Aufruhr in Damaskus (1939)

The film begins with a title card quoting a short passage from *The Seven Pillars of Wisdom* by Colonel Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, in which he praises the German enemy’s fighting spirit in a militarily hopeless situation: “… here, for the first time, I was proud of the enemy …” The year is 1918. The setting and theater of war are the Diaspora of the gradually disintegrating Ottoman Empire: the Syrian front near Damascus, where Arab units, supported by British military personnel, attack a fortress bravely defended by a scattered German unit. Under the leadership of Captain Schulz, the German men—disciplined and unpanicked as they perform their desperate duty in the middle of nowhere—resolutely defend their fort, the last post of the Central Powers, against the Arab desert tribes. But the soldiers under the command of the one-armed Captain Schulz and his immediate subordinate, Lieutenant Hans Keller, gradually run out of ammunition. Food is also running low, and the telephone connection with Damascus has been cut off. Captain Schulz therefore sends Keller, Sergeant Kroll, and three other men to Damascus with a camel caravan. On the way, the small German detachment encounters Vera Niemayer, a German woman who has just been pushed off her camel and abandoned in the desert by an Arab from her caravan. Keller picks Vera up and takes her with them. Vera, she explains, is the only survivor of an Arab attack in which her father was also killed; afterward, the Arabs abducted her. Keller takes her to Damascus. During a train journey, the two gradually grow closer and begin to like each other. In Damascus, Captain Lamberty gives Keller little hope of obtaining the urgently needed food supplies. To keep the soldiers in the fort from starving, Lamberty has to swallow his pride and ask the Arab merchant Moni for help, after having brusquely turned him away shortly before. Meanwhile, the five Germans in Damascus finally find a little time to relax and enjoy themselves, once Vera has been safely settled. She, in turn, spends a pleasant evening with Keller and then lets him stay overnight at her place. During a British night raid on Damascus, the two lovers become intimate. The next morning, Lieutenant Keller has to leave again with his men, and Vera decides to volunteer as a nurse at the German military hospital in Damascus. Meanwhile, the situation in the fort grows ever more desperate. Private von Elmendonck learns from a letter that, after his brothers and mother, his father has also died, killed on the Western Front. Keller is back at the fort by then, having brought weapons and food. But in the meantime, the Arabs are approaching from one side and the British from the other. Captain Schulz orders Keller to break out; he and radio operator Gerlach are to disguise themselves as Arabs. Schulz will also withdraw with his men, but first destroys everything he does not want the British to get their hands on. Keller and Schulz plan to break through to Damascus by different routes. In the meantime, Vera begins tending to the wounded in the hospital. Keller and Gerlach come upon a German outpost, Hartung. German soldiers lie dead everywhere, and the two men first give them an honorable burial. Under Captain Schulz’s leadership, the other caravan struggles across the desert sands. On the way to Damascus, Private von Elmendonck dies, leaving no one in his family alive. Soon, water becomes increasingly scarce. Searching for this precious resource, the group is lucky enough to find water in a small house. In Damascus, meanwhile, the last Germans are evacuated by train toward Constantinople before the British and Arab irregulars march into the city. Disguised as Arabs, Keller and Gerlach reach Damascus, as do Schulz and his caravan. The captain is shot dead from ambush by an Arab marksman. Chaos now erupts in the streets: the Arabs have hidden on the rooftops and attack the Germans from above. Schulz’s group fights its way to the “German rear area,” where the hospital with Vera is also located. Keller and Gerlach follow, and Hans and Vera see each other again. She urgently begs him to stay with her at last, and even invents a white lie, but Keller has received a new order from Captain Lamberty: all soldiers still fit to fight and not seriously wounded are to be taken out of Damascus so they do not fall into British captivity. As the Germans head back out into the desert, British soldiers march into the city and eventually into the German hospital as well. In the film’s final shot, a German newspaper reports that Lieutenant Keller and his men have reached the German lines at Aleppo.