Leave Berlin? I'd rather blow my brains out. (Hitler, 1945)

Rating: Null/10 (6 February 2014)

On DVD, loan from my public library. I came across this title recently in a list of "must-see" movies. I agree, it is a "must-see" movie. German with English subtitles, and includes footage of the real Frau Junge, Hitler's personal secretary.
Bruno Ganz is just really good as Adolf Hitler, sometimes warm and friendly, other times seemingly crazed. In 1942 he needed a new secretary and several young women went to meet him. The one chosen was Traudl, who later married one of Hitler's men, and she then became Frau Junge. Actress Alexandra Maria Lara plays Traudl Junge, from whom much of the material for the book, and thus this film, came in interviews in the late 1990s. As the author explains, she wasn't hard to find, she was listed in the phone book. Since she had been a young woman and not even a member of the Nazi party, only a secretary, she wasn't subject to post-war prosecution. In her own words, back in 1942 Hitler was sort of like a modern day "rock star", she took the job because it seemed so interesting. Only later in her life did she realize the extent of Hitler's murdering ways.
The film covers mainly the few weeks of 1945 when Hitler turns 56 and then when it appears that allied troops, particularly the Russians, were invariably going to take Berlin, as part of the total defeat of Nazi Germany. Hitler became more and more agitated, more and more irrational, as the noose tightened. Interestingly Hitler and his Nazi commanders blamed the German population, for it was them that chose Hitler and to follow him. As the end was near Hitler showed no sympathy for the German people, he figured they were weak and the weak needed to be destroyed anyway.
I feel a special connection with this movie for two reasons. First, I was born just a few months after all this happened and second, I studied German in college, became fluent in the language, traveled in Germany in the 1980s, all without a clear realization of what had transpired in 1945. Now I understand.
A "must-see" movie.