Beware historical inaccuracies

Rating: 5/10 (24 April 2006)

From _The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin
from the Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides_, Edited by
Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl, PUBLICAFFAIRS, 2005.
"_The Hitler Book_ has since been
proved one of the best primary sources on the inner workings of the Third
Reich that we possess. It also called into question several scenes in
Downfall.
"Downfall provoked a lively debate, above all in Germany. The Swiss actor
Bruno Ganz's portrayal of a 'human' Hitler clashed with a convention
which requires him to be cast as a carpet-biting devil. Audiences saw a
worried, frightened and tearful Fuhrer; they witnessed him kiss his new
wife Eva on the mouth (The Hitler Book makes it clear that he kissed her --
like a good Austrian -- on the hand); they saw his concern for the well-
being of his secretaries; and they saw the demon too, but one mitigated
perhaps by human (rather than humane) emotions. They saw a normal
woman love him, and excuse his conduct. More shocking perhaps (but this
aroused far less outcry) the film turned a butcher like SS-Brigadefuhrer
Wilhelm Mohnke into an honourable soldier and the SS doctor Ernst
Gunther Schenck into something approaching a Hollywood hero, despite
the fact that he had carried out experiments on the prisoners in Nazi con-
centration camps....
"According to The Hitler Book a
few of the dictator's alleged tantrums never actually took place.
"But such scenes provide spectacular cinema and necessarily made their
way into Bernd Eichinger's Oscar-nominated 2005 film Downfall. An eloquent example of this is the alleged tantrum that was caused by Fegelein's
treachery. The cinema-goer hears Hitler, beside himself with fury, bellowing 'Treachery!', 'Fegelein! Fegelein! Fegelein!', and the script emphasizes, 'Each time Hitler beats the table with his fist. His face is so red that
it is fit to explode.' In reality Hitler had to be told by Gunsche, the Battle
Commander of the Government District, to hand his brother-in-law over
to the court martial. Other scenes in the film are either pure invention or
stem from unreliable witnesses. The last visit of Speer's was clearly less
emotional than its depiction in the film; and the secretary Traudl Junge was
not, as is shown in the film, saved by a boy but raped many times and was
for several months the 'personal prisoner' of a high-ranking officer in
Soviet intelligence. Time and again the chronology of the film fails to
match historical reality...."