Hitler in his manger.

VIENNA BLOOD

French version below

In this series, PBS explores the slow and violent rise of ultranationalist German movements in Austria when Adolf Hitler is being born and raised. The series is rather harsh because kind of graphic, but it sure is worth a small trip in time.

ENDOR PRODUCTIONS LTD — VIENNE BLOOD — FIRST SEASON — 2019

Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century, before World War 1, is a very cosmopolitan city that is still the crossroads it had been for several centuries as the capital of the German Empire. Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, and above all Jewish people are living there and the Germanic Austrians resent this situation. At the same time, this society is rich with music and culture, and Mozart’s Zauber Flöte is always present with its magical and somber forces that are tearing this society apart, even if the vision that is given in one episode of this series is closer to Siegfried and his dragon than the charming bird catcher Papageno. This society is haunted by some demons coming from the very distant Middle Ages, and these demons are going to tear apart not only Austria but the whole of Europe. The first one is antisemitism, clearly identified since Max Lieberman and Sigmund Freud are Jews. But the second is freemasonry which is discreetly present in the series and is constantly confronted with a militaristic and nationalistic ideology of military honor and military solutions to any problem. The worst part of this ideology is the belief that marriage is the only objective of a man in this world, and to be a man you have to be strong and resilient against any hardship, violence, and suffering with the acme idea that a real man cannot be anything if he does not accept to go through some such brutality imposed onto him as a challenge, a selective ordeal, salvation. You have to be tortured to become strong and you have to accept this torture because that’s the destiny of any decent man worth being a…