Like the films that, after 1990, started to foreground the private side of the Nazi past, those about collective histories also sought extreme closeness with people and events. Particularly after the turn of the millennium, fictional as well as documentary formats aimed at not merely a confrontation with but also an immersion into German experiences of war. Compared with earlier productions from East and West Germany, these films mobilize an unprecedented degree of emotion and affect. Fictional representations partly remake West German war movies from the 1950s and partly adopt Hollywood aesthetics of the spectacle to heighten the viewing experience, whereas documentary portrayals recuperate the life stories of the war generation. Through their audiovisual intensity, these productions have strongly shaped the image of Germans as victims of bombings, flight, and expulsion. And, by characterizing German suffering as traumatic, some of them have tried to appropriate the status of Holocaust victims.

This change in representation is also one in production, indicating the growing influence of television on the portrayal of public histories, above all of the Third Reich. In 1970s West Germany, public broadcasters began to act as co-producers of “amphibische Filme” (amphibian films) that following a theatrical release were to be shown on television, such as Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot (The Boat, 1981). The continuity of this model after 1990 is illustrated by Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), co-produced among others by ARD, WDR, and NDR and broadcast by ARD in two parts in October 2005. However, what we witness from the late 1990s onward is a decrease in cinema productions, with or without television participation, and an increase in miniseries for television that integrate cinematic qualities.

Two films by Joseph Vilsmaier, one of the most prolific directors of films about the Nazi past since the late 1980s, exemplify this trend. Stalingrad (1993), the first national film event about the Second World War to be produced after reunification, was still, like its 1950s predecessor Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben (Stalingrad: Dogs, Do You Want To Live Forever?, 1959) by Frank Wisbar, a cinema production. Released fifteen years later, Vilsmaier’s Die Gustloff (Ship of No Return, 2008) likewise drew on West German war movies, here with a partial remake of Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen (Darkness Fell on Gotenhafen, 1960), the third part of Wisbar’s highly successful war trilogy. However, in contrast to Stalingrad, Die Gustloff was from the start conceived as a two-part television movie.