The Red Orchestra

A loose outfit spread over different countries Germany Belgium France tried to put a spanner in the works of rising nazism and the ascent of Adolf and this here follows their journey

• the way it has been cobbled here was to take cuts from BOTH the DDR and the FRG (West Germany) biopics made in 1970; it is easy to find copies of the former on the net The Internet Archive has a copy one can view it was titled KLK an PTX - Die Rote Kapelle (1971) the other one Die rote Kapelle (1972) is on YT all 6 parts run PL8u35OttU5rAYij21hrA_85PMSLbItUfc and you will find it you can run the automatic subs; the DDR one has no subs so unless your German is good enough it is not feasible as viewing.

Arte is showing this documentary until 31st Jan 2023 and there will be copies about on the net thereafter no doubt

It is truly excellent; as are the cuts from the 2 1970s opuses. The DDR one was filmed at 70 F/s which means it has incredible def; better than anything we see these days; ha Honecker all is forgiven :)

So the way it is stitched together is cuts from those and poignant interviews with descendants of main actors; Dr Hans Copi Jr tells us how as a baby his gran came to pick him up so the Nazis could murder his mum after a kangaroo-court trial

Those were brave folks who went totally against the grain of their society; they started at the start of Adolf's run and could see it was going nowhere nice; as indeed it did not; post war the US and OSS/CIA possibly flipped some of them and some of the Gestapo to "study" the goings-on behind The Iron Curtain

Although they were termed Red and some of them were Communists; truth is it appears most were free spirits and would probably have baulked at Stalin in the same way if they were living in Russia

It is extremely gripping as a human story highly highly recommended; Arte has it for 6 more days with 6 subs ...

PS there is also a French film from 1989 L'orchestre rouge (1989) and quite of few documentaries scattered on the net if you want added info.