"Der Untergang" (The Downfall)

Rented this at the weekend. Great film, with some reservations.

This is the story of the last days of Adolf Hitler as the Russians remorselessly close in on the Führerbunker. It is told partially through the eyes of Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary, and the film begins and ends with the real Traudl Junge speaking (she died in 2002). The film proper starts with the midnight selection as a secretary for Hitler of Fräulein Gertraud Humps (Junge was her married name) from among 5 hopefuls, mainly, the film suggests, because she came from Munich, with which Hitler had close connections and for which he had much affection.

The really good thing about this film is Swiss actor Bruno Ganz's portrayal of Hitler. One can't imagine anyone ever doing it better. Everything, the tantrums of rage, the loss of reality and refuge in fantasy, the intrusion of bitter reality, the ever-shaking hand, which he sought to hide, all brilliantly captured. In addition, there's the accent – I hope that the English language version of the film has subtitles rather then dubbing, because Hitler never lost his Austrian accent and Ganz's coarse accent stands in sharp contrast to those of the polished Hochdeutsch speakers around him). Ganz's Hitler is a train crash in slow motion as his worlds, real and fantasy, collapse around him and his closest followers (Goering, even Himmler der treue Heinrich) seek to save their own skins. I've heard criticisms that this portrayal of Hitler makes him too human, but this, to me, makes the portrait that much more effective. After all, all this death and destruction was not brought about by aliens from another planet, but by people from this one, and moreover from a nation that has given the world so much, especially in the field of great music. I suspect that people like the “monster†portrait, because they can then distance themselves from the monster (“we're not like thatâ€Â). However, this is the monster that lurks within us all and all it needs is the right circumstances to bring it forth. It should be remembered that the current allegedly Christian President of the USA wants the ability to have people tortured. The slippery slope is not as far away as you think.

You look at this wreckage of a person so beautifully played by Ganz and wonder, why on earth did all these people follow him to the bitter end? In one scene, Goebbels in close to tears when Hitler orders him to leave Berlin and confides to Traudl Junge that he will disobey a Führer order for the first time. In another scene, Magda Goebbels intimates to Albert Speer that she will kill her six children (all of whose Christian names start with “H†in admiration for Hitler). “I beg you to reconsider, Magda,†protests Speer, “those children deserve a future.†“There is no future without National Socialism,†replies Frau Goebbels. She is seen later breaking cyanide capsules in their mouths (having first given them all a sleeping potion), before she and her husband commit suicide (true, but depicted inaccurately). Why this determination to remain with an obviously sinking ship? In an era where fanaticism of all kinds is again on the rise, we need to understand why and disseminate the answers and lessons more widely. The current state of the world is evidence that we have not done so very well.

The world of the collapsing Third Reich is beautifully (if that's the word) captured, with people partying wildly as the world falls apart around them, fanatics stringing up “defeatists†from the lamp posts, even as obvious and very real defeat looms, the fanatical kids of the Hitler Youth trying courageously but vainly to stop the Russian onslaught, even the German guards carrying Sturmgewehre, early assault rifles of the type that Mr. Kalsahnikov would later make famous.

Reservations? Only one really; the film smacks a little of a whitewash, of portraying to some extent the Germans as the innocent victims of the deranged Nazis, so that the Germans don't feel too bad. I confess I don't know the history in any great detail, but when an SS Brigadeführer (brigadier-general) starts to worry about civilian casualties and the death of the elderly, I start to wonder. The soldiers are all terribly honourable and sensible – it's the rabid Nazis of the film, such as Josef Goebbels (chillingly played by Ulrich Matthes) who want to fight to the end for the Führer and who are totally callous with regard to human life. Most of all, there's the central figure of Traudl Junge, played as a wide-eyed ingénue by the delicious Alexandra Maria Lara. Nicely played to be sure, but was this really how it was? After all, she married a Waffen-SS officer (killed in Normandy), and they were the prime examples of Nazi racial ideology (the fact that she was married and widowed is not mentioned in the film). At the beginning, the real Traudl Junge says that she was never an enthusiastic National Socialist and at the end she related her shock and shame at finding that fellow Münchenerin the heroic Sophie Scholl of the White Rose resistance group was born in the same year and was en route to the guillotine as Junge took the Hitler job ("so being young is no excuse"). And when Hitler dictates his political testament to Junge, should she have looked so shocked at the bit about the enemy International Jewry? Perhaps there's more than an uncomfortable element of truth in a statement by Goebbels, when he says dismissively to the abovementioned SS Brigadeführer words to the effect of “it's the people's fault, they voted for this.â€Â

In conclusion, in spite of some of my pernickety reservations, a good one, well worth seeing.

 

Excelently review, Tones.
I saw this film and I agree with you in pretty much all you wrote.

I understand the research behind the film itself was done by a well known historian, of German origin. This may perhaps explain some of the perceived "whitewash" as you mention, that I tend to desbelieve myself.

For sure there were many that knew not the extent to which the atrocities extended. It is easy to follow someone's ideals when caught in such a situation as the Germans were by and large caught - recovering from the worst economic crisis. Not that dissimilar to the crisis lived by Germany today but of course in much different political circumstances. Hitler did some good for Germany creating infrastructure and many jobs - of course used to fuel a war machine. Not everyone knew that, though.

Still, many got caught in the hype of this "revolution" and no doubt are less than innocent of the many racial crimes and offenses made throughout Germany and the occupied regions.

It is always difficult to judge whether today such a situation could develop again. Not easy to happen in Germany, imho, but this is not about a nation necessarily, but about a series of circumstances, policies and hype that manipulated in a specific way created a snowball effect. How easy would it be to compare the fear of Terrorism and measures being taken "because they are needed" in a similar vein...

An excelent film that made me think and prompted me to read more about it all.
My two cents.
Jack

 

Certainly not for a few more generations, I'm sure, we Germans are acutely aware of our history and of the need to prevent it from repeating itself.

Personally, I would have thought that Germany's shame would have served as a lesson to other nations, too, but the world insists on proving me wrong. The mechanisms that Hitler et al. used to bring the masses under control could be observed in action to chilling effect in Yugoslavia, to a certain extent in Russia, and there are quite disturbing similarities in the Islamic world. Ignorance, propaganda and greed are as potent, and dangerous, a mixture today as they were in Nazi Germany.

 

The "whitewash" was just an impression, the way the stolid, honourable soldiers appeared to be contrasted with the fanatical Nazis. (I subsequently found out that the SS Brigadeführer depicted was notorious for massacring prisoners - this makes the character more unbelieveable).

Could such a system happen again? Absolutely yes. Germans were and are no more or no less iniquitous than the rest of us, but a particular set of historical circumstances - and one obsessed little Austrian - caused one of the most civilised countries in the world to go right off course. Markus is right - we have seen the same things (or something like them) happening again in other parts of the world. Look at what the gentle land of Cambodia went through with Pol Pot (people with glasses were killed because that meant they could read and were therefore intellectuals). Look at North Korea today, a grotesque parody of Hermann Goering's "guns will make us strong, butter will only make us fat".

I salute the Germans for being so honest and open about the Nazi past. Now if we could only persuade the Japanese to do the same...

 

Unfortunately there's very few "innocents" that come out of a war time situation.
Ref Japan, I remember discussing the POW attrocities with my grand mother when I first explained that I was seeing a Japanese girl. She was mortified.
It was interested to put it into perspective that whilst they killed 90,000 troops through forced labour, that the US killed more civilians than that in Tokyo with a single firebombing raid. I have a very good book about the bombing raids over Japan. Because of the nature of Japanese production at the time, most military production was within cities, and the US really didn't worry too much about "casualties of war".
Strikes me that every nation involved has plenty it's papered over.

 

I saw this this when it was released, superb I feel one of the most accurate (of how it was from various sets of prespectivies 'outside' the loop' so to speak)
Compelling and yet brutally real.
A critisium my 'father' gave was Hitler was (the actor protraying him) was a little too old, mid 50's as opposed to mid 40s? and his accent wasn't correct. The Austrain inflections wern't quite right else he gave thumbs up which is stratoshperic praise believe me.
A great if realisticaly distrubing account, a MUST watch recommendation T.

 

Hitler had just turned 56 when he died, Tony. And Bruno Ganz's basically Swiss accent (plus years working in the theatre in Berlin) is closer than any Hochdeutsch accent would have been.

 

Unfortunately true. However, I was thinking about the Rape of Nanking, the terrible treatment of prisoners of war, the infamous Harbin experiments (for which the perpetrators were given immunity by the Americans in return for the results!), rather than direct acts of war, such as the Tokyo fire raid. The same way as the Final Solution was not an act of war but a separate barbarity. However, it all comes back to Ulysees Simpson Grant - "war is hell", and it debases everything it touches and everyone involved in it.

 

Yes it is hard to believe people can treat other people in such ways... the power of propaganda (not just the nazi one) is quite something. and it works not just to bring people to treat other human beings with such cruelty, it worked also well in bringing a whole multitude of civilians to disbelieve that any of that could be actually going on.

however, i cannot accept something like guantanamo bay in this day and age, also done in the name of "war" - this time against terrorism, which seems to whitewash all the wrongdoings...

jack

 

It's an interesting comment.
I guess that we "like" to think of ourselves as civilised in our 21st century world.
I wonder though how we'd react if faced with seeing our friends blown up, shot, ambushed, mutilated or whatever other horrible scenario could face us? Being honest, I don't think I'd be too forgiving of people I believe perpetrated the crime.
In the context of Guatanamo, it's policed by soldiers, some of whom may well have seen their friends ambushed and beaten to death by "insurgents".

The tricky point is the balance on how to deal with things. Applying too many laws, rules can lead to "repression" of the masses and the kind of state shown so well in say 1984. At the other extreme we have complete anarchy, with people able to do what they like. Just where is the appropriate balance between the two?
As it happens, the UK is probably one of the "better" compromises in the world, but we still have stupid scenarios such as the inability to really defend ourselves in our homes, and juveniles getting away with (literal) murder.

 

I'm not sure if her casting was a blessing or a curse for this film. Without her, Downfall would perhaps be too grey, too depressing, making the film unwatchable. As it stands, she is a beaming ray of light, illuminating the screen...

....a little too brightly; I found her wide-eyed, angelic beauty a little too distracting - to the point of ignoring whatever else was going on in this (superbly acted) film.

Nice review btw Tones.

DT

 

Ain't that the truth