A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.
"Laughing with Hitler" is a journey into a supposedly humorless time. In the Third Reich, however, the Führer and his Nazi bigwigs were laughed at. The political jokes of the Hitler years were a barometer of true public opinion. But those who dared to make jokes critical of the regime lived dangerously. In the early Nazi era, Hitler jokes were punished as "insidious", during the war even as "undermining of military strength" and the penalty was the death penalty! The conflict with the Nazi authorities ended more mildly for other pranksters: the cheeky cabaret artist Werner Finck was deported to a concentration camp, but was released again.
In 1981, a film about the misadventures of a German U-boat crew in 1941 becomes a worldwide hit almost four decades after the end of the World War II. Millions of viewers worldwide make Das Boot the most internationally successful German film of all time. But due to disputes over the script, accidents on the set, and voices accusing the makers of glorifying the war, the project was many times on the verge of being cancelled.
When Luzifer fell from heaven to earth a precious stone fell from his crown, which turned into a huge deep black block of marble. "You think the world is on your string, well Rudy, think again". Luzifer had spoken.
Robert Koch is one of the superstars of the scientific world. In countless publications, Robert Koch is enthusiastically celebrated as the savior of humanity, but on closer inspection, many aspects of his research appear questionable today and can only be understood in the context of his time. Koch's meteoric career in the Wilhelmine Empire is a prime example of how scientific discoveries are inextricably linked to the political and economic conditions of their time. The documentary sheds light on these conditions and interludes, drawing parallels to the problems facing infectious medicine today.
A German U-boat stalks the frigid waters of the North Atlantic as its young crew experience the sheer terror and claustrophobic life of a submariner in World War II.