"Berlin is one big whorehouse," a Red Army soldier tells his comrade. In the spring of 1945, the Soviet Army entered Berlin, or what was left of it. Rubble is everywhere. The city is populated almost entirely by women. They have nothing. They have no one to protect them. The Soviet soldiers have been at war for a long time. They have seen the atrocities that German soldiers did in their country. To the victors go the spoils?

A Woman in Berlin is based on an anonymous diary of one of the women who lived through this period. They faced frequent rape. Many submitted willingly to have a protector. Survival was their only real goal. A Woman in Berlin is an intense and compelling depiction of the life of those women in such difficult times.

Anonyma (the nameless narrator) had been a journalist who had lived in Paris and London, but returned to Germany to be part of her country's destiny. She supported her country in the war. Her husband is away fighting in the war. When faced with trying to survive in a difficult time, she does what she feels she must. How are we to judge her?

This is a film of moral ambiguity. Certainly the soldiers who rape are monstrous, but overall the characters in the film are all trying to find a way out of the death of war into some sort of life. Anonyma and the other women have no choice in submitting to rape. But does Anonyma have options other than striking up relationships with two protectors?

Early in the occupation, Anonyma finds the Soviet commander asking for help and protection from the raping soldiers. He coldly responds, "Those few minutes—so what?" Yet he becomes one of Anonyma's protector and their relationship grows beyond protection to something that is at least akin to love.

Anonyma reports all this with a strange detachment—as if she is an observer rather than a participant. Perhaps that too is a survival technique. It is the same detachment that a group of women have as they sit in a kitchen joking about what has happened to them. To acknowledge the actions taken to survive—even if justified—may well be too much for many people to cope with. Certainly in this film we see what war can reduce people to whether perpetrators of violence or victims who cannot overcome undeserved guilt. The key sentiment is Anonyma's question, "How do we go on living?"

Indeed, as much as we would like at assign guilt to the characters in this story, we often end up unwilling to point a finger. Can we blame Anonyma for surviving? Can we blame the commander for his indifference over the rape given, what he has been through in the war or when we see him as loving with Anonyma? Can we blame her husband for his response when he returns and learns what she has done? We may look at all of these and wish they had acted differently, but in truth we understand them all too well.

The real villain in the film is war itself. It does no good to trace the blame for the war because everyone does things they might be ashamed of in other situations. War is at its most basic a battle to survive. Anonyma tells the commander, "War changes our words. Love is no longer what we thought it was." The love that they share is based in a specific setting. They probably both know it would not last. She goes on to tell him, "I still want my husband to find the woman he left behind." And yet, we understand that "the woman he left behind" is one more casualty of the war.