"I must force an outcome in Berlin, or face my downfall".

Rating: 10/10 (7 June 2009)

I'm having some trouble with other reviewers on this board who feel the movie was an attempt at putting a human face on Adolf Hitler, as providing some sort of apology for the actions of a dictator bent on world domination. Yes, Hitler was a human being, as much as Genghis Khan, Idi Amin, and Osama Bin Laden, but I didn't come away from the film with the impression that he was simply some misguided tragic figure. There are just too many scenes of Hitler in tirades against anyone or anything within his sphere of influence if he wasn't getting his own way. Twenty thousand German soldiers dead attempting to defend Berlin against the Russians - "But that's what young men are for." His tirade against the military for the failure of Steiner to launch an assault against the Russians - a completely irrational rant against his high command in the face of certain defeat. The only scene I can recall that one might consider to evoke empathy for Hitler was when Magda Goebbels' children entertained him in the bunker, with the youngest daughter sitting on his lap in a grandfatherly pose. The complete incongruity of that scene with Hitler's true nature struck me as one of those surreal moments in a torrential landscape of surreal moments presented throughout the picture. Like Eva Braun attempting to strike up the dance while the city is being shelled immediately outside. One is forced to consider how these individuals maintained their own sanity as outside forces were about to come crashing down on their heads.
No, I think the film makers did a remarkably dispassionate job in presenting Hitler as the face of evil that he truly was. The claustrophobic feel of the underground bunkers conveyed a sense of the world caving in on Hitler and the Nazis. The mini-dramas involving Eva Braun's brother-in-law and Magda Goebbels' devoted loyalty while killing her own children only heighten the viewers' awareness that Hitler's fanatical grip on his followers went beyond human comprehension. This film in no way glorifies Adolf Hitler or the Nazi cause.
A couple of weeks ago, on Memorial Day in fact, I watched the acclaimed Frank Capra World War II documentary "Why We Fight". There was a line from Hitler quoted in the first installment, 'Prelude to War', that stuck with me, and was visibly prominent in "Der Untergang". It was the scene when the young Nazi street fighter received a medal from The Fuerher himself, having distinguished himself in guerrilla attacks on the Russians. Beaming proudly, the youth personified Hitler's vision of a cause that in his view would ultimately lead to Nazi victory - "I want to see again in the eyes of youth the gleam of the beast of prey". Truly chilling.