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Re: :Downfall" - the Hitler's final days

I too enjoyed the film very much. I approached it more as film that would appear on the History Channel. Not what I would technically label a documentary, but a drama which serves the same purpose. I do not recall another film which sheds light so exhaustively on Hitler's last moments in the bunker. I saw the documentary Blind Spot with his secretary, and this film helps to put some meat on the bones, to fill in what was a recitation of events.

I do not understand the problems with showing Hitler as a human being. Frankly, I think that doing so makes him scarier. Are you afraid of the boogeyman? Probably not, because you know it does not exist. On the other hand, showing Hitler from our human community makes him scarier because we are reminded that he was among us, going to school, to the store, to a movie, which should put us on guard to avoid allowing such a thing to happen in the future. He loved dogs, hated smoking, was a vegetarian, could be very nice. I am not sure knowing any of those things ever mitigates the evil inside the man, nor why we assume that a film maker was attempting to do so by giving us a complete picture. An historian should not make judgments. An historian should report the history, factually, then allow the reader, viewer, or listener to place some value or interpretation.

I think Ebert hit the nail on the head in his review wherein he wrote that the Nazi's have become a prop or plot device in films, usually in comedies, which reduces the true horror the regime. I wonder if kinds growing up today, whose only frame of reference are those films, consider the Nazis with the terror they deserve. Or are they a joke? This film reminds of the madman. That is good, I think.

I also think that this film does a decent job of showing that this evil was not Hitler's alone. Too many times, I think, we consider the Third Reich as Hitler. But many fed at Hitler's table, including many civilians. Goebbels depiction was the most striking to me, particularly Frau Goebbels. Her statements that she does not want herself, nor her children, to live in a world without National Socialism rose to a level of scary that almost equalled Hitler's. My first thought was that she did live a world without National Socialism. What was the difference? Well, she probably enjoyed a better life, with more authority under National Socialism. At the expense of millions of people. And she sacrificed her own children.

This film confirms my belief that the National Socialists were largely people who were less educated, less intelligent, less experienced, and who had no standing in society without the state. They needed National Socialism to give them their identity. Ironic, that none of them were the blond haired, blue eyed ideal they estalblished.

The scene where Hitler is marrying Braun, and he is asked to estalblish his Aryan heritage to get married. Well, it is the law, he is told. One of his lieutenants informs the man who performed the ceremony that "This is the Fuhrer." Well, we never learned about Hitler's Aryan heritage, I suspect because he had none.

To WWII buffs, the film also does a very good job showing how insane Hitler really was. Up until the end, he imagines troops on a map that are not there, moving them as they were pawns in chess. He has plans to encircle the Soviet troops, when his military men know that there is no way out. I often wondered how anyone in their right mind would invade the Soviet Union in Winter, or waste planes bombing England, or devoting troops to Northern Africa. Well, because, when merely looking at a map, and simply looking at troops on paper, there is no winter, dessert, water to cross, no elements to confront. His military experts, who obviously knew better, are trained to obey orders, and the film shows them arguing with each other about following orders versus giving opinions on the futility of the order.

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  Kimber Kable  

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