Fly-on-the-wall recreation of the end of the Third Reich

Rating: 8/10 (23 April 2005)

Step inside the artillery-pounded, claustrophobic confines of Hitler's final command post. As German boys confront Russian tanks in the streets, leading Nazis and their generals are locked in a dance of death with their Fuhrer, who will not admit the reality of defeat and release them from disaster. Some try to save their own skins, others are unswervingly loyal. Most can only wait helplessly for events to unfold. A few heroes try to bring an end to the suffering. But gangs of villains use the dying days of the war to intensify it in an orgy of political violence.
With Russian forces just blocks away, Hitler's political structure remains potently intact. Nothing is more shocking than the sight of death squads summarily executing traitors and deserters to a lost cause. Some civilians even take this duty upon themselves, ropes slung over shoulders. There is no compassion. There is not even logic. Just bitterness, pointless brutality and misdirected rage. Hitler speaks admiringly of his enemies, "the disciplined people of the east", while ranting at the failure of the "weak" German people. Goebbels too shows no sympathy for the suffering of German civilians, content instead to "slit their little throats" for being such unquestioning followers. His children must also fall under this category.
The concrete bunker is a symbol of a divorce from all reality and empathy. The director contrasts the compact, well-supplied, neat and orderly remains of the Nazi state with the vast and fiery chaos in the rubble outside. The faithful cling fervidly to party doctrine and sing patriotic songs while explosions rumble above. Huddled meetings in the bunker contrast vividly with images of earlier Nazi rallies. These scenes also brought to mind another famous German war movie, 'Das Boot'.
The film is an excellent recreation of the doomed dictatorship, and gives us much else to think about. Bruno Ganz somehow evokes pity rather than contempt for his stooped and haggard Hitler, in turns gentle and fatherly, poisonous and hysterical, deluded and powerless, fanatical and cruel. How can this twitching and shuffling figure who can't bear to watch his own dog being put down be the same man responsible for sending millions to their deaths? But there is also an uneasy sense that Hitler knows exactly what he is doing, a suspicion that his delusional ranting, his denial of reality, is really a ploy to maintain control at all costs, though now it doesn't extend far beyond the bunker. His decision to commit suicide, to have his body destroyed, and his acknowledgement that millions would curse him, are evidence that he was far from mad. The decision of several not-so-culpable Nazis to follow Hitler to the grave is a disturbing testimony to the power of his cult of leadership.
When I visited Berlin in 1997 there was not a trace left of Hitler's bunker, not even a marker. Germans feel uncomfortable about "gawkers" trying to revisit the Third Reich, especially as tourists. But I am glad that a German director has had the courage to make this film. It may be seen by some as an attempt to undo the demonization of Hitler, or by others as voyeuristic entertainment for Hitler "gawkwers". But no, the film is addressing our common human need to understand the past - the catastrophic, unthinkable and hidden past of just sixty years ago. How could such cruelty and brutality have taken place in a modern nation? And could it easily happen again?