General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Des Teufels General

Des Teufels General (The Devil's General) is a 1955 West German black-and-white drama directed by Helmut Käutner, adapted from Carl Zuckmayer's stage play of the same name, with Curd Jürgens as the Luftwaffe general Harras who turns against the Nazi regime.¹ It premiered on 23 February 1955 at the Weltspiele cinema in Hannover and became one of the defining German films of the 1950s about guilt and complicity under National Socialism.¹

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	23 February 1955, Weltspiele, Hannover; FSK rating 12 years issued 17 February 1955¹
Director and screenplay	Helmut Käutner, with Georg Hurdalek; based on Carl Zuckmayer's play¹
Lead cast	Curd Jürgens (General Harras), Viktor de Kowa (SS-Gruppenführer Schmidt-Lausitz), Karl John (engineer Oderbruch), Marianne Koch (Diddo Geiss)¹
Production	Real-Film GmbH (Hamburg), producer Walter Koppel; shot 23 November 1954 to 25 January 1955 in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel, Berlin, and the Real-Film studios in Hamburg-Wandsbek¹
Runtime and format	117 minutes (the filmportal archival record lists 3291 m, 120 min); 35 mm, 1:1.33, black and white²^•¹
Awards	Volpi Cup at Venice 1957 (ex aequo, best male acting performance); David-O. Selznick Prize at the Berlinale 1957; Deutscher Filmpreis 1955, Filmband in Gold for best supporting actress; FBW rating "wertvoll"³
First TV broadcast	24 April 1967, ZDF³

Spoilers

Plot

The action is set in Germany in December 1941, with German cities under Allied air attack and air superiority deciding the war.⁴ General Harras, a celebrated flyer who has devoted himself to Hitler's air force out of a passion for flying rather than ideology, keeps his distance from the Nazis and the SS and says so openly.²^•⁵ When a series of newly built aircraft crash, he falls under suspicion of sabotage, and the SS puts him under pressure, placing him under surveillance and briefly detaining him.⁴^•³

Harras discovers that the saboteur is his friend, the aviation engineer Oderbruch, who has been manipulating the planes to resist the regime's madness.³ In December 1941 Harras recognizes that he shares guilt in the war and its inhumanity, and that the war is already lost.²^•⁴ Rather than betray his friend to the SS, he takes off in one of the sabotaged aircraft and flies to his death, thereby shielding Oderbruch with his own.²^•³ Zuckmayer derived the figure of Harras from the fate of the aviator Ernst Udet, who was driven to suicide by the Nazis in 1941; the film's closing line has Harras conclude that whoever was the devil's general on earth must also quarter him in hell.⁶^•¹

Production

The rights to Zuckmayer's play, already a major stage success, were sought after for years before Hamburg's Real-Film, under producer Walter Koppel, brought it to the screen with Käutner directing.⁷ Military subjects had long been taboo in German cinemas after the war, and the trade press expected the film to put human problems in the foreground while keeping the uniform in the background.⁵^•⁷ Albert Benitz was the cinematographer for studio work, with aerial photography by Jost Graf von Hardenberg, and the production design was by Herbert Kirchhoff and Albrecht Becker; the music consists of archival recordings.¹

The film marked the breakthrough for Curd Jürgens, whose imposing presence suited the role of the cynical, charming general.⁸ Marianne Koch, previously cast in ingénue parts, played the politically aware actress Diddo Geiss and received the Bundesfilmpreis and the golden Bambi in 1955 for the performance.⁸

Reception and assessment

The German Film and Media Rating board (FBW) awarded the film its "wertvoll" predicate and praised the lifelike characters, the acting, and the above-average sets and photography, while noting that the film's treatment of its central problem remained flatter than the stage play and that the contrast between the unstable Harras and the resolute Oderbruch came through less clearly on screen.⁴ The Filmdienst review reached a similar verdict: a formally notable but politically defused adaptation that makes unreflected identification with the hero easy, a "rehabilitation film" that remains ambivalent despite its realistic rendering of the period.² A Deutschlandfunk retrospective placed the film as a document of the ostrich politics of the 1950s, to which Käutner himself contributed.⁵

The director Fritz Lang, by contrast, said he had not seen a single German postwar film he had liked except Des Teufels General, which he found magnificent.¹ At the 1957 Venice International Film Festival the film received the Volpi Cup for the best male acting performance, shared with The Heroes Are Tired, and at the 1957 Berlinale it won the David-O. Selznick Prize.³

Later distribution

The film was first broadcast on television on 24 April 1967 on ZDF.³ Early DVD releases were cut by almost four minutes; on 16 March 2018 Filmjuwelen issued an uncut restoration from the negative on DVD and, for the first time, on Blu-ray.⁹ A digitized DCP version was produced in 2013 by the Deutsches Filminstitut with funding from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and the film is available for rental through the DFF and the Deutsche Kinemathek.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › War action and adventure › War action films released through 1999 › Released 1934 to 1962

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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