In Part 1 it is mentioned that Ferdinand serves in France, but by then, that war theater was in crisis and the last thing the military would allow is that a soldier would leave his post. The same happens when Lena and her fiancé dance in the mansion: the first waltz to be heard is one of Tchaikowsky, a Russian composer, and that kind of cultural uttering was forbidden and quite punished.

"Die Flucht" is a World-War-II movie from 8 years ago. It was made for television and, from what I have read, it reached gigantic audience numbers. It consists of two episodes of 90 minutes each. Director Kai Wessel is a prolific television director and his most famous big screen work is probably a Hildegard Knef biopic starring Heike Makatsch. The movie won a Bambi and a lot of that is probably because of Maria Furtwängler, who is in almost every scene during these 3 hours. That does not mean, however, that I felt she gave a good performance. In my opinion, she is the female Jan Josef Liefers and even less talented, not only because both are "Tatort" detectives. She is mediocre at best, sometimes even bad, has entire films centered around her and basically always plays the same characters. Also she is extremely over-hyped and does not have a whole lot of range, but lots of recognition value instead.I cringed the first time early on when she insists on leading the horses on her own when the guy sitting next to her on the carriage wants to lead them. I am really sick of Furtwängler's whole "strong perfect woman" shtick as that is really all she every plays. Of course her character is also against the Nazis in this film needless to say. Then she is fighting for her daughter and of course pretty much every man she comes across has romantic interest in her. The only reason why I won't give this film less than four stars is because the supporting actors (Zischler, Schmiede, Winkler and others) are okay, sometimes even good, and some of the war references are nicely done too. However, it's nothing we have not seen as good or better in some other of these uncountable German WW2-movies. Another criticism would be that almost all the male characters in this film were so uninterestingly written that even the best actor could not save them, probably that we won't forget how Furtwängler's character is such a courageous female character that strong male characters could be a danger to her being the undeniable center of the film.So, as a whole, I would not recommend watching this movie, because it also dragged a couple times. Thumbs down.

In 1933 Germany elected Adolf Hitler as Reichschancellor, and with him came the downright criminal Nazi-government. Among many other atrocities, Hitler started the most devastating war in history of mankind: his campaign against Stalin's Communist Soviet Union. The year was 1941.Inspired by genuine racism, the Germans behaved terribly in the part of the Soviet Union occupied by them. Consequently Soviet revenge was equally terrible when in January 1945 Stalin's victorious army invaded East Prussia, Germany's most Eastern province. To make things worse, Hitler stubbornly refused to evacuate East Prussia's civil population.'Die Flucht' (= German for 'the flight, the escape') is about this invasion. I am impressed by the historical correctness applied by the German filmmakers: after all, for many Germans the loss of East Prussia still is a highly emotional issue. Add to that the excellent quality of its shooting and acting, and all these ingredients make 'die Flucht' an epic and excellent film.

This film deals with the plight of Germany's former eastern population at the end of World War II. Most Americans are unaware of the brutal and criminal expulsion of some 14 million Germans from their homes in what is now Poland. Millions of innocent men, women and children were murdered by the advancing Red Army. The Germans tried to flee, but their treks were rolled over by Soviet tanks and they were mowed down by a hail of machine gun fire. We will not discuss how the Russians treated German women. Those Germans who did not flee were forced to either become Polish or leave their homeland. Most of them decided to leave since they were already being treated like second-class citizens (examples: German language forbidden, economic sanctions, etc).Many people have been waiting for a film like this to break the silence. For years no one dared mention the expulsion of the Germans. German war crimes got plenty of air time, but the evil that was brought down on innocent German civilians never seemed to be of much importance.The film is about a woman who, at the start, is living in West Germany. She has a daughter, and after hearing that her father is sick, she moves back to East Prussia to help him. As the story moves forward, the Russians are getting closer and closer to Eastern Germany. The family decides to build a wagon and flee, which is against the law. The Nazis did not want the people to show any signs of defeatism, so they forbade the population any type of retreat.The film could have shown more Soviet atrocities to show what hell it really was for these poor people. The film shows some of the horror, but a couple of times it focuses back on German crimes, which we hear about every time we turn on the History Channel.That should suffice for a general idea of what the film is about. No spoilers are needed here. Spoilers really do ruin a film.Watch the movie and learn something about German history.