This is the most disturbing movie I have seen in a long time. I knew it was going to be. The story of Hitler’s final days in the Berlin bunker has been told many times in dramas and documentaries. Cable had already played the 2002 documentary about the memoirs of Traudl Junge, Hitler’s young secretary, on which this movie is largely based. I had heard that this production is entirely German and had heard the controversy about its portrayal of a “human” side to the worst person who ever lived. I dreaded either a caricature or an apology. I didn’t want to hear “mitigation” for this paragon of the worst of the worst.
I put the disc in the player and began, fully expecting to be nauseated and angered at what I would be watching. In the early scenes, my finger wavered over the “ff” and “stop” buttons as I listened to the grating German dialogue, watched the adoring faces of the toadies that surrounded Der Fuhrer. But almost against my will, I became engrossed in the tale. It was like watching a Shakespearean tragedy with characters that possess apparent human traits, but act out of some gravitational madness that causes you to watch it as if you are seeing a slow motion chain reaction car crash. It is a horror movie about a madhouse, in which the characters seem possessed and even the innocent sane people deserve to die.
These are not the people who were inspired by rhetoric of a charismatic, optimistic leader in 1933. In the start, the German audience was arguably vulnerable to nationalistic slogans about regaining prosperity, national pride, honor. Nor are these the ones who hopped on the wagon in the early years of the war, when victories stirred patriotic blood. By the time this movie covers, it was apparent to all but the densest and most fanatical followers that Hitler was leading them to nothing but complete destruction.
Who was left by April, 1945? The hardest of the hard core at the center, in the bunker. And a few foolish airheads who blinded themselves to anything but the stardom of their employer. Yet even they were human, not just mad dogs or molls as in some 30's gangster movie. Some deeply upsetting psychological effect is occurring. The bunker mentality is evident, including a fatalistic self-deception that is hard to understand. I shudder to say it smacks of a “Masada” syndrome.
In one particularly chilling sequence, Joseph Goebbels’ wife Magda calmly smokes a cigarette while sleeping potion is prepared. She adoringly coaxes her six little blond children to drink and later calmly cracks open poison capsules in each of their mouths, covers their bodies and retreats to play solitaire until Joseph fetches her to shoot her and himself. Frau Goebbels is seen as a true believer in her husband, Nazism, and an idolator of Hitler, saying she could not bear for her children to live in a world without National Socialism. But how potent is the ideology, religion, charisma, or pathological delusion that can overwhelm a mother’s love for her children?
As the Russian army squeezes the battered city, we see boys and girls suicidally fighting for The Cause. How can they still believe? What was the allure Hitler had that was so gripping for so many? Is the answer pathological, political, spiritual?
The overall unreality of the behavior of these people is startling. Traudl Junge, as depicted, is not like Magda Goebbels or Eva Braun. She is a secretary, a sweet and pretty woman of 22, who insists on staying with her Fuhrer until the end. Why? How can she admire him so much that she is willing to die with him? Because he is a good boss? Because he patted her cheek and smiled at her? Because she feels some loyalty to this fatherly old man, no matter how mad he often seems to be?
In a preface, we see the now aged Traudl telling us that she has asked herself those questions many times over the next 50 years. Her conclusion in an epilogue is a bit trite, befitting a decent person who is not very bright, certainly no intellectual. She insists that she discovered the extent of Hitler’s criminality only after the war, and now feels she was “wrong” to admire him, “naive” to have ignored his apparent destructive evil. She admits that she should have and could have taken the effort to doubt, to ask questions, to find out the truth for herself.
In an interview added to the DVD, the author who worked on Traudl’s memoirs with her relates that Traudl married a soldier on Hitler’s staff in 1943 (something not mentioned in the body of the drama). He had asked to be assigned to the front and died there. Before leaving, he told his young wife that he had to leave because he found himself agreeing with everything Hitler said and had ceased to think of himself as an individual. Traudl did not understand what he had said until long after the war when the truth struck her. She never remarried.
The movie makes Hitler something of an enigma, like PATTON or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. Bruno Ganz alters his face and body in subtle but alarming ways to evoke emotions as he alternates from an avuncular gentle man to a raving, fearsome monster and back again.
He is kind and considerate to his help: the young secretaries, cooks, his dog, his loyal attendants. He is wildly paranoid, lost in magical thinking about victory in the face of logic, blames everyone but himself. When his generals repeatedly urge that he consider the civilians of Berlin in his actions, he raves bitterly that the German people deserve to die because they proved themselves unworthy of him. He is a twisted Christ figure, preaching that the meek must die because they are unfit. He shows personal compassion for his secretary, but declaims that compassion is a sin when dealing with The People.
There are other things that are troubling. While Hitler’s words are evil, his face is pathetic. We are moved to be moved by his dilemma. We are led to admire the heroism of the German soldiers who are willing to fight to the last man against the enemy, the Russians. This patriotic military quality is an aspect of our own value system and The Alamo is not an inapt analogue for the bunker. The suicides by some (especially the officers who have failed to dissuade Hitler from his delusions about victory) are strangely depicted as heroic, as a Masada like act of defiance against an enemy.
As David Denby of The New Yorker commented, “Who cares about their honor? By adding pathos to the collapse of Nazism, the filmmakers have come close to nostalgia...”
We also see an anomalous figure, an SS doctor who is humane, sanely insists on surrender to stop the suffering, heroically strives to save innocent lives. Possibly this is based on a true character and incidents, but does it misrepresent or unfairly soften the reality of the viciousness of the SS?
Though a balanced view is attempted, the overall emotional mood of the endgame of the war is as a tragic defeat rather than a liberation from the nightmare. If this is part of the dialogue that the German people are having 60 years after the event it is somewhat troubling.
I put the disc in the player and began, fully expecting to be nauseated and angered at what I would be watching. In the early scenes, my finger wavered over the “ff” and “stop” buttons as I listened to the grating German dialogue, watched the adoring faces of the toadies that surrounded Der Fuhrer. But almost against my will, I became engrossed in the tale. It was like watching a Shakespearean tragedy with characters that possess apparent human traits, but act out of some gravitational madness that causes you to watch it as if you are seeing a slow motion chain reaction car crash. It is a horror movie about a madhouse, in which the characters seem possessed and even the innocent sane people deserve to die.
These are not the people who were inspired by rhetoric of a charismatic, optimistic leader in 1933. In the start, the German audience was arguably vulnerable to nationalistic slogans about regaining prosperity, national pride, honor. Nor are these the ones who hopped on the wagon in the early years of the war, when victories stirred patriotic blood. By the time this movie covers, it was apparent to all but the densest and most fanatical followers that Hitler was leading them to nothing but complete destruction.
Who was left by April, 1945? The hardest of the hard core at the center, in the bunker. And a few foolish airheads who blinded themselves to anything but the stardom of their employer. Yet even they were human, not just mad dogs or molls as in some 30's gangster movie. Some deeply upsetting psychological effect is occurring. The bunker mentality is evident, including a fatalistic self-deception that is hard to understand. I shudder to say it smacks of a “Masada” syndrome.
In one particularly chilling sequence, Joseph Goebbels’ wife Magda calmly smokes a cigarette while sleeping potion is prepared. She adoringly coaxes her six little blond children to drink and later calmly cracks open poison capsules in each of their mouths, covers their bodies and retreats to play solitaire until Joseph fetches her to shoot her and himself. Frau Goebbels is seen as a true believer in her husband, Nazism, and an idolator of Hitler, saying she could not bear for her children to live in a world without National Socialism. But how potent is the ideology, religion, charisma, or pathological delusion that can overwhelm a mother’s love for her children?
As the Russian army squeezes the battered city, we see boys and girls suicidally fighting for The Cause. How can they still believe? What was the allure Hitler had that was so gripping for so many? Is the answer pathological, political, spiritual?
The overall unreality of the behavior of these people is startling. Traudl Junge, as depicted, is not like Magda Goebbels or Eva Braun. She is a secretary, a sweet and pretty woman of 22, who insists on staying with her Fuhrer until the end. Why? How can she admire him so much that she is willing to die with him? Because he is a good boss? Because he patted her cheek and smiled at her? Because she feels some loyalty to this fatherly old man, no matter how mad he often seems to be?
In a preface, we see the now aged Traudl telling us that she has asked herself those questions many times over the next 50 years. Her conclusion in an epilogue is a bit trite, befitting a decent person who is not very bright, certainly no intellectual. She insists that she discovered the extent of Hitler’s criminality only after the war, and now feels she was “wrong” to admire him, “naive” to have ignored his apparent destructive evil. She admits that she should have and could have taken the effort to doubt, to ask questions, to find out the truth for herself.
In an interview added to the DVD, the author who worked on Traudl’s memoirs with her relates that Traudl married a soldier on Hitler’s staff in 1943 (something not mentioned in the body of the drama). He had asked to be assigned to the front and died there. Before leaving, he told his young wife that he had to leave because he found himself agreeing with everything Hitler said and had ceased to think of himself as an individual. Traudl did not understand what he had said until long after the war when the truth struck her. She never remarried.
The movie makes Hitler something of an enigma, like PATTON or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. Bruno Ganz alters his face and body in subtle but alarming ways to evoke emotions as he alternates from an avuncular gentle man to a raving, fearsome monster and back again.
He is kind and considerate to his help: the young secretaries, cooks, his dog, his loyal attendants. He is wildly paranoid, lost in magical thinking about victory in the face of logic, blames everyone but himself. When his generals repeatedly urge that he consider the civilians of Berlin in his actions, he raves bitterly that the German people deserve to die because they proved themselves unworthy of him. He is a twisted Christ figure, preaching that the meek must die because they are unfit. He shows personal compassion for his secretary, but declaims that compassion is a sin when dealing with The People.
There are other things that are troubling. While Hitler’s words are evil, his face is pathetic. We are moved to be moved by his dilemma. We are led to admire the heroism of the German soldiers who are willing to fight to the last man against the enemy, the Russians. This patriotic military quality is an aspect of our own value system and The Alamo is not an inapt analogue for the bunker. The suicides by some (especially the officers who have failed to dissuade Hitler from his delusions about victory) are strangely depicted as heroic, as a Masada like act of defiance against an enemy.
As David Denby of The New Yorker commented, “Who cares about their honor? By adding pathos to the collapse of Nazism, the filmmakers have come close to nostalgia...”
We also see an anomalous figure, an SS doctor who is humane, sanely insists on surrender to stop the suffering, heroically strives to save innocent lives. Possibly this is based on a true character and incidents, but does it misrepresent or unfairly soften the reality of the viciousness of the SS?
Though a balanced view is attempted, the overall emotional mood of the endgame of the war is as a tragic defeat rather than a liberation from the nightmare. If this is part of the dialogue that the German people are having 60 years after the event it is somewhat troubling.
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