Perhaps the strangest way any war has ended.

Rating: 10/10 (18 April 2005)

I have seen docos and read of these strange last days of the Third Reich. This movie recounted those facts but was so much more than a history lesson-which is what it was with the extra dimension of human drama that could not be dealt with by a documentary.
The two plus hours of this engrossing film passed swiftly after entangling me in the extraordinarily fine acting, cinematography and lighting of the talented people that produced such a great film. I mention the lighting artistry because 99% of this film takes place in Hitler's bunker in the final days of the war; therefore, the constraints of shooting indoors would have taxed these guys to the max and their result was perfect.
The script writers, Bernd and Eichinger, took the memoir's of Hitler's secretary and shaped them into a movie of excellence and are to be congratulated.
Magda Goebbels must be one of the ultimate characters in European history and Carinna Harfouh played her beyond great-something that only the best of the best could carry off. A mother that commits the gravity of the acts that she committed in those last hours in the bunker warrants more notoriety than she has. I believe people should see the movie just to watch Harfouh's acting-it is a tour de force! This is not to take anything from Ulrich Mathes who played her husband, Joeseph Goebbels, who viewers can always identify because he is the only one in that brown uniform amongst a sea of Nazi army uniforms.
A final word must be said of the killings in the film and the decisions that accompanied them-these killings, beyond the executions for what the remaining officers believed was desertion, were suicides by the men and women remaining in the bunker. Execution for some suicide for others because, as Magda Goebbels said, "I cannot live without National Socialism". It is scary that some people can feel so strongly about a cause.