Regardless of the war between 1942 and 1943, a 14-year-old national school student from Berlin was able to go to school in the remote NEPA, which is not consistent with the facts at the time. The movie single-sidedly emphasized the boxing match that "eliminated" the opponent and other more exaggerated plots. The bedwetting student (Siegfried) in the film has apparently been in Napola for a long time. In fact, this is impossible to allow. He will be expelled directly from the school instead of being punished continuously. The bombing practice will begin immediately in Napola, using live ammunition grenades; let the children fully armed to catch the escaped war criminals will also begin at the same time. Students must swim under the ice-covered lake in winter.
In a routine work conversation with director Dennis Gansel, I proposed Napola's example: they should learn from the British Public School. There teachers and students study and live together. The purpose of education is to train a gentleman and combine it with rigorous physical training in the process. After raising many criticisms and detailed questions, in May 2003, I finally proposed to delete the paragraph about the relationship between a young man with a simple thinking and talent for boxing and the son of Nazi, who was born under the rule of the Nazis. All kinds of restraints and restrictions result in friendship opinions, but only show a fictitious elite school. And this story is obviously impossible for Gansel to give up. After that, we did not further discuss translation 1. (Gansel and Maggie Peren are the screenwriters of the movie).
I have watched the movie now. Obviously, the title of the film Napola is a supplement to the sensitive subtitle "The Elite of the Führer" for the purpose of advertising. The original 14-year-old protagonist who had just graduated from the national school was replaced by a 17-year-old young man who had graduated from the school for three years without any apprenticeship: After graduating from the Yilu National School, he was obliged to go to a vocational school and participate in the "Hitler Youth League." "Registration. But this 17-year-old young man worked as a temporary worker in a coal store to earn a few small dollars, and he was training in a private boxing association in Wedding, without getting into any troubles-this is unimaginable in Nazi Germany. Why did his father find him an apprentice job only three years after graduating from the young Freidrich? This is unfounded. It seems that the plot here should be the content of the initial script. The protagonist's next experience is also untenable in history. Even in addition to the "Hitler Youth League" and the "Imperial Sports Training League", there is also a "Wedding Boxing Association" (in a country where "civilians" are considered swear words, this type of sports league organization is impossible) , Even if the Potsdam NPEA boxing team exists (in fact, there is no one at all), the students of Potsdam will never be able to compete with a "civil association" player (in addition, there was no small bus between Potsdam and Berlin in 1942). Friedrich's main opponent, deliberately making trouble in the dressing room before the game is also unimaginable. Napola has strict discipline in all outings. In the film, they have been portrayed as "bad Nazis" many times.
Napola's selection process is divided into many levels and requires a "examination week" decision. The examination will involve multiple tests of intelligence and physical fitness. Each correctional home is divided by region. Allenstein is fictional, and the film was shot in Warthegau. In reality, this kind of examination is very strict, and Allenstein's examination in a Berlin stadium is very cordial and relaxed. As the movie hopes to express, Friedrich passed the racial identification, indoor sports test and a simple examination of theoretical knowledge of the ruling class. Napola's education level is equivalent to high school in reality. In addition, there are pre-entry training (including gliding and driving a motorcycle), intensive sports, and some etiquette and ballroom dancing courses. The learning time for eight grades (called "groups") should start at approximately 10 years old. Like Friedrich, it is only equivalent to the graduation level of a national school. If you want to enter a Napola, you must first enter the designated so-called "research class". After two years of "special training", they can learn in Latin courses, Keep up with the progress of other students.
In the film, the school is located in a castle, and the environment around the venue is very simple, which is impossible for a true elite education. The dormitory was photographed similar to the barracks. The bedroom and the wardrobe-luggage storage room are mixed together, and it is difficult to distinguish where is the school work space and which is the free activity area. The classroom also lacks the necessary facilities (biology, chemistry, physics, music) for professional learning. The plot in the classroom is obviously not to show elite education, but to prove the indoctrination of the barbaric theories of the Nazis. In addition, "Napola Allenstein" does not have a dedicated sports field. Morning exercises and general training (high jump) are carried out on the stone pavement in front of the castle. The only training ground is the boxing arena, as if there is a special Napola specializing in training elite boxers. In the restaurant, there is no "Essenholer" (dinner?), which is usually done by boys in boarding schools. Instead, it is replaced by a young girl. This is nonsense. Except for letting the 17-year-old boy observe her lighted room through an uncovered window, the girl played no role in the film.
In the plot of the new school year's speech, the principal, the later Gauleiter (provincial party leader), and a party official claimed that Napola’s educational purpose is to train talents for the empire worldwide, not Mecklenburg, but Washington and Kaifeng. Cape Town. This is more like a speech by the leader of the higher-level learning structure "Ordensburg". "Ordensburg" has only two locations in Nazi Germany. Its purpose is to train successors for the upper echelons of the Nazis. Napola should follow the traditional Prussian military academy method to train successors for the army (the country releases the army?) and the country (the government?). Another unreasonable part of the movie is that the situation of the war between 1942 and 1943 (especially the breakout of the Volga at the Battle of Stalingrad) was actually reported to the school regularly. This is erased from the movie.
Another climactic error in the Annotation 3 film is that Napola appears as a priest. He brought news of the "hero sacrifice" of relatives to Napola's students. However, the students of elite schools under the rule of non-Christian regimes are separated from the church in principle. The students will be solemnly promoted to "knights" at the age of 14, instead of "confirmation" (in view of the eager hope of the parents of the students, there are special regulations that allow them to meet outside the NPEA area). Annotation 4
Because the Napola education shown in Dennis Gansel's films is inconsistent with historical facts on important issues. The film is more about using deliberately crude methods to roughly show the actual harm caused by the indoctrination of national socialist ideology at different levels. This is not the case in reality. The movie Napola regrettably shows this history of the Third Reich from a wrong perspective. Therefore, I insisted on removing the title of "historical consultant" to OLGA Films.
Hanns Müncheberg
2005.05.15.
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The author Hans Müncheberg, born in 1929, entered Potsdam Napola in 1940. At the age of 15, he was sent to the battlefield as a child soldier and was seriously injured on May 2, 1945. He worked as a drama consultant and writer on the former East German radio station. With the prohibition of the former East Germany, he had a very difficult time writing down these memories. After 1991, the shortened manuscript continued to be edited and was published in Berlin Nora Publishing House (nara-verlag.de).
Annotation 1: Müncheberg's original intention here was that when he proposed to delete the F/A friendship part of the script After that, Gansel and the film company stopped discussing with him ^_^ After all, the movie is not a historical fact.
Annotation 2: The important difference between Napola and ordinary high schools is that a lot of military, field reconnaissance positioning, marching and shooting training have been added. For example, in Köslin and Postdam, apart from general school sports, flight courses are also set up. Professional sports accounts for 8 hours out of 38 hours per week. In the movie, Allenstein had a gliding flight class, and later a group of eighth-grade students enlisted to join the Luftwaffe.
Annotation 3: Ordensgurg literally means the castle of the (religious) Knights. The original text seems to be another institution that cultivates more senior talents for the empire. The "employment direction" of Napola is obviously lower than that of Ordensgurg. The closing sentence of this paragraph means that Müncheberg himself joined Napola in 1940, but "Inschutznahme des Nordens", I really don't understand what it is.
Annotation 4: Schwertleite, historically refers to the promotion ceremony of a knight, where a sword is used to strike the head and the sword is presented to the knight, which means that a knight entourage is officially promoted to a knight. This ritual of Napola is probably similar to this. Konfirmation is a Protestant adult ceremony held in a church.
Original Links: http://www.filmstarts.de/kommentare/kritiken/Napola/
Translation: Jeanne
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