Human crimes

Rating: 9/10 (30 May 2009)

The Nazi regime and everything associated with it has been demonized in the past six decades up to a point where it is truly hard for a layperson to have a fairly realistic view of how things were. Don't get me wrong: every bit of the moral condemnation is fully deserved and necessary to be made.
However, we have to understand, that Nazis were just as human as any regular guy. It wasn't demons, or Satan or some unimaginable evil that has committed those crimes- they were people, cruel & despicable people, but otherwise having the same feelings, fears & uncertainties as any one of us. Attributing demonic powers to the enemy is never a good way to understand; and you might say who wants to understand such a thing?; but there is no other way to learn from the past- or from anything else for that matter- then trying to be realistic instead of dismissing.
We HAVE to condemn crimes that have taken place; but we have to condemn them for the right reasons; only after medicine has learned that diseases are caused by microorganisms, genetics etc. rather then by evil spirits that it was able to treat them. It is only if we accept that the nazi crimes(and many others before & after) were the results of deeply human processes that we can hope to avoid them in the future.
This is what I think this movie transmits to us.