Angels of Iron 1981

This stark black-and-white drama chronicles the true story of a Berlin gang of thieves led by juvenile Werner Gladow during the Berlin Blockade and Airlift. The film uses a sharp, documentary-like lens to draw a line from Occupied Germany to a rough parallel with the Prohibition-era United States, portraying a society in flux where ordinary rules have been suspended and crime can take root.

Directed and written by Brasch, the movie offers a careful, almost sympathetic portrait of organized crime born out of demoralization, lawlessness, and a sense of looming anarchy. The narrative centers on the partnership between Gladow and his fellow conspirator, Gustav Völpel, a man who, in a previous life under Allied occupation, helped hang Nazi war criminals. This pair moves through a landscape where authority is fragile and loyalties are volatile.

As East and West Germany take shape in 1949, the old “forces of order”—a term echoed by Völpel—reappear to reclaim control in both states. The return of these authorities signals a crackdown on the Gladow Gang, which had thrived on the range of freedoms and upheaval left by war and occupation.

Gladow himself meets a grave fate, sentenced to death for murder and executed by East Germany in 1950 at the age of 18. Meanwhile, Völpel faces a stark choice: ex-Nazis offer him a job in the new West German police if he flees to West Berlin, yet he chooses to remain in East German custody, where he stays until his death in 1959. The film suggests that, for him, prison can feel freer than any ordered society, a sentiment that echoes his wartime refusal to fight for the Nazis.