Find Movies & TV
Home
Live TV
On Demand
Discover
Explore
Movies & TV Shows
Most Popular
Leaving Soon
Categories
Action
Animation
Comedy
Crime
Descriptive Audio
Documentary
Drama
En Español
Horror
Music
Romance
Sci-Fi
Thriller
Western
Explore
Browse Channels
Featured Channels
CW Forever
Ion Mystery
LiveNOW from FOX
Categories
Black Stories
Hit TV
Drama TV
True Crime
Reality
News
Sports
Comedy
History & Science
Movies
Food & Home
Lifestyle
Nature & Travel
Daytime TV
Game Shows
Sci-Fi & Action
Kids & Family
Classic TV
Anime & Gaming
Chills & Thrills
International
En Español
Music
Sign In
Generation War
Miniseries
TV-14
60%
92%
Watch Free
Five friends go out to war and promise each other to be back for Christmas.
More
3 Episodes
A Different Time
E1
A Different Time
1941. Shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, five close friends have a party in Berlin. The brothers Wilhelm and Friedhelm are respectively an officer and enlisted man in the military. Viktor is a Jew who works as a tailor. Charlotte has just passed her examination to become a military nurse. Greta is a beautiful bartender who wishes to become a famous singer. The friends are hopeful that they will meet again by Christmas. Wilhelm and Friedhelm witness some early victories as the German army heads toward Moscow. Charlotte gets used to seeing blood as she works near the front-line. Greta sleeps with a major in the Gestapo to advance her career as a singer, and to obtain documents for Viktor to flee to New York City, since the rights of Jews are being diminished. However, Viktor is arrested by the Gestapo and is put on a train.
A Different War
E2
A Different War
The invasion is being pushed back by the Russians, causing high casualties for the Germans. Wilhelm gets wounded and left for dead. When he wakes up, instead of going back to the base, he finds a cabin by a lake and lives on his own for a few weeks. He is discovered by the German Army and sentenced to death for desertion. Friedhelm is sent back home, but seeing his father's disappointment with Wilhelm's apparent death, and lack of appreciation for his survival, he enlists again. Viktor escapes the Germans and joins a group of Polish partisans, but tries to conceal his Jewish race because they hate Jews. Charlotte feels despair over Wilhelm's apparent death and starts an affair with a military doctor. Greta visits the front-line and becomes disillusioned by what she discovers there. She is arrested and thrown into prison for making remarks in public that disapprove of the war and the Nazi regime.
A Different Country
E3
A Different Country
The Soviet army is pushing toward Berlin. Not just the war is doomed but Nazism's existence. Wilhelm's death sentence is lowered to probation. The probation officer abuses Wilhelm, who ultimately reacts by killing him and running. Viktor is expelled from the partisans for being a Jew. He crosses paths with Friedhelm, who kills his commanding officer, so Viktor can escape. After the German army falls apart, Friedhelm dies while leading a group of German militia, sacrificing himself to make his troops surrender. Charlotte is captured by the Soviets and becomes a nurse for them. Greta is executed by the Nazi authorities for her speech crimes. Finally, the war ends in 1945, and the three survivors, Wilhelm, Viktor, and Charlotte, meet in the same pub as before and grieve together.
Cast of Miniseries
Volker Bruch
Wilhelm Winter
Tom Schilling
Friedhelm Winter
Katharina Schüttler
Greta Müller
Ludwig Trepte
Viktor Goldstein
Miriam Stein
Charlotte
Mark Waschke
Dorn
Henriette Richter-Röhl
Hildegard
Götz Schubert
Dr. Jahn
Hildegard Schroedter
Brigitte
Sylvester Groth
Hiemer
Miniseries Ratings & Reviews
Newsday
John Anderson
Certainly entertaining, possibly art, not always convincing but most assuredly a soap.
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
It's as retrograde - if also as perversely intoxicating - as an old Hollywood melodrama.
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
I suppose everything that occurs in "Generation War" is factually possible, even when it's not based on fact. But weirdly little of it feels historically plausible, at least to one foreigner's eyes and ears.
New York Post
Farran Smith Nehme
The reasons why some Germans have hailed it as a spur to soul-searching may remain opaque to an American watching all 4 /₂ hours in a theater.
AV Club
Ben Kenigsberg
Serves up nearly five hours of self-pitying Third Reich youth, in a film shot through with heavy ironies and scored as if it were The Shawshank Redemption.
The Dissolve
Noel Murray
There's a strong narrative pull to Generation War as it moves from one crisis to another, [and] many of those crises are genuinely exciting and suspenseful.
Slant Magazine
Steve Macfarlane
The perverse thrill of seeing less-than-popular considerations of Nazism on screen fades hurriedly to the old ache of seeing any kind of questions about Nazism answered noxiously.
Boston Globe
Peter Keough
Though director Philipp Kadelbach and screenwriter Stefan Kolditz do touch on moral ambiguities ... they settle comfortably into glib ironies, bittersweet platitudes, and sentiment passing as tragedy.
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
"Generation War" has a texture and an interest that American stories do not.
The New Yorker
David Denby
In all, "Generation War" has the strengths and weaknesses of middlebrow art-it may be clunky, even embarrassing, but it's certainly never dull.
Variety
Rob Nelson
Overly melodramatic but fairly engrossing ...
New York Times
A.O. Scott
As television drama, Generation War is unquestionably effective. As dramatized history, it is pretty questionable.
Village Voice
Michelle Orange
Viewers require more from the plight of these characters ... than the film is equipped to give.
NPR
Ella Taylor
Generation War forces us to see that cruelty and indifference to suffering were not only practiced institutionally but individually, by nice young people to whom we grow ever more attached even as they progressively alienate us.
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
Ken Hanke
Less to do with making the Germans look good than it's about the perils of nationalism for its own sake, self-delusion, disillusionment and just plain getting sucked into something over which you have no control.
The Patriot Ledger
Al Alexander
Think of the ambitious 'Generation War' as a German-language 'Friends' in which the five close pals encounter rape, death squads and the brutality of war while constantly fending off lethal bands of mad Russians at the dawn of World War II.
NYC Movie Guru
Avi Offer
Stilted and lackluster despite impeccable production design and intense war scenes.
Oregonian
Marc Mohan
While it's an effective memoriam for the well-meaning Germans whose lives were ruined by Hitler's mad dream, the refusal of "Generation War" to focus on any other sort of German makes it both dramatically and historically suspect.
Metro
Matt Prigge
If one were to take 'Generation War' as gospel, we'd come away believing that Germany fell to Nazi rule because the Nazis were nothing more than a bunch of nasty bullies.
Nerdist
Witney Seibold
This is a new subject in the ongoing cinematic conversation America has been having with the War.
Take Plex everywhere
Watch free anytime, anywhere, on almost any device.
See the full list of supported devices
Home
Live TV
On Demand
Discover