Os Diabos Verdes de Monte Cassino

I usually like these movies. But I have a heard time seeing the Nazis as the good guys. Typical of the French who I read a co-writer was from France to forget who occupied their country and killed millions.

Someone recommended "The Green Devils of Monte Casino" to me and I was happy I found an English language version (though I wouldn't have minded captions) on YouTube. It's interesting because it shows the famous Italian battle from the viewpoint of the German defenders...and what's more interesting is that it came out only a baker's dozen years after the war ended.

Considering that the film was made by post-war Germans, I expected the film to soften the German characters in the movie...and that certainly was the case. No mention was made of the evils of the Third Reich and the whole context for the war was omitted. Additionally, much of the film focused on the good German commander who worked hard to save the precious works of art in the monastery. In addition, the Allies broadcasted what seemed like lies in the film...that the Germans were not moving the art to protect it but to steal it. Well, I hate to break it to you but the Germans DID steal much of the art throughout Europe during the war. So, whether the film was accurate in all respects or not, making it sound as if the Allies were lying just to get the locals upset was disingenuous. There WAS precedent for the Allies saying this...the Germans had done it in the Louvre and many other museums and private collections throughout the continent and many pieces of art still have not been repatriated.

If you look past all this, the film is decent but not great. I say this because the acting was very good and the story well constructed. But an overreliance on grainy stock footage and the odd way that sometimes images were superimposed on the stock footage just looked cheap. All in all, a flawed but watchable film...worth seeing but don't take it to be Gospel.

The German paratroopers, the famous Fallschirmjäger, elite troops who fought in Normandy - Carentan - against the 101st Airborne, US elite paratroopers in fierce melee dog fights, those Third Reich troops were, as the terrific Afrika Korps, not SS troops, committing atrocities against POWs or civilians, they were authentic fighters, noble soldiers. In Monte Cassino, as in Stalingrad - despite the fact that the Russian front was a very brutal and bloodthirsty war - or even in North Africa, you had some chivalry scenes, truce sequences, during which fighters from each side stopped killing each other and permitted the other to take their corpses, exchanging food and even litters or medicine. There was a contrast between this very touching behavior and the fierceness of the combats. The other user obviously ignores these facts, for him German soldiers were necessarily Nazis. Rommel for instance admired Hitler ONLY, for him he was a great leader, no matter the ideology behind him, such as the anti semitic or master race non sense. he admired the Fuhrer till 1943 though, not after , for obvious reasons that you can guess, after he saw civilians slaughters in Italy by SS troops. But Rommel was definitely not a Nazi admirer. he was a soldier, as most of the Fallschirmjäger who fought in Monte Cassino. This film is not propaganda; it only shows the German side, after all, this is a German movie. Most war movies audiences don't know WW2, except thru the Hollywood crap industry. Such a shame. The scheme of this high rank officer trying to save the paintings, artwork from the bombardments in Monte Cassino, this officer role reminds me the awesome Paul Scofield's character performance in John Frankenheimer(s THE TRAIN, where a German officer also stopped at nothing to save priceless artworks.

The point of the film seems to be, "The Nazis were not such bad guys after all". They talk about the "peace we have dreamed of". The Nazi's vision of such a peace was the total murder of all those they deemed undesirable, and the enslavement of those that were left. All officers and elite troops, such as the paratroopers, were members of the Nazi party. Even the rape of an Italian women by a German officer is somehow justified by the film because she is a member of the resistance. It is films like this that holocaust deniers and modern Neo-Nazis love.

Only a little lose with the facts, but based on a novel. Monte Cassino was a brutal multi-month battle, in very rough physical environment (rugged remote mountains, winter, etc.) that Hitler declared must be held at all costs...the Germans stalled the Allied advance up Italy for months. Not great, but decent period piece, romance, chivalry, in the face of a brutal battle. Told through German troops' perspective. Reasonable effort given the date of the movie to tell fairly truthful tale of a somewhat unknown, but very important World War 2 battle. Acting good for the times, and the Inge character, played by Ms. Geert, a famous German actress of the time, as half of the romance story, is pretty good. Other leads are obviously professional movie actors, script/director on par with a late 1950's Not a masterpiece, but tells the story most viewers don't know.