The Adventures of Werner Holt

The Adventures of Werner Holt is a 1965 East German drama film directed by Joachim Kunert. Plot Werner Holt, a young Luftwaffenhelfer in an anti-aircraft gun crew stationed on the eastern border of Germany in the last days of World War II, is awaiting the attack of the Red Army with his friend and commander Gilbert Wolzow. Holt recalls the last two years of his life: his meeting with Wolzow, their conscription, his experience as an assistant in an anti-aircraft battery. He remembers how he began to lose faith in the war's aims, after witnessing the brutal crushing of the Slovak National Uprising and having a sexual encounter with an SS officer's wife, which left him disgusted. After that, he realized that his father's claims about millions of people being murdered in the concentration camps were true. As the Soviets attack, Wolzow orders his ill-equipped soldiers to hold to the last man. Holt flees, only to hear that his friend was himself accused of treason by an SS blocking detachment. He arrives in time to see Wolzow hanged. Enraged, Holt grabs a machine-gun and mows down the executioners. He then deserts. Cast