If you’re a history fanatic like me, then I have a special gem for you here today. ParaLight WorX, a German YouTube channel, has been making monumental strides here in recent years with their mini series war drama, Dusty Faces.
For some context, before I watched this series, I had a very biased view of German soldiers who fought in WW2. I’m also certain that I’m not the only one who has shared this collective consciousness.
We’ve all seen it portrayed in countless WW2 films and video games, German soldiers and tanks in battle running aimlessly towards a hail of bullets and rockets, just like NPCs in Call Of Duty.
This irrational portrayal of German soldiers is quite comical, as no ordinary person would ever operate in such a manner in such stressful situations.
One thing to keep in mind when considering these games and films is that the Germans militarized their entire society and conditioned their young for military service at an early age, typically around 13, so it only seems logical that German troops would have had the training to adopt a more tactical approach to battle.
Dusty Faces follows a German company sent to fight the Russians on the Eastern Front during World War 2. The main protagonist of the series, Otto Degen, (Tristan Hebestreit) is a young German soldier sent to fight on the front lines alongside his fellow “Wehrmacht” (German military at the time) soldiers.
The amount of detail and continuity in each episode all prove to the viewers how dedicated and passionate the filmmakers and crew are regarding the historical accuracy of the series, which help to further immerse the audience into the actual time period and experiences of these young men.
As I mentioned before, prior to viewing the series, I only was familiar with the German soldier through the lens of war games like Call Of Duty; which often depict poor attempts at battle scenes which also factor into countless war movies, serving as a disingenuous and misguided representation of the men who actually fought and died for their country, in terms of patriotism, that is. The only noncommendable act being they were fighting for the continuation of the poisonous Nazi ideology and the Third Reich.
Even with this in mind, the series is still worth the watch because of its paramount contribution to humanitarianism. Dusty Faces shows us that we aren’t too different from what we perceive as an enforcement of a heinous ideology or evil, which stems from false lens of perception.
