Blut und Ehre: Jugend unter Hitler
(1982)

TV Series

AKA: Blood and Honor: Youth Under Hitler

Country: USA, West Germany

Genre: Historical Drama

Synopsis

The story of young Hartmut Keller, his family and his boyhood friends, from 1933 to 1939. Hartmut's friend Hans belongs to an upper-middle class family whose social ambitions dovetail nicely with the rise of the Nazis. Hartmut's own family is lower-middle class, with nervous reservations about what is happening. The family of Hartmut's Jewish friend Franz, on the other hand, is trapped in the expanding horror of Nazi race laws and theories. As Hitler consolidates his hold on Germany, he also exploits the idealism of German youth. Despite the fact that his parents are social democrats, Hartmut finds himself irresistibly drawn to the Hitler movement by his desire to belong.

Notes

• Based on a screenplay by director and screenwriter Helmut Kissel, when the German production companies approached American producer Daniel Wilson to collaborate on the project the latter was determined to avoid a dubbed version for the English speaking markets, so screenwriter Robert Muller was called in to write two scripts based on Kissel's original screenplay, one in German and the other in English. The producers then set about recruiting a cast, in Germany and elsewhere, of bilingual actors, and each scene was shot twice, first in English, then in German. (The Region 2 DVD release - Amazon link at top right of page - includes both versions.)
• Kissel's original screenplay was in part based on his own experiences as a member of the HJ. However, the miniseries is fictional and not a docudrama.
• The series incorporates archival historical footage, always shown in contrasting black and white, to establish the general historical context of the story.
• Comprising 4 episodes, the English version has a total runtime of 246 minutes, and the German version has a total runtime of 229 minutes. Besides some minor differences in scenes between the two versions, the English version has a longer opening credits sequence, and contains more documentary footage.
• Shooting for the miniseries began in the summer of 1980 and was completed in March 1981, so Jeffrey Frank (as Hartmut Keller) would have been 15 years old. The show premiered on West German television in July 1982 and on American television in November of the same year.