August 22 , 2005

Dear Colleague,

        At last I saw a DVD version of the German film, Downfall, and I was very impressed. Normally, a film of this scope should be seen on the big screen in a fully equipped cinema. However, my home TV (a German model) was adequate, in part because it was equipped with "surround sound." Sitting in my chair in the middle of the living room, I was a bit unnerved by the sound of bullets whizzing by and of grenades exploding all around me, making dodging or hiding out of the question.

         I start in this mild, technical way because the story Downfall tells—the last days of Hitler in his bunker—is harrowing in the extreme. Bruno Ganz, who plays Hitler, has been nominated for an Oscar. He fully deserves one, in my view, not so much for making Hitler into a monster, which is not difficult to do, but for making him into a monster that can command the utmost loyalty and even affection. Ganz's Hitler is hypnotically charming and considerate in moments of personal contact. For example, the young secretary taking her first dictation from Hitler was paralyzed with nervousness. She typed quickly as he dictated, as though she knew what she was doing, but what she typed was just a mess of random letters. Hitler looked over her shoulder and said mildly, "Well, I think we need to try again."

         One evidence of Hitler's madness is his inability to see glaring contradictions in his own thought. The film shows him waxing eloquent over a future in which cities will be packed with museums, art galleries and theaters, in which men will rise to their full stature and walk the earth like gods. But almost with the next breath, he urges men to trample on the weak as the apes do, for to aspire to anything "higher"—to show pity or compassion, for example—is to be artificial, departing from the primitive and eternal laws of nature.

         A crazy belief in the rightness of one's views is very much in the news. Suicide bombers, Jihadists, Jewish extremists, Christian fundamentalists, to name just a few, come to mind. Not too long ago, no people were more crazy, more tenacious in their belief, than the Nazis. Magada Goebbels was an outstanding example. Hiding in the bunker with her husband and the rest of Hitler's staff, she killed all her six children because she couldn't bear the thought of their surviving the Nazi world and vision. In a letter that managed to get out, she wrote: "Our glorious idea is in ruins, and with it everything I have known in my life that was beautiful, admirable, noble, and good. After the Fuhrer and National Socialism, the world won't be worth living in, and that is why I have brought the children here. They are too good for the life that will come after us..." (Joachim Fest, Inside Hitler's Bunker, p.143). The film is based in part on Fest's book. It shows in tomb-like silence and the slow motion of a nightmare, Magda at her grisly task, putting her children to sleep with a drug and then forcing cyanide pills into their mouths one by one.

         A problem with viewing a film like Downfall in one's living room is how to shake off the images of evil once the show is over. I can't just leave them behind by walking out of the cinema. But maybe that's a good thing. One shouldn't just walk out and forget, should one? One might at least write a "Dear Colleague" letter!

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu