:00:12. > :00:14.Good evening and welcome to our discussion on the highly acclaimed,
:00:15. > :00:18.highly controversial drama Generation War: Our Mothers, Our
:00:19. > :00:22.Fathers. Is it a German Generation War: Our Mothers, Our
:00:23. > :00:24.to open up a new debate Generation War: Our Mothers, Our
:00:25. > :00:28.country's attitude towards the Nazis? Or is it five hours of
:00:29. > :00:29.self-pity, as one review has it, portraying its German characters too
:00:30. > :00:34.sympathetically, whilst demonising portraying its German characters too
:00:35. > :00:47.others? Joining me in the studio tonight to debate the fact and
:00:48. > :00:53.series, Benjamin Benedict... David Cesarani,
:00:54. > :00:58.series, Benjamin Benedict... David advised the government on Holocaust
:00:59. > :01:02.education. Eva Hoffman, Polish story and at the University of Central
:01:03. > :01:06.London, and Sir Richard Evans, Regius Professor of history at
:01:07. > :01:09.Wolfson College. Generation War is a story following the lives of five
:01:10. > :01:11.young Germans from the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 to the end
:01:12. > :02:50.of the war in 1945. Sir Richard, the opening scene is
:02:51. > :02:55.set in 1941. How realistic do you think the friendship is? I don't
:02:56. > :03:01.think it is realistic at all. In 1941, these are kids about 20, 21.
:03:02. > :03:06.They would have grown up in the Nazi period, reached adolescence in the
:03:07. > :03:09.Nazi period and they would have been members of the Hitler Youth, they
:03:10. > :03:17.would have gone through the educational system, been bombarded
:03:18. > :03:20.with propaganda from Goebbels' Nazi propaganda machine, so they would
:03:21. > :03:27.have been much more heavily indoctrinated, they would not have
:03:28. > :03:34.been friends with a Jew, virtually impossible by 1941. These are kids
:03:35. > :03:41.who are taken from today's Germany and catapulted back in time to 1941.
:03:42. > :03:45.Virtually impossible in 1941? I would have to disagree on that
:03:46. > :03:51.point. I would have to point out that in starting the development of
:03:52. > :03:57.the series what we first did was a lot of research, and we talked to a
:03:58. > :04:05.lot of people from that generation, born in the years 23, 24, and we had
:04:06. > :04:09.a lot of personal accounts so we had some very diverse fact that. I agree
:04:10. > :04:14.that they were highly influenced at the time and it did not happen very
:04:15. > :04:19.often, but there were accounts of friendship between Jewish and German
:04:20. > :04:22.childhood friends at the time. If they were friends in childhood it
:04:23. > :04:30.might have survived the Nazi propaganda? It might have survived
:04:31. > :04:33.the propaganda, but by June 1941, Jews in Germany were practically
:04:34. > :04:40.invisible. Most of them were forced to live in so-called choo houses and
:04:41. > :04:44.the men between the ages of about 16 and 65 were doing forced labour
:04:45. > :04:50.already. The idea that beyond Jew could go riding around Berlin on a
:04:51. > :04:56.bicycle, jump off and say shalom to his friends is frankly preposterous.
:04:57. > :05:04.I have to repeat myself a little bit, because to come to a very basic
:05:05. > :05:09.point here, is it totally impossible but these events might happen, or is
:05:10. > :05:15.it implausible or improbable? There is a distinction to draw. We are
:05:16. > :05:19.dwelling on the fact that they were growing up together and they were
:05:20. > :05:21.close childhood friends and there are numerous accounts were the
:05:22. > :05:26.friendship survived the system even for buried and people, there were
:05:27. > :05:35.accounts of people hiding Jews in Berlin. We were of course referring
:05:36. > :05:44.to these accounts that were documented several times. Eva, we do
:05:45. > :05:51.CDs for characters, they are not straightforward, they each commit
:05:52. > :05:59.war crimes of a kind, Charly betrays a Jewish woman, they each have their
:06:00. > :06:03.moments of crisis. Indeed, but I would like to say that this is
:06:04. > :06:08.implausible to the point, it seems to me, of being ahistorical. I
:06:09. > :06:17.imagine some friendships did survive but for me it is the process of
:06:18. > :06:21.indoctrination and ideology, I don't see how the innocence would have
:06:22. > :06:24.been maintained in 1941 and how division of innocence can be
:06:25. > :06:31.maintained today. The opening scene, it might have been a scene of
:06:32. > :06:39.young people going off to college, charming, carefree, hopeful. As
:06:40. > :06:43.producer, I suppose you had to have them like that, they could not be
:06:44. > :06:52.Nazi from the outset? That is a complex question, in a way. I have
:06:53. > :07:03.to come to a point -- to the point for that they were as innocent.
:07:04. > :07:07.There was no innocence, he is saying that in the first statement, the war
:07:08. > :07:11.will bring out the worst in us, they commit the most horrible crimes,
:07:12. > :07:16.they kill other people. A failure to understand how this is not portrayed
:07:17. > :07:20.as something... But the point is they are innocent at the beginning
:07:21. > :07:23.and then corrupted. It is only after they have been corrupted in many
:07:24. > :07:27.different ways, and the programme does that brilliantly, but the
:07:28. > :07:31.problem is they are shown as innocent at the beginning, and that
:07:32. > :07:36.makes them into victims. A German series that shows young Germans as
:07:37. > :07:41.victims of the Nazi system, innocent at the beginning and corrupted at
:07:42. > :07:44.the end. Quite early on, Charly is pretty unsympathetic, she spouts
:07:45. > :07:53.knotty propaganda, says she is there to represent German order -- spouts
:07:54. > :08:02.Nazi propaganda. She betrays a Jewish woman who is later sent to
:08:03. > :08:05.her death. I think that it was possible in Nazi Germany, and we can
:08:06. > :08:14.see this from letters and diaries from the time, and memoirs, to
:08:15. > :08:17.believe in the People's community, to throw yourself into it with the
:08:18. > :08:24.kind of idealism that Charly demonstrates very well. Some of the
:08:25. > :08:29.soldiers we later see on the Eastern front, we hear them articulating
:08:30. > :08:34.that sense of doing something wonderful for German people,
:08:35. > :08:44.conquering land to live in. And yet at the same time feeling warmth
:08:45. > :08:48.towards a particular Jew, not to see him as the enemy, as the Jews, and
:08:49. > :08:57.abstract in the propaganda, that is plausible. But I think what the
:08:58. > :09:02.later scenes bring out is a peculiar positive aspect of National
:09:03. > :09:06.Socialism. It could mobilise the idealism, the passions of young
:09:07. > :09:12.people, gave them a pigeon of a Germany in which all people were
:09:13. > :09:17.equal, treated on their merit -- gave them a vision. The one problem
:09:18. > :09:21.I have got with that way of singing this group is that Wilhelm has
:09:22. > :09:28.already served in the German army in Poland. That was not a picnic. The
:09:29. > :09:31.German army in Poland committed atrocities. More recent research has
:09:32. > :09:37.shown that from the first moment the German troops crossed the border on
:09:38. > :09:41.the 1st of September 1939 they were shooting civilians, targeting Jews
:09:42. > :09:45.specifically. That is the area I want to come onto now because we
:09:46. > :09:48.have different views about the accuracy and the context of the way
:09:49. > :09:52.the Germans were portrayed, but what about the weight of the way the
:09:53. > :09:56.Germans were portrayed, but what about the been protests outside the
:09:57. > :10:00.BBC about this. A court case in Poland, damning reviews in the
:10:01. > :10:05.United States. In particular, criticism about the way the Polish
:10:06. > :10:08.resistance, the AK, is shown. Here is the Polish ambassador
:10:09. > :10:10.resistance, the AK, is shown. Here Let's look at this film as a film.
:10:11. > :10:28.It is a fantastic German soap opera. Let's look at this film as a film.
:10:29. > :10:38.clean, and somehow shown against some filthy partisans from Poland
:10:39. > :10:48.who are anti-Semites. In general, shown against an American wielding
:10:49. > :11:00.his cigar and employing a Gestapo officer, Russians who either shoot
:11:01. > :11:05.someone or molest women, etc. It is a moral equivalence between the
:11:06. > :11:07.victims and the traitors. When you are a viewer, you like attractive,
:11:08. > :11:11.beautiful Germans and beautiful are a viewer, you like attractive,
:11:12. > :11:15.girls and disliked those are a viewer, you like attractive,
:11:16. > :11:20.partisans from the forests. I'm afraid that a lot of young people
:11:21. > :11:25.will and will watch this film and not necessarily,
:11:26. > :11:29.Russia, Other Places, maybe Latin America or Asia, this will be the
:11:30. > :11:48.Viktor of the Second World America or Asia, this will be the
:11:49. > :12:18.they can just see Jewish prisoners. This is completely absurd.
:12:19. > :12:25.In Poland, you had a lot of people who lost their lives. Do you think
:12:26. > :12:30.they could just open the doors and close the doors? It is completely
:12:31. > :12:36.absurd and unbelievable. We cannot agree with this kind of stereotypes
:12:37. > :12:43.and presenting a history which is false. This is not an objective
:12:44. > :12:48.presentation of history. You hear the criticism, not an objective
:12:49. > :12:52.representation of history and particular objection to the scene in
:12:53. > :12:57.the train with the AK, the Polish resistance, did not allow the Jews
:12:58. > :13:00.the train with the AK, the Polish of the train. There are a variety of
:13:01. > :13:05.remarks which were made in that statement. I would like to dwell
:13:06. > :13:08.one thing, the German being portrayed was nice. Once again, I
:13:09. > :13:11.have two object portrayed was nice. Once again, I
:13:12. > :13:14.the scene where the main character shoots a Russian officer in the back
:13:15. > :13:20.of his head. Forgive me, but I cannot agree that they arbitrate in
:13:21. > :13:26.a positive way. I really cannot agree with that. In the third
:13:27. > :13:30.episode he shoots a five-year-old child. I fail to understand how this
:13:31. > :13:35.is a perception of niceness. Somebody might have to explain that
:13:36. > :13:41.to me. The other thing is there is an SS officer that shoots a Jewish
:13:42. > :13:45.girl within 30 minutes of the first episode, a clear sign of these
:13:46. > :13:51.atrocities. They are wholly depicted at that time, and I would have to
:13:52. > :13:54.point that out. On this particular point, the episode with the train,
:13:55. > :14:03.this is what has caused particular offence... I will come to that, of
:14:04. > :14:08.course. Talking in general about four minutes in five hours with the
:14:09. > :14:16.question of elements of anti-Semitism within the home Army
:14:17. > :14:20.and I understand, and we have to realise, of course, that we offended
:14:21. > :14:26.people and did not want to do that, so we already apologised to that
:14:27. > :14:30.fact. There was no tendency behind it to say be wanted to betray the
:14:31. > :14:34.niceness of the Germans and the other parties in a different way,
:14:35. > :14:38.that is something I would have to point out. And also the question of
:14:39. > :14:44.anti-Semitism within the Army is well documented. But we did not want
:14:45. > :14:54.to make a portrayal of the home Army, per se. But this has caused a
:14:55. > :15:01.huge amount of upset, particularly in Poland. Yes. In the Polish
:15:02. > :15:06.episodes, this is the only time when we see characters who are not
:15:07. > :15:11.completely marginal or minor aches wrestling very alert personal
:15:12. > :15:28.anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic conviction. -- expressing personal
:15:29. > :15:35.anti-Semitism. And of course, this will be taken as a portrayal of the
:15:36. > :15:41.whole army. And it is a very partial truth about the home Army. Yes,
:15:42. > :15:47.there were anti-Semitic factions, the home Army on the whole was not
:15:48. > :15:52.systematically ideological the anti-Semitic. Yet this is what
:15:53. > :15:59.people would perhaps get of the AK as a whole. Once again, we are
:16:00. > :16:10.talking about a moment within hours of the series. It is clearly
:16:11. > :16:15.anti-Semitic. But I can't agree on the point you are making. I
:16:16. > :16:21.understand the danger, the perception, that it is perceived
:16:22. > :16:26.that it is a general statement about the whole resistance Army, but for
:16:27. > :16:31.us, the central element is that our major character, Viktor, only
:16:32. > :16:38.survives due to the actions of the home Army. It is not the Germans who
:16:39. > :16:47.save him, it is the Polish army. In the end, the actions which are per
:16:48. > :16:53.-- portrayed, he is the one who is surviving. We want to show the value
:16:54. > :17:01.of the home Army. And what is it possible to say about the elements
:17:02. > :17:06.of anti-Semitism? I think that the historical consensus now is that
:17:07. > :17:13.Polish society was riven and under incredible rusher. It was flooded
:17:14. > :17:18.with Nazi propaganda, and Poland was a very diverse society. And for Jews
:17:19. > :17:23.who were trying to survive in the forest, it was difficult to tell the
:17:24. > :17:34.home Army from the colonists underground from partisans from
:17:35. > :17:41.Ukraine or Belarus. I think that we have now got a much more nuanced
:17:42. > :17:46.understanding of Polish society, and as Eva was saying, the home Army did
:17:47. > :17:57.contain anti-Semitic elements, but also elements that tried to stamp
:17:58. > :18:04.out the betrayal of the Jews. And the other side of the story, those
:18:05. > :18:12.who try to help the Jews, is not detected here, and instead you get
:18:13. > :18:16.the violent side. Something like 20,000 Jews survived in Warsaw and
:18:17. > :18:22.they protection of polls. But remember that Viktor survives
:18:23. > :18:26.because he is thrown out the Home Army unit because they say he can't
:18:27. > :18:30.guarantee his safety because they never use Edu. It wouldn't have
:18:31. > :18:32.taken much to have one or two minutes whether members of the
:18:33. > :18:38.partisan group argue with each other, where you have somebody who
:18:39. > :18:43.stands up for the anti-Semites and says, you are wrong. So I do think
:18:44. > :18:51.it is unfair, partial the fiction of the Home Army. Many were not
:18:52. > :18:55.anti-Semitic, and I can understand quite why Polish people are
:18:56. > :19:04.offended. And you talk from your own family experience of Jewish people
:19:05. > :19:11.in Poland. My parents' story, they grew up in a small town in Ukraine
:19:12. > :19:20.which was one third Ukrainian, one third Polish, one third Jewish,
:19:21. > :19:25.before the war. They were hidden by Polish and mainly Ukrainian
:19:26. > :19:35.neighbours, entire families were exterminated. So in a sense, this
:19:36. > :19:38.gave me a point of entry into understanding the internal
:19:39. > :19:47.complexities of the Polish situation during the war. And the range of
:19:48. > :19:57.behaviour, and the range of Polish attitudes towards Jews during the
:19:58. > :20:12.war. So yes. I totally would agree with everything you are saying. I
:20:13. > :20:17.produced a movie showing about a Polish partisan who hid a man. But I
:20:18. > :20:22.wanted to point out what our perception was and why it is
:20:23. > :20:26.important that he was helped by Polish people as well, even if it is
:20:27. > :20:32.shown in the ways of storytelling. Interesting that you mentioned
:20:33. > :20:44.storytelling, because this is what I want to move on to now. We have
:20:45. > :20:48.discussed the accuracy of the series, but it is a drama, after
:20:49. > :20:51.all. How much should writers be tied to historical fact when creating
:20:52. > :20:55.fiction? Generation War is the latest in several films which have
:20:56. > :20:58.been set during the war. We spoke to two writers who have struggled with
:20:59. > :21:01.the dilemmas of balancing history and drama. I think you can do
:21:02. > :21:03.anything you want was a writer. You don't have any responsibility to
:21:04. > :21:08.inform or educate people. My job is to entertain people. But if you
:21:09. > :21:14.twist history and tell lies, if you use propaganda or distort, you are
:21:15. > :21:19.letting down the viewer. What do you mean by historical accuracy? Whose
:21:20. > :21:27.historical accuracy are we recording? You can look at one set
:21:28. > :21:30.of viewpoints, and then you read personal testimonies and private
:21:31. > :21:38.diaries, and they tell you something with a different spin. Dramatists
:21:39. > :21:40.don't work by rules, and that also applies to German dramatists,
:21:41. > :21:45.particularly now, 70 or 80 years later. They have the right to
:21:46. > :21:49.approach the war and write about the war in the way that they want to.
:21:50. > :21:57.The producers and writers and the cast and crew of Generation War have
:21:58. > :22:04.created what to my mind was an incredible drama about five very
:22:05. > :22:11.young people caught up in the Second World War. If they had tried to give
:22:12. > :22:16.a complete picture of everybody's experience of the war, you would
:22:17. > :22:21.have ended up with nothing. You are telling the complete of their lives
:22:22. > :22:26.in the war. Your Tyler McGregor the picture of something that is deeply
:22:27. > :22:33.personal -- you are telling the picture of some deeply personal. As
:22:34. > :22:38.a dramatist, you ask what that situation does to them.
:22:39. > :22:46.An interesting point. This isn't a historical document. It isn't, but
:22:47. > :22:51.the producers have stressed how much research they did I talked about how
:22:52. > :22:56.accurate and authentic it is. And as soon as critics point out something
:22:57. > :23:06.that isn't authentic, they say, it is just a drama. This is not a
:23:07. > :23:10.lecture. I think this series is let down in some ways by playing fast
:23:11. > :23:15.and loose with the past. In many respects, it is extremely accurate.
:23:16. > :23:18.It does capture the mood of the time, and is astonishingly
:23:19. > :23:25.representative of German points of view. I have to point out that I
:23:26. > :23:32.didn't mention once the question of poetic licence in this discussion.
:23:33. > :23:36.It is not my line of argument. But of course there is the broad subject
:23:37. > :23:42.of how you have to think about a drama which of course depicts a
:23:43. > :23:51.special period in history which has a reference to historical knowledge,
:23:52. > :23:56.and that is the situation we have. We wanted to accept this reference
:23:57. > :24:01.and the demands that come with it. We also wanted to tell a story, so
:24:02. > :24:05.we chose not to do a documentary or a historical account, which I think
:24:06. > :24:11.you're history of the Second World War alone has 800 pages. It is
:24:12. > :24:17.complex. There are hundreds of books. But as a television viewer
:24:18. > :24:22.rather than just a historian, what did you make of it? We wouldn't be
:24:23. > :24:28.here discussing it if it wasn't great television. If it didn't carry
:24:29. > :24:33.you through and make you sympathise with these characters and share
:24:34. > :24:36.their fate. It is terrific stuff. If it was a rubbish programme, we
:24:37. > :24:40.wouldn't be bothering. But having said that, what strikes me about
:24:41. > :24:44.historical drama is that there is an awful lot of it, and it gets people
:24:45. > :24:49.into the past, so that is great for historians. TV drama is fantastic
:24:50. > :24:55.when it comes to portraying the background. Every car you see is
:24:56. > :25:01.going to be of the right date, every tank of the right model, every
:25:02. > :25:03.uniformed an upright. But when it comes to portraying people, it is a
:25:04. > :25:06.different matter, because you can't portray the people of the past, even
:25:07. > :25:14.the relatively recent past accurately. It is another country,
:25:15. > :25:20.the past is another country, they do things differently there. Seeing
:25:21. > :25:26.can't have Henry VIII in a drama spouting Tudor English, to start
:25:27. > :25:28.with. We wouldn't understand him. You wouldn't understand them if they
:25:29. > :25:32.thought like the people in those days. And viewers might not grasp
:25:33. > :25:41.that fact. It does have a curacy Molder
:25:42. > :25:49.message, which is that underneath the skin, the uniform, we are all
:25:50. > :25:59.the same -- a very culturally modern message. We see them at the
:26:00. > :26:06.beginning with the implicit message that they are going forward into a
:26:07. > :26:10.new world. It is remarkable just how many times in the series the
:26:11. > :26:17.characters literally change uniforms or change sides. Everything becomes
:26:18. > :26:24.blurred. With a Polish good or bad, the Germans good or bad? The Jews
:26:25. > :26:30.are always good, they have to be. They can't be bad, certainly in a
:26:31. > :26:35.German production. But there is a curiously German multicultural
:26:36. > :26:40.message that if we can overcome petty hatred and blinkers, we will
:26:41. > :26:49.understand that underneath the skin, we are all the same.
:26:50. > :26:57.21st-century glasses? I totally have to disagree. At the end, these three
:26:58. > :27:02.characters I nearly as destroyed as the people who have died. If you
:27:03. > :27:07.look at their faces, you can see that they are devastated by what
:27:08. > :27:12.happened, and not at all in the message that we are all the same and
:27:13. > :27:19.everything is going to be OK. They were influenced by what they are
:27:20. > :27:22.experiencing is very young people, and these people became our
:27:23. > :27:29.grandparents, and they rebuild the country. The other thing is, I
:27:30. > :27:34.disagree as well with what you were saying about the characterisation.
:27:35. > :27:39.We had so many reactions coming from our audience, and so many people
:27:40. > :27:45.said, this is my story, my father's story or my mother's story. Will
:27:46. > :27:52.ease the stories they wanted to believe? I'm simply pointing out
:27:53. > :27:58.that we had these reactions. If you remember it, 70 years later, that
:27:59. > :28:02.was your experience. Richard mentioned Henry VIII, but is there
:28:03. > :28:06.something particular about this period of history that has its own
:28:07. > :28:13.with an ability when people start to create historical novels dramas? It
:28:14. > :28:18.is a particularly horrific history, and it is still very charged with
:28:19. > :28:22.very intense passions and feelings. It is a history which has caused and
:28:23. > :28:28.hold suffering and is still very close to us, so yes, I suppose there
:28:29. > :28:34.is a special responsibility to portray accurately. I would like to
:28:35. > :28:39.just echo Richard in saying that it is a very powerful drama, and I
:28:40. > :28:49.think the depictions of the war are extremely powerful, and the sense of
:28:50. > :28:59.the meaninglessness of war. A terrific director, we have. So I do
:29:00. > :29:05.think that is terrific. I do think that there is a responsibility, and
:29:06. > :29:16.let me back up a little bit. This is a drama which gains its significance
:29:17. > :29:19.and import from the history, so there is a responsibility to depict
:29:20. > :29:27.the history with some accuracy, some balance. So why was the drama
:29:28. > :29:31.produced? So what does Generation war tell us about the way Germany is
:29:32. > :29:33.now confronting its past? The journalist and broadcaster Anne
:29:34. > :29:36.McElvoy has written extensively about the country's history. How
:29:37. > :30:11.does she think modern Germans now regard the brutality of the war?
:30:12. > :30:16.I think because the Holocaust has been quite rightly and
:30:17. > :30:21.understandably centrestage in terms of never being able to be out done
:30:22. > :30:25.on atrocities it has had the unfortunate effect of making people
:30:26. > :30:33.perhaps less curious, less aware of things that happened in Poland,
:30:34. > :30:37.Ukraine, in Belarus, because those countries were under the blanket of
:30:38. > :30:45.coming as for so long until 1989, other reasons, things were hidden or
:30:46. > :30:48.turned to the advantage of the coming this regime. It is like going
:30:49. > :30:52.down into the cellar of history and finding out there is another one
:30:53. > :30:57.below that that you have never been allowed to go to. Since 1989 there
:30:58. > :31:03.have been a lot of Germans growing up without, great, job done,
:31:04. > :31:07.unification, they won't keep coming after us with the question, how
:31:08. > :31:14.guilty do you feel about the Second World War? If it is a bit like Dan
:31:15. > :31:19.Tanabe, it is a way of getting people in front of the TV to ask the
:31:20. > :31:28.question, who do you identify with, and what would you have done? And,
:31:29. > :31:32.to my mind, that is not a bad thing. I do think it was the right time for
:31:33. > :31:36.this series to be made because it is the last time in which you will have
:31:37. > :31:44.living German witnesses who took part in the war, the third Reich.
:31:45. > :31:49.The television, the television drama, it is much better to have
:31:50. > :31:53.that sense of connection, even if there are relatively few people
:31:54. > :31:58.around to still talk about it, it does open up a conversation on a
:31:59. > :32:02.different level. Sir Richard, an enormous question
:32:03. > :32:08.for you, how have attitudes in Germany towards the war changed over
:32:09. > :32:13.time Gus Macrae there was a kind of collective amnesiac after the war,
:32:14. > :32:17.they wanted to get back to rebuilding the country, having the
:32:18. > :32:23.economic miracle. From the 70s, there were the beginnings of a
:32:24. > :32:28.confrontation with the Nazi past. Since 1989, the fall of the Berlin
:32:29. > :32:33.Wall, the reunification of Germany, the Holocaust has moved very much
:32:34. > :32:38.centrestage for Germany's self-consciousness. If you ask what
:32:39. > :32:43.makes Germans German, one of the things is a feeling of historical
:32:44. > :32:48.responsibility. But it has been tempered since 1990 with a feeling
:32:49. > :32:52.of victimhood. 11 million Germans were brutally expelled from Eastern
:32:53. > :32:56.Europe at the end of the war from many Eastern European countries.
:32:57. > :33:05.They were subject to mass bombing during the war, there is a lot of
:33:06. > :33:08.resentment. There has been a lot of television and popular works about
:33:09. > :33:12.that kind of victimhood and I think one of the important things about
:33:13. > :33:17.the series is it begins to move beyond that, so you showed the young
:33:18. > :33:24.Germans become perpetrators and that, I think, is something new,
:33:25. > :33:27.shoving the chairman Army is participating in atrocities on the
:33:28. > :33:33.Eastern front, something you could not have done 20 years ago. It was
:33:34. > :33:39.always the SS, not the Wehrmacht, wasn't it? In the 1990s there was an
:33:40. > :33:42.exhibition about this which caused riots in the streets of Munich
:33:43. > :33:50.because it betrayed the Army as guilty. You called the series Our
:33:51. > :33:57.Mothers, Our Fathers because you wanted this to be about people who
:33:58. > :34:00.were still alive? As I mentioned already, it is the last moment to
:34:01. > :34:05.have a dialogue between the generations now, because the people
:34:06. > :34:11.we offer training are at the end of their lives. It needs three
:34:12. > :34:16.generations to really cover the generation who experienced it, the
:34:17. > :34:19.one coming after, and the third-generation taking a new view
:34:20. > :34:24.on it, which is what happened here. The other things are the means of
:34:25. > :34:32.modern storytelling, quality TV where you really deal with the
:34:33. > :34:37.characters, so we choose characters who did horrible things but we
:34:38. > :34:45.wanted to portray them, and wanted to show that these are the oil who
:34:46. > :34:50.actually built the country and who made everything we are living in
:34:51. > :34:53.now, in a way, and so it became very personal for everybody, because
:34:54. > :34:57.everybody in the audience in Germany was referring to their personal
:34:58. > :35:04.history will stop we started a debate, a new level of awareness. It
:35:05. > :35:11.is another example of a kind of overcompensation. Juggling the 1950s
:35:12. > :35:15.and 60s, Germans are particularly West Germany, could not stop talking
:35:16. > :35:20.about the war. Their were commemorations in towns and cities
:35:21. > :35:24.that were bombed, there were struggles to get war criminals out
:35:25. > :35:30.of prison. The Germans had a specific view of the war, able in
:35:31. > :35:35.which they ended up as victims of a criminal regime, the victims of
:35:36. > :35:38.Hitler. In the debates that go on about the war in Germany during that
:35:39. > :35:46.period, the Jews are completely absent. They only come into German
:35:47. > :35:52.narratives of the war in the 1980s and 1990s, and only become more
:35:53. > :35:57.prominent. In this series, you have a Jewish character central to a
:35:58. > :35:59.group of German friends, and it is a peculiar distortion. For most
:36:00. > :36:04.Germans living through the third Reich, you simply would not have
:36:05. > :36:11.known they were there. To revisit that period and the consciousness
:36:12. > :36:17.and memories of Germans who survived the war through the 50s, 60s and
:36:18. > :36:20.70s, imagining that Jews would be central to their experiences and
:36:21. > :36:29.their memories is, again, a very subtle but important distortion. You
:36:30. > :36:33.have to remember they are less than 1% of the population in 1933 and
:36:34. > :36:37.half of them have gone by the time the series begins. Watched team-mate
:36:38. > :36:41.of Polish attitudes towards the war, either? Has there been a
:36:42. > :36:48.similar process of self examination? There has been since
:36:49. > :36:55.1989. The process was much delayed because of censorship Germans are
:36:56. > :36:58.called for, so that none of the subjects could be discussed openly
:36:59. > :37:08.and in a way that allowed for a kind of fixation for a coveted of certain
:37:09. > :37:15.distortions of history. But, since 1989, there has been a very thorough
:37:16. > :37:25.and sometimes very painful debate about all aspects of the Polish
:37:26. > :37:33.participation in the war, including cases of complicity of aggression
:37:34. > :37:43.towards Jews, as anti-Semitism. So there has been for recognition. In
:37:44. > :37:50.Poland in particular, once again it is an infernally complicated
:37:51. > :37:57.problem, the Polish - Jewish dialogue has been very complicated.
:37:58. > :38:01.As complicated as the German - Jewish dialogue came at some point.
:38:02. > :38:08.It was clear who the victims were... The question of the Germans
:38:09. > :38:20.being portrayed as victims once again, it is totally clear to me,
:38:21. > :38:24.and did my perception we don't show them as victims, we show what it
:38:25. > :38:30.makes for people to become perpetrators and commit these crimes
:38:31. > :38:34.and how it influenced a generation. I think we could spark of several
:38:35. > :38:37.more hours of debate as to what you said, but sadly we have run out of
:38:38. > :38:43.time. I would like to thank all of my panel, Professor A bit says
:38:44. > :38:47.wryly, Benjamin Benedict, Eva Hoffman and Sir Richard Evans. If
:38:48. > :38:50.you missed the last part of Generation War and want to see what
:38:51. > :38:56.the debate is about, it will be on I play for another week. Good night.
:38:57. > :39:00.-- it will be on the eye player.