VIENNA BLOOD, Metternich’s Sacher Torte

In this series, Vienna Blood, PBS explores the slow and violent rise of ultranationalist German movements in Austria before the First World War, where and when Adolf Hitler was born and raised. The series is rather harsh because it is fairly graphic, but it is worth a small trip in time. The main characters are a Jewish psychiatrist and a Slovak detective. They have to solve various crimes, and they discover little by little an underground movement working in the darkness to bring about a war because they are mainly connected with the steel industry, which depends a lot on war and war equipment. The psychiatrist is Freudian, and as such, is trying to find out the mostly or often unconscious motivations of the people he is investigating. We are dealing with antisemitism, anti-Freudianism, and ultra-nationalist Germanic movements. The Slavic option is strong with Russia and Serbia competing in the bringing up of the war by defending the unity of all Slavic people, under Moscow or Belgrade.