Digest

Götterdämmerung in a hole in the ground

A great deal of controversy attended the then emerge, half-convinced even in that replied ‘No’ to that question, ‘it would have release of Oliver Hirschbiegel and Bernd late hour, by the Führer’s victory rhetoric. It been the most extraordinary reply in Eichinger’s film The Downfall (Der all has to be heard, of course, in the original History.’ Untergang) last year, in France as well as in German. The only figure conspicuous by his What is shocking about the film, in fact, is Germany: Claude Lanzmann, the historian absence is Hitler’s Leibarzt or personal not Hitler’s supposed ‘humane qualities’ but and director of the monumental 9 hour long physician, Dr Theodor Morell, a quack who his inhumanity. The one danger in the film documentary film Shoah (1982), felt that the was at least partly responsible, thanks to his lies perhaps in the astonishing veracity of crimes committed by Adolf Hitler benzedrine and morphine cocktails, cocaine Ganz’s depiction: Ganz’s portrayal is so overwhelmed any reason that could be eyedrops and barbiturate sleepers, for the convincing that next to Hitler the other Nazis given for making a film about him. Other lamentable physical state of his patient. seem almost level-headed. Hitler’s every people took the view that the film (Hitler was probably also taking low-dose move was the dogmatic response of a man ‘humanised’ Hitler, as if it were scandalous strychnine to ease flatulence.) Hitler who believed himself to be, supremely, ‘the that he should be represented as a man celebrated his 56th birthday in the bunker 8 man of Will’: reality counted for nothing. The rather than an alien, or even that it made him days before his suicide, but it is a far older- front soldier who had ‘miraculously’ seem ‘affable’, as if the almost unctuous looking and undisguisedly ill man who walks survived the trenches of the First World War Viennese courtesy towards his secretarial out into the chancellery gardens, left hand was never interested in consolidating the staff and his maudlin dog-love were traits flapping behind his back, to decorate the territorial conquests chalked up in record somehow not in keeping with the man who boys who were defending Berlin. That was time by his armies. The immaculate sent millions of people to their deaths. to be his last public appearance. The preparations for his death and disposal of Kitsch and cruelty get along famously, as Russians were less than 20 miles away. his post-mortem remains suggest that, at WH Auden knew when he wrote his poem The women around Hitler are least in part, he knew the truth about Epitaph on a Tyrant: ‘And when he cried the exceptionally well played, especially himself: universal destruction was at the little children died in the street.’ Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch), who empty core of his vision. By 1945, it hardly The Downfall, in fact, is a masterly study in veers from idolatrous Fürher-worship to mattered to him if those being annihilated claustrophobia, a Götterdämmerung in a cold detestation of her husband: after were Germans, Russians or Jews. hole in the ground. It relies heavily on the Hitler’s suicide on 29 April, she alone Throughout his career Hitler never changed: eyewitness account of the last 12 days of undertakes the terrible task of killing her six he had announced his rationale, and Hitler’s life in the Führerbunker written in blond children, the parade family of Nazi programme, way back in Mein Kampf, in 1947, and published just before her death in eugenics, which she did by drugging them 1925. It sold millions but nobody, it seems, 2002, by Hitler’s Bavarian secretary, Traudl and then crushing phials of prussic acid ever read it. Junge, whom we see being recruited at the between their teeth. Theirs had been the beginning of the film, and Joachim Fest’s only innocent life in the bunker, playing solid scholarly work Inside Hitler’s Bunker, games and singing in its concrete which was published last year in English corridors. Amidst the coming and going of IAIN BAMFORTH translation. Hitler is played by the Swiss generals and adjutants, and the pounding actor, Bruno Ganz, best known for his role of heavy shelling, Eva Braun introduces a Downfall Der Untergang as chief angel in Wim Wender’s film Wings flippant touch: her role in Hitler’s life is still, Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, Germany, 2004, 155 mins (15). of Desire (1987). Both demented and to put it mildly, enigmatic. She was what ordinary, his is the only convincing PG Wodehouse would have called a impersonation of Hitler (other than Charlie ‘flibbertigibbet’. Her presence in the Chaplin’s, but that was a rather different bunker adds a touch of absurdity to a kind of film). All the bigwigs who attended situation already teetering on the Hitler in the prison of his own myth are there: ridiculous. A registrar is summoned to Albert Speer, who drops in from organising marry her and Hitler a few days before their the new Europe, Josef Goebbels and Martin joint suicide. ‘Are you Aryan?’ he nervously Bormann. Many of them have one eye on asks the Führer, like a good servant of the the loudly ticking clock, and the other on state. The Führer’s brief hesitation defuses how to save their own skin. Battle-weary the tension of the film for a moment, generals come in to announce the bad news although it hardly offers comic relief. As the to Hitler, recoil before a verbal tirade and diarist EM Cioran wrote, if Hitler had

404 British Journal of General Practice, May 2005