Have you ever read a book/watched a movie that made you sympathize with the "bad" guys in history?

Question

I was watching "Das Boot" about a bunch of German submariners, and I found myself rooting for them against the British.

Answer 1

Yes, I have an excellent book written by a common German soldier in the regular army during WW11. He fought on the Russian front and his memoirs are mind boggling.



You are really sympathizing with him and you think, wait!! he was our enemy!

The book is ' Blood Red Snow. '

Fascinating.......

Answer 2

I became friends with a Japanese family who were living in my small town after hearing some other people who were being extremely racist towards them....



one afternoon the wife and I watched a movie on SBS ( an australian international program television station) and it was about the fire bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities PRE the dropping of the A-bombs... I had never even been aware that those events took place. The movie was about a Japanese family and it really affected me. The japanese lady watching the film cried silently through the most traumatic scenes.



This was 50 yrs after ww2 had ended....and I didn't hold any hatred for the Japanese for the events that took place during the war..but the film made me realise.. that while we MIGHT consider ourselves to be the good guys.. it is always the little man.... that suffers most in war.. the civilian, the mother, the children....



I was sad that we allies had caused so much horror through those fire bombs... :(

Answer 3

Das Boot is excellent! The version we see is actually part of a miniseries; the Brits get to see the whole thing.



Persian Fire, by Tom Holland, is an excellent book about the Persian-Greek wars, from the Persian side. Another great one is 'Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world', a bio of Genghis focusing on his many achievements.

Answer 4

"Das Boot" is a classic.



Along those same lines, I liked "K-19: The Widowmaker" starring Harrison Ford as a Russian submarine commander sacrificed members of his own crew to stop the nuclear explosion within is submarine even though he could have taken out the surrounding American enemy boats around him.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eavXSdvtjRo

2:26 min. Movie trailer

Answer 5

The Book Thief, by Marcus Zuzak, made me feel a lot of empathy for the average Germans, trying to keep their families alive during the Nazi regime.

Answer 6

All Quiet On The Western Front

Answer 7

Yeah, I think we as a society sometimes forget that even the bad guys are still human. I remember reading about Hitler's childhood and adolescence and feeling somewhat sorry for him.

Answer 8

i watched the tv series rome and it made me feel really bad for julius caesar. i think hes generally thought of as having been a bit of a bad guy.

Answer 9

not with actual people in history but in some movies like the joker in batman: the dark knight and jason, freddy, and micheal myers