Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Charité at War hit Netflix today, and if the German-language drama sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a sequel series to celebrated hospital drama Charité. Both series are set in Berlin’s world-famous Charité Hospital, and both follow bright, young women attempting to break boundaries in medicine under the tutelage of legendary physicians. Both Charité and Charité at War weave soap opera drama into the historic events of the day, showing how human passions influenced tremendous medical breakthroughs, and how politics got in the way of science. The big difference between the series, though, is that Charité is set in the late 19th century, a period of cultural renaissance for Germany, while Charité at War opens in 1943. That means the hospital isn’t just run by Nazis, but every character has to confront what they will and won’t do for the Reich.
Yes, Charité at War is a show about Nazis. Though, to its credit, Charité at War manages to look unblinkingly at the atrocities committed during this time. Even as we’re rooting for mom-to-be and med student Anni (Mala Emde), we’re being shown how her beloved husband Artur (Artjom Gilz) is surreptitiously experimenting on special needs children in order to keep himself in Berlin as opposed to the front. Oh, yes, there’s a scene where his mentor straight up insinuates that if he doesn’t man up and euthanize children with Down’s Syndrome, he will have to eat bullets on the front. Are we meant to root for Artur’s choice? Nope. Are we meant to understand the logic pushing him to commit murder? I guess?
Charité at War pulls off something stunning. It never pulls its punches on the ethics of the Nazi party — repeatedly showing all the ways their beliefs were awful, and having characters quietly admit Hitler sucks — but it shows how real people could have gotten sucked up into the fascist machine. We meet soldiers suffering from PTSD, hard-core believers railing against homosexuality, and people just living their lives as the world burns. It is a soap opera where you know everyone is doomed, and you get the feeling they know it, too.
Like Charité, Charité at War is six episodes long and the whole season is now streaming on Netflix.
