Netflix’s action-thriller, Blood and Gold follows a German deserted trying to reunite with his daughter while an SS troop looks for a Jewish treasure.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
An SS troop chases after a deserter named Heinrich, who doesn’t want to fight a war he deems senseless. His punishment is death and he’s left to die a slow and painful death after getting hung from a tree branch in a certain way.
While the troop heads off for Sonnenberg, a young girl sneaks in and saves Heinrich by cutting off the rope, although he does get knocked out and suffers wounds on his neck. She takes him to her farmhouse where she lives with her special needs brother, Paule.
Elsa treats Heinrich’s wounds and insists he rests up and gathers his energy. She also tells him why she helped him, which is because she hates the Nazis who took away and killed her father, because of the subversive statements he used to make.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel and his men reach the village and ask the Mayor to take them to Löwensteins’ house, which is in ruins. While the Mayor seems suspiciously hesitant to disclose the truth about what the troop has arrived in search of, the Lieutenant Colonel asks his men to get started on searching the rubble and ruins.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Dörfler is tasked to go and collect livestock for their food. He arrives with a bunch of soldiers at none other than Elsa’s farm. She takes a stand and asks him to not take all the animals. Later, Dörfler barges in and takes note of Paule, before pinning Elsa down with the help of others and trying to rape her.
Heinrich, who’s been hiding in the attic, can’t tolerate the horrors from happening and comes down to put a stake inside one of the soldiers. He then fights off others, including Dörfler, with the help of Elsa. The two manage to kill all but Dörfler, who flees to his troop’s temporary headquarters at the local inn.
Elsa, Heinrich, and Paule flee the farm and spend the night deep in the forest. However, Paule can’t stay away from his cow and sneaks out to go and milk her in the morning, and shortly Dörfler and his men arrive, arrest him, and take him away to the village.
There, they take Paule to the church and plan to kill him at the bell tower. Paule fights back but ends up dead moments before Elsa and Heinrich reach him. Elsa gets arrested by Lieutenant Colonel’s men while Dörfler and other soldiers try to kill Heinrich, who manages to put up a good fight before taking refuge inside a resident’s house.
Elsa takes care of the Lieutenant Colonel and Heinrich gets entrapped by Dörfler and his men, and in the final set piece of Blood and Gold, he, along with Elsa and two other people goes up against the Nazis.
Blood and Gold ending explained in detail:
How does the Lieutenant Colonel die?
Lieutenant Colonel Von Starnfeld is one vicious and ruthless soldier, but also equally cowardly and arrogant. When he kills Paule, Elsa runs towards him while trying to shoot him dead, but she fails to do so and gets captured alive, something Von Starnfeld wants.
He later explains the reason behind it, which is that Elsa reminds him of a young woman he once knew and fell in love with. He tells her that because she was Jewish he couldn’t be with her and since he couldn’t do that, he killed her.
Now that Elsa stands in front of him, as a near replica of his former love, he rips out the mask that covers half of his disfigured face, digs out a ring from his empty eye socket, and puts it on Elsa’s finger, promising her protection for the rest of her life.
When he falls asleep, Elsa wakes up and spots the ring on his finger, and that it houses a pill inside it. He wakes up and Elsa fakes being attracted to him and drawn to his promise of protection, followed by her kissing him and transferring the pill to his mouth, followed by a punch to the chin that makes Starnfeld bite into it and consequently bite the dust.
What happens to Paule?
Paule has separation anxiety regarding his cow Rita, who’s also pregnant and he constantly asks Elsa to turn back and go to their home, since he’d need to milk the cow in the morning. Elsa manages to convince him to keep walking as the SS soldiers are out to kill them, but not for long.
While Elsa and Heinrich rush to get to him before the SS troop does, the Nazis manage to beat them to the race and capture Paule. They then gather the villagers at the square and prepare for a public hanging at the bell tower. However, a ferocious Paule manages to stand his ground and fight the two Nazi soldiers there to kill him.
He pushes one off the window and shoots the second one. He then proceeds to shower the soldiers standing on the ground outside with bullets, causing more mayhem, but an unfazed Von Starnfeld takes aim, and just moments before Paule is about to reunite with Elsa, shoots him in the back of his head, killing him.
Who takes the gold?
The gold treasure is what the SS troop led by Lieutenant Colonel Von Starnfeld is after. It belonged to the only Jewish family in Sonnenberg, the Löwensteins. The Mayor rouses up the people against them and outraged bigots drive them out of the village.
However, while the son Johannes Löwenstein and his wife decide to leave and set sail to Palestine, his father, and mother don’t since it’s their home and their ancestors helped build the village.
When during the scuffle, they end up dropping the gold bricks, the Mayor, his mistress Sonja, and friends Reinkober and Wirtz all spot it. They hide it from other villagers while catalyzing the outrage, killing the family. Meanwhile, Johannes and his wife are captured before they can set sail to Palestine.
That’s how Starnfeld and his troop come to know about the treasure. It’s Heinrich who comes to learn about the treasure’s whereabouts from the local preacher, who saw the Mayor and others steal it and also found out where they kept it. He then took it out of there and hid it in the church.
Sonja, Reinkober, and Wirtz capture the preacher and he leads them to the treasure, but inside the box is a booby trap that he and Heinrich set up for the SS soldiers. Reinkober and Wirtz die from the explosives while Sonja gets knocked unconscious.
After Heinrich and Elsa fight off the Nazis and leave the church, Sonja wakes up and shoots the remaining SS soldier. At the end of Blood and Gold, she is seen driving away in a car, happy with all the gold she managed to take for herself, only for an American tank to blow her car up.
The Yanks then find the gold as Sonja dies, and delight in the treasure they just received, deciding to take it for themselves. Before Blood and Gold ends, Heinrich and Elsa are shown to be together as the former finally reunites with his daughter Lottchen, and in doing so find the only gold he cared for.
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