08/15 (1954 film)

08/15 is a 1954 West German film directed by Paul May and based on the novel 08/15 by Hans Hellmut Kirst who also served as the film's screenwriter. The term 08/15 (nill-eight/fifteen, German: Null-Acht/Fünfzehn) refers to the German Army's standard machine gun, the 08/15 (or MG 08 model 15), by far, the most common German machine gun deployed in World War I. It was manufactured in such large quantities that it became the German Army slang for anything that was standard issue. 08/15 is also the first part of the 08/15 film trilogy, hence it is also named Teil 1: In der Kaserne (Part 1: In the Barracks).

Plot

The movie starts in Germany 1939, in the barracks of an artillery battalion. The enlisted men of the battery are harassed by their First Sergeant Schulz and a platoon leader, Staff Sergeant Platzek, whenever possible. Especially Private Vierbein, who has a passion for music and wanted to become a piano player, is a preferred target. This intensifies when Vierbein is ordered by Schulz to carpet beating in his rooms and Schulz´s wife, Lore, starts flirting with him. Even the squadron leader Corporal Lindenberg, who is known to be fair and correct, starts under pressure from Schulz to pick on him. He breaks down under the constant hard drill and harassment; when he steals ammunition on a rifle range, to commit suicide, one of his comrades, PFC Asch, who helps him constantly to get along with the military life, prevents this and decides that the harassment by the NCOs can´t go on.

Asch, who is viewed as one of the best soldiers in the battery and highly valued by Schulz and the other NCOs, and his friend Lance Corporal Kowalski start to compromise their superiors one by one. Corporal Lindenberg is provoked to report Asch for insubordination, but Kowalksi, who is named as witness, doesn´t support the claim. The mess-sergeant, Rumpler, reports Asch for mutiny when he controls the food and gets a result of unwarranted decrease. Rumpler withdraws his report when Schulz is threatening to inspect the kitchen food himself. Platzek tries to cover up the loss of the ammunition that Asch has kept, and though Asch helps him to falsify the documents he makes clear to Platzek that he is in his hands now. Later Asch and Kowalksi use the ammunition to fire several shots into Schulz´s office while Schulz and Platzek are in it.

Schulz, who recommended Asch for promotion to Corporal himself, is unnerved because of the shooting and the constant reports about Asch, and relays the reports up to the battery commander, Captain Derna. Derna refers Asch to the doctor, who declares him officially insane. Asch uses this diagnose and threatens the doctor with a gun. Now the situation is so severe that Captain Derna takes the reports to the battalion commander, Major Luschke. Luschke, severely unnerved by Derna and his inability to handle it himself, takes measures. He talks the officers and NCOs who reported Asch into withdrawing them by threat of demotion or transfer.

After that Asch is promoted to Corporal, as the Major has already granted it before the reports began, and Kowalski is promoted to Senior Lance Corporal. Only minutes later the battalion is falling in on the courtyard to hear the radio message of Hitler declaring the start of war against Poland and so the start of World War II.

Cast

• Joachim Fuchsberger as Private First Class Asch
• Peter Carsten as Lance Corporal Kowalski
• Paul Bösiger as Private Vierbein
• Emmerich Schrenk as First Sergeant Schulz
• Hans Christian Blech as Staff Sergeant Platzek
• Reinhard Glemnitz as Corporal Lindenberg
• Wilfried Seyferth as Major Luschke
• Helen Vita as Lore Schulz
• Mario Adorf (in his first role) as PFC Wagner

External links

• 08/15 at the Internet Movie Database