Hermann My Father (Hermann mein Vater)

1944, on the morning of June 6th.

German occupying forces in France defend their Atlantic fortifications

against the vastly superior strength of the advancing Allies.

In vain.

In these bunkers all the soldiers will die,

buried in the rubble

that collapses all around and on top of them.

My father wasn't one of them.

Not any more.

My father is still alive.

You're still alive, Father.

You learnt French and France has always meant a lot to you.

Can you tell me a little bit about what France means to you?

Yes, I like the country,

the sea that almost surrounds France.

And the French people.

Their way of life.

Their politeness.

HERMANN, MY FATHER

You also used to read French books.

Pardon?

You also used to read French books.

Yes.

What did you read?

Guy de Maupassant, for example.

"Mademoiselle de La Seiglière." We read it at school too.

And Balzac...

I read some of his work.

And Jules Verne.

I can just about put them on an equal footing.

These were books you read as a boy?

- Yes. - You read Flaubert.

Flaubert too. Gustave Flaubert, yes.

Yes, but now, being here 45 years later,

the last time I spoke French,

it is of course difficult

to remember it all again.

The older you get, the worse your memory becomes.

And your memory becomes less...

You forget individual words and then...

then it is of course difficult to speak fluently.

It was also very difficult for you

to come back to France at all.

Am I wrong about that?

Memories of the war never fade.

They always remain quite vivid.

And then of course...

quite clearly you have to show some reticence

towards the people you have hurt so much.

My father.

In 1940, you were a soldier in France.

In 1944, you were in Greece or Russia.

Weapons of death and destruction

that rained down in this attack on France.

And finally for the French people,

freedom.

Freedom from the German occupiers.

The Allies landed here.

From here they advanced towards the German border.

The war went on for almost a year after this devastating raid.

The occupying forces came here in June 1940, of course,

and we were under Nazi occupation

until the 6th June 1944.

Was it hard being under Nazi occupation?

Yes, it was very hard and above all oppressive.

We had to work for the occupying forces

and anyone who refused, was deported to Germany.

Sadly, many never returned.

But you still honour this cemetery which has lots of Germans in it.

Yes.

When soldiers are buried after they die,

you have to honour them.

For the sake of future generations, this page in history

must teach them about peace

and ensure that they never experience war.

And it has to be said that the soldiers who were here

weren't all Nazis.

Of course.

From the contact we've had,

we found out that many of them were forcibly enlisted

and they were obliged, as we were,

to put up with the Nazi regime.

My father didn't join the National Socialist Party.

That's why he was forced to become a soldier.

So, as you say,

it's up to future generations to make sure they don't repeat...

- such things. - The errors.

I think the best thing for future generations

is to get to know one another very well

and, as others have said, to love one another.

So why didn't you join the Party?

I was the son of a primary school teacher.

And it was common knowledge that primary school teachers

were democratically-minded.

And that was the case with us as well.

Other primary school teachers from neighbouring villages

met up with each other socially every Saturday,

at a different teacher's house each time,

and teachers were not exactly the most stupid people.

And therefore I had to admit

that the comments they made there,

against the Hitler regime and so on,

gave me plenty of food for thought

and for that reason

I continually put off joining the Party.

Although I was put under pressure from many sides,

I became convinced,

from the conversations of these teachers with each other,

that under Hitler's regime we would end up at war again.

And that's why I didn't join the Party.

The consequence of this whole business was of course that these teachers...

that one teacher after another was replaced.

Including my father.

His place was taken by a young man

who was already trained in Hitler's ideology.

You were one of the first to be called up.

Yes.

This German military equipment is still left standing on the Normandy beaches

to rust away.

After 40 years.

Inge?

Oh, Inge. You're there. Good.

I'm phoning from this call box...

A lifelong love for this woman, my mother.

A love of France whose border you had to cross like this.

As a soldier, as the occupier.

And witness what your fellow countrymen created there.

A pile of rubble.

France, 1940.

Entering a country you love like this.

On these vehicles, tanks, machines, in this uniform.

France, 1940.

You say you never shot anyone.

That's what they all say.

If nobody had fired their guns there wouldn't have been this war.

Can you enter a country as a soldier

on these tanks, these machines, without firing your guns?

You must also have been afraid that you would be shot at

when you invade like this.

Forgetting Flaubert, Maupassant,

forgetting that you thought you loved this country,

and you go marching in like this.

I look for your face here.

One of them must be you.

No, you were in a truck during the invasion,

setting up lines of communication.

Trying as little as possible to be an enemy.

But the others around you came here as the enemy, and so you did too.

Did you find the place where you were stationed in 1940?

I was here in the spring of 1940.

There were lots of these little houses...

You tell Philippe Collin what it was like.

It's easier than telling me.

In that house. Four or six in one house.

So these little wooden houses were fishermen's huts?

Yes, perhaps. I don't know.

But on the other side of the dunes

was the exercise ground.

How did the day unfold?

What did you do all day in Coutainville in 1940?

At five o'clock in the morning,

we bathed in the sea

and at seven o'clock we had breakfast.

Half an hour later,

there were exercises down there.

Yes.

And the corporal would be like this...

"Attention!"

"Eyes left!"

Eyes left.

No definite article.

"Eyes right!"

"Eyes straight ahead!"

Yes, and then...

...lots of running.

And, "Lie down!"

We got down like this on the ground.

And, "Get up!"

Et cetera, et cetera.

Three hours non-stop.

Look.

- In a room like this... - Yes?

...there were six or eight soldiers.

- But they slept in bunk beds. - One on top of the other.

At the time you sent these postcards home.

French towns lay in ruins after your invasion.

Well, if it doesn't affect the Germans...

It did affect them.

As early as 1940. Fear.

These photos of Saint-Lô date from around 1900 to 1920,

but this is the town you knew and the town I knew too.

I was ten, or nine even.

And the houses no longer exist

but the places, or what we could see of them, existed.

On the wall of this building here,

I remember seeing, in 1940,

a black-and-white poster

showing a German soldier carrying a little boy in his arms

and handing him a jam sandwich.

And written on the poster was: "Trust the German soldiers."