History Series / ChariteAtWar

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

* VillainousBSOD: The Nazis, most prominently de Crinis and nurse Christel, slip into this once Germany's defeat becomes increasingly clear.

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: The entire series [[UsefulNotes/GermanDialects plays in Berlin]], but de Crinis speaks with a distinctly Austrian accent; only Professor Sauerbruch, Martin and nurse Käthe have a Berlin accent, and Anni, while she and Otto usually speak High German, slips into a Bavarian dialect when she talks to her (also Bavarian) mother on the phone. Professor Jung, from Alsace, has a subtle French accent.

** Both Professor Bessau and nurse Käthe think it'll be for the best if little Karin will be "sorted out" and the Waldhausens just make new, healthy children.

** There's also nurse Christel who willingly allows a group of Volkssturm ChildSoldiers (fanatically indoctrinated boys of 13 to 15 years) to prepare for an armed fight in the hospital during the [[DarkestHour fall of Berlin]], though [[OnlySaneMan Martin]] is there to stop that from happening.

* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: Paul Lohmann, an injured soldier, asks for Pervitin for his pain, aka Crystal Meth. Martin warns him that it's not a medicament, and soon enough finds Lohmann with an overdose not after an attempt to get high, but after an attempt to kill himself so as not to be executed for "undermining the military force" because he's suspected of having crippled himself, which is exactly what happens to him after that.

* {{Adorkable}}: Maria Fritsch and Fritz Kolbe when they act as SickeninglySweethearts to cover up for Kolbe's spy work and Miss Fritsch helping him. They're even bigger dorks when they actually ''are'' all lovey-dovey over each other.

** 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 [[DarkestHour fall of Berlin]], though [[OnlySaneMan Martin]] is there to stop that from happening.

* '''Ferdinand Sauerbruch''', chief surgeon at the Charité, an innovator who has devised new techniques for taking care of the many, many German casualties coming back from the war. Generally anti-Nazi. His wife '''Margot''' is his surgical assistant. His son '''Peter''', child of his first marriage, is a Major serving with the army on the Eastern Front.
* '''Max de Crinis''', psychiatrist at the 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.

* 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 Dohnanyi soon becomes an important character when he's admitted to the Charité.

* BookEnds: One of the first shots of the series, within the first few seconds, shows a heavily pregnant Anni walking towards the Charité hospital, caressing her belly. The very last shot (except for some period photographies) shows Anni walking away from the Charité with her little daughter by her hand.

* MyCountryRightOrWrong: Professor Sauerbruch shows a very specified and limited version of this when his wife asks him to stay in Switzerland instead of returning home: He wants nothing to do with the Nazis and supports the resistance as much as he can, but hell if he'll let the Charité down. Not much about loyalty to his country, more about saving lives as a doctor.

* RedScare: Played with. The Soviets are seen as the main menace, all of Berlin fears them when they march in, and the unit that occupies the Charité bunker is not a pleasant bunch. That has less to do with communism though and more with them being in a deplorable state -- dirty, half-starved and brutish from the war, several of them drunk beyond inhibitions after the victory (one shoots wildly into the group of unarmed medics), and their [[OnlySaneMan commanding officer]] is obviously angry at their behavior and tries to keep them under control so he can begin negotiations with the doctors for medical aid for their wounded. Ultimately, the situation can be saved, and the Charité is delivered to the occupiers without much resistance.

* '''Ferdinand Sauerbruch''', chief surgeon at the Charité, an innovator who has devised new techniques for taking care of the many, many German casualties coming back from the war. 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.

* MentorShip: There are undertones of this between de Crinis and Anni. They never actually ''do'' anything; they're both married after all, but they're very warm with each other, Anni regards her doctoral advisor's words highly and he obviously keeps her close to the state ideology, and de Crinis goes great lengths to help her dissertation. Anni grows more distant from him after Karin's condition becomes obvious, but she still takes advantage of de Crinis' affection for and attraction to her to help Martin.

** Sauerbruch's failure during Karin's head surgery and him having to ask Jung to stand in for him foreshadows something that's only mentioned in the series' epilogue, but is still tragic: [[spoiler:His beginning dementia.]]

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

** Nurse Christel becomes this for de Crinis, denouncing Dohnanyi to him whose recovery has been kept a secret, [[spoiler:and then Martin, simply because she hates him.]] When the Sauerbruchs catch on to her activities, they don't bother to hide their disdain for Christel.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: When the end is near and a Nazi official declares that the entire medical staff will be armed, violating the Geneva Conventions that demand them to remain neutral, even de Crinis looks appalled. And there is one time when he looks truly, utterly shaken: [[spoiler:When Magda Goebbels asks him for cyanide to [[ShootTheDog poison her children]].]]

* MentorShip: There are undertones of this between de Crinis and Anni. They never actually ''do'' anything; they're both married after all, but they're very warm with each other, Anni regards her doctoral advisor's words highly and he obviously keeps her close to the state ideology, and de Crinis goes great lengths to help her dissertation. Anni grows more distant from him after Karin's handicap becomes obvious, but she still takes advantage of de Crinis' affection for and attraction to her to help Martin.

* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: In the series' epilogue, Anni narrates how life went on for her, Karin, Artur, Otto and Martin, Jung, the Sauerbruchs, Kolbe, and Miss Fritsch.

* {{Yandere}}: Nurse Christel. All Otto has done was flirt a little bit with her and take her out for a movie ''once'', which was never followed up by anything. She falls in love with him and tries to get him to propose to her, telling him in the meantime who she thinks [[GreenEyedMonster is no good company for him]] and, when he turns her down, [[spoiler:denounces his boyfriend Martin to the authorities in the hopes that [[MurderTheHypotenuse they'll take care of the rival]] for her.]]

* MetaCasting: Sneaky and season-overlapping, 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.

* FauxAffablyEvil: De Crinis is usually seen with a big smile on his face, his manners and tone as cordial as can be while he unapologetically threatens people, in one case resorts to physical abuse of an ill man, and makes sure that everyone who's not a Nazi conformist will suffer an awful fate.

* MentorShip: There are undertones of this between de Crinis and Anni. They never actually ''do'' anything; they're both married after all, but they're very warm with each other, Anni regards her doctoral advisor's words highly and he obviously keeps her close to the state ideology, and de Crinis goes great lengths to help her dissertation. Anni grows more distant from him after Karin's health issues become obvious, but she still takes advantage of de Crinis' affection for and attraction to her to help Martin.

* '''Otto Marquardt''', Anni's brother. A young med student who served on the Eastern Front, and is having difficulties adjusting to civilian life back in Berlin. Different than his sister, he's not blind for the atrocities happening around him, and increasingly less likely to silently condone them.

* '''Christel Böhnisch''', a pretty blonde nurse at the hospital who also happens to be a hardcore Nazi. She's taken a shine to Otto.

* ChristmasEpisode: The last third of episode 3 is this; Christmas in a UsefulNotes/NaziGermany hospital comes with guests being sneaked in to a patient because he's a dissident and not actually allowed to see his family, with a politically charged song battle (Hitler-ized lyrics sung by the Nazis versus traditional Christian lyrics sung by the dissidents), a HeelRealization, and a [[ForbiddenLove forbidden]] LoveConfession.

** Although there's also a [[SubvertedTrope subversion]] later on: When Christel actually ''is'' beaten up, they make sure that it's a ''female'' Soviet soldier with whom she's fighting.

* WomanInWhite: In the last episode, [[LightIsNotGood Magda Goebbels]] shows up in an elegant cream silk dress, perfectly styled and acting icily as always while the world is falling to pieces around her.

* 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 department for the persecution of homosexuals.]]

* FamilyVersusCareer: Initially a source of conflict between Anni and Margot as the later tries to scare Anni away from her patient Lohmann by noting she's probably more of a candidate for a motherhood award than a dissertation. Contemptuously, Anni replies that Margot is not the rolemodel she'll take -- Margot has one daughter who's currently in a boarding school, and doesn't plan on having more whereas Anni wants to quit working in a few years to raise a whole bunch of babies. They get over this when Margot empathizes with Anni's concerns about her baby. [[spoiler:Anni winds up raising an only daughter by herself and thus supports herself.]]

* '''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. Different than his sister, he's not blind for the atrocities happening around him, and increasingly less likely to silently condone them.

* {{Yandere}}: Nurse Christel. All Otto has done was flirt a little bit with her and take her out for a movie ''once'', which was never followed up by anything. She falls in love with him and tries to get him to propose to her, telling him in the meantime who she thinks [[GreenEyedMonster is no good company for him]] and, when he turns her down, [[spoiler:denounces his boyfriend Martin to the authorities in the hopes that [[MurderTheHypothenuse they'll take care of the rival]] for her.]]

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

* GoodDocBadDoc: A rather unusual political version of this trope. Sauerbruch the good doc is anti-Nazi and tries to avoid handing over soldiers with self-inflicted wounds to the army for court martial, and he firmly protects resistance fighter von Dohnanyi and is disgusted with and horriefied of the eugenics programme. De Crinis the bad doc is an evil Nazi who fully supports the entire eugenics ideology and denounces wounded veterans.

* MyCountryRightOrWrong: Professor Sauerbruch shows a very specified and limited version of this when his wife asks him to stay in Switzerland instead of returning home: He's disgusted with the Nazis and supports the resistance as much as he can, but hell if he'll let the Charité down. Not much about loyalty to his country, more about saving lives as a doctor.

* '''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. 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.

* 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 Dohnanyi soon becomes an important character when he's admitted to Charité.

* MyCountryRightOrWrong: Professor Sauerbruch shows a very specified and limited version of this when his wife asks him to stay in Switzerland instead of returning home: He's disgusted with the Nazis and supports the resistance as much as he can, but hell if he'll let the Charité down. Has less to do with loyalty to his country and more with saving lives as a doctor, though.

* ScrewTheRulesImFamous: Sauerbruch exploits this for all it is worth, though it has less to do with his ego and more with wanting to protect people, especially dissidents, from the Nazis. He's not happy to find his influence dwindling.

* AccompliceByInaction: A major character development for Anni is to recognize this about herself. Many of the Germans we meet in-series aren't exactly Nazis themselves, but they don't do anything and don't say anything when Jews, homosexuals, mentally ill, permanently disabled people and more "undesirables" are systematically sorted out and disappear into the unknown (although even that unknown often is more of a horrible OpenSecret). Dissidents like Stauffenberg, Professor Jung, Martin, Otto, and Margot Sauerbruch openly decry that attitude -- even Ferdinand Sauerbruch himself is not innocent of it, as his wife notes. Anni learns to acknowledge her guilt. [[spoiler:Artur doesn't, which seals the end of his and Anni's relationship.]]