THE WW2 movie nobody appears to have made...

[p51]

I was just watching "Empire of the Sun," and "Island at War" a couple of weeks before that, both showing Allies in Axis hands during the war.
I got to thinking again about the WW2 movie I don't think anyone has ever made but I would love to see someone's take on it.
At some point, civilians and servicepeople in the hands of Axis forces must have been keenly aware that things were about the flip. Soon, the Axis soldiers would have known they were going to have to surrender, maybe to the very people they'd probably done questionable things to for so long.
What would someone say or do in such a case?
In the 90s, I once met a vet who was a US Army LT accepting the surrender of a small Japanese unit in 1945. His brother had been killed in a POW camp near the end of the war and he knew exactly what to do that he could get away with (he said he really wanted to shoot them all but clearly he couldn't do that). He accepted the sword of the commander, promptly broke it in half and threw in in a ditch. He then told them all through their translator that they were an embarrassment to their emperor and their nation and were beneath contempt. He told me that it even more than 50 years later, he felt he'd done the right thing (but still wished he could have shot them all).
My point is that this guy was far from alone in that mindset back then.
Imagine if you're a POW or a civilian interned by the Germans or the Japanese and that everyone knows that in a day or two, the tables will be turned. How would each side cope with that? Wouldn't there be a strong desire to make you former captors pay for the things they'd done, before the allied troops get there and go about in an official capacity and your chance would have passed? How about the Axis soldiers begging the former POWs to say nice things about them later?
That is the movie I'd love to see someday, as I can't think of any example of such a film. But I bet many would like to see that.
Imagine these ideas:

• Russian soldiers stringing up former German captors (which I wouldn't be surprised if that happened; it's not like liberating Russian forces would have issues with that)
• As happened in real life as Dachau (at the hands of the 45th Division, and no courts martial came from it), allied troops rounding up SS guards and shooting them?
• As in "Jo Jo Rabbit," a family member of someone hung at the hands of the Gestapo for something stupid, finding the guy(s) who did it and taking out their own vengeance after the war was over? How could that not have happened somewhere in Germany after the war?

I've also long had the idea of a novel about someone who is a serial killer in occupied France (or maybe the Channel Islands) killing Germans in the most horrific of ways and managing to not be caught or found out by anyone. After the war, what kind of crime would that have been considered? Would a French resistance fighter ever see the inside of a jail for killing Germans during the occupation, even if it was more gruesome than just doing a drive-by (like in the Paris cafe scene in, "The Great Escape")?

 

[Psab keel]

That would make for an INCREDIBLE movie! I would watch that all day long. Imagine having that kind of restraint to even refrain from beating your captors. That kind of self control is outright heroic!

 

[Marv]

Isn't King Rat set at the end of the war in a Japanese POW camp. I don't recall it being about how the tables turn in terms of prisoners and their captors so much, more so how the inmates roles change.

I'd like to see something about how the Poles were treated by the Russians when Poland was split, and how many of them had to endure the salt mines of Siberia when they were captured before later being brought back into the war - Anders army fighting their way back through the soft under belly of Italy and the campaign of Monte Casino where 1 in 2 died taking the monetary.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I'd watch it. I seem to remember one of the books I read on British and U.S. POWs in Japanese hands where one of the Americans shot one of the Japanese guards who tortured them. I'm not sure, but it might have been Surviving the Sword (which is a great book). I would think in that situation even in 2023, that even though it would be illegal, the soldier would get off because of psychological trauma. I don't think anyone would convict them.

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

There's a great documentary that touches on this called "After Hitler," produced by the French, I believe, that details the immediate aftermath of the European campaign of WW2, and the formal end of the conflict with the surrender of the Japanese. I whole-heartedly recommend anyone watch it as it's a subject often overlooked and eschewed from study because of how romanticized WW2 has become. It's as grim and ugly as much of the war itself and lasted much, much longer. After seeing that, I think it might be difficult to make something true to the mentality circulating at the time without it being an extremely hard watch. It needs to have so much context built up to make it really sympathetic and is so nuanced, I think the only way to do it would be a series of some sort. A really expensive and very difficult watch. The catch is that anything else would be seen as insincere and camp. That bloodlust for vengeance and resentment spread like wildfire across the European mainland and lead to one of the greatest human migrations in all of human history as many were looking for places to resettle due to the mass violence that erupted after the fall of the Axis powers. Those fleeing were still preyed upon, not just by one single aggressor, but by "normal" people looking to take the advantage.

So many people sought retribution and stooped to the same barbarity that could be argued as mimicking their prosecutors. Many of these actions justified only by hearsay. The Jews and Gypsies of this time were still harangued by countless peoples. Those that suffered tremendously in particular was anyone with any German ancestry (even those fleeing and had nothing to do with the actual fighting). A lot of these incidents also lead to the many civil wars that rose up in European countries in the years immediately after the war.

I think this is a subject worthy of study to put not just history, but people, into context. This is something that shouldn't be tread lightly around, but treated with respect and nuance of what happened in honor of all those people that suffered from the confusion and anger that has lasted generations, even up to the present.

This is a subject I have great sympathy and connection to as, in one generation, similar acts of cruelty and madness affected my own family in Vietnam during and after the war there. I don't want this to turn political, but this topic borders such, and should be treated with as much nuance, truth, and perspective as possible. This should not be a hotbed for revisionist fantasies.

Isn't King Rat set at the end of the war in a Japanese POW camp. I don't recall it being about how the tables turn in terms of prisoners and their captors so much, more so how the inmates roles change...

Minor note of mention: I think King Rat is a wonderful little film that often gets overlooked, though I can see why; I'm hard pressed to not see it as a "minor masterpiece." The only thing that works against it is how hard it leans on the suave American getting by in the camp. I know it was the times that dictated that choice, but had that one element change to something more fitting with the source material, it'd make for a grimmer, bleaker but I think, ultimately, better film.

Another film in a similar vein I recommend is King and Country.

 

[jts1031]

Major Winters talking about the depiction of Speirs shooting prisoners in the Band of Brothers book:

 

[joberg]

Human Nature is difficult to put aside after years of war, occupation, concentration camps, etc...War is essentially men, hunting other men. Period!
Yes, the Geneva Convention made sure that Human Nature was not without some kind of basic laws regarding engagements, retribution, prisoner's right, etc...Great in theory, but somewhat difficult to apply into the context of battles and other war/conflict context.

Each conflict brought other rules: chemical war for example. My great-grandfather was gassed by the Germans in the Flanders in 1916...
My grand-father was a soldier in the Belgian Army and after a few days of combat and the surrendering of Belgium, he was part of the Belgian Resistance during the German occupation (with his wife) until the Belgian liberation. So, yes; it's kind of personal for me and my family.

The retribution; shooting your captors, or other acts of revenge against the enemy/friends/collaborators has been done for hundreds of conflicts.
It's true that no movie tackled that subject in particular because of many taboos attached to said "Act of Revenge"...
Some SS guards were killed by the camp's prisoners (or burn alive in one instance). An excellent film about the Holocaust is "Spectre of the Shoah", btw; a must see documentary by Jewish-French Director Jacques Lanzmann.
I'm not even discussing the outing/hunting/killing of collaborators after cities were liberated by the Allies...
While the Battle of the Pacific was in another part of the world, the European conflict was much more complicated than people think.

History played and still, to this day, plays an important/crucial roles into the way the different European countries see each others!
My Father's family is from a region called the "Three Borders": Belgium, Holland & Germany.
From childhood, it was normal to be tri-lingual since you had to deal with commerce, economy and ultimately mixed marriages.
What do you do when you father is off German descent and your mother Belgian, or Dutch? And you're either a German citizen, or Belgian, or Dutch? Where do you put your patriotism in a case of conflict/war? It wasn't unusual to have divorced parent's children to have a son fight on the German side, while the other was on the Belgian side

Shooting soldiers surrendering or prisoners is a normal psychological occurrence during any conflict...from both sides.
Terror is also a big strategy (lots of instances during the American Civil War, Sherman for example) for both sides also.
No-one is innocent and a war is a very special context to "manage" whether is the armies side or the civilian side.

Now, also we have a conflict of terror. Inside/outside our borders that have led to big ethical problems.

Complicated subject for sure and very close to be fully loaded with political history.

 

[Master Boda]

Come and See is a Russian movie that deals with this topic towards the end of the movie.

 

[Searun]

My father, father in law and twin brother all saw combat spanning WW2 through early Vietnam. As a student of history it is clear that, as stated above, when talking on an individual & country bases, “No-one is innocent.”

I often think that it is good that the Allies won the war. But, seriously question the 1000 plane fire bonding raids and then the use of the atom on similar civilian cities. Mankind has not changed much when it comes to the horror of war beyond the heat of the moment and revenge.

Guess I will have to live with and reconcile my fascination of war movies and war machine models: aircraft, tanks, battleships and space ships.

 

[dascoyne]

Does this count?

too soon?

 

[Too Much Garlic]

I think there's a reason those kinds of movies aren't made. Most of the people involved are dead, so it would be more fiction than reality, or it will done in an unrealistic one-sided way like we see in older War movies.

If done right it strips the "heroic" aspect of the characters and cannot work as a standard American tale with good versus bad and there'd be no one to really sympathize with as all the characters, because of their experiences have been pulled down into the darkest pits of human nature and acts villainous and with self-interest - war movies do tend to be kind of propaganda machines, so not having a clear "hero" wouldn't work in Hollywood.

So many people were killed after the war - either because of facts or worse, mere rumor spread by frightened people or people who wanted certain people gone and saw an opportunity to exploit the rage to get what they wanted. It would be a movie showing the worst of humanity - the desire for and acting on getting revenge. Devoid of justice.

Turn it around and show how America treated their POVs... or worse, how they rounded up Asian people living in America and locked them away in camps during WW2. Doubt they got any real justice for what happened to them and was just expected to let it go afterwards.

 

[Laspector]

Has no one watched Hunters on Amazon Prime? I haven't watched the 2nd season yet, but the whole premise was tracking down former Nazis.

 

[pengbuzz]

One for you to watch then is The Great Raid, starring Benjamon Bratt as Col. Hank Mucci. It was about the 6th Ranger Battalion invading and liberating Camp Cabanatuan in the Philippines. IRL, my father was one of the Rangers who participated in that raid (He got married late in life and had me with my mom when he was nearly 50, back in 1974).

 

[p51]

One for you to watch then is The Great Raid, starring Benjamon Bratt as Col. Hank Mucci.

I actually know a few people who worked on that movie and I'm very familiar with it.
It's the only movie I'm aware of that even comes close to the subject.

 

[tcsmit29]

I always wanted to see a movie adaptation of the book "Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer. Sajer was a half French-half German teenager from Alsace who enlisted in the German Army. The book is a memoir describing his time in training and being deployment to the Eastern Front. He enlisted not for any political or ideological reason, but because he thought the German soldiers looked "cool". You know, a decision like a teenager might make. I thought the book gives a very humanizing view of the German side of the war. That's something I've wanted to see represented because I have relatives that fought on both sides. Sadly, I think its a point of view that wouldn't be appreciated in today's political climate. It would probably be branded as pro-fascist propaganda. I think that is unfortunate, but the world we live in.

 

[p51]

One TV series I forgot about was the 1970s "Colditz" series. The last couple episodes cover well how the fortunes of war were shifting and how the Germans got ready for the transition from victor to vanquished (and how the XO of the Stalag, a diehard Luftwaffe officer, tried to weasel his way out of everything).
It seems like the only representation of what I was thinking about. But it was bloodless.
I still would not be the least bit surprised if there were many reprisals at and after the end of WW2 against former Axis soldiers that we just don't know of today.
Like that scene in "Jo Jo Rabbit," where the kid walks up to the those who were hung by the gestapo and finds his Mom hanging there, that was a body blow to me when I saw that as I'm sure that happened to some poor German kids. I refuse to accept that later, if that kid found out who did that, he couldn't have done something to whoever did that to his mother.

I always wanted to see a movie adaptation of the book "Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer.

The problem with that book is that many people think Sajer (real name Guy Mouminoux) made most (if not all) of it up. Ironically, he later became a famous cartoonist in France.

 

[tcsmit29]

The problem with that book is that many people think Sajer (real name Guy Mouminoux) made most (if not all) of it up. Ironically, he later became a famous cartoonist in France.

Yeah I used to follow a lot of the controversy about the book. My personal belief is that it was a real account. Army historian Douglas Nash was in communication with Sajer and was convinced that it was genuine. That is good enough to satisfy me. Many of the inaccuracies that critics nitpick over can easily be explained as translation errors or details forgotten after time has past. I have trouble recalling details my life 20 years ago too. It also is pretty clear that it's not meant to be a history book full of facts, but a recalling of some serious traumatic experiences that the author lived through. Whether its true or not, isn't really a concern when Hollywood makes a movie from it. The writers would tweak and change things anyway. A great example would be a movie like Braveheart. It was a true story, but almost nothing in the movie is the way it really happened.

 

[Riceball]

One TV series I forgot about was the 1970s "Colditz" series. The last couple episodes cover well how the fortunes of war were shifting and how the Germans got ready for the transition from victor to vanquished (and how the XO of the Stalag, a diehard Luftwaffe officer, tried to weasel his way out of everything).
It seems like the only representation of what I was thinking about. But it was bloodless.
I still would not be the least bit surprised if there were many reprisals at and after the end of WW2 against former Axis soldiers that we just don't know of today.
Like that scene in "Jo Jo Rabbit," where the kid walks up to the those who were hung by the gestapo and finds his Mom hanging there, that was a body blow to me when I saw that as I'm sure that happened to some poor German kids. I refuse to accept that later, if that kid found out who did that, he couldn't have done something to whoever did that to his mother.

I know that after France was liberated by the Allies, there were a lot of reprisals against people who collaborated with the Germans and/or were a part of or supported the Vichy government.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Band of Brothers shows how they treated civilian collaborators. I think it was depicted when they were in Holland. I'm not 100% sure because I haven't watched it in a while. They show them shaving women's heads and then kicking them out of their towns.

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

I know that after France was liberated by the Allies, there were a lot of reprisals against people who collaborated with the Germans and/or were a part of or supported the Vichy government.

Not just in France, but Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Greece, even Germany, and anywhere the war touched. Kangaroo courts, mock trials where the fate on "trial" was already determined, public humiliations, and regular beatings in the street (most times, to death) where a common occurance all throughout post-war Europe.

... I refuse to accept that later, if that kid found out who did that, he couldn't have done something to whoever did that to his mother.

And this is a danger, in my opinion. Yes, it violates our sense of justice where a misdeed is done and the perpetrator gets away with it, but that is how it works most times in the world. Most of us can't or won't do anything because, most times, that opportunity for justice never comes. Those fantasies satisfy a base desire but it would make a farce of what is and actually happened.

Here's the documentary, After Hitler, I mentioned earlier. Only place that has it is DailyMotion.