***SPOILERS***Celebraitng his 60th birthday on January 30, 1933 Prof. Victor Roth, Frank Morgan, has a lot to look back on in what he did to farther and expand the knowledge of science and the humanities and was looking forward to teach much more in the few years that he had left on this earth. But things would be somewhat different, and for the worst, for the old guy from that day on. You see January 30, 1933 also happened to be the very date that Adolph Hitler would become the Chancellor, and later Fuhrer, of the new and dictatorial Nazi Germany. After that momentous event things would, for kind sweet and non-violent people like Professor Roth, never ever be the same again.
Marching into town dozens of Nazi brown-shirted storm-troopers start to make life a living hell for Prof. Roth and those who refuse or aren't exactly willing to go along with their agenda. An evil agenda of super-patriotism and hatred of those who either don't conform or aren't that crazy to go along with their weird and hair-brained ideas. Soon many Germans end up being disappeared into internment and concentration camps never to heard or seen again until their released to their next of kin for, after being worked over starved and tortured, burial.
One of those who refuses to go along with the New Order in the new Nazi Germany is farm-boy and future veterinarian Martin Brehner, James Stewart, who's just plain old common as well as horse sense tells him that the Nazis ideology just isn't on the level, or kosher. Martin for one says that he isn't going to have anything to do with it, he Nazi Party, even if he has to leave the country for feeling that way. Martin didn't realize how prophetic that statement, or idea, was as events in the movie would later have him do just that.
Old man Roth is brutally beaten up and throw into a Nazi concentration camp, minus his overcoat and rubbers, for the unforgivable "crime" of being too pacifistic in his teaching to his students that love, not war, is the way to go. Kept in isolation for weeks on end in a cold dark cell Roth ends up dying in captivity. Roth's grieving daughter Freya, Margaret Sullivan, who's also Martin's girlfriend is now determined to leave the country, like Martin later did, by crossing the border into friendly and non-Nazi Austria. This is in 1933 five years before the 1938 German takeover of that country
We see in the movie "The Mortal Storm" how a foreign and frightening ideology can infect a highly cultured and progressive country like Germany by taking over the hearts minds and souls of millions of it's people and turning them into a nation of mindless zombies virtually over night. The horrors that the Nazi regime visits on the people in that small and sleepy German village that the movie takes place in is multiplied by hundreds, if not thousands, like-wise towns villages and cities within the next six years. Thus turning that great and highly cultured and civilized country into a mindless and ruthless Frankenstein Monster that would not be satisfied until it controlled not only it's immediate neighbors but the entire world!
Martin for his part is not at all that happy in being able to flee Nazi Germany without his love Freya who's kept virtually under house arrest by the local Nazis. Martin decides to go it alone and back into Nazi Germany in order to take Freya back home with him to Austria. Later, making their escape, the two are ambushed by a Nazi ski patrol at the Karwendel Pass, on the dangerous Alps slopes of the German/Austrian border, lead by Freya's ex-lover and now gong-ho Nazi fanatic Fritz Marberg, Robert Young. Freya ends up being shot and killed by Fritz's men as she, and Martin, refuses to turn back into Germany. Fritz now finally seeing what a mistake he made in his embracing the Nazi regimes is left a both heart-sick and heart-broken young man. Later, with tears in his eyes, Fritz tells Freya's two brothers who are also Nazi fanatics like himself, Otto & Eric, Robert Stack & William T. Orr, what he did, in his responsibility in their sisters death. Fritz's only excuse for his action is that he was only following orders!
P.S This lame excuse for committing government crimes, "I was only Following Orders", was to become the so-called "Nuremburg Defense" for Nazi, as well as many other nations, war criminals over the last sixty or so years since the end of WWII. Like it was brought out back at Nuremburg in 1945/46 that the person obeying and executing an illegal as well as official order is just as guilty as the superior office or either elected or anointed national leader who gave it.
Marching into town dozens of Nazi brown-shirted storm-troopers start to make life a living hell for Prof. Roth and those who refuse or aren't exactly willing to go along with their agenda. An evil agenda of super-patriotism and hatred of those who either don't conform or aren't that crazy to go along with their weird and hair-brained ideas. Soon many Germans end up being disappeared into internment and concentration camps never to heard or seen again until their released to their next of kin for, after being worked over starved and tortured, burial.
One of those who refuses to go along with the New Order in the new Nazi Germany is farm-boy and future veterinarian Martin Brehner, James Stewart, who's just plain old common as well as horse sense tells him that the Nazis ideology just isn't on the level, or kosher. Martin for one says that he isn't going to have anything to do with it, he Nazi Party, even if he has to leave the country for feeling that way. Martin didn't realize how prophetic that statement, or idea, was as events in the movie would later have him do just that.
Old man Roth is brutally beaten up and throw into a Nazi concentration camp, minus his overcoat and rubbers, for the unforgivable "crime" of being too pacifistic in his teaching to his students that love, not war, is the way to go. Kept in isolation for weeks on end in a cold dark cell Roth ends up dying in captivity. Roth's grieving daughter Freya, Margaret Sullivan, who's also Martin's girlfriend is now determined to leave the country, like Martin later did, by crossing the border into friendly and non-Nazi Austria. This is in 1933 five years before the 1938 German takeover of that country
We see in the movie "The Mortal Storm" how a foreign and frightening ideology can infect a highly cultured and progressive country like Germany by taking over the hearts minds and souls of millions of it's people and turning them into a nation of mindless zombies virtually over night. The horrors that the Nazi regime visits on the people in that small and sleepy German village that the movie takes place in is multiplied by hundreds, if not thousands, like-wise towns villages and cities within the next six years. Thus turning that great and highly cultured and civilized country into a mindless and ruthless Frankenstein Monster that would not be satisfied until it controlled not only it's immediate neighbors but the entire world!
Martin for his part is not at all that happy in being able to flee Nazi Germany without his love Freya who's kept virtually under house arrest by the local Nazis. Martin decides to go it alone and back into Nazi Germany in order to take Freya back home with him to Austria. Later, making their escape, the two are ambushed by a Nazi ski patrol at the Karwendel Pass, on the dangerous Alps slopes of the German/Austrian border, lead by Freya's ex-lover and now gong-ho Nazi fanatic Fritz Marberg, Robert Young. Freya ends up being shot and killed by Fritz's men as she, and Martin, refuses to turn back into Germany. Fritz now finally seeing what a mistake he made in his embracing the Nazi regimes is left a both heart-sick and heart-broken young man. Later, with tears in his eyes, Fritz tells Freya's two brothers who are also Nazi fanatics like himself, Otto & Eric, Robert Stack & William T. Orr, what he did, in his responsibility in their sisters death. Fritz's only excuse for his action is that he was only following orders!
P.S This lame excuse for committing government crimes, "I was only Following Orders", was to become the so-called "Nuremburg Defense" for Nazi, as well as many other nations, war criminals over the last sixty or so years since the end of WWII. Like it was brought out back at Nuremburg in 1945/46 that the person obeying and executing an illegal as well as official order is just as guilty as the superior office or either elected or anointed national leader who gave it.