See and feel this destruction and tragedy

Rating: 9/10 (10 November 2004)

Der Untergang is a realistic story of the last days of Hitler as seen through the (beautiful) eyes of his favourite secretary Fräulein Traudl Junge. The film shows us the slaughter and murders above the ground, the terrible blasts of the Soviet artillery fire on the governmental district of the capital Berlin. Under the ground life is peaceful and almost normal. The strength of the movie is that it shows us very acceptable, human and normal people around the broken Hitler. The most macabre scenes involve Magda Goebels murdering her beautiful children after she gives them a drink to sleep. The persons act very convincing, speak German as they did and also had the faces of Germans so typical for that period in history.
The only thing I missed was some more realistic pictures of Berlin as it was in those last days. Only (a model of) the heavily damaged chancellary and the Voss-strasse is shown and one big office building was used which is acceptable as a building which could have been located in Berlin, but other buildings or streets were NOT typical for builtup and ravaged Berlin. The Tiger I tank was a model used in Private Ryan. In reality there were a couple of the big Königstigers around. The same is true for the Flak gun which was a Soviet 85mm gun, where in reality there were German 88mm Flak guns. At the end the movie follows Traudl Junge and her flight out of Berlin. In the last scene she is a very old (but still beautiful) lady and tells us about her experience more than 55 years ago and how she felt pleased to join Hitler as his secretary and knew nothing of the crimes Hitler committed to the Jews. She was totally innocent and a victim of history. Most people around Hilter have died now, recently also: Traudl Junge and Hitlers personal adjutant: Otto Günsche and strong character Wilhelm Mohnke, which was also present in the battles in Normandy, in the Ardennes and Hungary as a divisional commander of the 1st SS Panzer division. The only one still living today is the man which also left the bunker as the last person to see it: Rochus Misch. The technical operator of the generators of the bunker.
Compared to "The Bunker" of 1981 this movie is less romantic, less clean and more realistic.