honest_reviews17 This documentary follows two different men who were sons of prominent figures during WW2. The person who does the interviews had several relatives who died in the war. This leads to an obvious bias on the part of the interviewer, but nonetheless it manages to reveal a sense of complication - both mental and emotional - created by such extreme events of the past. If your mind and heart are open, you will get much more out of this documentary.Some people say this has a political message / bias to it. But to me, the fact that real people were asked to encounter questions the enormity of which the world has never seen, and hopefully will never see again, negates any sense of intentionality of a "take away" message. In the end, it's left up to the viewer to decide - and that may be the most difficult part, realizing that a "decision" in terms of right and wrong are not always as clear as they seem. Not when it's personal. Not when it's your own father who was involved in such atrocities as this.

Michael Wehle Manipulative, simplistic documentary which adds to the pantheon of works positing the acceptability of but a narrow view of Nazism. The film opens with international lawyer Philippe Sands seemingly astonished to learn that Niklas Frank, son of Hans Frank, Governor- General of occupied Poland, is interested in discussing the architecture and furnishings of an Austrian castle. Philippe's confusion deepens when Niklas produces photo albums showing smiling family members and childhood birthday pictures along with photos of Adolph Hitler. Can Philippe's surprise be genuine? Is it so unimaginable that a family album might include pictures of a man the father worked with? Happily for Philippe, Niklas insists he had little love from his parents. We learn that his mother was remote and narcissistic - Niklas refers to her several times as Queen of Poland - and his parents' marriage was unhappy, with his father trying to get a divorce. Niklas is presented as fairly single-minded throughout the film, relentlessly condemning his father along with swipes at his mother. Philippe, and the BBC viewer, can relax. They were nasty people, these Nazis.Unfortunately for Philippe and Niklas, Horst von Wächter, son of Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter, apparently loves his father, and has only fond memories of both his parents. His father was a good man, we are told. He loved his wife and his children, and while he was an SS Gruppenführer and Governor of Kraków under Hans Frank, von Wächter never whole-heartedly supported the Final Solution. Horst maintains throughout the film that his father never once signed an order to transport Jews to death camps, and in fact suggests that he remained in his position from noble motivations, especially to support Ukrainian independence. Niklas and Philippe are exasperated with Horst, and the dynamic of the film is set.For the remaining hour and a quarter we see Philippe and Niklas, supported by a studio audience in London, struggle to convince Horst that his father was culpable in genocide. The battle becomes personal when Philippe reveals that under Frank and von Wächter 79 of 80 Sands family members died in Lviv, Ukraine. Philippe and Niklas argue with Horst in various venues, from an administration building where Frank delivered orders, to the site of mass executions, to a present day Ukrainian commemoration of the sacrifice of Ukrainians who fell fighting for independence. Philippe's alternately legalistic and quasi-therapeutic berating of Horst becomes a conspiratorial discussion with Niklas of whether Horst "is a Nazi" and what it will take for Niklas to sever his relationship with Horst.Horst a number of times attempts to communicate a context for how he sees his father's actions, but Philippe irritatedly rejects that there might legitimately be any context other than that of the BBC television audience. Horst references the First World War and the number of Austrian dead on the eastern front. A Ukrainian asked about the presence of modern day fascists replies that the question is complex, but this goes unexamined.The film closes with a rather excruciating imagining by Niklas Frank of his father's dishonest plea for absolution before his execution. For Niklas and Philippe, Niklas and Horst's fathers were beyond understanding and without redemption. Nazi crimes took place in a past disconnected from the time before Niklas's birth and events after Hans Frank's capture.In the end What Our Fathers Did is a self-satisfied voyeuristic pummeling of one old man by two other old men in the name of a justice which recognizes complicity in Nazi murder as more evil than acquiescence and complicity in other mass murder.

Steve B The film description tells you more than I can. However, I watched this not so much with interest for the 2 men, but for the story of their fathers and the occurrences they showed and the whole family perspective. The visits to the ghettos by the men as children said a lot to me. I mean, their fathers, dealers of death, took their kids to work. Incredible. They point out in the film the contradiction between these father's work and their ability to go home to their families to lead normal lives. It is inconceivable. All of the Nazis truly convinced themselves that their victims were not human. They had to have to look at everyone, their children victims and then go home to their own children. I cannot really grasp this which is why I watch films like this. I have never really come to an understanding of this and I probably never will.I did not expect the men to accuse their fathers or to convict them in front of the audience. I am not sure one should expect that. Both men acknowledge to different degrees what their fathers did. Are their fathers actions their actions? Should we expect them to vilify their fathers? I guess acknowledging who and what their fathers were and did is something I expect. Should they be blamed in a sense for their fathers actions if they do or do not blame or accuse their fathers? I think to a certain degree, people want to blame the children for their fathers crimes against humanity. By asking these men to vilify their fathers, they then would disown the crimes of their fathers....well this is the expectation of the filmmakers. I am not sure it is what should be expected. Their fathers were evil men who performed horrible evils, we all know that. Now if the children believed those actions were justified or if they believed their fathers were good men for those actions, then you could throw them in with their fathers actions. One man disowns his father and hates him as a father, for the father he was, as much as his Nazi actions in my opinion. He hated his mother too. That is some burden to carry. I think he carries it as a burden, truly.One man believes his father was a good man stuck in a bad circumstance. I don't believe that, I don't think anyone believes that. Should he vilify his father? He could say his father was kind to him but he knew his father did so much evil....but that didn't come out in the film to me.Watch this for the story of how human beings can lead 2 lives. Watch it to understand the horrors of the Nazis. Watch it to remember and ensure we don't see the rise of this again. We are seeing the rise....everywhere in the world. Watch this film to see where you stand, to judge your own beliefs. This film forces Introspect in my opinion.It is not about me, but it forces me to look at these people and my beliefs. I have strong Polish heritage so maybe that pushed my interest in this film too.

Tom Dooley Philippe Sands lost nearly all of his ancestors in Ukraine at the hands of Nazi's and their sympathisers. He became a barrister and specialises in human rights violation cases and war crimes. He met with two men who both owned up to being the sons of prominent Nazi's during WW II and he set out to make a film about them now and what the sins of the fathers mean to them.This film was made for the BBC Timewatch programme and has all the hallmarks of a high quality production. What makes this so watchable is the fact that the two men are at either end of the spectrum when it comes to blame. One hating his father for his crimes and the other claiming his papa did nothing wrong despite the evidence. He is not even using the 'he just followed orders' excuse as his father was the one issuing those self same orders.I found this to be a difficult watch in places even with the desensitising nature of modern TV it is still hard to contemplate the mass murder that Hitler and his acolytes carried out. Things here are generally balanced though and to say it was engrossing is an understatement – I would go for a rental if you can as you may not gain more on subsequent viewings.