Downfall (2004)
When I’m dead, you’ll have plenty of time for politics.
THE SUMMARY: A misunderstood Austrian painter gets a little too ambitious attempting to restore order to the European continent, and one by one, everyone has to take the internet’s favorite advice: kill yourself. Except for his young secretary, who escapes to tell the world she dindu nuffin. I appreciate this movie for several reasons: it’s a fair look at a side of the war that’s now forbidden from fair looks, it’s a compelling demonstration of the perils of leadership without accountability, and it’s a sad story about what happens when political ideology takes priority over the value of life itself.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER TONY: Hitler’s final days in the Berlin bunker at the end of World War II - and yes, this is the original progenitor of the Hitler rant meme, but the film is also genuinely scary.
Traudl Junge speaks about her past
THE BEST:
Very historically accurate: Pretty much all of it checks out, if not in dialogue, in historical events. Yes, Germany, in desperation, deployed child soldiers to defend Berlin. Yes, one of the final known photos of Hitler is the Führer shaking hands with a Hitler Youth member, presumably for some sort of battle achievement. Yes, Magda Goebbels actually killed her kids. Yes, the secretary survived and later struggled to come to terms with her past (her memoir is the basis for the movie).
I’m not a World War II historian, but the accounts I’ve read all say this movie is as close to historically accurate as you could expect any ‘entertainment’ movie to be. I have not found any sources to say the movie has wild exaggerations or baseless fictions inserted.
A lot to think about philosophically: How the characters are presented, their personalities, and their views could of course be a matter for debate, however, but this movie presents them in a way that prompts plenty of philosophical thought. It’s not simply ‘Nazis bad’ - it’s an honest look at the motives and ideologies that led to… well, the downfall.
Of course I disagree or have disputes with almost all of that philosophy, but that doesn’t make it any less worthwhile to think about:
Magda Goebbels kills her kids
Ideology over life itself: The most shocking demonstration of commitment to Nazi ideology, national socialism, actually isn’t from the deteriorating Hitler himself. It’s from Magda Goebbels, wife of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who kills her six children by cyanide poisoning rather than give them a chance at life post-war.
We don’t have to speculate about why she does this - she delivers several lines throughout. When asked why she won’t give her children an opportunity to escape, she says ‘my children cannot grow up in a world without national socialism… if national socialism dies, there will be no future.’ This line closely parallels what the secretary Traudl Junge says Magda actually told her in the bunker, ‘I would rather have my children die, than live in disgrace, jeered at. My children stand no chance in Germany after the war.’
To value commitment to ideology over your own children’s lives is, of course, twisted, but that is apparently how this happened. It’s much the same logic we see today in the context of abortion: ‘this child was destined for a bad life, so I’m justified in killing it. It’s merciful, actually.’
Nope. That child’s life has value for its own sake, no matter the obstacles or challenges, and to intentionally take that life is a moral failure for breaking that most fundamental moral rule.
The rules of the natural world: Speaking of the rules, Hitler, at least as presented in this movie, has a very interesting understanding of them. Hitler bases his philosophy on his perception of the natural world: it’s ruthless, competitive, and it rewards strength, not weakness, therefore any power exerted by the strong upon the weak is justified. Hitler reasons, ‘to feel compassion for the weak… is a betrayal of nature. The strong can only triumph if the weak are exterminated… Apes, for instance… kill all the odd ones. And what applies to apes, must definitely apply to humans.’
This philosophy ignores the key distinction between humans and animals, however: the human capacity to reason. Through that reason, we can deduce right and wrong in ways that animals cannot. Most importantly, we can observe the inherent value of human life, an observation that requires respect, lest we experience the same moral failings that Hitler and company did.
In other words, we don’t actually want to be apes. We want to prosper beyond them.
Leadership without introspection: On this point I have no idea what the true history is, but Hitler is presented as an absolute dictator without any capacity for introspection. Every battlefield failing is someone else’s fault, up to and including the German people who voted for this, and so ‘they get what they deserve.’
The movie illustrates a central problem with central power - it’s unaccountable. And when it’s unaccountable, it develops blindness. The best leaders have the humility to acknowledge their own flaws and welcome challenge. The worst leaders insist on their own perfection, and punish anyone who questions otherwise. The solution here is checks on power - systems that force leaders to consider the perspectives of others, not simply for mitigating any one person’s corruption, but for the pursuit of the truth. Only through the battle of ideas does the truth emerge, so any one person’s control of the battle terms must be limited. When we commit to that principle, and not to any one person, we succeed.
Accurate prediction that western democracies will succumb to the East: For as much as I’m criticizing Hitler’s philosophy, I gotta acknowledge the moment of spot-on prophecy. Hitler says ‘the western democracies are decadent. They’ll succumb to the people from the east.’ And 80 years later here we are, being decadent and succumbing to the people from the east.
I don’t think the remedy is Hitlerian authoritarianism, of course. I think the remedy is a moral revival. A renaissance of traditional values. We need people choosing a proper lifestyle for its own sake, not people forced into it at gunpoint. The gun may work in the moment, but there aren’t enough guns to point at everybody all the time. This is a problem that requires individual accountability to God, not a human standing in for Him.
Hitler hates the latest Call of Duty, again
Of course, the meme rant: It’s why I had some idea of this movie before I even saw it - the million or so ‘Hitler reacts’ videos that have saturated YouTube for the last decade and a half. They’re pretty stale now, but they had a great run, consistently funny and enhanced by the excellent performance of Bruno Ganz. My main encounter with these videos was the Call of Duty community hating each annual version of the game, and finding comfort in Hitler ranting about it.
THE WORST:
I hate reading movies: However, this is one of the better movies I’ve ever read. The story is compelling, the subtitling is concise enough to read easily and understand, and the acting performances help the viewer understand the characters, even if the words aren’t perfectly understandable.
What happened to the young boy?: Peter Kranz is his name in the movie - the Hitler Youth kid who took out the tanks, then his unit got killed, then his parents got killed (or killed themselves?), then he escaped Berlin with Traudl. I wanted more information on him, since every other main character is a real person, but it turns out Peter is not. Peter is a fictional composite character of Hitler Youth members in general. Despite his major role in the plot, Peter gets an abrupt, inconclusive ending, and Traudl never talks about him later. He deserved better.
THE RATING: 4/5 Wickies. It’s tough to stand out in the World War II genre: movies, TV series, video games, or any other entertainment. Downfall does it by showing a side of the story few others do, and doesn’t present it as propaganda either way.
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NEXT WEEK: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
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