Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Powerful

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Although this film is included in the genre of Nazi exploitation, there is very little, if any thing at all, that could be described as exploitative, unless you include a dozen or so beautiful young women taking their clothes off at various points during the film. There is not much of a story as it concerns a family who have displeased the Nazi regime and the two sisters who are drafted into the women's army to serve - and service - the brave German soldiers on the eastern front.For a film of dubious merit, the production values are good, with genuine and/or replica German military vehicles and uniforms, Russian tanks and the use of a steam locomotive with carriages. For a director who made his name with soft core films, the sex scenes here are laughable to say the least, as are some of the military action scenes. In one scene, a couple leave their radio listening post to have sex, the girl being totally naked while the male remains fully clothed, making guttural grunting noises. In a scene where the train is strafed by an aeroplane, all the occupants abandon the train by jumping off from one side only, presumably because that was the side where the camera was.Was there anything that interested this reviewer? For someone interested in military vehicles and steam engines, then these objects were indeed interesting. The motorcycle and sidecar combinations looked like the genuine article; and I also liked the steam engine - a bit more steam engine would have been welcome. What was interesting was the railway station, then later the village used for a battle scene. Looking at the dilapidated state of the buildings, the dirt roads and that one of the supposedly Russian soldiers spoke a couple of words in Polish, could this film have been made behind the Iron Curtain - Poland perhaps? For me, it raises the interesting question of how did, at the height of the Cold War, (1973) a not-very-good Swiss film maker manage to negotiate the film making rights for a Nazi-themed film? As the heading for this review says, this film, for me at least is interesting for all the wrong reasons.

"Eine Armee Gretchen" (and there are a handful of English-language titles for this one) is a Swiss German-language film from 1973, so this one will soon have its 45th anniversary already. It is one of the more known films by Swiss writer and director Erwin C. Dietrich, who adapted a novel by Karl-Heinz Helms-Liesenhoff for this film here. I cannot imagine he appreciated what Dietrich did with his base material unless it was as trashy and as much garbage as this film here. It runs for approximately 100 minutes and takes place during the days of World War II. The plot is that the German women want to do their best in order to help Hitler win the war and as Diietrich's films almost always have an erotic component, "the best" means in this case that they want to have sex with as many German soldiers as possible and help them in winning the war because if you are dead, you cannot have sex again and you would not want to miss out on these Gretchens after the War, do you? Oh yeah, this story sounds like the perfect component for a trashy guilty pleasure film, but it turns out no such thing.Actually, it is garbage and you could also say it is offensive somehow. It was made less than 30 years and at that point, really many (female) survivors from this terrible time in German history were still alive. They had to live through terrible times and this film mocking them and their (possibly dead) husbands must have been so painful to watch. The argument that the women from back then are not alive any more today is not valid, because they were alive when this film came out. Apart from that, the film also gives leukemia patients a bad name in Dietrich's extremely clumsy attempt to give this film more dramatic relevance. Another major problem with this film is that you are supposed to like the protagonists, especially the female ones, but this gets really difficult to do when you see them approve of and appreciate Hitler from start to finish.All in all, this film is a gigantic failure and really never should have been made. The fact that Dietrich fails in more areas than usual, for example the historic component that is missing entirely in his other many many stinkers that he made in his career, takes this film to a completely new level in terms of screwing-up. This is why I believe when you look for the worst film from his career, this one is definitely in contention. It is never interesting, pretty offensive to all kinds of women, irrelevant from the (historic) story-telling perspective, never funny despite being categorized as a comedy and just a prime example of how many German-language really sucked in the 1970s. Many people do not know Hitler was actually Austrian. Many people also do now know that Dietrich is Swiss. And both of them did huge damage in their respective fields with their works. I highly recommend to stay away from this movie.

Actually the alternate title of Frauleins out of Uniform is a better one.Young girls join up to help Hitler's army and end up having lots of sex with soldiers and each other while trying to fight for the Nazi way.Swiss made (for a German audience) exploitation soft-core war film that is more interesting for the nonjudgmental attitude toward the Nazis and its lack of any real violence -certainly nothing happens thats too exploitive -then anything then happens on screen. There is some attempt at a story, but it doesn't really go anywhere since the whole excuse for the film is for the women to get naked and to have simulated sex. Actually its not even that its pretend simulated sex (which is an oxymoron, which describes much of this film). Its all so nice that you really are never stimulated or titillated by anything on screen. Its like watching a bland TV show or Hogan's Heroes where people periodically undress. Its so bland as to inoffensive. I have never seen any film so asexual despite its best attempt to be sexual.Words fail me.Its not bad, its dull and so bland that you just don't care. I wish I could express how nonplussing this film is, its amazing.Should you see it? Only if you want to see some cute girls disrobe. Other than that I'd watch something else.Probably one of the weirdest Naziploitation films I've ever seen, which is not to be taken as a recommendation.

In most ways this fits in with the Nazi-sexploiters made in Italy or by Eurocine, except in one: this was made for the German market and consequently we do not get all the usual stereotypes: (i) all Germans are Nazis, (ii) all Nazis are evil, (iii) all Nazis are sexual predators. We just get (ii) and (iii). The film is also less violent and downright nasty than its foreign genre rivals, partly to accommodate the German censors (who always shunned the connection sex/violence) and partly because their target audience would not have been expecting that - for the aforementioned reason.The supposed identification figures of the film are Dr Kuhn and his daughters, who suffer from not playing Nazi-ball with the required conviction. I qualify this as "supposed", because this is no more than a McGuffin. After a while the film focusses on its real purpose: ogling at beautiful young women in the nude, with some added spice caused by the dangerous surroundings. If this were an accurate description of the going-ons at the Eastern front then the Wehrmacht should not have had much trouble getting volunteers.Obviously, this isn't complying with historical accuracy, or political correctness. But then, neither are 'Salon Kitty', 'Love Camp 7', 'Train spécial pour SS', 'Ilsa, she-wolf of the SS', or any of the other films of this ilk. One should not expect more of these pictures than a 1970s version of a roughie.