@ - @ how much home footage did you start the project with? And how did you go about whittling it down into a strong narrative you could sustain across two episodes?

There are thousands of hours of footage turning up in archives across Germany, so it was a daunting proposition. With such a wealth of footage available the story could have gone in any direction, and the concern was it could become simply a magic lantern show of the best footage. So a decision was made early to let the narrative arch drive the footage selection, not the best footage drive the narrative. I wrote a two page outline on each episode that focused on what I thought the significant ev

Sorry @FlorenceRowland , forgot to tag you the answer, thanks for the question!

Hey @FlorenceRowland, just realised there is a 500 character limit, so will add the other bits of the answer below. I'm not very good at this!!

@FlorenceRowland I wrote a two page outline on each episode that focused on what I thought the significant events would be if I was a German living through it, rather than a looking at the War from a British perspective with the benefit of hindsight. To help with this I was guided by a book by Nicholas Stargardt called The German War. The two films tell the story of the years 1936- end of 1941, and then New Year 1942 to May 1945

@FlorenceRowland The first film uses the stories of two invasions – France and Russia – to explore the German attitudes to the war. The invasion of France, from a German perspective, was seen as redemptive, the restoration of national pride after the humiliation of WW1. The footage we used for this was almost like a fun road trip for the German troops, easy victories culminating in young German soldiers wandering around abandoned British vehicles at Dunkirk as if they are in a theme park.

@FlorenceRowland The second half of the film tells the far darker story of the invasion of Russia. This is brutal and hard to watch, revealing a very different side of the German army. As the film takes in footage of the systematic murders of the time known as “The Holocaust by Bullet” the film explores what Germans at home knew of what was going on. The second episode also uses the two narrative of the deportation of the Jewish population and the allied strategic bombing campaign

@FlorenceRowland It reveals how the Germans conflated the two, using the bombing to justify the deportations and cruelty, all egged on by Nazi propaganda. The murder of the Jews was also used in the second half of the war to keep the Germans fighting – the Nazis made it clear all Germans would face a reckoning for what had been done in their name, so the population had to keep fighting even when the war was clearly lost.

I promise to try and make my next answers shorter!

@NickWatts I think if I was a German I’d be fascinated to to see these programmes. Has there been any interest is airing them over there? Would the programmes be tweaked in any way for a German audience? What kind of response might you anticipate?

Hi @WillMcGuigan great question. German TV has had WW2 home movies films, so they wouldn't take this film, however that is not because they aren't keen to examine the past, they are, but they do differently to us. i watched the German versions and they are very German, ie literal, rigorous, straightforward, more of a show and tell. What they don't do is push the emotional resonance in the way we did. So in short their version wouldn't work here, ours wouldn't work there!

@NickWatts @EllaMarsh @MilesGreen I watched episode one last night and thought it absolutely excellent. A really strong film. So shocking too but an important reminder of what I feel I did know but don't often remember about the deaths not just being centred around the camps.

@SarahLee hi Sarah, thanks for your kind comments. Something strange happens when you start watching these home movies, it takes you back to the time they were shot and into the shoes, and minds, of those who took the footage in the first place. Once you are in that place all the usual discussions about what people knew at the time start to seem academic and poin, the reality is right in front of you. I think it's the least we can do for Nina and Peter, plus the millions of others like them