Rating: 
Summary: Haunting Documents of War and Death
Review: First, a remark about the KINO DVD: It only contains the documentary, nothing else, picture quality is up to vhs standard only (of course I speak about the newer segments, shot in 1990), and worst of all, the english subtitles in this all-german film can not be switched off (the dvd was taken from an already subtitled print), which is very annoying as one would like to see the old images without big white letters written over them.
But then, what choice do you have?? This is the only version of this documentary available and so I have to live with it. The documentary contains home-made films from 6 german soldiers on the eastern front and their recollections and comments 45 years later, sometimes incredible high-quality color shots, sometimes gruesome field hospital scenes, naked ukrainian women, heaps of corpses, burnt out panzers, hanged jews, shot partisans and ruins, ruins, ruins. To me, these were the things which sticked in my mind, and I will surely not forget: The old china-trader, who comes across as the most distinguished and sympathetic of the veterans, admitting shooting partisans and having nightmares from it for 45 years each night. The Cynical one who states that the only thing he regrets was that he had not the opportunity to film the western theatre of war. And the reeducated one, giving hollow statements about how wrong it all was, but making (as the only one) his living by selling WWII photos in an agency. There are a lot of gruesome, funny, interesting things to see, but the most memorable one were the faces of the already beaten soldiers, 10 minutes befor the battle of Kiev, knowing they will die. This documentary is unbelievably valuable, presenting views and thoughts beyond any censorship or propaganda, so one has to own it as you're never be able to see things like this again, shame about the presentation on DVD which could have been so much better.
Rating:
Summary: Most important historical document.
Review: I believe that McNamara is wrong about what the gentlemen is describing. McNamara states that the old soldier is describing the journey to the front before the invasion of Poland. My take on it is that the old soldier is describing the move to the front through Poland and to the assembly positions for the invasion of Russia in 1941.
No serious student of WWII can be without this film. Unless you know exactly where Vitebsk is and when the Germans first captured it, you won't know exactly what the old soldiers are talking about.
I lived in Germany during the 1990's for several years. I met a few old German soldiers who fought in WWII. Their stories are very much like the stories told by the men in Mein Krieg.
Anybody who thinks that the USA's current campaign in Iraq is tough going needs to see "Mein Krieg", because Iraq is a picnic compared to the Russo-German War of 1941-1945.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Home Video Footage of the Eastern Front
Review: I can't say I was disappointed after viewing this movie composed of home videos shot during Germany's invasion of Russia. There's some really great footage in this movie. The color footage is amazing, and gives you another perspective of World War II. There's also some black and white, but whether color film or not, there's some interesting footage shot. I learned a lot from viewing this.
Rating: 
Summary: Just another war documentary
Review: I don't know why I had the impression that this was going to be a movie about a bunch of former comrades gathered together to watch the film that they shot and to describe to the public their experiences. Well this is just another war documentary, narrated by the now old soldiers (one by one and it was filmed at different times it isn't the reunion party that I expected). The most interesting part of the video were the few color scenes.
Rating:
Summary: Landsers narrate their own war
Review: I was a bit disappointed by this DVD, but it is still worth having. It provides some very penetrating insight onto bits of everyday life for the German landser on the Eastern front -- the footage is mostly of barracks, hospitals, rear-areas, roads, and only rarely the front -- but its short length (90 minutes) and the unavoidable messiness brought about by editing the amateur footage of six different men into one narrative gave it a ragged, uneven feel. It also seemed like the documentarians' questions were fairly loaded, as if they were trying to force the ex-landsers into admitting guilt for their participation in the war (which it was obvious only one or two of them really felt) rather than simply letting their words speak for themselves. The air of judgementalism, whether or not it is justified, has no place in a neutral format such as this. In any case, there are many fine moments in the footage. The striking (color) image of the ragged swastika flag flying over the barracks and the Nazi-style monuments is jarring because it looks so recent. One rarely gets such a sense of connection the historical past with B&W film. Similarly the color shots of the soldiers make them look alive and real in a way B&W film does not. One gets a sense that indeed, all of this did really happen. Seeing bombed-out ruins of Polish and Russian cities in black-and-white is one thing, but in color it is striking. There was not as much color as I had hoped, but the other scenes of the AA gun shooting down the Russian plane, the night tank scrap, the retreat in the mud sea and the unexpected arrival of Field Marshal von Manstein for dinner in the field are all very interesting, as is much of the narrative. To see men talking about the experiences they filmed themselves, fifty years later, is often moving. I just wish there was more of it.
Rating:
Summary: Mein Kreig
Review: I was deeply impressed with the directors' ability to connect images of film shot by German soldiers in the 1941 Russian campaign with their present-day recollections fifty years after the war. Moving back and forth between vintage footage (some of it in beautiful, vintage color) and interviews, the movie uniquely illuminates the war with the veterans' understanding and interpretation of century-old events. Time changes many young men's views of war, and most of the interviewed veterans seemed to come to sobering and disturbing conclusions of the purpose of the Russian campaign and their participation in the Nazi military effort. Seeing images of Germany and Russia in color also has a profound effect as we are so used to seeing only black and white images of that period that it was almost like viewing the past through some magical history-lens. Anyone with interest in modern European history or World War II will find this film magical, illuminating and haunting. The film does include footage of combat and discussion of atrocities and is probably not appropriate for children.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I've read many books about WWII. This movie did something very rare, it added a new perspective to my understanding of the war. There are no cliches, and there is much you have never seen before. Don't get me wrong when I say this, but I get the feeling that we have turned a deaf ear to anything the Germans have to say about their experience in the war. It is as if this is part of the retribution for the suffering the war caused. We seem to be trying to write their perspective out of the history books out of a sense that their view of things has no legitimacy or out of a fear that it will happen again. Germans are also reluctant to tell their side, I guess out of a sense of guilt. This is all wrong. We owe it to prosperity to get every side so that when people read about this era in the future, they will have a full understanding of what happened. I think this movie goes a long way in that direction.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing footage (some in colour)...a view back in time
Review: If you are unsure if this is the real thing.....rest assured it is. A must see. Blunt, surreal, sad, and interesting study of the "average" German Soldier.
Rating:
Summary: The other side...
Review: Mein Krieg is an extraordinary documentary consisting of film footage shot by six separate German Wehrmacht soldiers during WWII. These amateur filmmakers carried their home movie cameras to the front and in the process documented a little-seen aspect of war -- the personal experience. While the six men show their footage to their unseen interviewer, they also reminisce about their war experiences. The images these six men capture on their largely 8mm equipment is in black-and white and one has some stunning Kodachrome footage. What they capture are memories that could easily bet taken from the the Vietnam War. To begin with, the film offers a view of soldiering that a Marine recruiter might envy: smiling soldiers sharing smokes in a foxhole. Still more idyllic moments are featured in a film one survivor made as a 14-year-old at Hitler Youth Camp. "You didn't just walk around, you marched," explains the combat veteran, who went on to shoot movies on the march to Leningrad. These boys could be Allies or Nazis; their languages differ but their needs remain much the same. Mein Krieg is a fascinating glimpse of "the other side".
Rating:
Summary: a spectrum of perspectives
Review: More than anything, I am baffled by the film. I read the reviews here before I watched the video and I really saw something radically different from what I expected. A comforting, cozy cliche permeates the reviews that the German soldiers, when they grow old, become more sober about their participation in the Wehrmacht and what it stood for. That's not what I got out of this film at all. There is only one veteran who expresses unequivocal regret, the one who says he realized that this was no defensive war, but an idiotic aggression. Apart from him, one other says he used to have dreams of the war until a year ago and got over it after a visit to Russia. These two aside, one veteran says his conscience is not troubled at all. I think he is the one who says, at the beginning, that he "just followed orders". He has been an active participant in a campaign that left more than 20 million people dead (maybe half of them civilians), and his conscience is not stirred. Another one says that the only thing he regrets about the war is that he fought in the East. He says it's a good thing that he got to see Hungary, Rumania, etc., but he would have liked to see the countries in the West, too. The callousness of the remark is stupefying. And when you see images of Russian women throwing dead, half-burned bodies of their husbands and brothers into a pit, one veteran says something like "Nobody forced them to do it, they did it themselves. Of course, the German soldiers wouldn't do the burying; they had other things to do." It's hard to say whether he is being sarcastic or not. The German soldiers apparently had other things to do, namely the burning and the killing. And why should the Russian women leave their dead relatives lying around anyway? Some of the most revealing words of the film come from a field doctor. He authoritatively announces that in every war, people are bound to die. Then he talks about how many wounded soldiers they received and how disciplined the German soldiers were and how they never even moaned. This last one is a real classic. The most moving scene in the film is the one where one veteran is asked whether he participated in the killing of civilians, and he says "Do I have to answer that? Allow me not to answer that." And the footage of Russian POW's... Those scenes of tens of thousands of men in an open field remind one of the day of judgement more than anything else. Overall, it is definitely worth seeing. But what you make out of it is up to you.
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