I think the key negative was the Thirty Years War explanation. It fits into four lines of a high school history book, and when it came up in a college history class....it was a six-minute explanation. Because it’s five separate civil wars and built over extreme religious issues...it’s an impossible war to put into any discussion group.
This film is a perfect starting point for the discussion, but the theme and message are timeless. The Thirty-Years War is merely the backdrop. 90% of the film takes place in an isolated valley that has remained hidden from the outside strife until “the Captain” arrives with his 15 mercenaries. They are tasked to forage for supplies for an Army, and must decide to pillage the valley, or winter over in it instead. There are parallels and lessons to many wars and eras, not just the Thirty Years War.
I’ve read two or three histories of it and I’m still confused, even though I was a history major in college and graduated with honors. It’s much easier to understand the American Civil War, the English Civil War, WWI, and WWII than the 30 Years’ War.
In other words, more distant historically and an order of magnitude more complicated than the Spanish Civil War, which is already more complicated than any history class will deal with.