|
View the h-german Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in h-german's November 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in h-german's November 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the h-german home page.
The Downfall of Hitler and the German People
Gilat Margalit, Department of General History, University of Haifa
_Der Untergaang_ ("The Downfall"), has been playing at German movie
theaters since September 16. This film follows the dramatic last 12 days of
Adolf Hitler's life in his Berlin bunker, as well as the final collapse of
Nazi Germany. _Der Untergang_ reflects what is today a salient mood in the
Berlin Republic toward the Nazi past: a conciliatory, non-judgmental
attitude reflecting a desire to understand the spell that Nazism cast on
Germans, but not to criticize or judge the fairly enthusiastic participation
of ordinary Germans in Nazi initiatives. This mood is reflected as well in
the current discourse on the Germans during WWII as victims in the political
culture of the Federal Republic.
The script for _Der Untergang_ was written by Bernd Eichinger and directed
by Oliver Hirschbiegel. The movie is based mainly on Joachim Fest's book
_Der Untergang_[1] and on the diary of Traudl Junge, Hitler's personal
secretary, published in Germany two years ago.[2] The movie's widespread
exposure in the media began even before the official premiere. I heard an
echo of it in a chance conversation with an older woman on the street in
Frankfurt. "Yes, I have to see this movie,'Der Aufstieg' [The Ascent]," she
said, tellingly mistaking the title. "It was a part of my life."
Eichinger himself gave numerous interviews to the German press, explaining
his credo with regard to the screenplay and film, and denouncing his own
generation, the rebellious youth of 1968, for the militant, Stalinist nature
of their confrontation with the past. Although he is an international
producer, Eichinger was determined to make _Der Untergang_ a German film,
performed in German by a local cast: "Many subjects are so specific that
only the nation itself should be able to give them artistic expression.
German feelings [about Nazism] are very different from those of the
Americans, who saw themselves as liberators." His words suggest a
nationalist view that considers only one German position--one which sees the
fall of Nazism as defeat, not liberation--to be authentic. Clearly, this is
not the accepted American view. Eichinger further argued that cinema has
thus far presented Hitler as a monster or a grotesque figure (ever since
Charlie Chaplin's _The Great Dictator_). These portrayals, he has claimed,
cannot account for the powerful appeal of the despot or for his ability to
sweep millions of Germans toward the bitter end. "Hitler was what you would
now call a pop star," Eichinger has stated. "[It was] that kind of
adulation. To the people, he was almost a god." Eichinger believes it is
necessary to de-demonize Hitler--in other words, to humanize him.[3]
And indeed, the film's opening interview with the elderly Traudl Junge is
followed by the scene of the secretary's first encounter with Hitler, played
by Bruno Ganz. In the movie Hitler is shown as a kindly, avuncular man, who
calms the young secretary down when her nervous fingers falter while taking
dictation. In the movie, the compassionate dictator gives his subordinate a
second chance. Incidentally, he comes across in this scene as far more warm
and paternal than he does in the account in Junge's diary of the same
moment.[4] The emphasis on humanity is evident not only in the film's
treatment of Hitler, shown warmly kissing his dog, Blondi, and embracing the
children of Joseph Goebbels (who died later when their mother, believing
that life in post-National Socialist Germany was not worth living, poisoned
them with cyanide). Other figures in Hitler's close circle are depicted with
similar sympathy. The movie does not conceal the brutality, fanaticism and
inhumanity of Hitler, Goebbels and the Nazi regime. It does, however, choose
to focus on one particular aspect of Hitler's many crimes--his vindictive,
merciless policies toward the German people, who did not live up to his
expectations. In his conversations with Albert Speer, his armaments
minister, Hitler declares that he will not waste tears on the fate of the
German people.[5] He expresses similarly Darwinist positions regarding the
eventual fate of the German people also in other dialogues as well.[6] In
one of these talks he even states that the nation's best sons have already
died in battle, leaving only the inferior ones.[7] These scenes imply that
Hitler, toward the end of his life, decided to annihilate the German
people, just as he had tried with the Jews. The Jewish issue, incidentally,
is given a rather casual mention in Hitler's conversation with Speer,[8] so
that the Germans themselves are presented as Hitler's victims. The heart of
the movie, then, is the terrible anguish of the German people, caught
between the pitiless Nazi regime, which demanded that Germans of all ages be
willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, and the assaults by the Allies,
whose merciless bombing of the Reich's capital city caused widespread
destruction and death.
For all their brutality and fanaticism, Hitler and Goebbels are presented as
honest men who consistently follow their creed and are willing to pay a
heavy personal price for their idealism. This portrayal clearly contains a
touch of the heroic. By contrast, other senior Nazi officials are shown to
be Opportunists--especially Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, who flees
the lost battle for Berlin and tries, against Hitler's express policy, to
reach an agreement with the Americans. Himmler, utterly indifferent to the
suffering of the civilian population, is already pondering a wholly
different question: when he meets General Eisenhower, should he give the
Nazi salute, or shake the man's hand?[9]
Within this horrible chaos, Eichinger chose to focus on a few exemplary
Germans, most of them high-ranking SS officials determined to protect the
city's civilians, whether against the "Asian gangs of the Red Army" or
against Hitler's fanatical demand for senseless sacrifice. This gallery of
positive heroes includes Speer, the armaments minister, who refuses to carry
out Hitler's "scorched earth" policy and supposedly tells him so, with great
courage, during their last meeting in the bunker; the Wehrmacht General
Helmuth Weidling, commander of the defense of Berlin, who orders that the
futile resistance against the Soviet army be stopped; the SS General Wilhelm
Mohnke, the commander of the defence on the National Socialist
administration's quarters, who fights courageously; and the fictional
character of Wilhelm Kranz, a disabled war veteran whose 12 year-old son,
Peter, is a member of the Hitler Youth and is decorated by Hitler for his
service in an anti-tank unit. Kranz demands that his son and the rest of the
children be released from the pointless battle against the Soviet tanks.[10]
As a result, Kranz is executed by hanging, and his wife is killed by a squad
that targets German defectors and demoralizers.
The most exemplary of all these heroes is the physician Prof. Ernst
Guenter-Schenck. Schenck is not a fictional character: he was the SS
official in charge of nutrition, a position that allowed him to experiment
with feeding vegetable proteins to concentration camp inmates, killing many
of them.[11] The movie makes no mention of these crimes, choosing instead to
portray him as a committed idealist and altruist. In the movie, Schenck
refuses to carry out Hitler's command to evacuate the SS and army offices in
Berlin, because he is reluctant to leave the civilian population behind.
Instead, he risks his life by entering an abandoned hospital on the border,
under fire and without a helmet, to get the drugs and equipment he needs for
the improvised hospital in the Fuehrer's headquarters. Another incident
brings him into conflict with the military police, who want to execute two
elderly defectors: "Stop, immediately! Let these people go!" he demands.
"They are old men, civilians...You can't do this." "Really?" the military
policemen answers defiantly and shoots the two on the spot.[12] Schenck, as
a doctor, makes heroic efforts in helping Professor Werner Haase, a high
ranking SS officer and the Bunker doctor, to operate on severely wounded
soldiers in his makeshift hospital in the cellar of the Fuehrer's
headquarters. Toward the end of the movie he even urges Walther Hewel, a
diplomat (Ribbentrop representative in the Bunker) and loyal follower of
Hitler, not to commit suicide. The latter explains that Hitler has given him
a cyanide capsule, so that he might take his own life rather than reveal
secrets to the Soviets. Schenck, all wonder and innocence, says: "But you
are a diplomat...Your passport protects you under international law."[13]
In line with the prevalent mood in Germany today, Eichinger tries in his
movie to arouse sympathy for decent, "role-model" Nazis like Schenck. This
approach has an emasculating effect on the ongoing German confrontation with
the Nazi past. Since 1945 it has revolved around questions of responsibility
and guilt of the German people. In Eichinger's film the German people are an
helpless victims and there is no room for political and moral
responsibility, only for pity and identification with the overwhelming human
suffering and pain. The sound of requiem, which accompanies the movie
throughout, and especially toward the end, only emphasizes the tragedy of
the downfall of the Third Reich for the German people.
Notes:
[1]. Joachim Fest, _Der Untergang. Eine historische Skizze_ (Hamburg:
Rowohlt, 2004).
[2]. Traudl Junge, _Bis zur letzten Stunde. Hitlers Sekretaerin erzaehlt ihr
Leben (Munich: Claasen Verlag, 2002); see H-German review by Gerhard
Weinberg at http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=43241079886502 .
[3]. "Hitler ist greifbarer geworden. Bernd Eichinger ueber sein Bild des
Despoten und wie die Deutschen ihre Geschichte aufarbeiten sollten,"
_Frankfurter Rundschau_ (Magazin), September 11, 2004, p. 3.
[4]. Junge, pp. 42-43.
[5]. Bernd Eichinger and Joachim Fest, _Der Untergang. Das Filmbuch
(Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2004), esp. p. 323, also p. 268.
[6]. Eichinger and Fest, p. 327.
[7]. Eichinger and Fest, p. 268.
[8]. Eichinger and Fest, p. 323. Hitler dictates the passage on the
annihilation of the Jews in his political testament: Eichinger and Fest, p.
343.
[9]. Eichinger and Fest, p. 254.
[10]. Eichinger and Fest, pp. 259-261.
[11]. Michael H. Kater, _Aerzte als Hitlers Helfer_ (Hamburg, Vienna:
Europa, 2000), p. 208; Fridolf Kudlien, _Aerzte im Nazionalsozialismus
Koeln_ (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1985), pp.148-151.
[12]. Eichinger and Fest, pp. 296-298.
[13]. Eichinger and Fest, pp. 395-397.
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|