Sex and swastikas. That's what the publishing industry knows sells books, which is why I always suspect my own fascination with the Third Reich. However, I finally succumbed to curiosity and borrowed the DVD of "Der Untergang" and I must confess I really enjoyed it. Well, "enjoy" is hardly the word, but I was riveted by it. The screenplay was based around the eyewitness account of Hitler's final days in the bunker produced by his secretary Traudl Junge. I had seen her interviewed in the old "World at War" series and was fascinated by her tale already then. She seemed a very sensible, ordinary, decent sort of woman, as curious as I was as to how she got mixed up in that whole insane business. In fact, that was the heart of the film's message - the sheer banality of evil. It is in many ways so much more comfortable to view Hitler and the Nazis as demons rather than human beings. Once we accept them as human beings, sincerity requires that we confront that same potential for evil in ourselves. The film reveals an obvious truth about Hitler, which is that he had a capacity for charm, for human warmth, without which he would not have been able to create the cult of mass devotion to himself. Like all psychopaths and confidence tricksters his secret was his absolute belief in his own sustaining fantasies. His preparedness to sacrifice the whole German Volk as extras in his personal Götterdämmerung was entirely justifiable given that they had proved themselves "unworthy" in the Darwinian race-struggle. This sort of bloke-down-the-pub interpretation of evolutionary theory seems completely bonkers to us today, but it was an idea he sold to millions by the simple device of telling people what they most deeply want to hear - that they are special, that they are the master race. Who among us, deep in our black little hearts, does not think they are special?
The production is technically brilliant and the acting at times superb. The neurotic, claustrophobic atmosphere of the bunker is extremely well captured. Bruno Ganz as Hitler pulls off an incredible "tour de force". Heino Ferch as Albert Speer is particularly good - he even looks like him! I never quite worked out how a sensitive and intelligent guy like Speer ever got involved with those gangsters and fantasists. Presumably something weak in him was flattered. There was a biography came out a couple of years ago - another one for the list!* For me the most gruelling scene is where Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch) forces her eldest daughter to take the poison which is going to kill her. I had to look away.
There was an "extra" DVD in the box with details on the making of the film etc. which gave some interesting insights into how the director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, achieved the effects he was looking for. Some nice interview footage of old Joachim Fest, who wrote the book, looking good in his eighties. I remember particularly his "Face of the Third Reich" - a series of pen-portraits of the leading Nazis, a brilliant study of the banality of evil.
Intrigued by the "draw" of the whole loony Nazi fantasy, I returned to Michael Burleigh's "The Third Reich - A New History", which, of the books I've read, gives the greatest insight into the deep psychological attraction of Hitler and the National Socialists. On the subject of the quasi-religious nature of the movement he writes:
The Nazis hardly had a monopoly over the sacralization of politics, for since the French Revolution the quest for utopias based on reason, class or nation has been construed as a holy task. Many regimes more or less consciously usurped religious forms, much of it as harmless as the common transference of religious sentiment on to art, foxhunting or a football club. In a secular age, religious emotion has been diffused into various compartments, one of which is organised religion itself, which becomes a private matter on a par with lifestyle options such as vegetarianism or knitting. But Nazism did not merely hijack a few liturgical externals, all the better to win over a largely Christian country. It sank a drillhead into a deep-seated reservoir of existential anxiety, offering salvation from an ontological crisis.
The idea of frustrated religious sentiment necessarily finding some, any, outlet is deeply convincing and is probably more relevant to many of our current difficulties and misunderstandings than we would care to admit.
* Gita Sereny "Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth"
The production is technically brilliant and the acting at times superb. The neurotic, claustrophobic atmosphere of the bunker is extremely well captured. Bruno Ganz as Hitler pulls off an incredible "tour de force". Heino Ferch as Albert Speer is particularly good - he even looks like him! I never quite worked out how a sensitive and intelligent guy like Speer ever got involved with those gangsters and fantasists. Presumably something weak in him was flattered. There was a biography came out a couple of years ago - another one for the list!* For me the most gruelling scene is where Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch) forces her eldest daughter to take the poison which is going to kill her. I had to look away.
There was an "extra" DVD in the box with details on the making of the film etc. which gave some interesting insights into how the director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, achieved the effects he was looking for. Some nice interview footage of old Joachim Fest, who wrote the book, looking good in his eighties. I remember particularly his "Face of the Third Reich" - a series of pen-portraits of the leading Nazis, a brilliant study of the banality of evil.
Intrigued by the "draw" of the whole loony Nazi fantasy, I returned to Michael Burleigh's "The Third Reich - A New History", which, of the books I've read, gives the greatest insight into the deep psychological attraction of Hitler and the National Socialists. On the subject of the quasi-religious nature of the movement he writes:
The Nazis hardly had a monopoly over the sacralization of politics, for since the French Revolution the quest for utopias based on reason, class or nation has been construed as a holy task. Many regimes more or less consciously usurped religious forms, much of it as harmless as the common transference of religious sentiment on to art, foxhunting or a football club. In a secular age, religious emotion has been diffused into various compartments, one of which is organised religion itself, which becomes a private matter on a par with lifestyle options such as vegetarianism or knitting. But Nazism did not merely hijack a few liturgical externals, all the better to win over a largely Christian country. It sank a drillhead into a deep-seated reservoir of existential anxiety, offering salvation from an ontological crisis.
The idea of frustrated religious sentiment necessarily finding some, any, outlet is deeply convincing and is probably more relevant to many of our current difficulties and misunderstandings than we would care to admit.
* Gita Sereny "Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth"
posted by asbo at 2:58 PM
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