[2] However, aspects such as the portrayal of the Polish resistance movement as anti-semites, the scant depiction of Nazi Germany's objective to purge the Reich of Jews,[3] and the blurring of differences between non-German victims and German perpetrators have been deplored by others.

Shortly after the end of the war, the three survivors, Wilhelm, Viktor and Charlotte, meet in the ruins of the same pub as before and grieve for their lost friends, without any sense of triumph over their survival.

He is somewhat aware that Charlotte has feelings for him, but tells his brother and fellow soldiers that he doesn't want to get her hopes up, presumably as he could be killed on the front lines before he could reciprocate.

Facing the death of his whole platoon to achieve a questionable objective, he walks away from the front line after suffering from a concussion caused by a Panzerfaust anti-tank explosive.

Things only get worse when Wilhelm later turns up as a Penal Battalion soldier at her field hospital as the German Army is retreating on the Eastern Front.

She does however proceed to shoot Sonja, stating there was nothing she could do to alter a death penalty for a collaborator, noting that she has at least saved her from suffering sexual abuse at the hand of the soldiers.

She is briefly reunited with Friedhelm, Wilhelm, and Charlotte in her improvised dressing room after her performance, but cuts short the reunion (much to the other friends' dismay) to attend a private party held by the senior commanders.

By chance she manages to return to her bar in Berlin, where she openly expresses her doubts in the Endsieg to a group of partying soldiers, and angers Dorn by revealing their affair to his wife, both of which lead to her getting arrested and imprisoned for Wehrkraftzersetzung ("subversion of the war effort") and defeatism.

After the end of the war Viktor returns to Berlin to find out that both his parents and Greta are dead, that new residents have taken over his family's apartment, and that Dorn is now a member of the allies' postwar administration under the protection of U.S. army, much to his fury.

His comrades deride him as a foolhardy coward who puts their lives at greater risk and they beat him up after it is perceived he gave away their position to a Polikarpov Po-2 "sewing machine" by lighting a cigarette.

Friedhelm becomes emotionally hardened and ruthless throughout the Eastern front campaign, willingly executing prisoners, and leading a charge to take a Russian telegraph station after witnessing his brother's apparent death by a Panzerfaust.

Near the end of the war he has been promoted to the rank of Unteroffizier (equivalent to UK Corporal / US Sergeant) and leads a group of Volkssturm soldiers comprising old men and Hitler Youth boys shaped by their stubborn will to fight against the Soviets.

[citation needed] The series has received a 60% "fresh" rating on the popular critical aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes signifying mixed reviews.

[28] The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that the film would give the remaining survivors of the World War II generation an opportunity to discuss it with their families.

[32] The author stressed the danger of the docu-entertainment format of movies that attempt to depict historical events with stories that are in fact purely fictional.

The film showed nothing of the love and trust that Hitler inspired in German youth, or of the widespread belief that Germany deserved to rule Europe.

In reality, he wrote, these "mothers and fathers" were a highly ideological and politicized generation, who wanted Nazi Germany to win victory, because that would be right.

The film showed 20-year-old characters who became victims of war but missing were the 30- to 40-year-old Germans who built the Nazi system and supported it out of a mixture of conviction and self-interest.

The Americans (and not the Germans) use 'former' Nazis to pursue their own interests..."[34] A critic in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger called the film kitschy, devoid of deeper meaning, and morally worst, full of pathetic self-pity.

[6] Critics stated that the screenwriters sought to slander the Polish anti-Nazi resistance underground army Armia Krajowa, which is shown in the film as rabidly anti-semitic.

[37][38] The broadcaster issued a statement that it was regrettable that the role of Polish characters had been interpreted as unfair and hurtful: "The deeds and responsibility of the Germans should in no way be relativized.

[40] He was supported by the director of the Polish state organisation the Institute of National Remembrance, Łukasz Kamiński, who said he feared that people who were unfamiliar with European history may be led to believe that Armia Krajowa members were all antisemitic.

[43] Commenting on its success in Germany, The Economist wrote that some German critics suggested that "putting five sympathetic young protagonists into a harrowing story just offers the war generation a fresh bunch of excuses.

"[1] The Daily Telegraph wrote that Generation War "has been hailed by critics as a 'turning point' in German television for examining the crimes of the Third Reich at an individual level," and that it, "explores the seductive aspect of Nazism.

"[44] Jackson Janes, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, commented that the series "does not filter the Nazi atrocities nor the reality of war.

The review ends with the comment that of the five protagonists, "the artist, the intellectual and the Jew are all punished, for wantonness, weakness and naïveté, and pushed into extreme states of moral compromise, [while] the chaste, self-sacrificing Aryans, the lieutenant and the nurse, though they are not without guilt, are the heroes of the story, just as they would have been in a German film made in 1943.

[48] The New Yorker reviewer David Denby wrote that "Generation War has the strengths and the weaknesses of middlebrow art: it may be clunky, but it's never dull, and, once you start watching, you can't stop," and "the old accepted notion that the barbarians were confined to the S.S. and the Gestapo has been cast aside.

In reality, "most ordinary Germans at the time held attitudes of casual racism at the very least, and a strong sense of imperial entitlement over Jews, Slavs and other races deemed racially and culturally inferior.

"[50] The Spectator reviewer James Delingpole criticized the series as "semi-apologia" that "had ducked frank and fearless authenticity in favour of face-saving, intellectually dishonest, respectful melodrama that leaves its audience feeling frustrated, cheated and rudderless".

This is due to the portrayal of the five main characters in a sympathetic light of "heroism and sacrifice, loyalty and betrayal, love and its price" which is detached from actual historical events.