But Wilhelm's promise to their mother is looking less and less likely to be kept. There is one more moment of brotherliness for them, a play fight in the snow, a brief reminder of happier days (and more tears here, obviously). "I was right," he tells his elder brother, "this war would only bring out the worst in us." But then later it's Friedhelm's idea to get the prisoners to walk ahead to detonate mines. Wilhelm is the commanding officer now, not the protective elder brother. Friedhelm is seen as a coward and a traitor by the company. Well, Lieutenant Wilhelm does he executes a Russian prisoner – he has to. The two soldier brothers, pushing into Stalin's Russia, don't just witness atrocities, they take part in them. A barbaric regime and a terrible war tear them apart, strip them of their innocence and their optimism, harden and dehumanise them. Nothing will ever come between them …Įxcept it does, of course. They'll see each other again soon, Christmas in Berlin, pick up where they left off. The five have a farewell evening together, with booze and jazz, love and laughter. Charly, too, is heading that way, to volunteer at a field hospital, do her bit and help people.
Wilhelm promises his mother that he'll bring his bookish younger brother back when they set off for the Eastern Front. Greta, Viktor, brothers Wilhelm and Friedhelm, and Charly are five twentysomethings, friends since kindergarten who – perhaps strangely, given what's going on around them – feel optimistic about life, immortal, as if the future belongs to them.
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