The style is characterized by its use of location exteriors among the "rubble" of bombed-down cities to bring the gritty, depressing reality of the lives of the civilian survivors in those early years.
[3] The Murderers Are Among Us begins with a ground shot facing upwards showing a Berlin street, complete with piles of rubble, and destroyed buildings.
These features include gloomy environments, canted angles and chiaroscuro lighting, along with morally ambiguous protagonists.
The German identity had been stripped by the Nazi party, and they felt that these films did little more than re-affirm the horrors that Germany suffered.
In the film The Murderers Are Among Us, the female protagonist Susanne returns from a concentration camp and is shocked by the misery of Germans in the cities.
A common trope in the rubble films is the highlighting of German soldiers' trauma at the expense of relegating the suffering of political and racial enemies of the Third Reich.