The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical drama film said by its makers to be "based on real-life events" in Austria, before and after the Anschluss with National Socialist Germany in 1938. For a time it was the highest-grossing film ever, received many awards, and has been included on various lists of 'greatest films of all time'.

Criticisms include very poor historical accuracy, notably regarding the ridiculous depictions of National Socialist Germany, with the male protagonist, Georg von Trapp (b.1880), after the Anschluss being forcibly ordered to join the German Navy and he and his family, in order to escape this, having to walk on foot through the Alps to Switzerland.

In reality the offer to join the German Navy as a naval officer was a voluntary job offer that occurred before the Anschluss, and then only in an advisory capacity (he was almost 60 years old).

Being in serious financial difficulty following the 1931 great Austrian banking crisis during the Great Depression, followed by further financial miscalculations and disasters in 1935, and having already successfully toured the USA as a singing troup, he and his family decided to emigrate there. In 1938 they took a train from Austria to Trieste (formerly an Austrian city) where they embarked for North America. They were under no observations of any sort by the authorities in Austria. That they were treated as normal people was demonstrated in 1939 when the family returned to Europe to tour Scandinavia, hoping to continue their concerts. During this time, they returned to Salzburg for a few months before returning to Sweden to finish the tour. From there, they traveled to Norway to begin the trip back to the United States in September 1939, just after World War II broke out. There is no official evidence that they were wanted by the government of Germany at all.