08/15

08/15
German Poster
Directed by	Paul May
Produced by	Ilse Kubaschewski
Written by	Paul May Hans Hellmut Kirst Claus Hardt Ernst von Salomon
Based on	{{based on08/15|Hans Hellmut Kirst}}
Music by	Rolf A. Wilhelm
Cinematography	Heinz Hölscher
Editing by	Walter Boos Arnfried Heyne
Studio	Divina-Film
Distributed by	Gloria Filmverleih AG
Release date(s)	30 September 1954 (1954-09-30)
Country	West Germany
Language	German

The 08/15 is a 1954-1955 West German film trilogy directed by Paul May and based on the novel 08/15 by Hans Hellmut Kirst who also served as the film's screenwriter. The term 08/15 (nill-eight/fifteen, German: Null-Acht/Fünfzehn) refers to the German Army's standard machine gun, the 08/15 (or MG 08 model 15), by far, the most common German machine gun deployed in World War I. It was manufactured in such large quantities that it became the German Army slang for anything standard issue. The film follows the story of one Private Asch, a German soldier in World War II. The title implies that Asch and the soldiers under his command were unostentatious characters of the war on the Eastern Front.^[1]

The last of the 08/15 film trilogy ends with Germany being occupied by American soldiers portrayed as bubble-gum chewing, slack-jawed and uncultured louts, inferior in every respect to the heroic German soldiers.^[1] The only exception is the Jewish emigrant, now US officer, who is shown as both intelligent and unscrupulous, which is interpreted by the Israeli historian Omer Bartov as implying that that the "real tragedy of World War II was that the Nazis did not get a chance to exterminate all Semites, who have now returned with Germany's defeat to once more exploit the German people".^[1]

Parts

• Part 1: In der Kaserne (In the Barracks)
• Part 2: Im Krieg (In War)
• Part 3: In der Heimat (Back Home)

Cast

• Joachim Fuchsberger as Private Asch
• Helen Vita as Lore Schulz
• Peter Carsten as Unteroffizier Kowalski

References

Notes

bibliography

• Kapczynski, Jennifer M. (2010). "Armchair Warriors: Heroic Postures in the West German War Film". In Cooke, Paul; Silberman, Marc. Screening War: Perspectives on German Suffering. Screen Cultures: German Film and the Visual. pp. 23–27. ISBN 1-57113-437-9. 

External links

• 08/15 at the Internet Movie Database