The Defeated

The Defeated Season 01 | Official English Trailer | Netflix
Latest Updates

I'm ambivalent about this show. On one hand it's showing us what life was like in Berlin right after the end of WW2. Lots of ruins, people scrabbling to survive. Don't see many shows about the aftermath of war and the chaos that ensues. On the other hand the story is like something out of a comic book, fairly heavy handed.

We've got Max MacLoughlin, the cop from New York City, specially imported to help get the Berlin Police up and running again. Okay so far, but then we also have his brother Moritz, a psychotic killer who has taken it upon himself to kidnap, torture and execute former Nazis. On one hand, his victims are getting their just desserts, on the other, the war is over and we aren't supposed to be executing people without a trial. Just for a little historical aside, we also have a Jewish group known as Nakam who are also in the business of executing former Nazis.

Max and Moritz

Max and Moritz was a humorous book from the 19th Century that is (reputedly) still a fixture of German culture much like the Peanuts comic strip is in America. Our Max and Moritz's mother had a copy of this book and read it to her boys regularly, up until their father shot and killed her in a drunken rage, a drunken rage that also got him shot and killed and left our two boys orphans.

Moritz became a little unhinged, whether it was due to that traumatic incident or some other cause, we don't know. Max swore an oath of loyalty to his brother when he was a kid, but he has known for a while that his brother is a nutcase. So Max is conflicted. He wants him to give up his crusade of revenge killing and come home to New York, but Moritz doesn't care about New York or his family anymore. He just wants to kill Nazis. So what's Max gonna do? If he arrests his brother he's breaking his oath, not to mention that they are going to lock him up for good. If he lets him go, he's not doing his job as a cop.

Elsie is the female head of the precinct where Max has been assigned. Her squad of 'scarecrows' are all women, presumably due to the shortage of men. Her squad are called scarecrows because of their uncoordinated outfits, they don't have uniforms. Or guns. They do have a collection of wooden clubs hanging on a rack inside the front door of the bank they have commandeered for use as their precinct headquarters. The old one got blowed up.

According to Wikipedia, three million German soldiers have been captured by the Soviets. In this story someone says eleven million. In any case, Elsie's husband is one of them. 

The Soviets have their own sector of the city and, like everyone else, are prying into everyone else's affairs. Their chief finds out that Elsie's husband is a prisoner and has him transferred to Berlin. His plan is to reward Elsie with visits to her husband for providing him with useful information. On their second or third very brief meeting her husband tells her he is planning to escape. Elsie immediately informs the Soviet commandant of this in the belief that her husband will surely be killed if he attempts to escape. Her hope is that the commandant will spare him, otherwise his hold over her will be lost. Not your typical heroic story line. 

We also have the Angel Maker, the kingpin of a brothel and information empire. Entirely ruthless, he has no qualms about killing anyone why jeopardizes his fiefdom. Of course, he never actually gets his hands dirty, he has an army of women who are quite willing to do the job for him.

We also have the high society swells living the high life, driving fancy cars to cocktail parties in big, fancy houses and dancing with good lookin' dames in slinky evening gowns. That's what the victors do, that's what the victors have always done. But when you've got that much success, there are going to be abuses, so who knows what kind of skullduggery is going to be uncovered? They're telling us a cover story, but we still have a couple of episodes to go and I think we are going to find something much worse.

The worst part of it is that everybody speaks English. They slip in a few words in German or Russian here and there, but everyone quickly reverts to English. I hear English is becoming more common in Europe, but somehow I doubt that was the case in 1946.