ridiculous rating

Better Late Then Never

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Gripping WW2 movie about a young Gestapo officer (Tim Holt) who must choose between his loyalty to Hitler and the American girl he loves (Bonita Granville). Well-photographed and directed, it's a powerful and fascinating movie that has a lot to chew on for history buffs but is also an entertaining dramatic picture. It was pretty shocking stuff at the time, which led to it being a big hit at the box office. Tim Holt is fantastic in this. Definitely in his top three roles. He was a good actor who's largely forgotten today except among classic film fans. Bonita Granville has one of her meatiest parts here. This is a far cry from Nancy Drew. Kent Smith has a nice role as a sympathetic teacher. He narrates the first part of the movie. Otto Kruger and Hans Conried are two of the Nazis. As with a lot of WW2 era films on IMDb, you'll notice the reviews here are full of the word 'propaganda.' Try to ignore that. The problem isn't with the word itself but some use it to cast aspersions or impugn the honesty of a film. People these days have so many axes to grind and so much anger towards the wrong things. It's unsettling to me but, frankly, I'd rather not unravel that thread.

I found this film to be one of the most captivating and well-kept movie secrets of all time. If it is the first time you see it, you might be surprised that it was boldly made before WWII was over. The film stretches some emotions like taffy, while it is not overly-graphic, and only moderately intense. It instills in you with what seems to be a fair overview of the Nazi regime, while entertaining you with a plot of escape & a love story. To be expected, the conversation in it is surreal, typical of the film's era, but the only drawback for me is that Bonita Granville (age 19 when the film was made), who plays Anna Miller, passed in 1988 and actually stopped making major films after 1950. I did not realize what a beautiful girl she was until I discovered her in this picture a few weeks ago. A film for all generations (I was born 20 years after WWII).

I was flipping through the channels last night and once I read that the title was "Hitler's Children" I had to watch it. I missed the first bit of it and the ending but what I did see I loved. ************* POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD********There was a love triangle , illegitimate children, and to throw Nazis in there just made it all the more better. The works for a good movie. Plus I found it somewhat funny that almost every sentence started and ended with "Hail Hitler". Although I did find it pretty funny, it was very dramatic, and I now completely get what my history teacher was talking about. Great movie to watch if you just took world history.

***There are Spoilers*** The movie "Hitler's Children" starts with a torch light ceremony with hundreds of Hitler Youth at some outdoor sports stadium in, what seems like, Nuremberg. The movie ends with the German City of Colone bombed into rubble in one of the many USAAF/RAF 1,000 plane bombing raids on the Third Reich during WWII. That's about the most penetrating realistic and effective scenes in the movie. Somewhat unconvincing love story between an American girl Ann Miller/Muller, Bonita Grandville, who was born in Germany and a German boy and on and off fanatical Nazi Karl Bruner,Tim Holt, who was born in America who's lives become entangled during the movie. Anna later ends up in a German work camp with Karl being the one who's assigned to have her given ten lashes for being uncooperative and disloyal to the Fuhuer and his Nazi henchmen.The movie tries very hard to make the Nazis look bad and evil but only makes them look like a bunch of ridicules and bumbling buffoons who can't even keep a girl, Anna, in line much less be able to conquer almost all of Europe and even threaten to take over the entire world. Both Anna and Karl also change horses in midstream a number of times in the movie going from one extreme as die in the wool Nazis to another by openly denouncing the Nazi party and it's leader Adolf Hitler to the point where they can be shot on the spot which is exactly what happens at the end of the film.Being enrolled at the American School in Berlin Anna meets Karl during one of the many fight that the American students have with the Nazi Youths in the school that they attend across the street. In all these fights the Nazi supermen always seem to get the hell beaten out of them. Karl having his skull cracked in a fight with the American youths goes into their school to talk to principle and professor "Nicky" Nichols, Kent Smith, to get some dressing and medicine for his badly swollen head. It turns out that the real reason Karl went there was to get a peek at Anna whom he's secretly in love with. Karl makes a play for Anna and she really starts to get to like him but then the movie goes six years into the future, from the spring of 1933 to the spring of 1939. It's then now begin see that the world, and Germany, changed for the worse and so did Karl.Rounding up all unfit, psychically and mentally, undesirables to go to work for the state and all German born foreigners, like Anna, to be inducted into educational camps to become full-fledged Nazis things that was taken for granted in the pre-Nazi era have now been taken away from the German People. All this was replaced with a cult-of-personality, Hitler & Co,like government that's to be worshiped and obeyed by all Germans in Germany and abroad.It's hard to take the Nazi's seriously in the movie when we see them go to the extreme of using an entire, armed to the teeth, Gestapo unit to chase down and captured Anna for just taking off from camp without permission. And later ending up getting whipped in public for it. where at same time the Nazis not as much as say boo to the Catholic Bishop, H.B Warner, who tells off the head of the Gestapo Major Copel, played by Gavin Muir, to the point of insulting Hitler and wishing that his Third Reich would go down in flames and be stomped into the ground by it's enemies! You would think that the least that Gestapo chief Copel, being the evil and unfeeling person that he is, would do is give the Bishop a warning to not says things like that again if he knows what's good for him! But all Major Copel does is look stupid and put on a pose that seemed to be an imitation of Napoleon Bonaparte!Karl soon fell from grace by showing that he was human and not a mind-controlled Nazi with him showing affection and refusing to whip his love Anna. He's then made to repent his crimes. Karl is made to speak on the German Government radio telling the youth of Germany what a big mistake he made by turning his back on Hitler and his Third Reich and begging for forgiveness. Karl is to do this before he's to be executed for what he did with Anna, who's also facing a Nazi firing squad, present. It's not hard to guess what happens at this great and live event with millions of German listeners tuned in and tens of thousands outside the radio studio to see it live and in color. Karl knowing he has nothing to lose changes his tune in mid-sentence yet is still allowed to go on with his renouncing of Hitler and his Nazi policies! The Nazi bigwigs at the studio don't seem to have a clue to what he's saying until Karl almost finishes his speech and then blast him away together with the now happy, and now all is forgiven, Anna. This all happens with everyone man woman and child, and even pet,in the Third Reich listening in.Even as war-time propaganda "Hitler's Children" came up short and didn't deliver the goods being that the story took place from 1933 to 1939. Two years before America entered the war against Germany and even before WWII broke out in September of that, 1939, year! The worst crime that Adolf Hitler committed up to the time that "Hitler's Children" was supposed to take place was the rounding up and shooting of some 1,000 of his own brutal and criminal Nazi Brownshits. This happened on the evening of June 30-July 1, 1934 in what became known as the infamous Night of the Long Knives.