Suchergebnisse

This discussion is occasioned by Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 film, The Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third Reich, which reconstructs the final days of Hitler in his Berlin bunker, based on the recollections of his personal secretary, Traudi Junge. The film is placed within the context of other dramatizations & fictionalizations of Hitler's life, ranging from the comic treatments of Chaplin & Lubitsh to the more sober approaches of Syberberg & Pabst. Historical background is given on the fall of Berlin, Hitler's self-identification in his final days with the emperor Nero, & the persistence of a number of taboos relating to the discussion & dramatization of the end of Hitler. These taboos, which Hirschbiegel's film fails to transcend, include the great number of suicides among ordinary Germans at the fall of the Third Reich, the rape by Soviet forces of an estimated two million German women, & the potential for the full humanization of Hitler in the medium of dramatic cinema. R. Young