In the late 1940s, as World War II ended and the world was trying to return to something that vaguely resembled normalcy, there was still a lot of hostility in the hearts of those who had been hurt the most from that war. Anti-German and anti-Japanese sentiment was understandable, even though we should have known that not all Germans were Nazis and not all Japanese shared in Hirohito’s visions of conquest. To many, that didn’t matter and if you were from either country you were guilty by proxy. Healing would be a slow process. And it wasn’t just the Germans and the Japanese, either. The Russians, who were our allies in the war, had annexed half of Germany as part of their spoils of war, leaving many to fear and distrust their people, too. The idea of being able to set aside all of these differences and distrust and work together for the greater good would be considered a lofty, but probably unattainable goal for many in the late 1940s. But that is exactly what the film Berlin Express is ultimately about.
This film came out in 1948, less than two years after the last bullets flew in the second world war. It depicts several men, and a woman, who are thrown together by chance as they travel by U.S. Army train to Berlin. Among these people are American, Russian, British, French, and German diplomats. One of the Germans tries to get better acquainted with the others but is rebuffed because of his nationality. He is believed to be Dr. Heinrich Bernhardt, a prominent diplomat working to restore a peaceful Germany. But when he is killed by an explosion in his train berth, the others are questioned upon their arrival in Frankfurt. Soon it is discovered that the man killed wasn’t the real Bernhardt but his bodyguard. The real man is kidnapped in Frankfurt, leading the others, some of them more reluctantly at first than the others, to team up to find him and uncover what is really going on.
The central message here is that we are all part of humanity and that, for the right reasons, we can set nationalities aside and work together. This was the right kind of message we needed to hear in these years just after the war. But this is more than just a moralizing film. It also tells an intriguing story about just what the German people were facing in the time just after the fall of the Third Reich and how the people of Germany were trying to put all of that behind them. We are still feeling the aftereffects of this to this day as news of former Nazis, the very few that are still alive, are still being sought out for prosecution for their crimes eighty years later. In 1948 many would have had a hard time accepting that we could ever put aside our differences like this. But the final shot of this movie suggests that it is possible and that we could look to the future as a place where cooperation is not only doable but desirable. It’s the kind of message that we needed then and, quite honestly, we really need again. 1948 - 87 minutes
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