Generale - Anatomy of the Battle of the Marne
Generale - Anatomie der Marne Battle is a TV production by WDR from 1977 . It dealt, half fiction and half documentary ( television play ), the history and course of the German defeat on the Marne (September 5 to 12, 1914) at the beginning of the First World War .
content
The production recreates the events from July to September 1914 that led to the defeat of the German troops on the Marne. While Sebastian Haffner uses situation maps to explain and comment on the operations and decisions, key scenes are shown by actors. Haffner puts a focus on the controversial mission of Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hentsch , who is said to have contributed significantly to the breakdown of operations during a trip to the various army high commands.
criticism
In the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , Karl-Heinz Janßen criticized the fact that production was carried out exclusively at the level of the military leaders and suppressed the fact that their will could do nothing if the common soldiers were exhausted. He also generally ruled out that a general victory was possible because the Schlieffen Plan had already been wrongly designed. However, he also received praise: “One and a half hours of exciting entertainment and entertaining instruction, interspersed with cabinet pieces of the art of acting - this film was worth the expensive money. At last a war film without gun smoke and pillars of fire, without blood and sweat ... "But at last he restricted: " Anyone who, as a layman, confided in good faith to the skillfully lecturing presenter Haffner, was deceived. Haffner could not live up to his claim that every scene was historically attested to in detail. Much had been changed, rearranged, shortened, entire monologues and dialogues were invented. Every radio play author on school radio knows that history cannot be made clear otherwise. "
Together with Wolfgang Venohr, Sebastian Haffner finally published a book on the Marne Battle in 1982.
Individual evidence
- ↑ On the 100th birthday of Sebastian Haffner , broadcast of the MDR-figaro on December 27, 2007
- ↑ Karl-Heinz Janßen: Without powder steam and fire , in: Die Zeit (May 6, 1977), No. 20
literature
- Sebastian Haffner, Wolfgang Venohr: The miracle on the Marne. Reconstruction of the decisive battle of the First World War. Luebbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1982, ISBN 3-7857-0314-7 .