Niemandsland on AllMovie

Hell on Earth is the English-language title for the German antiwar drama Niemansland (No Man's Land). Most of the film takes place in a WW I trench, where five diverse individuals have been unwillingly thrust together. The characters are not given names, but designations instead: The Frenchman (Georges Peclet), The Englishman (Hugh Douglas), The Jew (Wladimir-later Vladimir-Sokoloff), The German (Ernst Busch) and The Negro (Louis Douglas). Despising one another at first, the five protagonists come to realize that they must learn to get along if they hope to survive. The pacifistic sentiments (not to mention the ethnic mix) of Niemansland would be verboten by the Nazi regime within a few years after its original 1931 release; indeed, all copies of this film were ordered to be destroyed by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.