Germany breaks the Hitler taboo

The Daily Telegraph ^ | August 24, 2004 | Kate Connolly

[MadIvan]

A decades-long taboo was broken in Germany yesterday with the launch of a feature film in which Adolf Hitler appears for the first time in a central role, not as a ranting demagogue but as a soft-spoken dreamer.

The Downfall is a huge shift from the previous tendency in German cinema to show Hitler only as a background figure or a character who does not appear on camera at all.

Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun, Bruno Ganz as Hitler and Heino Ferch as Albert Speer

It tells the story of the last 12 days of Hitler's life in his 25ft-deep bunker in Berlin - including his suicide alongside his new wife Eva Braun on April 30, 1945 - while advancing Soviet troops pulverise the city with shellfire.

The production by Bernd Eichinger, a respected director, is likely to cause controversy when it opens in German cinemas next month. It depicts the Fuhrer as an avuncular character with a penchant for chocolate cake, who slides into madness when his lifelong dream of a 1,000-year reich slips from his grasp.

Hitler is convincingly played by Germany's star actor Bruno Ganz, who once acted the part of an angel in the award-winning German film Wings of Desire.

In one scene Ganz depicts him with his hair in his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks, as he declares: "The war is over."

Hitler is shown stroking his alsatian Blondie and treating his secretary with tenderness and patience.

The Downfall offers a sympathetic portrayal of the Führer

Until he starts having hysterical fits, Ganz's Hitler talks in a soft, melodic Austrian accent, far different from the barking tone he adopted for his mass rallies. The director said the voice was copied from the single recording which exists of Hitler talking in normal tones.

Mr Eichinger, who also wrote the screenplay, reconstructs the last days of the Third Reich as seen from the claustrophobic and dimly-lit bunker with the help of diary extracts and eye-witness accounts by Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, who died in 2002, as well as his telephonist, and an officer, Major Freytag, who are the last two living survivors.

As well as recalling the unbearable stench of urine, sweat and diesel which dominated the bunker, Freytag described Hitler as a "physical wreck", with a limp, who hid his shaking left hand behind his back, leading to suggestions that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Shot in Berlin, Munich and St Petersburg at a cost of £9 million, making it one of the most expensive German films of all time, The Downfall has been welcomed by critics for demythologising Hitler - even before they have had the chance to see it.

Bruno Ganz as an avuncular Hitler hiding his shaking hand

Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the critic Frank Schirrmacher praised The Downfall for bringing Germany's evaluation of its history into "a new phase".

Until now Germans had been afraid to portray on screen "the man who still dominates the German imagination more than any other figure in history", he wrote.

But the tabloid Bild yesterday posed the question that an increasing number of critics will no doubt ask: "Should a monster be portrayed as a human being?" Eichinger, the 55-year-old son of a Wehrmacht soldier who fought on the eastern front, said he believed the film would offer an "emotional release" for many Germans still traumatised by the Second World War, even though only one in five living Germans experienced it.

Its release comes at a time when Germans are involved in an intense debate about their suffering in the war.

There have been several popular books and historical analyses of German suffering during Allied bombing of Dresden and other cities, most famously Gunter Grass's Crabwalk of 2002. The subject went virtually undiscussed for half a century after the war ended.

Critics say the debate is in danger of playing into the hands of revisionists - those who play down the crime of the Holocaust.

[MadIvan]

This is absolutely terrifying on a number of levels - firstly, the fact that critics praised the film before seeing it. And the admission that Hitler still dominates the German imagination...oh what a giveaway.

I hereby end British restraint on bringing up Fawlty Towers:

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Ping!

[Cacique]

[river rat]

Rising in support of their Sand Nazi Cousins?

Semper Fi

[Wilhelm Tell]

This is where moral relativism and the politically-correct notion that everyone is a victim takes us -- the worst villain in at least modern times is portrayed as a helpless victim. We are supposed to feel sorry for the bloody creature as it hides behind children in its bunker. I have predicted for some time that the left's moral relativism and its admiration of mindless political power for its own sake will eventually cause the left to rehabilitate Hitler. The left gets all romantic about violent sociopaths so it is not surprising that they will eventually grovel before Hitler.

[Blackyce]

You've seen th film then? Or are you just assuming this is a sympathetic portrayal?

[Jim Noble]

And the admission that Hitler still dominates the German imagination...oh what a giveaway.

As is the fact that it remains necessary to ban the NSDAP fifty-nine years after its last legal meeting, to ban all writings, symbols, and political songs from that era, and to give the government the power to ban any other political parties who even think about thinking NSDAP thoughts.

I don't know about you, but I suspect the Jerries would be right back at it if allowed.

[MadIvan]

Portraying Hitler as soft spoken and enjoying chocolate cake is an attempt to "humanise" him. I have to say that the best scholar on the subject, Ian Kershaw, who wrote the definitive biography, was astonished by how dry Hitler was as a human being: very few outside interests, very few personal relationships, not much sign of sensitivity to others. He was entirely a political creature, the evidence suggests.

Regards, Ivan

[Caipirabob]

Next month's feature: "Stalin and Bambi's Adventures!"

[gracex7]

PLEASE... don't give them any ideas!

[Wilhelm Tell]

I think, putting on my amateur psychologist's hat, that Hitler was THE sociopathic person of all time. He did have an incredible ability to detect what a person's weakness was and exploit that. Other than that, he was a mediocre man. And I am fed up with how the left always wants us to see the "human" side of violent criminals. I have seen and read interviews of people like serial killers and war criminals, and it struck me that there was something just missing or even dead about the person -- such people are not fully human and it is wrong for anyone to try to humanize them.

[MadIvan]

Next month's feature: "Stalin and Bambi's Adventures!"

I knew I was right to admire the hunter who shot Bambi's mother. Too bad he didn't take out Bambi in the process. Then it would be "The NRA Saves the Day". ;)

Regards, Ivan

[longjack]

German ping.

© dpa...Actor Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler in the film "Der Untergang" (The Fall) - Hitler and the end of the Third Reich"

"FAZ-FAZ.NET"...."Ich muß das Böse in mir entdecken"

"Der Stern"....Bruno Ganz als Hitler

Bruno Ganz spielt Adolf Hitler. Foto: news.ch

"Bild.T-Online.de"....Neue Serie in BILD: Hitlers letzte Tage

longjack

[bvw]

He was only one small man, a painter of hideous landscapes.

[blanknoone]

The timing of this and the Ami Raus movement finally getting the Amis to Raus has to be causing some discomfort to various Eurinals.

Is anyone starting a pool on how long the Alsatians will be speaking French?

[Sam Cree]

"He was entirely a political creature, the evidence suggests."

I think he was something of an artist as well, not surprising at all I guess, when one considers even the modern trend among artsy people to favor totalitarian government.

But this is the kind of thing that makes it seem like allowing the 2 Germanies to unite was not a good idea.

[Stirner]

"It struck me that there was something just missing or even dead about the person -- such people are not fully human and it is wrong for anyone to try to humanize them."

Putting on my own amateur psychologist's hat, I can understand the impulse, when confronted by evil, to deny that the perpetrator is fully human because that would make him, in some sense, like us. However, it is profoundly dangerous to label people as non-people. That's exactly what Hitler and Stalin did. A person can be incredibly destructively evil and at the same time a fully human being who shows us how low a human being can go. To fear that I too could wind up in such a hell is not the same as sympathy for such devils.

[SunkenCiv]

Not talking about WWII and its immediate aftermath seems to be the way things were done (well, not done). By the 1960s, German school textbooks had (in reference to the Holocaust) "anti-Jewish measures were intensified."

[Mr. Jeeves]

But the tabloid Bild yesterday posed the question that an increasing number of critics will no doubt ask: "Should a monster be portrayed as a human being?"

All of the monsters are human beings. There has never been one of them who thought he was the bad guy. This film looks interesting.