Es begins in 1932. Two students are lying on a meadow at night at a party in Oxford and get amicably drunk, a young Englishman named Hugh Legat and a young German named Paul von Hartmann. Both will make careers in the film “Munich – In the View of War” (now in cinemas, later on Netflix), one at 10 Downing Street, the other in the Reich Foreign Ministry.
It is an interesting film because it has equal rights, which cannot be said of most Anglo-American war productions; the original is by a Brit (Robert Harris) and directed by a German (Christian Schwochow), the main roles are split evenly (George Mackay and Jeremy Irons on the one hand, Jannis Niewöhner and August Diehl on the other) and have English and German the same rank.
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But let’s fade to the year 1937, to another film. In The King’s Speech, British Crown Prince Albert takes lessons from a therapist to overcome his stutter; the speech therapist treated British soldiers with post-traumatic disorders after the First World War. The coronation as George VI, during which Albert doesn’t have to talk much, goes without a hitch.
Flashback to “Munich”: It is now September 1938. Hitler is demanding that Czechoslovakia cede the Sudeten German territories and is threatening an invasion. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain tries to prevent the war after all. And his adviser Hugh Legat decides to reconnect with Paul von Hartmann, who has gone from being a Nazi sympathizer to an anti-Hitler.
We switch to the year 1939 in “The Excavation”. English landowner Edith Pretty hires amateur excavator Basil Brown to survey mounds of earth on her property. Brown finds a ship’s hull, which turns out to be an Anglo-Saxon grave. A leading Cambridge archaeologist has declared the discovery a matter of national importance. Every now and then you see war planes in the air.