Hitler: standing above the things, an "Übermensch" ?

Rating: 9/10 (17 November 2004)

Der Untergang is a film about the days in the bunker in Berlin within the final assault on the city, showing us the "enemies" and "monsters" as quite ordinary men, women and children. Hitler is depicted as an old broken but disciplined man, keeping distance to others. He behaves awkward when he kisses Eva, is almost patient and friendly against his female secretaries. When eating one of his last meals his hand is trembling. His manners are also stiff from his Parkinson disease. Hitler doesn't become a real human being, he stays at a certain distance, feeding the still present self created myth around his person. The public feels no sorry for this man which was also guilty of ordering the execution of mass war crimes. Apart from the leaders the normal personal bear no guilt and are victims themselves of the circumstances, like the main character Traudl Junge and the hundreds of thousands above the ground. The last days in the bunker passes self-evideny like a clockwork. Above the ground the storm of the battle rages and the area is heavily and constantly shelled by artillery and rocket fire. At the end of the movie Traudl Junge in her last years of her life admits that however she didn't know about the warcrimes she still feels guilty.
The German government nowadays is obsessed to erase all remains of the Third Reich (and even beyond that). On the open terrain, were once the Chancellary stood, not even a single text indicates what happened there in 1945. No great building which was built between 1870 and 1945 is reconstructed or rebuilt as it was and all symbols of greatness of the German Empire are all eradicated with great determination. Berlin nowadays radiate pure functionalism and innocence.