In 1930s Germany, the Essenbecks are a wealthy and powerful industrialist family who have begun doing business with the Nazi Party. On the night of the Reichstag fire in early 1933, the family’s conservative patriarch, Baron Joachim von Essenbeck, who represents the old aristocratic Germany and detests Hitler, is celebrating his birthday. The celebration features the Baron’s children performing for him on a makeshift stage. While grandson Gunther performs a piece of music on his cello, grandson Martin performs a drag performance that is interrupted by news that the Reichstag has been burned.The Damned 1969 Full Movie Download
Martin’s possessive mother (and Joachim’s widowed daughter-in-law), Sophie, has been secretly carrying on a longstanding affair with Friedrich Bruckmann, an executive of the family’s steelworks. Her father-in-law tacitly demands that Sophie never remarry and both fear that if their relationship was to be exposed, Sophie would be disowned and Friedrich fired. Friedrich is friendly with a cousin of Sophie’s dead husband; a SS leader named Aschenbach,[b] Aschenbach is aware that Friedrich seeks the title of Baron and wealth/power; he is also aware that the Baron has split control over the company in his will: his unscrupulous nephew, the boorish SA officer Konstantin will inherit the company but his grandson Martin will inherit enough shares of stock to give him defacto control over the direction the company takes.Acting on Aschenbach’s previous statements that things would be better if the anti-Nazi Joachim was to die, Friederich kills Joachim and frames the outspoken Herbert Thalmann for the crime by using his personal handgun secured by Sophie. Herbert escapes but leaves behind his wife and children. When his wife Elizabeth visits Sophie for help clearing her husband’s name, Sophie denounces her by telling her that the Germany of old is dead and arranges for the Gestapo to personally arrest her at her home along with her children.
Aschenbach convinces Friedrich and Martin to embargo their company from selling weapons to the SA, as the SS is seeking to marginalize the rival group in order to pacify the German army’s generals to Hitler’s side.