What did German foot soldiers know?

As memories fade into the past, people generally like them to become sunnier, less thorny and more genial, as we all like to put on a happy face and keep on keeping on. It is difficult, though, to put much positive spin on Germany during the Nazi years, and it is just this friction, the ongoing dialogue and debate over how the German people deal with the repercussions of their recent history, that makes up the subject matter of “The Unknown Soldier.”

Director Michael Verhoeven has dealt with the issues of Germany’s heritage from World War II in such fiction features as “The Nasty Girl” and “The White Rose,” but here he turns to documentary to examine the emotions stirred up by a museum exhibition that not only explored the accepted villainy of the SS but also questioned the extent to which common foot soldiers had knowledge of and were culpable for the Holocaust and related crimes and atrocities.

The exhibition’s reexamination of the actions of the Wehrmacht rank and file punctures the closely held belief of many contemporary Germans that everyday citizens and low-ranking soldiers were blameless for the crimes of the Third Reich. Very few want to think of Grandpa as a Nazi.

The film works best when it forces the viewer to consider how one deals with a less-than-pleasant past, how to keep moving forward without blindly refusing to acknowledge the horrors of history. How things look today may not be how we think of them in 60 years.

Where Verhoeven loses his way is when he allows himself to sink into a seemingly endless recounting of atrocities, getting away from the main moral and philosophical questions his film brings up so provocatively. Once the film gets mired in specifics, it begins to seem like any other Holocaust documentary and loses the sense of relevance and engagement with the now that at first makes it so intriguing.

There are those in the film who ask why these issues need be brought up at all, whether this is all just endless scab-picking and why the past can’t ever just be left behind. The tough questions, the ones for which there are no easy answers, are precisely the ones it is most vital to keep asking again and again. One need only think of the recent reemergence here in America of the noose as an active symbol of racial hatred to recognize that these things don’t stay in the cupboard for long.

As musician Steve Earle said recently with regard to the difficult vigilance necessary to claim Southern heritage while also recognizing the painful stain of racism and segregation, “It only takes one generation to drop the ball.”

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“The Unknown Soldier.” Unrated. In German with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes. At Laemmle’s Grande, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A. (213) 617-0268.