History Series / ChariteAtWar

* DoNotGoGentle: Somewhat surprisingly, nurse Christel gives the [[ActionGirl hard-boiled Sovjet soldier]] who's taking her out for execution quite a fight.

* WouldHurtAChild: Artur tests his tuberculosis vaccine on disabled children, a mother is willing to send her own daughter to almost certain death because the kid has Down Syndrome, and bot Professor Bessau and nurse Käthe think it'll be for the best when little Karin is "sorted out" and the Waldhausens just make new, healthy children. There's also nurse Christel who willingly allows a group of Hitler Youths (fanatically indoctrinated boys of 13 to 15 years) to prepare for an armed fight in the hospital during the fall of Berlin, though [[OnlySaneMan Martin]] is there to stop that last one from happening. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] with Anni, who passively went along with the Nazi horrors for long, but [[WrongSideAllAlong snaps out of it]] when she realizes the extent of the eugenics measurements.
* UglyGuyHotWife: Triples as AgeGapRomance and TinyGuyHugeGirl -- Margot Sauerbruch is a great deal younger than her husband, [[StatuesqueStunner several inches taller]] (even in flat shoes), and a very attractive woman whereas he is average at best and already going bald on top of it. [[HappilyMarried She couldn't care less.]]

* ActorAllusion: Sneaky, but it's there: Resistance fighter Hans von Dohnanyi's grandson Justus von Dohnanyi is a German actor these days -- and he played Robert Koch in the [[Series/{{Charite}} first season of Charité]]. In the second episode of this season, when Artur tells Sauerbruch of his tuberculosis vaccine research, Sauerbruch comments he's "on the trails of our great Robert Koch". Koch's tuberculosis project was a major plot point of the first season.

* StepfordSnarker: Martin shares a similar background as Otto, but he copes with sarcastic remarks.

* WouldHurtAChild: Artur tests his tuberculosis vaccine on disabled children, a mother is willing to send her own daughter to almost certain death because the kid has Down Syndrome, and bot Professor Bessau and nurse Käthe think it'll be for the best when little Karin is "sorted out" and the Waldhausens just make new, healthy children. There's also nurse Christel who willingly allows a group of Hitler Youths (fanatically indoctrinated boys of 13 to 15 years) to prepare for an armed fight in the hospital during the fall of Berlin, though [[OnlySaneMan Martin]] is there to stop that last one from happening. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] with Anni, who passively went along with the Nazi horrors for long, but [[WrongSideAllAlong snaps out of it]] when she realizes the extent of the eugenics measures.

* Anni and Artur Waldhausen. Anni is a student at the hospital who is on the verge of getting her doctorate. At the start of the series she's also on the verge of having a baby, being heavily pregnant. Anni supports the Hitler regime in a generally passive way. Her husband is a junior internist at the hospital, having pulled some strings to avoid service in the army.
* Otto Marquart, Anni's brother. A young med student who served on the Eastern Front, and is having difficulties adjusting to civilian life back in Berlin. He has drawn the attentions of Christel.
* Ferdinand Sauerbruch, chief surgeon at Charité, an innovator who has devised new techniques for taking care of the many, many German casualties coming back from the war with Russia. Generally anti-Nazi. His wife Margot is his surgical assistant. His son Peter, child of his first marriage, is a doctor serving with the army on the Eastern Front.
* Max de Crinis, psychiatrist at Charité. Unlike Sauerbruch he is a true believer in Hitler, supporting both the Nazi regime in general and its evil ideas regarding medicine, such as euthanasia for the disabled.
* Martin Schelling, orderly at the hospital and war veteran with a leg prosthesis. He's constantly at odds with his colleague, Christel, be it because of their conflicting political opinions or because of Martin's friendship with Otto.
* Christel Schlöhmann, a pretty blonde nurse at the hospital who also happens to be a hardcore Nazi.
* Adolphe Jung, a French medical professor who's conscripted to serve as a doctor for the Germans. The Sauerbruchs strike up a friendship with him, but he obviously yearns for home and peace and is rather openly critical.
* Maria Fritsch, Sauerbruch's secretary, and her boyfriend Fritz Kolbe, whom she regularls helps getting documents he's not supposed to see.
* Käthe, a middle-aged pediatric nurse with a genial, motherly attitude who's friends with the Waldhausens. Also a stickler for Nazi rules.

* Otto Marquart, Anni's brother. A young med student who served on the Eastern Front, and is having difficulties adjusting to civilian life back in Berlin. He has drawn the attentions of Christel, a pretty blonde nurse at the hospital who also happens to be a hardcore Nazi.

* Martin Schelling, orderly at the hospital and war veteran with a leg prosthesis. He's constantly at odds with his colleague, nurse Christel, be it because of their conflicting political opinions or because of Martin's friendship with Otto.

* Martin Schelling, orderly at the hospital and war veteran with a leg prosthesis. He's constantly at odds with his colleague nurse Christel, be it because of their conflicting political opinions or Martin's friendship with Otto.

* TheBeard: DiscussedTrope between the nurses Käthe and Christel. Christel's {{Gaydar}} has been pinging after seeing how much Otto hangs out with Martin. Käthe says there's no reason to care about that: Otto will need a beard for appearances, and she may luck out and get a widow's pension if he's killed in France. She also thinks "lads like that often come around later", which encourages the infatuated Christel to go for it. Otto however is not interested, telling Christel that he intends not to die.

* BrotherSisterTeam: Otto and Anni start out butting heads a lot because Anni is passively and contently sytem-compliant whereas Otto has long realized what horrors surround them and that a defeat of the Nazis will be for the best. They doubtlessly love each other though and grow to be allies [[spoiler:when Anni needs help to protect her daughter and Otto needs help to save his lover from the authorities.]]

* PlausibleDeniability: Anni's and Artur's compliance largely rests on this -- the full extent of the euthanasia programme is too terrible to be lawfully authorized, so of course there's no such thing. Nurse Käthe points out later that, in truth, they all knew to some degree, only [[ElephantInTheLivingRoom nobody ever talked about it]].

* WomanScorned: Nurse Christel was never the most pleasant person to be around (at least if you didn't fit her idea of a good German and servant of the homeland), but after Otto declines her quasi-proposal, she becomes outright nasty. [[spoiler:Having caught on to Martin and Otto, she denounces Martin as a "seducer" to the authorities responsible for the persecution of homosexuals.]]

* ArtificialLimbs: Martin lost the lower half of his right leg to a shrapnel near in the early years of war. Doctor Sauerbruch has fitted him a nice prosthesis; he's barely limping.

* AsYouKnow: The arrival of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer]]'s father at the Sauerbruch house gives Peter a chance to give the audience some exposition about who Bonhoeffer and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_von_Dohnanyi Hans von Dohnanyi]] are. Von Dohanyi soon becomes an important character when he's admitted to Charite.

* WhatTheHellHero: Otto snaps at his sister because of how she handled the Lohmann case; in trying to save her brother from being charged for giving a false testimony, she sent Lohmann himself to his doom.

* AdultFear: Comes with Karin developing hydrocephalus; Anni and Artur have to face that their daughter might wind up disabled -- and all the consequences that means in Nazi Germany: Karin will be considered an "unworthy life", could fall prey to the eugenics programme, and the parents themselves could be considered for a sterilization after that.

* TheBeard: DiscussedTrope between the nurses Kathe and Christel. Christel's {{Gaydar}} has been pinging after seeing how much Otto hangs out with Martin. Kathe says there's no reason to care about that: Otto will need a beard for appearances, and she may luck out and get a widow's pension if he's killed in France. She also thinks "lads like that often come around later", which encourages the infatuated Christel to go for it. Otto however is not interested, telling Christel that he intends not to die.

* Martin Schelling, orderly at the hospital and war veteran with a leg prosthesis. He's constantly at war with his colleague nurse Christel, be it because of their conflicting political opinions or Martin's friendship with Otto.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: When the end is near and Roder declares that all medical personnel will be armed against the Geneva Conventions that demand them to remain neutral, even de Crinis looks disgusted. And there is one time when he looks truly, completely shaken: [[spoiler:When Magda Goebbels asks him for cyanide to [[ShootTheDog poison her children]].]]

* HateSink: Doctor de Crinis is a homophobic, racist, arrogant, system-loyal Nazi bully with a [[SmugSmiler disgustingly self-satisfied attitude]] and no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He defames an injured soldier, gives homosexuals a choice between concentration camps and castration, and generally thinks "substandard" people should be sterilized.

* UglyGuyHotWife: Triples as AgeGapRomance and TinyGuyHugeGirl -- Margot Sauerbruch is a great deal younger than her husband, several inches taller (even in flat shoes), and a very attractive woman whereas he is average at best and already going bald on top of it. [[HappilyMarried She couldn't care less.]]

* HappilyMarried: The Sauerbruchs, Hans von Dohnanyi and his wife. Artur and Anni start out as this, but Karin's affliction becomes a major source of conflict.

* Maria Fritsch, Sauerbruch's secretary, and her boyfriend Fritz Kolbe, whom she regularls helps getting documents he's not supposed to see.

* TheSocialDarwinist: A major theme, as the medical profession is perverted to kill the disabled in accordance with Social Darwinist theory. UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and the Nazi regime are a bunch of Social Darwinists. Everyone is aware that the regime used to kill the disabled and the mentally ill, although Sauerbruch believes that such activities have been stopped. Artur is perfectly OK with testing a tuberculosis vaccine on mentally handicapped children. A mother is distressingly OK with sending her Down Syndrome daughter to a Nazi institution, even after Anni hints as broadly as she can that the girl may not come back alive.

* WouldHitAGirl: Martin claws at nurse Christel's throat and threatens to strangle her if she says one more wrong word. Considering [[TheDogBitesBack what she has done to him]], she definitely [[AssholeVictim had it coming]].

* WouldHitAGirl: Martin claws at nurse Christel's throat and threatens to strangle her if she says one more wrong word. Considering what she has done to him, [[AssholeVictim she definitely had it coming]].

* AsYouKnow: The arrival of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer]]'s father at the Sauerbruch house gives Peter a chance to give the audience some exposition about who Bonhoeffer and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_von_Dohnanyi Hans von Dohanyi]] are. Von Dohanyi soon becomes an important character when he's admitted to Charite.

--> '''

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Most of the main characters. Other real life characters appear in supporting roles, like Magda Goebbels and Claus von Stauffenberg.

* TheMole: It's implied that Kolbe, the Foreign Ministry guy who is dating Sauerbruch's secretary Miss Fritsch, is a Gestapo spy. It turns out he's actually a spy for the Western allies. Margot agrees to take a secret letter to Switzerland to pass to an Allied agent.

* TogetherInDeath: In the last episode, when De Crinis and his wife are stopped by a Russian checkpoint, they kill themselves. De Crinis's wife takes a cyanide capsule, and he holds her hand for a moment while she spasms, until he takes one too.

* TheBeard: DiscussedTrope between the nurses Kathe and Christel. Christel's {{Gaydar}} has been pinging after seeing how much Otto hangs out with Martin. Kathe says there's no reason to care about that: Otto will need a beard for appearances, and she may luck out and get a widow's pension if he's killed in France. Otto however is not interested, telling Christel that he intends to not die.

* TrustPassword: In Switzerland, Margot recognizes the Allied spy by the brand of cigarettes he carries.

This series is a sequel to 2017 miniseries ''Charité'', taking place at the same hospital in the 1880s (obviously with a completely different set of characters).

This series is a sequel to 2017 miniseries ''[[series/Charite Charité]]'', taking place at the same hospital in the 1880s (obviously with a completely different set of characters).

This series is a sequel to 2017 miniseries ''Charité'', taking place at the same hospital in the 1880s (obviously with a completely different set of characters).

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Sauerbruch and De Crinis were both real people. Other real life characters appear in supporting roles, like Magda Goebbels and Claus von Stauffenberg.

%%* TheBeard

* Otto Marquart, Anni's brother. A young doctor who served on the Eastern Front, and is having difficulties adjusting to civilian life back in Berlin. He has drawn the attentions of Christel, a pretty blonde nurse at the hospital who also happens to be a hardcore Nazi.

* Otto Marquart, Anni's brother. A young doctor who served on the Eastern Front, and is having difficulties adjusting to civilian life back in Berlin. He's fond of Christel, a pretty blonde nurse at the hospital.
* Ferdinand Sauerbruch, chief surgeon at Charité, an innovator who has devised new techniques for taking care of the many, many German casualties coming back from the war with Russia. Generally anti-Nazi. His wife Margaret is his surgical assistant. His son Peter, child of his first marriage, is a doctor serving with the army on the Eastern Front.

%%* TheSocialDarwinist
* StockFootage: On occasion scenes are linked with period footage of Berlin during the war.

* Ferdinand Sauerbruch, chief surgeon at Charité, an innovator who has devised new techniques for taking care of the many, many German casualties coming back from the war with Russia. Generally anti-Nazi. His wife Margaret is an administrator at the hospital. His son Peter, child of his first marriage, is also a doctor at Charité.