My rating is 5 out of 10. Why? Just because of the fact that it wasn't made properly. A lot of scenes that don't make any sense and are just useless from my perspective. The movie doesn't bring you the atmosphere of the situation this woman where put in. It just revolves into the fact that women where raped and it doesn't show besides that. Also, a lot of boring and long scenes to just fill up the time.

I have not seen a better film portraying civilian women in WWII. The daily sturggle between reality, morality and idealogy. Men on the other side pour their rage and revenge upon them. Men on their side cannot understand what they have undergone and cannot forgive what they have done. The women of Berlin had no one but themselves. Some chose to fight and die, and some, like the protagonist, chose to survive and kept her hope for the eventual reunion with her husband. As she described, Russian men appreciated well-educated women, while German men were the opposite. The supposed savage and animal whom she chose as protector turned out to be something quite different, and he gave everything to save her, even wanted to take her with him after the war. This reality clashed with the long and endless waiting of her husband. The 30-minute promise was long overdue and she had to make a choice. Yet again, fate chose for her. The commander was taken away by NKVD for what he did to save her, and the returning husband was not the person she was waiting for anymore- bitter, broken, and alienated.The woman at first was terrified and angered by the barbaric behaviours of the Red Army. As time passes, she began to understand their pain and realised the Germans also committed horrific atrocities against civilians. Her blind patriotism was unsettled by the accounts of the enemy, the feeling of betrayal by her own government, and worst of all, her own fellow German men, who left them defenseless. This was the beginning of post-war Germany- the rise of sexual equality and limited government authority.

This is very accurate film of the way the people of Berlin were treated by many of the Russians. Very well acted by the ensemble. Even with subtitles I found the film very good. The lead actress, Nina was outstanding with her facial actions of a woman in such distress and trying to regain some dignity. The ongoing eye contact with the Major really drove home the relationship they had. The Major's defending the people against his own troops and yet trying to remain in control was evident as a struggle. One can only imagine living in such conditions and trying to survive. This retribution against the citizens seemed right to the invading troops for what was perpetrated on their country by the German troops. This is a very true account of humanity vs inhuman acts.

A well made German movie that touches with frankness a very delicate historical subject: the mass rape of German women by Soviet soldiers during and after the Battle of Berlin. The movie, which has a good historical reconstruction of the times, is based on the memories of a woman, who choose to publish the book anonymously. After her death, it was revealed that she was a relatively well to do minor functionary in the Nazi propaganda ministry. She knew several languages including Russian and was well traveled. Her book was first published in the 1950s in Germany, but its frank portrayal of the sexual relations between the Germans and the Russians shocked many at the time who felt it besmirched German women. Also I suppose some people were afraid the book could be accused of Nazi revisionism. As a result, the book languished in obscurity for many decades afterward, and it was only republished, with great public success, in 2003, well after the Cold war ended and the author died.According to the movie, the Russians engaged in rape not because they were sadistic (very few of them are portrayed this way) but because they have a very natural urge for sex and they had few available Russian women around among the troops. In this, the movie disagrees with the feminist adage that rape is not about sex but about power. The Russian soldiers were so starved of sex that they even rape older German women in their 60s or even 70s. As shown in this film, German women at first were obviously shocked at being raped, but later would more or less adapt to the situation and even joke about it, and seek powerful Russians as lovers, to protect themselves from mass rapes by drunken, lowly soldiers. The protagonist here seeks as a lover a Russian commander that seems to be quite a decent fellow, but who would eventually find there are problems in getting too near to her.I think that in general the movie is quite fair in its portrayal of the Russians troops. This doesn't mean that if the movie is ever shown in Russia (I seriously doubt that) the audience would feel very comfortable in the portrayal of their countrymen: most of the Soviet soldiers appear here as loud, brash, vulgar, many times drunk. But they are not portrayed as sadistic. Personally, I don't think one can make a moral equivalence between the rape of German women (which is obviously reprehensible) and the genocidal behavior of the German army in the Eastern front during World War II, killing millions of innocent Jews and Slavs (the movie should have mentioned more about the latter, I think). That objection aside, this is a fine movie.