The film starts in the fashionable seaside resort on the Baltic, Heringsdorf, where Renate Müller spends a secret weekend away from her husband with her bosom friend Ida Wüst. The husband meanwhile has a flirtation while traveling by night train from Frankfurt to Berlin, nice atmospheric shots of sleeper and dining car in the morning. The action continues in the luxury villas and apartments of Berlin, Renate Müller wears a string of very elegant outfits. Misunderstandings, jealousies, temporary separation of husband and wife, a few songs, wicked humour.

When a wife reads a love letter addressed to her husband, written by an unknown female, all hell breaks lose.

To take a revenge on countess Laura, who slapped him at his proposal, the Governor of the occupied Poland gets her fall in love with a poor student, and exposes him during wedding banquet.

When the Soldiers is a 1931 German comedy film directed by Jacob Fleck and Luise Fleck and starring Otto Wallburg, Gretl Theimer and Ida Wüst.

film

To Max Ophüls this was an assignment (from the UFA), a pure routine job. One hardly recognizes the later Ophüls in this film (shortly made before his masterpiece "Liebelei"), but still Ophüls made this routine job into a well-paced, stylish and sometimes extremely funny romantic comedy; he probably could not do it any other way. The script is fine with some hilarious dialogue. The use of the surnames of the characters is simple but clever.
Having Ophüls in mind the film can also be considered a celebration of happy-go-lucky life: contrasted are those who live an easy going, wine and dine life with those whose narrow-minded life is based on punctuality and mineral water. Maybe that is why the film was banned in 1937: it was considered a film that could endanger public order and national-socialist feelings.
Good cast with Heinz Rühmann who shows his natural comic talent at best and Max Adalbert who is very good as the grumpy uncle; supporting cast good as well. Chauvinism makes me want to point out Lien Deyers (as Gina), a fine, charming and attractive actress from The Netherlands who had a successful career in German cinema.

At the Olympic games in Berlin 1936 Inge Wagner falls in love with Luftwaffenleutnant (Airforce Lieutenant) Herbert Koch. They want to marry, but he receives orders to go to Spain - incognito, without permission for any contacts to his friends and relatives. Inge is still waiting for him. After the beginning of WW II, German radio starts broadcasting the "Wunschkonzert für die Wehrmacht" - a program made of wishes from the soldiers. He hears the song, he wanted to hear, and so does Inge. A friend of Inge, who hopes she is willing to marry him, comes to the same squadron where Koch flies. Koch and Inge arrange a date at a Hamburg restaurant, but he and Ilse's friend are shot down the day before. In the hospital Koch finds out, that he and his friend love the same girl. He thinks they are already engaged and is willing to give her up.