie about a small US unit in winter 1945, in some fairly remote wooded area; at one point a larger unit of German soldiers see the writing on the wall and want to surrender but insist on surrendering to an officer of appropriate rank; the Americans have to have a private masquerade as an officer to negotiate. Then miscommunication causes things to go tragically wrong. It seemed to capture some of the end-of-war weirdness (as apposed to the regular war weirdness).
I haven’t read it since I was in high school, but I believe part of Crossbow and Overcast deals with Operation PAPERCLIP, the US effort to recruit German scientists who worked on the V-1 and V-2 programs, especially Wernher von Braun. It was made into a not-too-bad movie with George Peppard and Sophia Loren in the '60s (Operation Crossbow), but the main focus was on the campaign against the V-weapons themselves.
Albert Speer’s Inside the Third Reich of course deals a lot with the last days of Nazi Germany. It was made into an ABC TV miniseries in the early '80s with Rutger Hauer as Speer and Derek Jacobi as Hitler. It looks like the whole 5+ hours are on YouTube.
A couple of films about the end of World War II in Germany:
The Bridge (1959) is the true story of a group of 16-year old boys attempting to hold the bridge into their hometown against American forces. The end credit states “This event occurred on April 27, 1945. It was so unimportant that it was never mentioned in any war communique.” That would be about 10 days before Germany’s surrender.
The Captain (2017) tells the story of Willi Herold, a Wermacht deserter who assumed the persona of a Luftwaffe captain in April 1945. He and his hangers-on would show up as Task Force Herold where he claimed to have been personally appointed by Hitler to deal with deserters. He and his fellows ended up executing some 125 people in the closing days of the war.
Both are very good, if chilling, movies about the chaos and randomness at the end of the war.
Cold Mountain is good. It shows the Confederacy starting to break down from the inside.
Civil War movies e.g. *Glory *or Gods and Generals like to focus on stirring, noble sentiments. I don’t think a single one yet has shown how Jeff Davis wore a woman’s dress to flee Richmond as the Union forces closed in. But they really should.
