DownFall

Phill and I watched the German movie "Downfall" today at 5pm at the Swanpool cinema. Its an old 1950's cinema but well-maintained. We read and heard alot about this movie and being the history, esp war history, buff that he is, phill was very keen to watch it and so was i.

Before the movie, I was apprehensive that the movie would paint a sympathetic picture of Hitler and it would be hard to hate him even after the atrocities he had done to so many Jews (interestingly enough, Hitler does have Jewish blood and not the pure Aryan, which is actually the bloodline the Indian race comes from, race he thot he was).

I love the movie and could watch it again and there were moments when I found myself sympathising with Hitler and the pressure he was under as the Fuhrer but the next moment, I couldn't believe some of the things he did and said. To him, his civilians were secondary to his victory and his plans did not include considering their welfare or their evacuation from Berlin which was increasingly becoming dangerous and un-livable. To him, the best men were dead and all that was left were not good enough.

One of his senior men, Joseph Goebbels, went to the extent of saying the German people had exercised their mandate and placed them in power, thereby justifying their callousness towards their own people. It made me think we should really be careful about who we vote in power. This man, Joseph and his wife, Magda, went on to poison their 6 children because they couldn't forsee them living in a world where there was no national socialism, as Berlin was set to crumble beneath the advancing Soviet forces. Later, they killed themselves too.






The Beautiful Goebbels Children who were poisoned.

At the end of the movie, they gave an update on all the major characters of the movie and some were executed after the Nuremburg trials, some survived the years of Soviet captivity while some died while in captivity.

I cried when I read that one SS doctor, Prof. Dr. Werner Haase, died 10 years after the war while still in Soviet captivity. He wasn't a combatant, just a doctor saving lives but still suffered the punishment for being part of the German army.

What I thot was also poignant was at the end, the actual secretary of Hitler, Frau Junge from whose eyes the movie was told, was interviewed. And she said that initially she thot that she was not to blame for the atrocities done to Jews cos she was not aware of it and did not order it but once she walked past a headstone and saw that a Jewish girl who was around her age had died in the war, she felt that one could find out such things if only we bother to do so. In essence, I believe what she was saying was if everyone of us is responsible for doing what is right when we see injustice being done.

An IMDB review of the movie:
"In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capitol of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his Generals and advisers to fight to the last man. "Downfall" explores these final days of the Reich, where senior German leaders (such as Himmler and Goring) began defecting from their beloved Fuhrer, in an effort to save their own lives, while still others (Joseph Goebbels) pledge to die with Hitler. Hitler, himself, degenerates into a paranoid shell of a man, full of optimism one moment and suicidal depression the next. When the end finally does comes, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender."