Menschlich, Allzu Menschlich

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2006)

It has sometimes been said that because men no longer believed in the Devil, God created Adolf Hitler to serve as a symbol of absolute evil. This film, which tells the story of the last few days of World War II in Europe, largely seen from the perspective of Hitler and members of his inner circle as the victorious Russian army approaches the gates of Berlin, avoids that concept and tries to show us Hitler the man rather than Hitler the devil. It has been criticised in some circles for that approach, but in my opinion the criticism is not a valid one. Hitler was precisely that- a man, no less human for also being evil. We will never succeed in understanding the crimes of the Nazis if we persist in trying to see Hitler as the spawn of Satan or as some bizarre, inhuman alien being. He was, in Nietzsche's words, menschlich, allzu menschlich. (Human, all too human).
To make someone seem human is not necessarily to make them seem sympathetic, but we must remember that Hitler had succeeded in obtaining more than 40% of the vote in free elections, had won the fanatical loyalty of millions of Germans and had succeeded in retaining the loyalty of many of them even when it seemed obvious that his cause was lost. (We see some of that loyalty reflected in the film, especially among the fanatical young soldiers prepared to fight to the death). If he had been an obviously evil psychopath he would never have done any of those things, but would have remained the leader of a tiny movement on the lunatic fringe of German politics, winning the loyalty of only a small fraternity of kindred spirits. He could not have succeeded without possessing immense reserves of charm and charisma.
This film tries to show some of the characteristics which helped Hitler in his rise to power. We see him being kind to his secretary, Traudl Junge, on whose memoirs the film was partly based, affable and friendly to the young soldiers he decorates for their desperate acts of bravery, affectionate to his dog Blondi and loving to his mistress Eva Braun. (We like to think that, sexually, Hitler must have been either abnormally perverted or abnormally repressed because we do not like the idea that so monstrous an individual had a fairly mundane sex life, a monogamous heterosexual relationship with an attractive blonde girlfriend).
We do, of course, see far more of the opposite side of his character. By the end of the war Hitler had lost all contact with reality, and when we first see him he is unrealistically optimistic, believing that the German army will still succeed in driving the Allies back, issuing commands to non-existent fighting units and even congratulating himself on his strategic skill which has led the enemy into a trap. Later, when even he cannot deny the imminence of defeat, he falls into self-pity, raging against the cruelty of fate or against the German people who have proved unworthy of him. We see that he was not only brutal towards his own enemies but also completely callous towards his own people, refusing to surrender and not caring how many more lives might be lost. The role of Hitler must be one of the most difficult that any actor could be called on to play, but Bruno Ganz meets the challenge magnificently. He meets the physical demands of the role, bringing out Hitler's strong Austrian accent and the paralysed arm tucked behind his back. (Hitler had been injured in a failed assassination attempt the previous year). More importantly, he also rises to its emotional demands, showing the mixture of reckless optimism and despair, impotent rage, hatred and and self-pity which characterised the Fuehrer in his last days. The one thing, however, that Hitler never does is to express any sort of contrition for his crimes, which means that although he is human he is never pitiable.
We also see the moral blindness of the rest of Hitler's circle. The most chilling is Corinna Harfouch's portrayal of Magda Goebbels, wife of the infamous propaganda minister, who calmly poisons her own children because she does not want them to grow up in a world without National Socialism. Himmler, as deluded as his leader, vainly hopes that he can negotiate a separate peace with the Western powers that will leave him in power. Albert Speer, more realistic, sees that the war is lost and tries in vain to persuade Hitler to surrender, but he too fails to realise that it is the crimes of the Nazis, in which he played his part, that have brought this disaster upon Germany. Some relief is provided by Alexandra Maria Lara as the naive young Traudl; we also see excerpts from interviews with the real Traudl Junge towards the end of her life, when she confesses that neither her youth nor her naivety can excuse her failure to realise the true nature of the regime she served.
This is a bleak, grim film, set against scenes of a ruined city, with an ever-present sense of death and destruction. It is, however, a brave and powerful film which should be seen not only by anyone with an interest in the history of the Second World War but also by anyone who wants to understand the roots of human evil. No-one who has really watched it could make the mistake of considering it pro-Nazi. Oliver Hirschbiegel is to be congratulated for confronting this dark chapter in his nation's history with such courage and honesty. Congratulations are also due to Channel 4 for flying in the face of the British public's normal disdain for foreign-language films when they recently showed this important film at peak evening viewing time. 9/10