The Counterfeiters: superb concentration camp movie about the prisoners' dilemma
I saw an extraordinary movie last night: "The Counterfeiters," an Austrian-German movie ("Die Fälscher") about Operation Bernhard, the Nazis' mad plan to destroy the UK economy by flooding it with counterfeit British pounds, and fund the war operation with counterfeit US dollars. The SS Major responsible for the program recruited printers, bankers and counterfeiters from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and from inmates at Auschwitz.
The film tells the story of Sally Sorowitsch, a master counterfeiter who is imprisoned at the start of the war, and who curries favor in Auschwitz with his painting and drawing. Sorowitsch is rescued from Auschwitz and sent to run Operation Bernhard, amid captive bankers, artists and printers from Germany and Russia. Sorowitsch is a likable anti-hero, honorable but self-interested, the perfect pivot for the story to revolve around.
The Counterfeiters is an emotionally complex -- and often horrifying -- film about the prisoners' dilemma (literally and figuratively). A superbly acted and scripted cast of characters play out their intense moral conundrums: supporting the Nazis by printing currency for them; saving their lives while outside their compounds others are dying; and other situations in which solidarity and self interest lock horns, with no easy answers.
Ultimately, The Counterfeiters is a story about the way that fascism takes hold -- the way that Naziism was only made possible by all people being, in some small way, complicit; by choosing to save themselves instead of refusing to allow scapegoating, fear and war to rise.
The audience was rapt through the film, gasping and groaning in unison at some times, while at others, you could have heard a pin drop. I don't remember the last time I was that engrossed in a movie. Link
the latest
latest episodes
Apparently it's Austrian. Where did you see it? Is it in limited release?
Surely this isn't really a true example of the 'Prisoner's Dilemma'. In the classic game theory problem all the prisoners will get the best outcome for themselves personally if they ALL refuse to co-operate.
In this example, though, if you refuse to co-operate then you get killed.
Not exactly the same thing!
The omniscient Wikipedia has an excellent summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
(Or at least it did when I looked - when you look it could read anything ...)
Mac
It's an Austrian-German coproduction and was made in Babelsberg film studios. So you're both right, somehow.
appears to be the basis of the Raymond Chandler short story "No Crime in the Mountais", or at least they both had the same idea. The Chandler story is set, of course, in CA, not he UK.
in fact, while reading the story, i thought "This wold make a terrific short anti-Nazi propaganda film!"
Mac -- if everyone involved refused to cooperate, fascism wouldn't work, which is surely the best outcome for everyone.
Is it just me or is the counterfeit artist in Pratchett's latest novel, Making Money, derived from this? It seems awfully familiar...
'Austrian-German' is an appropriate label, but with Karl Markovics in the lead role and Stefan Ruzowitzky directing, calling the film 'German' seems totally wrong, even if it had been a pure German production ;-) But seriously, it's produced by Vienna-based Aichholzer Film in co-operation with German companies Magnolia and Studio Babelsberg. (There's nothing like Babelsberg in Austria; it's impossible to get a major Film off the ground there.)
@Matthew (#6): Mac is right; there's something you didn't consider: You said facism wouldn't work if 'everyone involved' refused to cooperate. This is right, but here, 'everyone involved' would mean all citizens under the fascist regime; in this scenario, the concentration camp would have never been built in the first place. Mac was talking about all prisoners and their personal benefit -- which is what the prisoner's dilemma is about. The subject of the film is more like a prisoner's dilemma.
@Martin (#1): It's been recently released normally (i.e. not limited) in the UK, so finding a cinema that shows it should be no problem if you look past the megaplexes :-) In the US, OTOH, there'll be a limited release in January :-/
Looking this up, I happened upon something very interesting: One of the characters of the film is one Adolf Burger, an inmate at the Auschwitz concentration camp, who was forced to participate in Aktion Bernhard and other forgery projects there. The movie's script was written by the real Adolf Burger, who is still alive (90 years old now).
It doesn't appear to come out in the US until February.
Same story also done as a miniseries on BBC in 1981,starring Michael Elphick. Very good as I remember...
Link to Private Schulz listing on IMDb
Yep, the BBC series was very good; Ian Richardson played several characters, from a German officer to a Scottish petty crook, and was excellent throughout.
It's hard to say more without spoilering the movie, but without saying too much: the film does indeed contemplate the classic prisoner's dilemma, considering the possibility that many ranking "Nazis" were not ideologues, but a cross between opportunists and cowards.
Cory said exactly what I wanted to say, but more eloquently and more susinctly.
Most people in life operate from the level of seeing the "trees" and never seeing the "forest." The problem with most political discussion in the western world is that it's rooted in the idealists "forest" of "If we all did [blah blah] so much [blah] will happen."
The sad reality is that many people are far for selfish than selfless. Heck, look at traffic laws in the U.S. If people truly cared about one another, you would not need an array of laws to control how we all drive, correct? But there you have it.
If you keep people comfortable and safe, you can really begin to control them and get them to do most anything and justify anything. And if you push it out in such away it pushes all of the right buttons, the people will start to operate as their own little fascists.
And personally, as a direct child of Holocaust survivors I'm sick and tired of people apologizing for the "average" Nazi as not being that big a participant in the horrors of World War II. As far as I am concerned, if you were a soldier of any rank in the German military, you're guilty. Some are more guilty than others, but by simply being a part of the process even the lowliest of Nazi's helped build the foundation that others built on.
@ Mr brown: This has nothing to do with Chandler, it is a true story. They changed it around a bit, but the story is essentially authentic.
@ Jack: I respect your anger, but you really should differentiate a bit. To say the german soldiers were all Nazis is plain wrong. Plus: Once the war started, many men were forced into service. Especially members of the communist parties were released from the concentration camps to fight in the Wehrmacht.
Finally, that registration verification email arrived! I wanted to discuss this all along, but the registration took ages. Well, that's life.
All I wanted to say is that the film is a German-Austrian Cooperation and that the story has been told by one of the survivors, but all of this has been said already. Well, next time, I'll have my login ready.
@ Zeta: There are very few things in life I draw clear black/white distinctions on. And one is the German/Nazi military and the supposed "shades of gray" among who did what to whom. Sorry but it's not my job to forgive them. And every story I have ever heard of soldiers in World War II Germany "who were forced to do what they do" seems like excuse upon self-justification upon denial. Communist soldiers were not that much better. In fact the reason my grandfather went along when Nazis rounded him up was because he knew how the Communists felt about the Jews, and gambled thinking "These guys couldn't be worse..." Sadly he was wrong.
Yes everyone is guilty but in very different ways. If you do not differentiate you are ignoring the reality of what happened (just as you would be if you take the excuses Germans made afterwards as literally true).
You are ignoring history, at least in crucial parts, and you are not taking the lessons it must teach.
Yes everyone who abode fascism, in Germany and in many of the occupied nations, is guilty to some degree, many civilians much more so then common soldiers.
And sometimes this guilt does stem simply from accepting the law and doing your job (e.g. ).
If anything, the banality of evil makes the evil that much bigger and unbearable.