The tiny compromises and accommodations that could often have huge consequences. What the film brilliantly brings to the fore is the countless shades of grey that existed for everyone.

However, life is rarely so neat, and certainly wasn't back then under the Third Reich or the Soviet Union. Living in freer times, we like to imagine life back then as black and white: you were either clean or you collaborated. In this respect, the film does a great job of bringing the nuances and complexities of life in wartime in a dictatorship to the screen. 'We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when.' I won't spoil your enjoyment by revealing too much more. The singer, Greta, for instance, has an affair with a Gestapo man, essentially to further her career Wilhelm (the enthusiastic soldier) is disillusioned by his experience of the war, his less enthusiastic brother Friedhelm becomes totally apathetic and ruthless.

What follows, over 3x90 minute programmes, shows what life - and the war - throws at the five friends, and crucially shows the ways in which they, like the vast majority of ordinary people, were subtly made complicit in both the Nazi regime and the all-pervading horrors of World War Two. They are perhaps a microcosm of the ordinary German population: 2 soldiers (one keen, one not), an ambitious singer, a nurse eager to do her duty for the Fatherland, and a Jewish tailor. Meaning literally 'Our Mothers, our Fathers', it is the story of 5 friends (3 men & 2 women) who meet up just prior to the invasion of the USSR in the spring of 1941 to swear eternal friendship and promise to meet again the following Christmas. It first aired in Germany earlier this year, and caused something of a sensation, drawing enormous audiences, provoking spirited debate and anguished reflection and generally jumping the normal bounds inhabited by a TV programme. I finally got around to watching the last part of the German mini-series 'Unsere M ütter, unsere V ä ter' last night. The Fortress at Brest - a story of heroism, sacrif.'Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter' - a historian's review.

Unsere mütter unsere väter cast