Colditz (TV Series)

Death Sentence (1974)

Bernard Hepton: Kommandant

Photos 

Quotes 

• [the Kommandant has just read to his officers a defiant, jingoistic statement from the Führer. In view of the approaching American army, he has suggested that the officers may want to bring their wives and families into the sanctuary of the castle. Heavy gunfire is heard in the distance] 

  Kommandant : [grimly]  Gentlemen, those are the guns of the American army. I give you a toast. "Germany. May God be with us in the days to come."

• [the American army are near; a unit of the SS is stationed near the castle; Major Carrington has been sentenced to death by a German court martial for insubordination and making death threats to Mohn. The Kommandant summons Preston] 

  Kommandant : We have had our difficulties, Colonel Preston. We have not always seen eye to eye. But I have come to trust you, if I may say so. I am going to speak freely. More freely than I should, perhaps. But I want you to know the situation in which we find ourselves.

  Lt. Col. John Preston : Which is what?

  Kommandant : Heavy fighting is still going on, but no-one knows the real situation. Perhaps Dunkirk was like that for you.

  Lt. Col. John Preston : Yes, it was very confused before the end.

  Kommandant : Confused. Yes. The telephone works only at intervals. Ration trucks fail to appear. Urgent mail is not received and yet I receive telegrams demanding personnel returns I dispatched weeks before.

  Lt. Col. John Preston : Perhaps red tape is the last thing to break down.

  Kommandant : Possibly, yes. The wheel turns, Colonel. A long time ago, I had the unpleasant duty of informing you that your wife was dead. Last night I heard that my son had been killed in action.

  Lt. Col. John Preston : [deeply moved]  I'm very sorry.

  Kommandant : Yes, thank you.

  Lt. Col. John Preston : How old was he?

  Kommandant : Twenty four. He joined his squadron in 1940. The war has lasted for so long. The Luftwaffe has suffered such heavy losses that his survival would have been a miracle. But one had come to hope for a miracle. In the end, he died with a rifle in his hand. He was wounded, left behind in the retreat... and crushed to death beneath the tracks of a Russian tank. One of his comrades saw it happen. I gave his mother a different version, of course. All that is by the way, except that his death seems so futile, and I wish to avoid any further meaningless bloodshed.

  Lt. Col. John Preston : So do we all, Kommandant. Why doesn't Berlin give the order to surrender?

  Kommandant : I'm not so sure Berlin knows what is going on any more. In the meantime, we wait and our soldiers fight on. However, Major Carrington will be released from solitary confinement and placed in Colonel Dodds' custody. Perhaps you will inform Colonel Dodd.

  Lt. Col. John Preston : Yes of course. Has Major Carrington been reprieved?

  Kommandant : No. Not to my knowledge, certainly. But since the order for his execution is not in my hands, I have decided in the circumstances to act on my own initiative.

  Hauptmann Franz Ulmann : As the Kommandant says, a number of telegrams have not come through. We know that by the missing serial numbers.

  Kommandant : Instructions about Carrington may be among the missing orders. We shall never know.

  Lt. Col. John Preston : Thank you, Kommandant. I am extremely grateful.