Peppermint Frieden (1983)

Born in 1940, Marianne has been battered by hunger and nights of bombing, and has fled with her mother and grandmother to the Bavarian Forest. Her father, a German Wehrmacht soldier, is released from captivity and starts working as a teacher again. Marianne’s parents and grandmother had not been convinced by National Socialism, but had ultimately adapted to that society. They try to shield Marianne from the horrors of the war and its aftermath, but she senses the terrible things that went on in the nearby concentration camp and on her father’s front line. An American soldier hands out peppermint-flavored chewing gum and befriends the children, who dub him “Mister Peace.” To the children, peace tastes like peppermint. Many things are new, such as the strange music coming from the next room, where Mister Peace and his girlfriend Nilla laugh and sigh. Their relationship is viewed with suspicion by the strictly Catholic villagers, and Mister Peace is later arrested for a time by the American military police. But with the Korean War and the Cold War, new lines of conflict begin to emerge. The adults discuss the threat, their opinions divided between the carpenter with communist convictions and the influential Catholic Church in the village. The atomic bomb in particular, and the fear of a Soviet invasion, stir up nightmares that weigh on the traumatized Marianne. Marianne and many of her peers are still shaped by memories of the Second World War. In the end, Mister Peace, too, leaves the village and Nilla to fight for the American army in the Korean War.