Plot
Helmut and Karl Hoffman are two brothers who grow up in the Great Depression of the Weimar Republic, witness the coming to power of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and the establishment of the Third Reich. Karl, an unemployed mechanic, is enthusiastic about the Nazis and joins the SA after hearing (SA Chief) Ernst Röhm speak at a Nazi Party rally. Helmut is reluctant and thinks the Nazis are simply another political party.
Helmut, who is a university student in Munich, is eventually talked into joining the SS by Reinhard Heydrich. Helmut is commissioned an SS officer (in the SD) right before Hitler comes to power, whereas Karl has already been an SA member for a year. Karl is distressed due to tensions between the SA and the SS and claims that the SS is trying to make it look like the SA is the "party’s garbage collector".
The entire first half of the film leads up to the Night of the Long Knives. Heydrich quizzes Helmut about the need to get rid of the SA leadership. Helmut replies, "Well, who needs revolutionaries when the revolution has already been achieved." The liquidation of the SA leadership, old enemies and the shooting of Ernst Röhm then transpire. During this time, Karl is arrested and sent to Dachau Concentration Camp. Using his connections within the SS, Helmut gets Karl freed but Heydrich cautions that Karl had better behave himself or else Helmut would find himself "running short of friends".
The film then moves into World War II, after glazing briefly through Kristallnacht and then focuses on Helmut becoming involved in the paperwork of the Holocaust. Karl meanwhile becomes an anti-Nazi and is drafted in the Wehrmacht. He actually becomes a Wehrmacht (Heer) officer on the Eastern Front.
Helmut eventually becomes an SS-Oberführer (senior colonel), but is extremely disillusioned with the SS and the Nazi Party by the end of the film. Karl deserts from the army around the time of the assassination attempt against Hitler (the 20 July Plot) and wanders Germany observing the war torn rubble of German cities. In late April 1945, Helmut deserts from the SS, but is killed by an SS patrol while trying to flee Berlin. The film ends with Karl and his lover Mitzie (who at one point was the love interest his brother Helmut) standing in the ruins of Stuttgart after learning his parents and little brother Hans (who fought in the Hitler Youth during the Battle in Berlin) are all dead.
Read more about this topic: Hitler's SS: Portrait In Evil
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