"Die Brücke (The Bridge)" is a 1959 West German anti-war film directed by Austrian filmmaker Bernhard Wicki. It is based on the 1958 novel of the same name by journalist and writer Gregor Dorfmeister.  The story was based on an actual event, upon the personal report of a surviving veteran who in his own youth experienced a similar situation during the Second World War.

 

In the closing days of the Second World War, a small German town comes into focus as U.S. Army forces advance in its direction. In the town's school, seven boys—each about 16 years old—are oblivious to the seriousness and dangers of the war, feeling excitement about how close the fighting is getting to them, and they live their lives as normally as they can.  

 

Unexpectedly, the boys are recruited into the Volkssturm (People’s Army) , but after only one day in the barracks, the commanding officers receive news that the Americans are approaching, and the garrison is called out. As they prepare to move out, the Kompaniechef (Company Commander), who has been asked by the boys' teacher to keep them out of action, arranges for the youths to be placed in 'defense' of the local bridge (which is strategically unimportant, and which is to be blown up anyway to spare the town the direct effects of the war), under the command of a veteran Unteroffizier (Senior Non-Commissioned Officer)