The Human Face of the Devil

Rating: 9/10 (6 November 2004)

Suddenly you are face to face with Adolf Hitler. He is in his subterranean fortress, the 'bunker', inside Berlin, surrounded by all his dear ones. Eva Braun, whom he marries just before they both commit suicide. His dog who is also doomed to die. The same as Goebbels and his family which includes seven kids. They have to die because Frau Goebbels does not think that it is worth living in a future without National Socialism. And, of course, there is Traudl Junge, his secretary, who manages to escape in the last moment, and who will later testify to an astonished and bewildered world that all these incredible things have really happened
Baffled you are in each and every moment of this film which lasts 155 minutes, a time which passes in a twinkling. Okay, you hadn't been born, some sixty years ago, but you have read lots of things, you know more or less all the details. And you have also forgotten about it, for plenty of years you have tried to bury the past. Although you live in Germany you were eager to make yourself believe that all Nazis were dead, that 'this' won't ever happen again. After all, Hitler was just an aberration, an accident of nature. Just a monster of the past which bears no meaning for our modern times.
Then you are right in front of him, as if you were just another member of his dinner party, listening to his xenophobic viewpoints, shaking your head in disbelief. It is pure authenticity, there are none of the effects that show you that this is just a movie. And then suddenly you see the human face of the devil, you become aware of the fact that this monster shows feelings such as anger and affection, and that he behaves in a perfectly normal fashion: caressing his dog, praising the cook for the spaghettis she prepared, and so on.
Those who hadn't been living in the times of the Nazi Reich always tended to put the blame for the atrocities committed in the name of Hitler on the fact that he was simply 'inhuman'. But what is humanity anyway? Does this not also imply that there is a dark side in ourselves, and that in special circumstances everybody might be prone to be such a devil?
A man like Hitler is by no means just the product of a peculiar waywardness of history that is dead and buried now. As a German you should be especially sensitive to a possible reawakening of Nazi ideologies of every shade. Recent developments show you that the resurrected devil is just outside the door. In the region where I live, the Ore Mountains, elections were held some weeks ago, and a Neonazi list gained about 12 per cent of all the votes, nourishing themselves predominantly from the young. Although the arts have never really led to but a slender change of people's awareness, 'Der Untergang' is a fair try and has appeared just in time to counteract a dangerously destructive tendency in our society.