The question Germany still whispers: how did ordinary people choose monsters?
In 1945, 160 German cities lay in ruins and the loss of millions of lives, billions in material assets and countless cultural treasures was mourned throughout Europe... With the question “How could it happen?”, the film goes back to the year 1914, when the “primal catastrophe of the 20th century” took its course with the First World War.
Direction
Schubert lets archive footage breathe until it suffocates
Editing
Juxtapositions that recontextualize familiar images into nightmares
Director
Beate Schubert
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of a rare wave of 2000s German documentaries confronting Vergangenheitsbewältigung—'working through the past'—without American narrative frameworks. Schubert filmed during the 2005 Schröder era, when Germany's EU leadership made historical reckoning newly urgent.
The title quotes the Nazi anthem 'Deutschland erwache' deliberately—reclaiming the phrase as warning, not rallying cry. This linguistic inversion was controversial among German historians who feared any repetition risked reactivation.
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