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I saw it in grade school as a kid and I saw it again last year on Netflix. I liked it. It has aged well compared to re-watching a lot of other shows and movies

by yardie 10y ago

I saw it in grade school as a kid and I saw it again last year on Netflix. I liked it. It has aged well compared to re-watching a lot of other shows and movies from my youth. It was filmed from the point of view of a child. Of course they wouldn't know much about how terrible the Nazis were. Hell most of the adult world didn't know how terrible they were. I'm sure the Baron just told them these guys are terrible without mentioning the ovens and medical experiments and kept it moving.

clock_tower 10y ago
I think the movie portrays them pretty accurately, from Captain von Trapp's perspective in 1938: thuggish, low-class, irresponsible, violent, and regrettably alluring to the young. The really foul stuff hadn't started yet -- and you'd have to know a lot more about the Nazi inner circle than von Trapp did (or cared to) in order to know that it was coming.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Reprising https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13475183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13475183: It's true that the Nazi regime got worse (very) shortly after 1938, but it's not true that Nazi Germany prior to 1938 was only superficially bad. The history of the era suggests that Nazi Germany in 1938 was like North Korea in the 1970s: a functioning murderous fascist dictatorship.
  - pvg 10y ago
    This is a point that probably isn't made clearer by analogy since 1970s North Korea was well ahead of 1938 Nazi Germany in totalitarianism (and camps).
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    I wasn't meaning to say that they were "only superficially bad", but that they were extremely ill-omened -- the sort of organization that was capable of almost anything, and that no gentleman would associate with. But, as you point out, they were very bad very early -- Roehm and the Sturmabteilung were purged in 1934 (!), and Kristallnacht was late 1938 (while restrictions on Jewish store owners etc. were earlier). "North Korea in the '70s" sounds about right -- I'd underestimated just how quickly things happened with that regime. The mere "no gentleman" phase was probably over before they came to power...
RodericDay 10y ago
At least some kids knew how terrible they really were, since they suffered through it. I don't like when people say eg: "Most people didn't know slavery was bad". It reflexively axes all the victims from the category of "people".

by yardie 10y ago

clock_tower 10y ago

I think the movie portrays them pretty accurately, from Captain von Trapp's perspective in 1938: thuggish, low-class, irresponsible, violent, and regrettably alluring to the young. The really foul stuff hadn't started yet -- and you'd have to know a lot more about the Nazi inner circle than von Trapp did (or cared to) in order to know that it was coming.

tptacek 10y ago
Reprising https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13475183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13475183: It's true that the Nazi regime got worse (very) shortly after 1938, but it's not true that Nazi Germany prior to 1938 was only superficially bad. The history of the era suggests that Nazi Germany in 1938 was like North Korea in the 1970s: a functioning murderous fascist dictatorship.
- pvg 10y ago
  This is a point that probably isn't made clearer by analogy since 1970s North Korea was well ahead of 1938 Nazi Germany in totalitarianism (and camps).
- clock_tower 10y ago
  I wasn't meaning to say that they were "only superficially bad", but that they were extremely ill-omened -- the sort of organization that was capable of almost anything, and that no gentleman would associate with. But, as you point out, they were very bad very early -- Roehm and the Sturmabteilung were purged in 1934 (!), and Kristallnacht was late 1938 (while restrictions on Jewish store owners etc. were earlier). "North Korea in the '70s" sounds about right -- I'd underestimated just how quickly things happened with that regime. The mere "no gentleman" phase was probably over before they came to power...

RodericDay 10y ago

At least some kids knew how terrible they really were, since they suffered through it. I don't like when people say eg: "Most people didn't know slavery was bad". It reflexively axes all the victims from the category of "people".