I found this movie while flipping through the channels early one morning in December/2005. I had missed the first 10 minutes and just had to buy the DVD. Although it plays loosely with the facts, something the film industry has a hard time adhering to, it nevertheless is an wonderful movie made for TV for the Hallmark Channel.
It is based on the short story "Truce in the Forrest" and "The Night God Came for Dinner" by Fritz Vicken. Unlike the movie, communication was done between Fritz's mother Elisabeth, who spoke some French and one of the American soldiers who also spoke a little French. Only one of the Germans spoke some English.
Both the movie and real life incident showed that these people could put their differences aside and found they were much alike in many ways. Unlike the conflict between the Germans and Russians, there wasn't that level of hatred unless they were dealing with the SS. I've found many stories where soldiers put their differences aside to help each other out, from a German officer stopping an American jeep at a checkpoint that was carrying a wounded GI, then directing them to the American lines, to the pilot of an ME-109 who came upon a crippled B-17 and rather than shooting it out of the sky, escorted it to the English Channel and made sure it was going to make it safely back before peeling away. Ironically, the pilots of those 2 warplanes found each other in the later years and became close friends. That's what this movie does it to show the human side of our "enemy" and leaves you hoping they made it out of the war OK but it does leave you wondering what ever happened to them.
Fritz Vicken was able to locate Sgt. Ralph Blank in a Maryland nursing home after years of searching for the soldiers, thanks to "Unsolved Mysteries". Sadly, Fritz Vicken died the year this movie was released. What is ironic is that Fritz immigrated to this country after the war, like so many German soldiers and civilians. Our former enemies were now productive Americans. Fritz owned a bakery in Honolulu for many years.
I've added this movie to my Christmas holiday collection.
