My mom is German, and grew up during that time, and she said, there is no way that the German soldier would have just stood there and waited for Mrs. Miniver to just give him the food. He would have shot her first, then took what he wanted. He wouldn't have cared that she had children up stairs. Hitler didn't train them to have a kind heart. He trained them to kill first.
This coming from a full bred German.
Possibly true, but Wyler was told to go easy on the Germans because the U.S. wasn't at war with them and German companies were still important to the U.S. film industry.
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Regardless of how people are trained, there are those who are determined to make their own choices and listen to their own conscience.
"great minds think differently"
The Germans owed the United States a lot of money and that is one of the reasons why Roosevelt didn't want to make the new German government angry....lot of good it did.
shareIn the first place, your history is totally false. Roosevelt opposed German aggression at every turn (though it was up to the Europeans to take the lead), even in the face of militant American isolationists and defeatists like Taft, Lindbergh and millions of others. He limited American trade with Germany until it was virtually non-existent, incurring the wrath of conservative business leaders who wanted to conduct "business as usual" with the Nazi regime. By 1941 he was pushing American "neutrality" in the Atlantic to the breaking point to try to force German action against America, and actively arming Germany's enemies, Britain and, later, the USSR. While maintaining limited diplomatic relations, the US had withdrawn its ambassador from Berlin in 1939 and both countries' embassies were run by a low-level charge d'affairs. For its part, Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy claimed that FDR was Jewish and suffered from syphillis and other mental disorders they attributed to his polio. Roosevelt repeatedly confronted, acted against and angered Hitler and the German government. To say otherwise is factually inaccurate.
Second, FDR didn't make Mrs. Miniver. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer did. In fact, Louis B. Mayer repeatedly argued with director William Wyler, who resisted Mayer's demand to "go easy" on how the German flyer was depicted. Like most Hollywood moguls, Mayer was Jewish and along with those other studio chiefs didn't want to become a target of anti-Semites who would blame them for stirring up war fever against Germany. Also, Mayer was petrified of offending the Germans, for fear of losing the German market. Of course, by the time the film was in production in the fall of 1941, MGM's Berlin office had been closed for over a year and most American films were already banned in Germany -- as the furious Wyler well knew, when he threw that specious argument back in Mayer's face. Only after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war by Germany four days later did Mayer change his mind and agree to let Wyler show the German as a ruthless fanatic.
It was Mayer's concerns about maintaining a business relationship of any kind with Germany that led to the argument about how to depict the German flyer. Roosevelt had no such worries about the Germans, and had nothing to do with this movie.
The German had to know he would eventually be caught, especially being wounded. He was stuck on an island. If he kills a civilian, he would be tried for murder and executed. If he is simply caught, he goes to a POW camp, and eventually home to Germany.
Not too hard to figure out the right choice here.
That may have been true if the pilot were located in German-held territory (such as Vichy France). But in this case, he was stuck in the middle of England, surrounded by his enemy. His only chance of avoiding capture or execution was to hide and hope to find a way to return to mainland Europe, or to neutral territory such as Ireland. Firing a gun would have been sure to draw the authorities. That would have been his last resort, not first.
Firing a gun would have been sure to draw the authorities.Disagree. In today's world people fire guns and no one even knows about it. Why would it have been different then, when houses were even further apart?
What CindyH says may be true of her neighbourhood ("today's world", God help us) but does not apply to semi-rural Kent, where the natives do not go in for shooting each other very often.
The fact that the airman asked for food and for a coat to cover his German uniform suggests that he planned to live rough. In such a populated and cultivated area, he would not have lasted long. Was he thinking of stealing a boat to slip across to German-held France? Or was he hoping to survive until German troops landed in Britain?
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