This here is a question for all those German speakers who have seen the movie. A friend asked me something, but not being able to speak German, I figured I’d come here and see if someone else could help me out.
Towards the end, during the big battle at the bridge, when the German soldier they let go earlier kills the Jewish soldier, what does he say? I was under the impression he simple coed him (just lay over him saying “Shhhhh, shhhhhh,”) but my friend is convinced he said something, and is curious as to what it was. If anyone can shed some light on the subject, it’d be much appreciated.
As the German soldier stabs a US soldier to death, he says: “Gib’ auf, du hast keine Chance! Lass’ uns ein Ende machen es ist so viel leichter für dich!” This translates: “Give up, you don’t stand a chance! Let’s end this here, it will be easier for you like this!” The words are spoken in Austrian-accented German.
No, they were the same soldier. Hence, his letting the American guy live instead of shooting him dead on the steps. And, the reason the American guy shot him dead at the end even though he was a prisoner and unarmed. He let the German guy live, the German guy let him live, and his grief at the fact his trying to be humane led to the deaths of his own people led to a sacrifice of his humanity for revenge. That was the whole point of the German’s character and the scene at these two scenes (the machine gun nest and “execution” at the end). Demonstrates you can’t be civil in war.
While that makes sense, most of the material I read indicated that “Steamboat Willie” was not the same German as the one who killed Mellish at the end.
well i cant remember the two (or one) guys face(s)
but i remember the guy at the machine gun nest having a different voice to the guy who killed Melish
but that could be cause he was reduced to groveling as a captive…
The soldier Upham shoots is the same one they let go at the machine gun nest (“Steamboat Willie”), who is different from the one who Upham encounters on the stairs after failing to save Mellish.
I think he probably let Upham live out of contempt. He could tell he wasn’t even worth wasting a bullet on (the site I linked to above also indicates he–unlike Willie–was in the SS, so that may contribute to his feeling of fearlessness towards the cowardly G.I.)
I agree that the German soldier let Upham live out of contempt. I seem to remember him brushing Upham aside as he came down the stairs. Did I imagine that?
I’m 99% sure that this site is correct in that Steamboat Willie does not kill Mellish but he is the one who kills Capt. Miller. The camera zooms in on Willie right before Miller gets shot and you can clearly tell that it is the same soldier.
The scene where the German soldier kills Melish is a very intense experience for both of them (not to understate things too much or anything)…I always firgured the reason he doesn’t kill Upham on the stairs is because 1) killing one guy up close with a knife to the sternum was an intense enough experience to shake the German soldier up good, and 2) Upham clearly didn’t pose a threat.
To put it a different way, I took it as a statement on the difference between killing another human being from a distance with a gun (like they’d been doing for most of the film up to that point) and actually looking into your victim’s eyes and being almost intimate with them while driving a knife into their living flesh. When the German soldier killed Melish, they weren’t German and American or Nazi and Jew anymore…they were just two guys, one of whom was going to have to kill the other for no other reason than the fact that they were at war. And it sucked, and it fucked up the German soldier enough that he couldn’t even think straight to kill Upham on the stairs.
That’s what I thought, anyway. To say that he let Upham live out of contempt is too simple and a disservice to the scene (one of my favorite in the movie)…
Next time ask me about how unbelievably homoerotic that killing scene was. Go on, ask me.