Well you'd need lots of extras (or CGI); the Waterloo movie from 1970 made good use of Russian Extras- I hear something like 16-20 thousand Soviet troops were used to make the movie.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

Thats true spoken. Especially some of the late war battles like Kursk, D-Day or Berlin, had so many men fighting that its hard to get a grasp on the enormous size of the events. One relatively old movie that gives sometimes an impression on the scale of fighting is for me "The longest day". Even there, they had to use original footage at times (especially of the fleet) to get it done.

Haven't seen the series but I agree with you that it would be a problem to show the sheer scale of fighting on the Ukrainian Steppes. Heck, I remember Guy Sajer's "Forgotten Soldier" & his description of a Soviet attack on his position: an artillery barrage that literally made the earth thrash like an earthquake & the sky alternately darken from debris or lighten up from the flashes of the explosions; or a line of Soviet footsoldiers stretching from one horizon to the other all yelling & cheering as they charged towards his trench with bayonets fixed.How could you even begin to create a vision like that?
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

"Bands of Brothers" and "The Pacific" are vastly superior shows compared to "Generation War", I think. You cannot compare them fully because both american shows deal more with the frontline (especially "The Pacific"), while in the German one fighting scenes are rare. Although what Generation War cannot change is that BOB/TP have much higher production values.
But the main point is for me the authenticity. BOB/TP reenact real battles. "Generation war" is reflecting on themes happening on the East Front, but it is a highly fictionalized version not caring much about details. For example, the one longer battle scene is set in the enormous steppe battle of Kursk in 1943, but - I suppose because its easier to do - features house fighting, which was not very common in that battle.
If you take a closer look, "Generation war" has many situations that are unlikely or do not match well when you have read books about the Eastern front. There are so many things, that I won't even go on detail here, but which make me dislike the series.

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You make a good point and I'm fully aware that I might have mislead people with my topic title. This howevere is all done to raise awareness and actually get people to watch it. It's far more appealing to most viewers whom probably wouldn't have starting watching the show if the title would have said something like: German tv series about young people before, during and after WWII. From what I've heard, most Americans (and maybe some other countries) don't like to read subtitles and prefer movies with english as the spoken language, like Valkyrie for instance. I'm sure there are also many moviegoers who don't give a sh*t about that, but still.

I've seen it and it is very good BUT everyone has got to STOP calling it the German Band of Brothers. It's about 5 Germans who were very close friends before the war and shows what happens to them during the war. It is NOTHING at all like Band of Brothers or even the Pacific for that matter.
I highly recommend it but STOP calling it the German Band of Brothers!!!!!!

For anyone looking for it, it was renamed 'Generation War' here in the US. It is currently available on discs from Netflix (but not streaming) and on Amazon under this title. I searched for Unsere Mutter, Unsere Vatter, but it was momentarily confusing that the results were listed by a different name.
Will definitely check this out.

The thing is, in my experience with German filmwhich is admittedly limitedI've never seen the Germans portray themselves as anything but victims of the Nazis. If they would make a film or two about "Bad Germans," they might gain a little respect from me. I don't believe Germans as a whole will ever accept the enormous guilt they bear.
I suppose they are somewhat better than the Japanese, who seem to think they were the wronged party in the war, but that ain't saying much.
"He was running around like a rooster in a barnyard full of ducks."Pat Novak

lvrepoman:
Because there's only ONE angle to everything? Well OKAY! HEY Germans! Please do not make anything about bad germans - only good germans?!!
Time to hit the history books, boy!
"I do not like jews*" = nothing new, as in, long before NAZI's ever got the idea.
*We are humans, we DO NOT LIKE any Outsider. Because they're not in our tribe!

Ivrepoman, thank you for your reply, I'm glad to hear that you'll give the series a chance (it recently came out on Netflix!) despite your feelings about the Germans, though I hope the series will relativize your opinion.
This series isn't glorifying the Wehrmacht and the SS in any way. It's a drama about a group of young friends who happen to be born in Germany of Hitler and therefore have to face the hardships and the pain that the Nazi's brought upon their country.
Can your really blame them for being indoctrinated? Most were naive young men who were in for an adventure, become a hero and do what is right (well, in their minds it was right). Others didn't want to fight, some joined the resistance, others just didn't dare stand up (again, can you really blame them?). In the end, most of them fought for their brothers in arms, their families and even their homes (when the war was almost at an end). The SS on the other hand were devoted Nazi's who were responsible for most of the atrocities during the war. Though it must be said that the Wehrmacht were also responsible in some intances, but the same can be said for the allied armies (especially the Russians). Point being, in war there are good and bad people on both sides. The Nazi's were terrible and unfortunately it took the normal Gemrans a long time to realize this.
I'm from the Netherlands myself and I recently found out that one of my relatives joined the SS during the war and was killed during Operation Bagration in East-Prussia 1944. I can not describe how angry and dissapointed I was to find out that this man belongs to my family. I'll never know and understand what his reasons were to join up, but series like Unsere Mtter, Unsere Vtter really helped me to rethink my opinion on this matter.
Therefore, I sincerely hope that you'll watch it soon and I'll be excited to hear what your thoughts about it are when you're done with it!

Thanks for the "heads-up." I'm an American, but my mom was born in Germany and my grandfather and both of my uncles were in the Wehrmacht. My older uncle died fighting the Soviets and my younger uncle was nearly killed by them about a dozen times.
Despite the familial connections, I find myself to be just intensely anti-German. I've tried watching several German productions about WW2, but for the life of me, I can't see why a modern German filmmaker would visit this period. It reminds me of modern Americans from the south making films about the CSA. No matter how hard you try, anything you turn out comes across as an excuse for those who fought for evil causes. Trust me, I've heard all the excuses from my German relatives"We weren't Nazis," or some variation of "We were only taking orders." None of these really hold up.
I will probably give this series a chance, but I will be surprised if it changes my attitude. If I was a modern German filmmaker, I would probably stick to stories of Germans who fought against the Nazis if I addressed that period at all. But that is only my opinion.
"He was running around like a rooster in a barnyard full of ducks."Pat Novak

Watched it last year, was really excelent for me. It's good to see a WW2 movie made by Germans (I guess they still have to be very careful about this topic).
SPOILER
The most memorable scene for me was Friedhelms death.

This was shown on television over here. It's not bad, actually pretty good. Especially all the technical stuff, uniforms etc. And, best of all, Germans played by German actors who speak German.

well,
It is a very interesting series. Usually German television dos not attract such a wide audience.
There are not that many intense fighting scenes compared to "The Pacific" or "BoB".
And a very big discussion in German Media developed about the Polish and how some of them are portrayed in the series.
The Series got very big attention in Poland, because the Partisan Resistance being Portrait Anti Semite.
There are very different approaches how to deal with this in Poland for a long time now. How big was the Polish involvement in the Holocaust? Especially Polish right wing parties say that the series is misleading in those historical aspects.
On the other side the series is the first one deconstructing the myths of the merciless German Wehrmacht as "Honorable Knights" and the very common opinion that the average German didn't know about the concentration camps.
So it revalues historical aspects in an important different perspective. How far this perspective is "right" or "wrong" should be decided by every viewer on its own.

Yeah I am a huge fan of Sajer's 'forgotten soldier' & do I ever wish it was made into a movie/miniseries; I cannot imagine either the budget or the scale of such a movie.
Stalingrad '93 was OK but just too 'small scale' compared to the actual battle.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

A very good book The Forgotten Soldier is a memoir about a german soldier on the eastern front. Its very interesting as it gives alot of details and is far from what the western war was like in so many ways. Also the movie Stalingrad (1993) is very good and is the German perspective on Stalingrad.

Thanks for the info. I have always wanted to see film about the germans view.

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