(The Holocaust and Its Contexts) Karolin Machtans, Martin A. Ruehl (Eds.) - Hitler - Films From Germany - History, Cinema and Politics Since 1945-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2012) PDF

THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS CONTEXTS
HITLER
Films from germany
HISTORY, CINEMA and POLITICS since 1945
Edited by
Karolin Machtans and Martin A. Ruehl
Hitler – Films from Germany
The Holocaust and Its Contexts
Series Editors: Olaf Jensen, University of Leicester, UK, and Claus-Christian

W. Szejnmann, Loughborough University, UK.
Series Editorial Board: Wolfgang Benz, Robert G. Moeller and Mirjam Wenzel
More than 60 years on, the Holocaust remains a subject of intense debate with
ever-widening ramifications. This series aims to demonstrate the continuing rel-
evance of the Holocaust and related issues in contemporary society, politics and
culture; studying the Holocaust and its history broadens our understanding not
only of the events themselves but also of their present-day significance. The series
acknowledges and responds to the continuing gaps in our knowledge about the
events that constituted the Holocaust, the various forms in which the Holocaust
has been remembered, interpreted and discussed, and the increasing importance
of the Holocaust today to many individuals and communities.
Titles include:
Olaf Jensen and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann (editors)

ORDINARY PEOPLE AS MASS MURDERERS
Perpetrators in Comparative Perspectives
Karolin Machtans and Martin A. Ruehl (editors)
HITLER – FILMS FROM GERMANY
History, Cinema, and Politics since 1945
Tanja Schult
A HERO’S MANY FACES
Raoul Wallenberg in Contemporary Monuments
Forthcoming titles:
Olaf Jensen (editor)
HISTORY AND MEMORY AFTER THE HOLOCAUST IN GERMANY, POLAND,
RUSSIA AND BRITAIN
The Holocaust and Its Contexts Series

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Hitler – Films from
Germany
History, Cinema and Politics since 1945
Edited by
Karolin Machtans
Assistant Professor of German Studies, Connecticut College
Martin A. Ruehl
Lecturer in German Thought, University of Cambridge
Palgrave
macmillan
Editorial matter, selection and introduction © Karolin Machtans and
Martin A. Ruehl 2012
All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2012
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First published 2012 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-349-31110-1 ISBN 978-1-137-03238-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137032386
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hitler—films from Germany : history, cinema and politics since 1945 /
edited by Martin A. Ruehl, Karolin Machtans.
p. cm.
Summary: “The first book-length study to critically examine the recent
wave of Hitler biopics in German cinema and television. A group of
international experts discuss films like Downfall in the context of
earlier portrayals of Hitler and draw out their implications for the
changing place of the Third Reich in the national historical
imagination”—Provided by publisher.
1. Hitler, Adolf, 1889–1945—In motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures—
Germany—History—21st century. 3. Television—Germany—History—
21st century. I. Ruehl, Martin. II. Machtans, Karolin.
PN1995.9.H514M585 2012
791.43 651—dc23 2012021611
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments xii
Notes on Contributors xiii
Introduction 1
Part I Totem and Taboo

1 The Führer’s Fake: Presence of an Afterlife 35
Eric Rentschler
2 ‘Hitler’s Shadow Still Looms over Us’: G. W. Pabst’s The

Last Ten Days as Film and Event 56
Michael Töteberg
3 Our Hitler: A Film by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg 72

Thomas Elsaesser
Part II Another Hitler

4 Entombing the Nazi Past: On Downfall and Historicism 99
Sabine Hake
5 Tragedy and Farce: Dani Levy’s Mein Führer 132

Michael D. Richardson
6 Man, Demon, Icon: Hitler’s Image between Cinematic

Representation and Historical Reality 151
Michael Elm
7 Hitler Wars: Guilt and Complicity from Hirschbiegel to

Harald Schmidt 168
Michael Butter
v
vi Contents
Part III Approximations

8 Hitler Nonfictional: On Didacticism and Exploitation in
Recent Documentary Films 193
Kerstin Stutterheim
9 Encountering Hitler: Seductive Charisma and Memory

Spaces in Heinrich Breloer’s Speer & Hitler 211
Axel Bangert
10 Far Away So Close: Loving to Hate Hitler 234

Johannes von Moltke
Index 244
Illustrations
Figures
i.1 Cover page of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s book Hitler – A

Film from Germany (1982) 2
i.2 Hitler salutes crowds of supporters from a motorcade:
scene from Hitler: A Career (1977), directed by Joachim
Fest and Christian Herrendoerfer 3
i.3 Anthony Hopkins as Hitler in George Schaefer’s television
dramatization The Bunker (1981) 9
i.4 Udo Kier as Hitler in Christoph Schlingensief’s 100 Years
of Adolf Hitler: The Last Hour in the Führerbunker (1989) 11
i.5 Bruno Ganz as Hitler in Downfall (2004) 12
i.6 Helge Schneider as Hitler in Dani Levy’s Mein Führer
(2007) 14
i.7 Martin Wuttke as Hitler in Quentin Tarantino’s
Inglourious Basterds (2009) 15
i.8 Hitler features in an AIDS awareness ad released by
German charity Regenbogen in 2009 16
1.1 The opening scene of Helmut Dietl’s Schtonk! (1992), with
Günther Bader in the role of Hitler 36
1.2 Forger Fritz Knobel (Uwe Ochsenknecht) takes on Hitler’s
features in Schtonk! (1992) 39
1.3 The young Fritz Knobel (Robert Chalkey) copies Hitler’s
signature from the frontispiece of Mein Kampf in Schtonk!
(1992) 43
1.4 A close-up of Hitler’s handwriting: scene from Schtonk!
(1992) 50
2.1 Hitler (Albin Skoda) on the cover of the original program
brochure for G. W. Pabst’s The Last Ten Days (1955) 57
2.2 Albin Skoda as Hitler and Willy Krause as Goebbels in
Pabst’s The Last Ten Days (1955) 61
2.3 Hitler (Albin Skoda) accepts defeat: scene from The Last
Ten Days (1955) 67
3.1 One of the Hitler puppets in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s
Hitler – A Film from Germany (1977) 79
vii
viii List of Illustrations
3.2 Hitler (Heinz Schubert) as ‘carpet eater’: scene from

Syberberg’s Hitler – A Film from Germany (1977) 84
3.3 Hitler (Heinz Schubert) as Charlie Chaplin: scene from
3.4 Hitler (Johannes Buzalski) as painter: scene from
3.5 Hitler (Heinz Schubert) as standard bearer: scene from
3.6 Harry Baer (as himself) in conversation with a Hitler
puppet: scene from Syberberg’s Hitler – A Film from
Germany (1977) 91
4.1 Hitler (Bruno Ganz) chooses his future secretary: scene
from Downfall (2004) 101
4.2 Hitler (Bruno Ganz) accepts defeat in Downfall (2004) 105
4.3 Close-up of Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) in
Downfall (2004) 106
4.4 Hitler (Bruno Ganz) embraces Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler):
scene from Downfall (2004) 107
4.5 Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) reacts to the news of
Germany’s imminent defeat: scene from Downfall (2004) 107
4.6 Close-up of Hitler’s trembling hands: scene from Downfall
(2004) 111
4.7 Hitler (Bruno Ganz) lashes out against his generals: scene
from Downfall (2004) 123
5.1 Hitler (Helge Schneider) takes a bath in Dani Levy’s Mein
Führer (2007) 136
5.2 Hitler (Helge Schneider) sleeps beside his speech coach
Adolf Grünbaum (Ulrich Mühe): scene from Mein Führer
(2007) 141
5.3 Hitler (Helge Schneider) on the rostrum in the final
sequence of Mein Führer (2007) 145
5.4 Grünbaum (Ulrich Mühe) delivers Hitler’s speech at gun
point: scene from Mein Führer (2007) 145
6.1 Hitler (Bruno Ganz) bids farewell to his secretary in
Downfall (2004) 154
6.2 Hitler (Bruno Ganz) orders Speer to destroy Germany’s
infrastructure: scene from Downfall (2004) 157
6.3 Hitler (Helge Schneider) loses half of his moustache in
Dani Levy’s Mein Führer (2007) 159
6.4 Hitler (Helge Schneider) in bed with Eva Braun (Katja
Riemann): scene from Mein Führer (2007) 160
List of Illustrations ix
6.5 Hitler (David Bamber) strokes the head of his German

shepherd: scene from Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie (2008) 162
6.6 Hitler (David Bamber) beside his would-be assassin
Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise): scene from Bryan Singer’s
Valkyrie (2008) 163
7.1 Bruno Ganz as Hitler on the original German poster for
Downfall (2004) 172
7.2 Speer (Heino Ferch) and Hitler (Bruno Ganz) discuss the
rebuilding of Berlin in Downfall (2004) 175
7.3 Hitler (Helge Schneider) reclines on a couch in Levy’s
Mein Führer (2007) 180
7.4 Hitler (Helge Schneider) takes his tea in a white suit in
Mein Führer (2007) 182
7.5 Hitler in bed with Göring: excerpt from Walter Moers’
cartoon Adolf, the Nazi Pig (1998) 183
7.6 Hitler joins the peace movement: excerpt from Walter
Moers’ cartoon Adolf, the Nazi Pig (1998) 184
8.1 Hitler in a private moment: scene from Guido Knopp’s
television documentary Hitler: A Profile (1995) 197
8.2 Eintopfsonntag – ordinary Germans take their lunch with
the Führer: scene from Guido Knopp’s Hitler: A Profile
(1995) 198
8.3 Hitler and his German shepherd: scene from Hitler: A
Profile (1995) 202
9.1 Hitler (Tobias Moretti) visits Speer at his Berlin atelier:
scene from Heinrich Breloer’s television docudrama Speer
& Hitler (2005) 212
9.2 Hitler (Tobias Moretti) and Speer at a reception: scene
from Speer & Hitler (2005) 212
9.3 Speer (Sebastian Koch) first encounters Hitler (Tobias
Moretti) at a party rally: scene from Speer & Hitler (2005) 219
9.4 Speer (Sebastian Koch) accompanies Hitler (Tobias
Moretti) on his walks on the Obersalzberg: scene from
Speer & Hitler (2005) 222
9.5 Hitler in the midst of Speer’s model of Germania: scene
from Breloer’s Speer & Hitler (2005) 228
Plate section (following page 96)
Hitler in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), top, and a

pre-war Nazi propaganda film, bottom
x List of Illustrations
Charlie Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel, a thinly veiled caricature of Hitler,

in The Great Dictator (1940)
Scenes from Disney’s animated short Der Führer’s Face (1943)
Bobby Watson as Hitler in The Story of Mankind (1957), top, and Steven
Berkoff as Hitler in War and Remembrance (1988), bottom
Scenes from Mel Brooks’ The Producers (1968), with Dick Shawn as
Hitler in the musical-within-the-film, bottom
Alec Guinness as Hitler in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)
Original footage from National Socialist propaganda films in Hitler: A
Career (1977), directed by Joachim Fest and Christian Herrendoerfer
Two scenes from Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Hitler – A Film from Germany
(1977), showing André Heller reading out passages from the film
script, top, and Heinz Schubert as Hitler, bottom
Scenes from Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Hitler – A Film from Germany
(1977) in which Hitler is frequently shown in the form of a
puppet, top
Scenes from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films The Marriage of Maria
Braun (1979), top, and Lili Marleen (1981), bottom
Anthony Hopkins impersonates Hitler in the television drama The
Bunker (1981)
Udo Kier as Hitler in Christoph Schlingensief’s 100 Years of Adolf Hitler:
The Last Hour in the Führer Bunker (1989)
Two scenes from Helmut Dietl’s Schtonk! (1992), with Uwe
Ochsenknecht in the role of Fritz Knobel (bottom), a character
modelled on the real-life forger of Hitler’s diaries, Konrad Kujau
Guido Knopp’s television documentary Hitler: A Profile (1995), shows
Hitler posing for a Heinrich Hoffmann photograph, top, and in a
private moment, bottom
Two scenes from Christian Duguay’s Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003), with
Robert Carlyle in the role of the young Hitler
Hitler (Bruno Ganz) with Albert Speer (Heino Ferch) outside the Reich
Chancellery, top, and with Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler), bottom, in
Downfall (2004)
Two scenes from Downfall (2004) showing Hitler (Ganz) surrounded by
his entourage
Hitler (Ganz) with a Hitler Youth (Donevan Gunia), top, and the
Goebbels children, bottom, in Downfall (2004)
Downfall (2004) shows Hitler (Ganz) dining with his staff, top, and
sitting alone in his bedroom, bottom
Two scenes from Downfall (2004) showing Hitler (Ganz) voicing his
racist doctrines
List of Illustrations xi
Hitler (Ganz) opposite Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch), top, and a

young nurse (Elizaveta Boyarskaya), bottom, in Downfall (2004)
Hitler (Ganz) acknowledges defeat (top); the scene of his suicide
(bottom): two stills from Downfall (2004)
Two scenes from Mein Führer (2007) showing Hitler (Helge Schneider)
with his ‘coach’ Adolf Grünbaum (Ulrich Mühe), top, and with Eva
Braun (Katja Riemann), bottom
Hitler (Schneider) receives Grünbaum (Mühe), top, and plays the piano
for Eva Braun, bottom, in Mein Führer (2007)
Hitler (Schneider) embarks on a nocturnal promenade with his German
shepherd Blondi, top, and delivers his final speech to the people of
Berlin, bottom: two scenes from Mein Führer (2007)
Scenes from Walter Moers’ animated short ADOLF – I’m Sitting in My
Bunker (2006)
Tobias Moretti as Hitler in Heinrich Breloer’s television mini-series
Speer & Hitler: The Devil’s Architect (2005)
Scenes from Speer & Hitler (2005) showing Hitler (Moretti) in the
company of his favorite architect (Sebastian Koch)
Hitler (Martin Wuttke) rages, top, and dies, bottom, in Quentin
Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Comedian Harald Schmidt (above) and NDR’s satirical show Extra Drei
(below) lampoon the German media’s new obsession with Hitler
Two scenes from Bernd Fischerauer’s Hitler in Court (2009), with
Johannes Zirner as Hitler
Scenes from Jörg Buttgereit’s Captain Berlin versus Hitler (2009), with
Claudia Steiger (below) as Hitler’s physician Ilse von Blitzen
Acknowledgments
This book grew out of a series of papers presented at the 2007 con-
ference of the German Studies Association (GSA) in San Diego, and
we should begin by thanking the GSA for giving us a platform to dis-
cuss with a relatively large group of experts what was then a relatively
little-known topic. We next need to thank our panelists, both for their
original presentations and for their subsequent efforts to rework these,
in some cases quite substantially, for publication. Johannes von Moltke
deserves special mention in this context, as he kindly agreed to expand
his comments on panel no. 2 into a tour d’horizon that now serves as a
conclusion to our volume. We are indebted to Thomas Elsaesser, Sabine
Hake, Eric Rentschler, and Michael Töteberg, who were not among
the panelists, for contributing individual chapters. Ruth Ireland, Clare
Mence, and Cherline Daniel at Palgrave gave us excellent support when
it came to turning these chapters into a book. Catherine Smale and Julie
Deering ably translated some of the contributions originally submitted
in German. Crystal Eisinger helped with the selection of illustrations.
The publication process was further facilitated by generous financial aid
from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), as well as the
Newton Trust and the Vice-Master’s Fund of Trinity Hall, University of
Cambridge. Finally, we would like to thank our colleagues and students
for their questions, suggestions, and support. This book bears the stamp
of the lively research culture at the University of Cambridge, where film
studies have long been an integral part of German studies.
Karolin Machtans
Martin A. Ruehl
xii
Contributors
Axel Bangert is a research fellow at Homerton College and a member of

the Department of German and Dutch, at the University of Cambridge.
From 2004 to 2006, he worked as a research assistant at the Founda-
tion Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. His doctoral thesis, completed at the
University of Cambridge in 2010, examines the portrayal of the Third
Reich in post-reunification German cinema and television. He is cur-
rently co-editing a volume on the Holocaust in contemporary screen
culture titled Holocaust Intersections: Genocide and Visual Culture at the
New Millennium, which is scheduled to be published in 2012.
Michael Butter is a research fellow in the School of Language & Litera-

ture at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, where he is working
on a book about American conspiracy theories from the Puritans to
McCarthyism. He is the author of The Epitome of Evil: Hitler in American
Fiction, 1939–2002 (2009), and co-editor of American Studies/Shifting
Gears (2010) and Arnold Schwarzenegger: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on
Body and Image (2011). His essays on American literature and culture
have appeared in journals such as the Canadian Review of American
Studies and Journal of Literary Theory.
Michael Elm studied sociology and educational theory at the Goethe

University in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. He received his doctorate with
a thesis on Holocaust testimonies in feature and documentary films. He
was a research fellow at the Fritz Bauer Institute, working on memo-
rial culture and the reception of the Holocaust. He is co-editor of
Zeugenschaft des Holocaust: Zwischen Trauma, Tradierung und Ermittlung
(2007). Currently a lecturer for the German Academic Exchange Service
(DAAD) at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel, he is prepar-
ing a comparative study of Bildungsgeschichten in German, Israeli, and
American historical films.
Thomas Elsaesser is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the

University of Amsterdam. He has held visiting professorships at various
xiii
xiv Notes on Contributors
American universities, notably the University of California (Los Angeles,

San Diego, Berkeley, Irvine, Santa Barbara), New York University, and
Yale University. In 2005–06 he held the Ingmar Bergman Chair at
Stockholm University, and in 2006–07 he was a Leverhulme Profes-
sor at the University of Cambridge. He has published numerous books
on German film history, including studies on early film (A Second Life:
German Cinema’s First Decade), the cinema of the Weimar Republic
(Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary) and Fritz Lang
(Metropolis), the New German Cinema (New German Cinema – A History),
a monograph on Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a study on the afterlife of
the Nazi era in German post-war film, and The BFI Companion to German
Cinema.
Sabine Hake is the Texas Chair in German Literature and Culture in the
Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
She is the author of six monographs, including German National Cin-
ema (2008), Topographies of Class: Modern Architecture and Mass Society in
Weimar Berlin (2008), and Screen Nazis: Cinema, History, and Democracy
(2012). She has published numerous articles and edited volumes on
German film and Weimar culture. Her current book project is tenta-
tively titled ‘Fragments of a Cultural History of the German Proletariat,
1870s–1970s’.
Karolin Machtans is Assistant Professor of German Studies at

Connecticut College. Before joining Connecticut College, she was an
assistant professor at California Polytechnic State University and a
DAAD lecturer at Cambridge University. Her research concentrates on
twentieth and twenty-first-century German literature and film, with a
special focus on intercultural literature and film, representations of the
Holocaust, and the interrelations between literature, film, and history.
Her first book, which examines the autobiographical writings of Saul
Friedländer and Ruth Klüger in the context of their scholarly work, was
published in 2009 by Max Niemeyer Verlag. She is currently working
on a book-length study of the representation of Istanbul in German
literature and film.
Johannes von Moltke is Associate Professor of German Studies and

Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan. He is the
author of No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema
(2005), which was awarded the MLA Scaglione Prize for Best Book in
German Studies. Together with Julia Hell and Andreas Gailus, he serves
Notes on Contributors xv
as executive editor for The Germanic Review, and together with Gerd
Gemünden he is the series editor for Screen Cultures: German Film and
the Visual at Camden House. He is the editor, with Gerd Gemünden,
of the forthcoming Culture in the Anteroom: The Legacies of Siegfried
Kracauer and, with Kristy Rawson, of the forthcoming Affinities: Siegfried
Kracauer’s American Writings 1941–1966. He is currently working on a
monograph titled Manhattan Transfer: Siegfried Kracauer and the New York
Intellectuals, or, the Trans-Atlantic Construction of Critical Theory.
Eric Rentschler is Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Germanic Lan-

guages and Literatures at Harvard University. He has published numer-
ous works on German cinema during the Weimar Republic, the Third
Reich, the post-war, and the post-Berlin Wall era, including West German
Film in the Course of Time (1984), German Film and Literature (1986), West
German Filmmakers on Film (1988), Augenzeugen (1988; second updated
edition 2001, with Hans Helmut Prinzler), The Films of G. W. Pabst
(1990), and The Ministry of Illusion (1996). He is currently working on
two book projects: The Enduring Allure of Nazi Attractions and Courses in
Time: Film in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1962–1989.
Michael D. Richardson is Associate Professor of German and Chair of

the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Ithaca College.
His research focuses on German literature and film, as well as the repre-
sentation of Hitler in popular culture. He has written and presented on
German film, from the Weimar era to the present. He is co-editor, with
David Bathrick and Brad Prager, of Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents,
Aesthetics, Memory, and co-editor, with Jennifer Kapczynski, of the forth-
coming New History of German Cinema (2012). He is currently working
on a monograph titled Hitler Immortal: The Afterlife of Hitler in Popular
Culture.
Martin A. Ruehl is Lecturer in German Thought at the Faculty of Mod-

ern and Medieval Languages and Fellow of Trinity Hall, University of
Cambridge. His research concentrates on the myths and memories that
have shaped German society and culture in the twentieth century. He
lectures on fascist cinema and the representations of fascism in post-war
European film for the MPhil in Screen Media & Cultures (University of
Cambridge). He has published books and articles on Nietzsche, Thomas
Mann, and Stefan George. His monograph The Making of Modernity:
Renaissance Italy and the German Historical Imagiation, 1860–1930 will be
published in 2012.
xvi Notes on Contributors
Kerstin Stutterheim is a filmmaker as well as a professor in media

studies and aesthetics at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen Konrad
Wolf in Potsdam. Her films include Mythos, Macht und Mörder (1998),
a documentary on the occult roots of Nazi ideology. She has also
published widely on this topic, notably Okkulte Weltvorstellungen in
dokumentarischen Filmen des ‘Dritten Reiches’ (2000) and ‘Germanisch-
arische Auserwähltheit in mythischem und okkultem Kontext’, in Peter
Zimmermann (ed.), Zur Ästhetik und Geschichte des nonfiktionalen Films in
Deutschland 1895 bis 1945 (2005). She is currently working on a mono-
graph about the history and aesthetics of documentary filmmaking in
Germany.
Michael Töteberg is a film critic and independent scholar as well

as director of the Agentur für Medienrechte at the Rowohlt publishing
house. He has edited the papers of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the
writings of Wim Wenders, Edgar Reitz, and Tom Tykwer. He is also
the editor of Metzler Film Lexikon (2005). His numerous publications
on modern German cinema include Fritz Lang: Mit Selbstzeugnissen
und Bilddokumenten (1985), Filmstadt Hamburg. Von Emil Jannings bis
Wim Wenders: Kino-Geschichte(n) einer Grossstadt (1990), Fassbinders Filme
(1990–91), Das Ufa-Buch: Kunst und Krisen, Stars und Regisseure, Wirtschaft
und Politik, co-edited with Hans-Michael Bock (1992), Szenenwechsel.
Momentaufnahmen des jungen deutschen Films (1999), Rainer Werner
Fassbinder (2002), Good bye Lenin: ein Film von Wolfgang Becker (2003),
Film-Klassiker: 120 Filme (2006), Romy Schneider (2009), and Tom Tykwer’s
Drei (2011). He is a contributor to CineGraph: Lexikon zum deutschsprachi-
gen Film (2009).
Introduction
If one looks and hates but is forced to recognize human features there, how can
we justly picture ourselves and this guilt and this common will and these inter-
mediate tones of hope without harming ourselves through lies, self-deception?
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Hitler – A Film from Germany (1978)
Do you know what I saw on the television in my hotel room at one o’clock this
morning? Films of Hitler! They are showing films about the war, the movement.
People are fascinated, the time is right.
Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) in The Boys from Brazil (1978)
Even today, the first obsession remains Hitler. Where is the German who does
not try to understand him? Yet where can you find one who is content with the
answer?
Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest (2007)
Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland (Hitler – A Film from Germany,

1977) was the deceptively pithy title of a seven-and-a-half-hour
phantasmagoria that reached West German screens in the summer of
1978. In the eyes of contemporary observers,1 Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s
cinematic spectacle was the high (or indeed low) point of a ‘Hitler
wave’ that had been sweeping through the Federal Republic since
the appearance of Joachim Fest’s best-selling biography five years ear-
lier.2 The often heated controversies triggered by this wave generally
revolved around the question of whether Hitler could be critically rep-
resented and meaningfully discussed in the popular media, and how
such representations would affect the German public’s attitude towards
the Nazi era.3 That Fest’s film, Hitler – Eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career,
1977), rather than his book,4 lay at the heart of these controversies indi-
cates a subtle, yet important, shift in the complicated process known as
Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the legacies of National
1
Figure i.1 Hitler, ein Film aus Deutschland (1977) was the original title of
Syberberg’s cinematic meditation on the specifically German origins of National
Socialism and the intricate relationship between the medium of film and our
image of Hitler. Released in the USA by Francis Ford Coppola under the title Our
Hitler, it became something of an art-house sensation thanks in large part to a
glowing review by Susan Sontag, who also provided the preface for the book. The
book cover shows the film’s most iconic scene: a toga-clad Hitler rising slowly
from Richard Wagner’s grave.
Introduction 3
Figure i.2 ‘Voluptuous anguish and ravishing images’: Christian Herrendoerfer’s

Hitler: A Career (1977), scripted by Hitler’s biographer Joachim Fest, was accused
of relying excessively on original footage from – and thereby replicating the
aesthetic of – Nazi propaganda films.
Socialism) 30 years after the end of World War II, a shift away from
Aufarbeitung (reconstruction of the actual historical events) and towards
Darstellung (representation),5 as well as a new concern for the political
and pedagogical function of the mass media, in particular film.6
Since the late 1990s, another Hitler wave has been washing over
Germany,7 and again Hitler’s portrayal in cinema and television is
the focus of the principal controversies. Despite certain continuities
(Joachim Fest played a prominent part once more), this second wave
appears to be driven by other ideological agendas, and its Hitlerbilder
(images of Hitler) differ from those of the 1970s. The new images are
more realistic and at the same time more playful; they are shaped by
films such as Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), based
on Fest’s book of the same name and a script by Bernd Eichinger,8
Heinrich Breloer’s docudrama Speer und Er (Speer & Hitler: The Devil’s
Architect, 2005)9 and Guido Knopp’s extremely successful television
documentaries, from Hitler: Eine Bilanz (Hitler: A Profile, 1995) to
Hitler und die Frauen (Hitler and Women, 2011),10 but also by Dani
Levy’s grotesque Mein Führer: Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf
Hitler (Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler, 2007),
Walter Moers’ irreverent short animation ADOLF – Ich hock’ in meinem
Bonker (ADOLF – I’m Sitting in My Bunker, 2006),11 and the seemingly
unending series of Downfall parody clips on YouTube.12 The sheer
number of German films produced in the last 15 years that deal either
4 Hitler – Films from Germany
exclusively or primarily with Hitler, including Armin Mueller-Stahl’s

neglected Gespräch mit dem Biest (Conversation with the Beast, 1996),13
Urs Odermatt’s adaptation of Georg Tabori’s Mein Kampf (2009),14 Jörg
Buttgereit’s C-movie farce Captain Berlin versus Hitler (2009)15 and the
14-part documentary series on the last 12 hours of Hitler’s life Ein Tag
schreibt Geschichte – 30. April 1945 (A Day Makes History: 30 April 1945,
2011) conceived by Alexander Kluge,16 suggest that earlier German
taboos about his representability17 – taboos that had been challenged,
but ultimately reinforced by the films of Fest and Syberberg – have begun
to crumble. If a totem is an emblem chosen by a group to remind its
members of their ancestry, then Hitler in the early Bonn Republic was a
totemic figure, but one so negatively or at least ambivalently cathected
that representing him on the big screen (let alone the TV screen) was
considered a provocation, indeed a transgression by many. The his-
tory of Hitler’s filmic representations since the 1970s indicates, amongst
other things, the gradual loss of his totemic significance and ability to
provoke.
In her recent ‘film historical survey’,18 Alexandra Hissen describes
this development as a process of normalization. Films featuring Hitler
as a character, which were considered controversial in the 1950s and
still had the potential to shock in the 1970s and 1980s, have become,
Hissen argues, generally accepted in Germany since the 2000s, indeed
‘mainstream’, and frequently generate high television ratings as well
as strong box-office receipts. When the acclaimed director G.W. Pabst
made a film about Hitler’s last days in the bunker in 1955, it caused
a storm of protest in the West German media19 and was refused a
(tax-reducing) quality rating by the National Board of Film Classifica-
tion (Filmbewertungsstelle) in Wiesbaden.20 When Oliver Hirschbiegel
and Bernd Eichinger recounted the same events in Downfall 50 years
later,21 the German press, with some exceptions,22 lavished praise on
their film and the Filmbewertungsstelle duly awarded it the highest pos-
sible rating (‘besonders wertvoll’).23 Axel Corti’s subtle psychological
examination of Hitler’s formative years in Linz and Vienna, Ein junger
Mann aus dem Innviertel (A Young Man from the Inn Region, 1973), a dra-
matized documentary based on a script by Georg Stefan Troller, was not
so much panned as ignored by the German television audience – in
stark contrast to the biopics produced by Guido Knopp since the late
1990s, which have enjoyed extraordinary ratings.24 The Hitler satires of
the 1980s, notably Jörg Buttgereit’s short Blutige Exzesse im Führerbunker
(Bloody Excesses in the Führerbunker, 1982), Romuald Karmakar’s Eine
Freundschaft in Deutschland (A Friendship in Germany, 1985), and
Introduction 5
Christoph Schlingensief’s 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler: Die letzte Stunde im

Führerbunker (100 Years of Adolf Hitler: The Last Hour in the Führerbunker,
1989), were radical experiments in demythification. Inspired in part
by Ulli Lommel’s romantic farce Adolf und Marlene (Adolf and Marlene,
1977),25 these independent, low-budget productions made no pretense
of historical veracity and creatively re-imagined everyday events in
Hitler’s life, showing him sledding, swimming, and masturbating. True
to its title, Buttgereit’s film did most violence to the figure of Hitler
who eventually is cut to pieces with an axe. Schlingensief’s bunker film
ends on a less brutal, but equally surreal note: when, after repeated acts
of sexual transgression, defecation and drug abuse, Hitler, played by
Udo Kier, finally expires, Eva Braun quickly takes over his moustache
and with it his political authority, ousting Hermann Göring, marrying
Magda Goebbels, and eventually eloping with her own brother-in-law,
SS-Obergruppenführer Hermann Fegelein.26
The Hitler satires of the 2000s lack this radicalism, their humor is
less transgressive, their plotlines more conventional. The problem with
Kai Wessel’s Goebbels und Geduldig (Goebbels and Geduldig, 2001) and
Dani Levy’s Mein Führer, for instance, is not so much, as some critics
have claimed,27 that they ‘trivialize’ the horrors of the Nazi regime, but
rather that their ridiculing of that regime is too tame, too restrained,
in short: not ridiculous enough.28 Perhaps it was precisely because of
their lack of audacity that these new Hitler satires quickly entered
the mainstream of German popular culture. By the mid-2000s, at any
rate, parodying Hitler became a staple of German comedy. A thinly
disguised Hitler figure, Alfons Hatler, played by acclaimed comedian
Christoph Maria Herbst, featured as a kind of running gag in the suc-
cessful comic drama Der Wixxer (The Trixxer, 2004). Harald Schmidt’s
Hitler impersonation – actually an imitation of Bruno Ganz’s Hitler
impersonation – proved a huge hit with the audience of his late-night
show in February 2005.29 ‘Hitler Leasing’, a two-and-a-half-minute short
in which the original footage of a Hitler speech from Triumph of the
Will was synced with a comic routine about a dishonest car salesman
performed by satirical cabaret artist Gerhard Polt, became a German
internet sensation in 2006–07.30 When the high-brow German daily
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung asked in December 2006, on the occa-
sion of the imminent release of Levy’s Mein Führer, ‘May we laugh about
Hitler?’ (‘Dürfen wir über Hitler lachen?’),31 the concern about political
correctness underlying the question already seemed a little outdated.
The documentary films conceived and produced by television his-
torian Guido Knopp have played a no less important part in the
popularization of Hitler over the last 15 years. More than any other
media personality, Knopp can be said to have transported Hitler into
the living-rooms of the Federal Republic. His Hitler documentaries,
which combine archival footage, eyewitness accounts, close-ups of his-
toric photos and dramatic re-enactments in a fast-paced editing style
that tends to privilege visual effects over discursive analysis, have
been aired since the mid-1990s by ZDF, Germany’s second-largest pub-
lic television broadcaster, usually in prime time. Already the first of
these documentaries, Hitler: A Profile, a six-part miniseries advertised
as ‘the most comprehensive TV portrait of the most famous German’
and shown on Sunday evenings throughout November and December
1995,32 reached an audience of over 5 million German viewers and 22
per cent of German households watching television at the time of broad-
cast.33 There had been prior documentaries, to be sure, notably Erwin
Leiser’s Den blodiga tiden (Mein Kampf, 1960) and Fest’s Hitler: A Career,
but Knopp’s decision to devote an entire series to Hitler, the public figure
as well as ‘the private man’ (to quote the title of the first episode), rep-
resented a novelty in German television. Employing digital technology,
an elaborate soundtrack, and plenty of previously unseen material from
newsreels, propaganda films, and home movies, Knopp created a fresh,
accessible, indeed highly entertaining image of Hitler. It is an image
that may have been particularly appealing to German viewers because
it shows him as the omnipotent ruler of the Third Reich, downplaying
the active role of ‘ordinary Germans’ in the execution of Nazi policies.
The German public, in fact, generally appear as little more than pas-
sive followers, ‘blinded’ (‘geblendet’) and ‘seduced’ (‘verführt’) by the
demonic powers of their Führer.34 Even when they do not focus directly
on him, Knopp’s subsequent documentaries suggest that Hitler was the
central, indeed the only genuine political agent in Nazi Germany. Their
very titles betray the Hitler-centric interpretation of National Socialism
proffered by Eberhard Jäckel and Klaus Hildebrand who acted as his-
torical advisors to Knopp: Hitlers Helfer (Hitler’s Henchmen, 1996/1998),
Hitlers Krieger (Hitler’s Warriors, 1998), Hitlers Kinder (Hitler’s Children,
2000), Hitlers Frauen (Hitler’s Women, 2001), Hitlers Manager (Hitler’s
Managers, 2004), and Hitlers nützliche Idole (Hitler’s Useful Idols, 2007).
Whether or not these shows amount to ‘historical pornography’, as
Wulf Kansteiner claims, they seem to have offered German audiences
certain ‘transgressive pleasures’ with their glossy, aestheticized depic-
tions of violence and their intimate, empathetic portraits of power.35
They certainly have given Hitler an extraordinary prominence in the
screen media,36 prompting historian Norbert Frei to remark in October
Introduction 7
2004 that ‘there has never been so much Hitler’ in Germany since the
end of World War II.37 The question remains what this new promi-
nence means for his place in the collective memory of Germany,
60 years after the collapse of the Third Reich and 20 years after
reunification.
The present volume approaches this question from a diachronic angle.
It takes stock of the recent Hitler films in light of earlier ones. Its
aim is to chart and analyze the changing images of Hitler on the
German screen and to assess their role in the transformation of German
Geschichtsbewusstsein (historical consciousness) from the Bonn to the
Berlin Republic. Its fundamental premise is that since the end of World
War II, Germany’s historical myths and memories have been shaped
and mediated, to a great extent, by the moving image.38 As early as
1947, Siegfried Kracauer argued that ‘the films of a nation reflect its
mentality in a more direct way than any other artistic media’. Accor-
ding to Kracauer, certain recurrent ‘screen motifs’ illustrate not so much
explicit worldviews as ‘psychological dispositions’, those ‘deep layers of
collective mentality’ that extend ‘below the dimension of conscious-
ness’.39 While the contributors to this volume do not conceive of their
work in such psychologizing terms, they share Kracauer’s belief in the
supreme importance of cinema and television as social and cultural his-
torical sources. They do not approach Hitler’s shifting screen image after
1945 as celluloid manifestations of the collective German unconscious;
nor do they interpret it as the embodiment of a national ‘ego-ideal’,
cathected with ‘libidinal energy’, as Eric Santner did, extending the the-
ories of Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich.40 Rather, they investigate
Germany’s Hitlerbilder as ‘lieux de mémoire’ (Pierre Nora) and sites of
historiographical as well as political contestation.41 The ways in which
Hitler has been demonized, satirized, humanized, and historicized on
the German screen over the past 60-odd years are explored here in the
context of the vicissitudes of Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the ‘cultural
memory’ (Jan Assmann) of post-war Germany.42
As Gerhard Weinberg remarked recently, coming to terms with the
Nazi past also means coming to terms with Hitler ‘as a person, as
leader . . . and as a symbol’.43 Even for the generation of Germans who
reached maturity between 1933 and 1945, the symbolic meaning of
Hitler, what Ian Kershaw has called ‘the Hitler myth’,44 was largely
derived from the images produced and disseminated by the Third
Reich – the films of Leni Riefenstahl,45 the photographs of Heinrich
Hoffmann,46 or the weekly newsreel Die Deutsche Wochenschau.47 Thus,
we might adapt Weinberg’s statement to the effect that coming to terms
with Hitler also means coming to terms with his filmic representations.
That was precisely the intention of Syberberg, whose Hitler film was sup-
posed to lay to rest the cinematic specter of Hitler, to bring about ‘the
end of this Hitler’, as Syberberg himself put it, ‘who is now a film’.48 In
the words of Eric Santner, the attempts of Syberberg and other German
directors to ‘master’ the guilt of German history were inextricably linked
with his attempts to master the guilt of German ‘film history’.49 The con-
tributors to the present volume try to determine if and to what extent
these attempts were successful. In particular, they aim to assess whether
earlier mythopoeic portraits of Hitler have been replaced by more sober,
historically accurate or, alternatively, humorous and surreal represen-
tations; or whether these latter representations, under the mantle of
historical ‘realism’ or ‘satire’, have reproduced and preserved some of
the earlier myths, or indeed created new ones.50
‘Hitler films’, to be sure, have never been a purely German phe-
nomenon. Quite the contrary: at least until the end of the twentieth
century, Hitler was a much more familiar figure on American and British
screens. Of the more than 100 feature films and television miniseries
that Charles Mitchell lists in his exhaustive catalogue raisonné,51 only 11
are German productions. Before Bruno Ganz’s performance in Downfall,
the actors who most lastingly defined Hitler’s screen image were almost
without exception English-speaking – Charlie Chaplin, Robert ‘Bobby’
Watson, and Derek Jacobi.52 Indeed, Ganz’s portrayal was not just pre-
ceded, but also seems to have been inspired by, earlier impersonations
of Hitler in English-speaking films, notably those of Alec Guinness
and Anthony Hopkins. As various critics have noted,53 the makers
of Downfall drew on previous ‘bunker films’, particularly G.W. Pabst’s
Der letzte Akt (The Last Ten Days, 1955), but also Ennio De Concini’s
Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), an Anglo-Italian co-production, and
George Schaefer’s American television drama The Bunker (1981). Dani
Levy’s Mein Führer liberally quotes Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940)
and Gordon Douglas’ The Devil with Hitler (1942) as well as Mel
Brooks’ The Producers (1968). Downfall, with its painstaking (and costly)
attempts to achieve the maximum amount of historical authenticity, is
deeply indebted to the glossy, big-budget historical dramas of Steven
Spielberg and Oliver Stone. Similarly, Knopp’s mini-series and Breloer’s
docudrama Speer & Hitler are influenced by the representations of the
Third Reich and its leaders in popular television productions from the
USA and UK, for instance Dan Curtis’ The Winds of War (1983) and
Laurence Rees’ The Nazis: A Warning from History (1997).
At a time when German audiences are more than ever exposed (and
susceptible) to the products of a global film market – and Hollywood
Introduction 9
Figure i.3 Anthony Hopkins gives his Emmy Award-winning impersonation in

George Schaefer’s television dramatization The Bunker (1981), which alongside
Hitler, the Last Ten Days (1973) and Inside the Third Reich (1982) set the standard
for filmic depictions of ‘the last days of Hitler’.
in particular –, it would be naïve to speak of specifically or purely

German screen images of Hitler.54 The Hitlerbilder that have emerged
in German popular culture over the past ten years or so may have been
shaped primarily by the films of Bernd Eichinger and Guido Knopp, yet
they are also conditioned by Quentin Tarantino, say, whose radically
counter-factual approach in Inglourious Basterds (2009) – Hitler is gunned
down by a group of American-Jewish soldiers on the balcony of a small
Parisian cinema – suggests a new and potentially cathartic way of com-
ing to terms with the historical figure through the medium of film.55
While these Anglo-American contexts cannot be ignored and, indeed,
are not ignored in the present volume, the editors nonetheless felt jus-
tified in their decision to keep the focus squarely on Hitler films from
Germany, as the latter seem fraught with ideological and moral issues
that are unique, or at least largely absent from British and American pro-
ductions.56 Neither Alec Guinness nor Anthony Hopkins, it seems, felt
compelled to defend and explain their decision to impersonate Hitler
to quite the same degree that Ganz (who is Swiss) did;57 and neither
Marvin Chomsky’s Inside the Third Reich (1982) nor Christian Duguay’s
Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003) saw anything like the controversy that
Knopp’s portraits of Hitler and his entourage provoked in the German
press.58
The essays in this volume, consequently, concentrate on a selection

of German films, that is, films with a German director, produced in
Germany or (as in the case of The Last Ten Days) for a German-speaking
audience, and extensively discussed in the German press. In one way or
another, all the films under discussion contributed to the making and
re-making of the screen images – always multiple, shifting, overlapping,
at times heavily contested – of Hitler that conditioned his popular per-
ception in the Federal Republic. They are analyzed here in the context of
specifically German concerns about the historical, moral, and political
legacies of the Nazi era, in particular the ‘recoding of memorial culture’
(Harald Welzer) since the late 1990s.59 At the same time, they raise larger
questions, for instance about the problematic relationship between film
and history,60 the ‘biographical turn’ which has been integral to the
recent popularization of history, the public role and responsibility of
the media,61 and last but not least what Saul Friedländer has called ‘the
limits of representation’.62 If there is, as Terrence Des Pres has argued,
a ‘Holocaust etiquette’,63 should there also be a ‘Hitler etiquette’, one
that prescribes how to present ‘der Fuehrer’s face’ and how to properly
‘emplot’ a Hitler film?64 Can Hitler be satirized without being trivia-
lized?65 Do narrative representations of Hitler, insofar as they inevitably
offer explanations of his actions, run the risk of exculpating him, as
Claude Lanzmann warned?66 How can the Hitlerbild be de-mystified and
at the same time remain an emblem of what Emil Fackenheim labeled
‘radical evil’?67 Does a Hitler biopic that aims to make its subject-matter,
in the words of Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘seem real and worthy of belief’,68
lose its didactic purpose (at best) and (at worst) ‘complacently’ repro-
duce the Nazi aesthetic?69 Or is the new realism, as seen in Eichinger’s
Downfall, the outcome of an ‘inexorable process of seeing the Hitler era
as history – even more important, feeling it to be history’?70 It should
be clear that all these questions take on a particular significance when
tackled in the context of post-war Germany. It should also be clear that
they are relevant far beyond that context.
Part I of the book deals with the Hitlerbilder that defined the process of
Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the first half-century of the Federal Repub-
lic and that provide the template, in many ways, for his more recent
representations.71 Eric Rentschler (Chapter 1) sets the scene with a pro-
bing analysis of the particular (West) German obsession with the image
of Hitler and its afterlife in the mass media, from the Third Reich to the
1980s. Rentschler examines this obsession through the prism of Helmut
Dietl’s award-winning satire Schtonk! (1992). Subtitled ‘Der Film zum
Buch vom Führer’ (‘The Film Based on the Führer’s Book’), Schtonk! is a
Introduction 11
Figure i.4 Christoph Schlingensief’s 100 Years of Adolf Hitler: The Last Hour in the
Führerbunker (1989), with Udo Kier as a morphine- and sex-addicted Führer.
farce about the events surrounding the publication of the forged Hitler
diaries by the German news magazine Stern in 1983. Rentschler reads
the film as an allegory of Germany’s vexed search for the ‘real’ Hitler
and his simultaneous (re-) constructions as a cinematic simulacrum.
Michael Töteberg (Chapter 2) looks at an earlier cinematic construc-
tion, G.W. Pabst’s The Last Ten Days (1955), the first German-language
film after 1945 to feature Hitler. An Austrian production based on a
script by Erich Maria Remarque, The Last Ten Days was panned by crit-
ics and tepidly received by audiences in Germany. After lingering in
obscurity for almost 50 years, Pabst’s film attracted attention in the
wake of Downfall which, Töteberg argues, draws on it in important ways.
Töteberg analyzes the negative response to The Last Ten Days in the con-
text of the repressive intellectual climate of the Federal Republic in the
1950s which he contrasts with the film’s positive reception abroad.
Some 20 years later, when Hans-Jürgen Syberberg set about shooting
Hitler – A Film from Germany (first released in 1977), that climate had
changed considerably. Syberberg’s film provides the point of departure
for Thomas Elsaesser’s reflections (Chapter 3) on the role of cinema in
Figure i.5 Breaking the German Hitler taboo? Bruno Ganz gives the Führer a
human face in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall (2004). Here he tells his personal
adjutant Otto Günsche (Götz Otto) how to dispose of his mortal remains after
his suicide.
the making (and the potential un-making) of Germany’s fascination

with Hitler and the Third Reich. According to Elsaesser, all directors
of the New German Cinema, whether directly or indirectly, re-assessed
West Germany’s self-understanding in relation to the Nazi legacy; only
in Syberberg’s Hitler – A Film from Germany, however, was Hitler him-
self ‘both thematized as a historical figure and represented on screen’.
This thematization was deeply ambivalent, though. On the one hand,
Elsaesser argues, Syberberg’s film invokes ‘Hitler’ as a mirror or projec-
tion screen of German culture, as part of a German collective identity
that cannot be disavowed; on the other hand, it offers a sustained cri-
tique of Western capitalism and its ‘society of the spectacle’ whose
victory Hitler and the Nazis, despite themselves, helped to secure
through their use of the mass media as tools of entertainment and
propaganda.
Part II of the book deals with the more recent representations of
Hitler in German cinema. It concentrates on two films in particu-
lar: Downfall (2004), an epic reconstruction of Hitler’s last days in
the bunker, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and produced – as well as
scripted – by the late Bernd Eichinger (who had also made Syberberg’s
Hitler – A Film from Germany); and Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth
about Adolf Hitler (2007), Dani Levy’s surrealist satire starring mad-
cap comedian Helge Schneider in the title role. In their very different
Introduction 13
ways, both films reflect the more ‘relaxed and self-confident’ attitude
towards the Nazi past first proclaimed by the Schröder government
(1998–2005).72 Using Downfall as a case study, Sabine Hake (Chapter 4)
critically examines this new attitude to the past, which she interprets
as a form of historicism and as concomitant with the emergence of
an Erlebnisgesellschaft (Gerhard Schulze), that is, a society fixated on
commercially produced experiences. Seemingly oblivious to the themes
of guilt and mourning, Downfall insists on the ‘pastness of the past’.
But for all its efforts to provide a faithful reconstruction of the his-
torical Hitler, Hake argues, Eichinger’s film only ends up reproducing
the ‘Hitler figure familiar from Hollywood productions’. Ultimately, the
film’s historicizing tendencies are little more than strategies of evasion:
relying almost exclusively on the conventional techniques of the histor-
ical drama, Downfall is ill-equipped to address the moral monstrosity of
the Third Reich and its leader.
Mein Führer, conceived by director Dani Levy as a ‘counter-film’ to
Downfall with its epic pretensions and tragic pathos,73 is the subject
of Michael Richardson’s essay (Chapter 5). Set in the final months of
World War II, Mein Führer offers an alternate, darkly humorous account
of the end of the Third Reich. Its protagonist, a Jewish acting coach
named Adolf Grünbaum (played by Ulrich Mühe), is called from a con-
centration camp to prep an ailing, depressed Hitler for an important
speech. Employing unorthodox methods, which make for a series of out-
rageous slapstick sequences, Grünbaum not only whips the Führer into
shape but also gets to the bottom of his troubled psyche. Richardson
argues that Levy’s much criticized fusion of comedy and drama actu-
ally constitutes one of the film’s greatest strengths, as it confronts the
audience with a profoundly contradictory image of Hitler who is shown
as both perpetrator and victim, pernicious master of the Third Reich
and ineffectual clown. Like George Tabori’s play Mein Kampf and Radu
Mihaileanu’s film Train de Vie (Train of Life, 1998), Levy’s film blurs
the traditional boundaries between fact and fiction, thus challenging
received notions of historical veracity and ‘authenticity’. According to
Richardson, Mein Führer, ultimately, is not so much a film about Hitler as
a meditation on the inevitably futile – and therefore absurd – attempts
to understand him.
The premise of Michael Elm’s essay (Chapter 6), a comparative ana-
lysis of Downfall and Mein Führer, is that both films seek to ‘humanize’
Hitler. Though in different ways and with decidedly different intentions,
Mein Führer no less than Downfall deconstructs the conventional images
of the evil tyrant, demonic seducer, and hateful monster. Therein lies
Figure i.6 After tragedy comes farce: Helge Schneider as a tracksuit-clad Führer
and Ulrich Mühe as his Jewish therapist in Dani Levy’s satire Mein Führer: The
Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler (2007).
their potential, Elm argues, but also their limit. For with their biographi-
cal approach, in particular their pathologizing, psychologizing account
of Hitler’s private life, both films ultimately do little more than reit-
erate the conventional, ‘intentionalist’ reading according to which the
crimes of National Socialism can be reduced to the psychotic mind of its
leader. Such a reading of the Third Reich, however, ends up exculpating
the many ‘ordinary Germans’ who actively collaborated in those crimes
and in some cases eagerly carried out the will of their Führer. With their
humanizing and personalizing portraits of Hitler, Downfall and Mein
Führer also fail to give a plausible explanation of his role in the gene-
sis and execution of the Final Solution. For Elm, this personalizing take
is reminiscent of earlier historical interpretations of National Socialism
as well as revisionist trends in contemporary films, for instance Roland
Suso Richter’s Dresden (2006), Kai Wessel’s Die Flucht (March of Millions,
2007) and Nikolai Müllerschön’s Der rote Baron (The Red Baron, 2008),
which depict Germans both as victims and heroes of World War II.
Michael Butter (Chapter 7) offers a contrasting assessment of Downfall
and Mein Führer. Like Sabine Hake, he is skeptical of the historicizing ten-
dencies in Eichinger’s film which he associates with the work of conser-
vative historians such as Joachim Fest and Andreas Hillgruber who pio-
neered an ‘objective’, value-free approach to Hitler. Eichinger, similarly,
tries to suspend moral judgment, Butter argues, a move that accounts
for the lack of perspective in his film.74 Following Fest and Hillgruber,
Eichinger reduces the complex structures and decision-making processes
Introduction 15
Figure i.7 Hitler (Martin Wuttke) enjoys a Nazi propaganda film shortly before
he is shot by the eponymous heroes of Quentin Tarantino’s irreverent Inglourious
Basterds (2009).
of Nazi Germany to the actions and intentions of its Führer. Taking

his cue from Hannes Heer’s book Hitler war’s (2005),75 which might be
translated as Hitler did it, Butter highlights the apologetic implications
of this approach and the ways in which it perpetuates the image of an
all-powerful leader constructed, originally, by Nazi propaganda. Echo-
ing Michael Richardson’s essay – and challenging that of Michael Elm –
Butter considers Mein Führer a successful deconstruction, or at least sub-
version of this image. He is less concerned with Levy’s pyschologizing
approach, which owes a great deal to the writings on childhood trauma
by Alice Miller,76 and emphasizes instead the liberating effects of the
film’s irreverent counter-factualism which Butter also sees at work in
Walter Moers’ comic series Adolf (1998–2005). Both Moers and Levy
powerfully ridicule the notion of Hitler as an ‘evil genius’ leading a mes-
merized German people to their doom – a notion that informs Downfall
as well as other products of the latest Hitler wave. According to Butter,
this notion also underlies recent revisionist attempts by historians and
public intellectuals to portray ordinary Germans as part of the victims
of National Socialism.
Part III of the volume investigates the images of Hitler generated
in German documentary films and recent television productions.77
In terms of sheer impact, the Hitlerbilder broadcast on television are
probably more significant than those shown in feature films, even bona
fide blockbusters such as Downfall. The first season of Knopp’s series
Figure i.8 In bed with Hitler: a controversial German anti-AIDS campaign of

2009 equates Hitler and HIV as ‘mass murderers’.
Hitler’s Henchmen, for instance, aired in 1996/97, was seen by an aver-

age of 6.86 million German viewers – compared to 4.5 million German
viewers who paid to watch Downfall on the big screen.78 On 9, 11 and
12 May 2005 – that is, right after the 60th anniversary of the end of
World War II – more than 3.5 million German households tuned in
to watch Heinrich Breloer’s three-part docudrama, Speer & Hitler, on
Germany’s first public television station ARD. Such numbers seem to
buttress Steve Anderson’s claim that televised re-dramatizations of his-
tory play an increasingly important role ‘in cultural memory and the
popular negotiation of the past’.79 Their impact has to do, at least in
part, with their implicit claim to historical veracity – a claim that is
even more pronounced in documentary films.80 Kerstin Stutterheim
(Chapter 8) surveys some of the more recent representations of Hitler in
documentary cinema and television.81 She begins by critically assessing
the particular form of ‘infotainment’ in Knopp’s Hitler documentaries
Introduction 17
and the way these have shaped the public perception of the Nazi past in
the Berlin Republic. She then turns to a group of less well-known docu-
mentary films about Hitler, notably Ullrich Kasten’s Hitler & Mussolini –
Eine brutale Freundschaft (Hitler and Mussolini: A Brutal Friendship, 2008)
and Oliver Axer and Susanne Benze’s Hitlers Hitparade (Hitler’s Hit Parade,
2005), which she positively contrasts with the work of Knopp. Yet
even these latter films, Stutterheim argues, tread a thin line between
‘didacticism and exploitation’.
Breloer’s Speer & Hitler, the topic of Axel Bangert’s essay (Chapter 9),
combines the techniques of the documentary film – it contains lots
of historical footage, but also interviews with Speer’s children as well
as Leni Riefenstahl and Speer biographer Joachim Fest – with those of
the television drama. Though presented as a biopic of Hitler’s archi-
tect and minister of armaments, Speer & Hitler, according to Bangert,
is not so much about Speer as it is about Hitler, or rather: Hitler’s ‘seduc-
tive charisma’. By showing him through the eyes of Speer, Breloer’s film
turns Hitler into a Mephistophelean character, which leaves Speer – and
by implication the German people – with the role of the Faustian fol-
lower. For Bangert, Speer & Hitler thus lacks critical distance to its two
protagonists and ultimately reinforces not just to the myth of Hitler’s
evil aura, but also the legend of Speer – a legend created, originally, by
Speer himself and disseminated subsequently by Fest – as the ‘gentle-
man Nazi, who was misled and then repented, who was driven by good
intentions and . . . a little bit of opportunism and who simply became
enthralled, as so many others, by Hitler’ (Wolfgang Benz).82
In his conclusion to the volume, Johannes von Moltke (Chapter 10)
reviews the principal arguments put forth by the authors as well as
the recurrent preoccupations and motifs that have defined the filmic
representations of Hitler in post-war Germany. He takes as his point of
departure Thomas Mann’s famous 1938 essay ‘That Man is my Brother’
(‘Bruder Hitler’) which places the Führer at an aesthetic distance and
at the same time recognizes his proximity, however uncomfortable, as
a ‘brother’.83 The Hitler films made in Germany, from The Last Ten
Days to Downfall, are characterized, von Moltke argues, by this ‘unre-
solved dialectic of intimacy and remove’. While he sees deep structural
similarities between earlier films such as Fest’s Hitler: A Career and
Eichinger’s Downfall in this respect, he also points up important dif-
ferences, contrasting Syberberg’s Hitler – A Film from Germany with
subsequent attempts at (re-)mythification. The recent turn towards a
more ‘human’ portrayal of Hitler is the inevitable effect of the dialectic
sketched by Mann: ‘as our historical distance from Hitler grows . . . , so
does the number of attempts to move in closer on the historical figure,
to decrease distance and increase intimacy’. Von Moltke ends his reflec-
tions on Hitler films past by considering the future possibility of an
adequate representation of the Führer on film. He states this possibility
in the form of another paradox, saying that the right moment for such
a film will have come when it is no longer relevant, when ‘nothing any
longer is at stake in so risky an undertaking’.84 For the foreseeable future,
however, despite declarations of ‘Hitler fatigue’,85 Hitler films remain
relevant, risky undertakings, and as the following chapters suggest, the
stakes remain high.
Notes
1. See Wolfram Schütte, ‘Der Erlöser ruft oder: Parzival sucht Bayreuth. Hans
Jürgen Syberbergs siebenstündiger ‘Hitler – ein Film aus Deutschland”, Frank-
furter Rundschau (16 June 1978) for a particularly negative critique, but cf.
Hans C. Blumbenberg, ‘Träume in Trümmern’, Die Zeit 28 (7 July 1978)
and especially Susan Sontag, ‘Eye of the Storm’, New York Review of Books
(21 February 1980), reprinted as ‘Syberberg’s Hitler’ in Susan Sontag, Under
the Sign of Saturn (New York, 1980), pp. 137–65, for more appreciative
assessments.
2. On the Hitler wave of the 1970s see Anneliese Mannzmann (ed.), Hitlerwelle
und historische Fakten (Königstein, 1979), Eberhard Jäckel, ‘Litaraturbericht:
Rückblick auf die sogenannte Hitler-Welle’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und
Unterricht 28 (1977), pp. 695–711, Marion Dönhoff, ‘Was bedeutet die
Hitlerwelle?’, Die Zeit 37 (9 September 1977), William Carr, ‘Histori-
ans and the Hitler Phenomenon’, German Life and Letters 34, 2 (Jan-
uary 1981), pp. 260–72, and Gordon Craig, ‘Hitler and the New Genera-
tion’, in Gordon Craig, The Germans (London, 1991), pp. 61–79. See also
Matthias N. Lorenz, ‘Faszinosum Hitler’, in Torben Fischer and Matthias N.
Lorenz (eds), Lexikon der ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ in Deutschland: Debatten-
und Diskursgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus nach 1945 (Bielefeld, 2009),
pp. 211–21.
3. See Jörg Berlin, Dierk Joachim, et al. (eds), Was verschweigt Fest? Analysen und
Dokumente zum Hitler-Film (Cologne, 1978), and Guido Knopp (ed.), Hitler
heute: Gespräche über ein deutsches Trauma (Aschaffenburg, 1979).
4. See Joachim Fest, Hitler: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt am Main, 1973).
5. This transformation is extensively documented in Fischer and Lorenz
(eds), Lexikon der ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ in Deutschland. See also Charles
Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Iden-
tity (Cambridge, MA, 1988), Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik: Die Anfänge
der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit (Munich, 1996), Aleida Assmann
and Ute Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit – Geschichtsversessenheit. Vom Umgang
mit deutschen Vergangenheiten nach 1945 (Stuttgart, 1999), Edgar Wolfrum,
Geschichtspolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Der Weg zur bundesrepub-
likanischen Erinnerung 1948–1990 (Darmstadt, 1999), Robert Moeller, War
Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley,
CA, 2001), Norbert Frei, 1945 und wir. Das Dritte Reich im Bewußtsein der
Introduction 19
Deutschen (Munich, 2005), and Wulf Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory:

History, Television and Politics after Auschwitz (Athens, OH, 2006).
6. See, for example, Moshe Zuckermann (ed.), Medien – Politik – Geschichte
(Göttingen, 2003). On representations of World War II and the Holo-
caust in German cinema and television, see Anton Kaes, From Hitler to
Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge, MA, 1989), Wolfgang
Becker and Norbert Schöll, In jenen Tagen . . . Wie der deutsche Nachkriegsfilm
die Vergangenheit bewältigte (Opladen, 1995), Heiko R. Blum, 30 Jahre
danach. Dokumentation zur Auseinandersetzung mit dem Nationalsozialismus
im Film 1945 bis 1975 (Cologne, 1975), Christoph Classen (ed.),
Bilder der Vergangenheit. Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus im Fernsehen
der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1955–1965 (Cologne, 1999), Christiane
Fritsche, Vergangenheitsbewältigung im Fernsehen. Westdeutsche Filme über den
Nationalsozialismus in dern 1950er und 60er Jahren (Munich, 2003), Brigitte
J. Hahn, Umerziehung durch Dokumentarfilm? Ein Instrument amerikanischer
Kulturpolitik im Nachkriegsdeutschland (1945–1953) (Münster, 1997), Thomas
Möller (ed.), Die Vergangenheit in der Gegenwart. Konfrontationen mit den
Folgen des Holocaust im deutschen Nachkriegsfilm (Frankfurt am Main, 2001)
and Frank Bösch, ‘Moving History: Fictional Films and the Nazi past in
Germany since the late 1970s’, in Sylvia Paletschek (ed.), Popular Histo-
riographies in the 19th and 20th Century (Oxford, 2011), pp. 103–20. For
more general discussions see Manuel Köppen and Klaus R. Scherpe (eds),
Bilder des Holocaust. Literatur – Film – bildende Kunst (Cologne, 1997), Matias
Martinez (ed.), Der Holocaust und die Künste. Medialität und Authentizität
von Holocaust-Darstellungen in Literatur, Film, Video, Malerei, Denkmälern,
Comic und Musik (Bielefeld, 2004), Waltraud Wende (ed.), Geschichte im Film.
Mediale Inszenierung des Holocaust und kulturelles Gedächtnis (Stuttgart, 2002),
and Peter Reichel, Erfundene Erinnerung: Weltkrieg und Judenmord in Film und
Theater (Munich, 2004).
7. On the notion of a second Hitler wave see Jürgen Pelzer, ‘ “The Facts Behind
the Guilt”? Background and Implicit Intentions in Downfall’, German Politics
and Society 25, 81/1 (Spring 2007), pp. 90–101 (here 90–1). On the conti-
nuities between the first Hitler wave and the second see Henryk M. Broder,
‘Alles Adolf’, Der Spiegel 12 (17 March 2008).
8. Joachim Fest, Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches (Berlin,
2002). See also Joachim Fest and Bernd Eichinger, Der Untergang: Das
Filmbuch (Reinbek, 2004). Eichinger not only adapted Fest’s book for the
screen, but also produced the film. Martin Brady and Helen Hughes, ‘Down-
fall and Beyond: Hitler Films from Germany’, German as a Foreign Language
Journal 3 (2006), pp. 94–114 (here 94–5), rightly emphasize that Downfall is
‘Eichinger’s film’, rather than Hirschbiegel’s.
9. On Speer & Hitler see Judith Keilbach, ‘National Socialism as Docudrama: On
Programmed Ambivalence in Heinrich Breloer’s Speer & Hitler’, New German
Critique 34 (Fall 2007), pp. 61–74; Tobias Ebbrecht, ‘Docudramatizing History
on TV: German and British docudrama and historical event television in the
memorial year 2005’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 10, 1 (2007), pp. 35–
53, and Christiane Peitz, ‘Der Blender’, Der Tagesspiegel (12 May 2005).
10. These documentaries are Knopp’s in the sense that as head of the
editorial office for contemporary history (‘Redaktion Zeitgeschichte’) of
ZDF, Germany’s state-run Channel 2, he has devised, supervised, or pro-

duced nearly all of them. Knopp directed Hitlers Helfer (Hitler’s Henchmen,
1996/1998) and the first episode of Hitlers Krieger (Hitler’s Warriors, 1998). He
is listed as executive producer for the television miniseries Hitler: A Profile
(1995) and as supervising commissioning editor as well as writer (supervisor)
for Hitler and Women (2011), the fifth and penultimate episode of the docu-
mentary series Geheimnisse des ‘Dritten Reiches’ (Secrets of the Third Reich). On
Knopp’s Hitler documentaries see Wulf Kansteiner, ‘Die Radikalisierung des
deutschen Gedächtnisses im Zeitalter seiner kommerziellen Reproduktion:
Hitler und das Dritte Reich in den Fernsehdokumentationen von Guido
Knopp’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 51 (2003), pp. 626–48; repub-
lished in English as ‘The Radicalization of German Memory in the Age
of its Commercial Reproduction: Hitler and the Third Reich in the TV
Documentaries of Guido Knopp’, in Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory,
pp. 154–80.
11. For a critical discussion of Moers’ Hitler comics, which were first pub-
lished in the German satirical magazine Titanic in 1997 and form the
backdrop to his animated short film ADOLF – I’m Sitting in my Bunker, see
Thomas Jung, ‘Pop-Icon Adolf Hitler. Hitler-Comics and Collective Mem-
ory in Contemporary Germany’, in Klaus L. Berghahn and Jost Hermand
(eds), Unmasking Hitler: Cultural Representations of Hitler from the Weimar
Republic to the Present (Bern, 2005), pp. 237–57. See also Annina Klappert,
‘Comic und Kulturpolitik. Der Hitler-Comic als Hitler-Denkmal’, in Susanne
Düwell and Matthias Schmidt (eds), Narrative der Shoa. Repräsentationen der
Vergangenheit in Historiographie, Kunst und Politik (Paderborn, 2002), pp. 143–
69, and Ulrike Kruse, ‘Das Dilemma der ideologischen Codierung. Der Leser
als Textfunktion in Walter Moers’ Adolf ’, in Thomas Jung (ed.), Alles nur
Pop? Anmerkungen zur populären und Pop-Literatur seit 1990 (Bern, 2002),
pp. 185–211. See also Alexandra Tacke, ‘De/Festing Hitler. Das Spiel mit den
Masken des Bösen’, in Erhard Schütz and Wolfgang Hardtwig (eds), Keiner
kommt davon. Zeitgeschichte in der Literatur nach 1945 (Göttingen, 2008),
pp. 266–85.
12. The clips in question, usually re-subtitled adaptations of the climactic scene
in Downfall that shows Hitler, played by Bruno Ganz, angrily confronting
his generals on receiving the news that the attack of Army Detachment
Steiner has not taken place, are among the internet’s most ubiquitous
and enduring memes. On the curious appeal of the parodies see Virginia
Heffernan, ‘The Hitler Meme’, The New York Times Magazine (24 October
2008): ‘In the best parodies – and ‘Hillary’s Downfall’ is a good one – Ganz
embodies the role assigned him by the parodist by the time his glasses
come off. This is the moment in the original film after Hitler has been
informed that he cannot win; as he eases up on denial, he’s coming down
on fury. In ‘Hillary’s Downfall,’ you can’t believe how quickly the haircut
and costume recede and the Hitler factor fades, eclipsed by Ganz’s tough
old fork-tongued grandpa performance. Hitler becomes not the author of
the Holocaust but a salty dog who, though all is lost, doesn’t stop pierc-
ing pretense and speaking in slangy, heartfelt language, expressing the most
deeply felt needs of the human id. We may have repressed that speak-for-
the-people Hitler, the one he decided to be in ‘Mein Kampf’; but in the form
Introduction 21
of these videos, he has returned.’ See also Finlo Rohrer, ‘The rise, rise and rise
of the Downfall Hitler parody’, BBC News (April 13, 2010). Available online
at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8617454.stm (accessed on 11 June 2012). The
most comprehensive and up-to-date account of the phenomenon can be
found online at http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/downfall-hitler-reacts.
On representations of Hitler in the internet see Sonja M. Schultz, ‘Hitler
2.0: Der Diktator im Internet’, in Rainer Roth and Karin Herbst-Meßlinger,
Hitler darstellen: Zur Entwicklung und Bedeutung einer filmischen Figur (Munich,
2008), pp. 86–100.
13. See Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, ‘Der Frühling des Patriarchen: Über den
Schauspieler Armin Mueller-Stahl und sein Regie-Debüt “Gespräch mit dem
Biest” ’, Die Zeit 9 (21 February 1997) and Alexandra Hissen, Hitler im
deutschsprachigen Spielfilm nach 1945: Ein filmgeschichtlicher Überblick (Trier,
2010), pp. 135–47.
14. On Tabori’s play see Klaus L. Berghahn, ‘ “Hitler and His Jew”: Notes on
George Tabori’s Mein Kampf ’, in Berghahn and Hermand (eds), Unmasking
Hitler, pp. 193–211.
15. The film is in fact the adaptation of a stage play and was ‘shot over three days
in front of a live audience at Berlin’s Hebbel Am Ufer theatre in November
2007’. During post-production it was ‘infused with special optical effects for
limited theatrical release in 2009’: Kevin Gilvear, ‘Captain Berlin vs Hitler’,
DVD Times, available online at: http://www.joergbuttgereit.com/english/
films/features/captain-berlin-vs-hitler/. The principal conceit of Buttgereit’s
underground burlesque is a counter-factual scenario: Hitler’s physician,
Dr Ilse von Blitzen, has preserved his brain and is now (the year is 1973)
trying to re-embody it – with the help of Dracula. Hitler is seen for most of
the film as an over-sized piece of gray matter with two googly eyes, conserved
beneath a glass case on top of a silver robot.
16. This mammoth documentary was broadcast by VOX, a popular private
German television station, beginning on 30 April 2011, the 66th anniver-
sary of Hitler’s death. The series, which relies almost exclusively on historical
footage and eyewitness accounts, was directed by Michael Kloft and pro-
duced by Alexander Kluge’s company dctp, in co-operation with SPIEGEL
TV. It was based on an original idea by Kluge. See Nikolaus von Festenberg,
‘Marathon-Doku über Hitler: Der “Führer”, flambiert’, Der Spiegel (30 April
2011).
17. In a recent interview, Margrit Frölich, one of the leading experts in the
field, remarked that ‘for a long time, it was considered taboo to represent
Hitler in film. It was [regarded as] offensive. [Directors] avoided [this topic]
like the plague: Margrit Frölich, ‘Hitler-Figuren: “Die Aura zertrümmern” ’,
Deutsche Welle (1 June 2009). Available online at: http://www.dw-world.de/
dw/article/0„4289395,00.html. See also Kate Connolly, ‘Germany breaks the
Hitler taboo’, The Daily Telegraph (24 August 2004): ‘A decades-long taboo
was broken in Germany yesterday with the launch of a feature film in which
Adolf Hitler appears for the first time in a central role, not as a ranting
demagogue but as a soft-spoken dreamer. Downfall is a huge shift from the
previous tendency in German cinema to show Hitler only as a background
figure or a character who does not appear on camera at all.’ As the essays
in Part I of this volume suggest, the claim that there was a ‘Hitler taboo’ in
German film since 1945 is something of a simplification.
18. Alexandra Hissen, Hitler im deutschsprachigen Spielfilm nach 1945. Ein
filmgeschichtlicher Überblick (Trier, 2010). See also Rainer Rother and Karin
Herbst-Meßlinger (eds), Hitler darstellen: Zur Entwicklung und Bedeutung einer
filmischen Figur (Munich, 2008), Yael Ben-Moshe, Hitler konstruieren: Die
Darstellung Adolf Hitlers in deutschen und amerikanischen Spielfilmen 1945–
2009. Eine Analyse zur Formung kollektiver Erinnerung (Leipziger Univer-
sitätsverlag, 2012) and Martin Brady and Helen Hughes, ‘Downfall and
Beyond’, pp. 94–114. Margrit Frölich, Hanno Loewy and Heinz Steinert
(eds), Lachen über Hitler – Auschwitz-Gelächter? Filmkomödie, Satire und Holo-
caust (Munich, 2003), Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Deutsches Filmwunder: Nazis immer
besser (Hamburg, 2006), Judith Keilbach, Geschichtsbilder und Zeitzeugen. Zur
Darstellung des Nationalsozialismus im bundesdeutschen Fernsehen (Münster,
2008), and Sonja M. Schultz, Der Nationalsozialismus im Film: Von Triumph
des Willens bis Inglourious Basterds (Munich, 2012) touch on the image
of Hitler only tangentially. But see the excellent discussions of Downfall
and Speer & Hitler in Margrit Frölich, Christian Schneider, and Karsten
Visarius (eds), Das Böse im Blick: Die Gegenwart des Nationalsozialismus im
Film (Munich, 2007), pp. 45–98, and 113–42, resp. See also Roel Vande
Winkel, ‘Hitler’s Downfall, a film from Germany (Der Untergang, 2004)’, in
Leen Engelen, Roel Vande Winkel (eds), Perspectives on European Film and
History (Gent, 2007), pp. 183–221, Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, The World Hitler
Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism (Cambridge, 2011),
pp. 199–374.
19. It should be emphasized, in this context, that German controversies over
Hitler’s screen image between 1945 and 1990 were almost exclusively
West German controversies. For filmmakers in the GDR, Hitler evidently
was much less of a hot potato. In Kurt Maetzig’s DEFA production Ernst
Thälmann: Führer seiner Klasse (Ernst Thälmann: Leader of his Class, 1955),
for instance, he plays a prominent supporting role. Within the parameters
of East Germany’s anti-fascist reinterpretation of the Nazi past, Hitler was
just that: a supporting actor, that is to say, a puppet of big business and
‘monopoly capitalism’. See Detlef Kannapin, ‘ “Es versucht zu sprechen: der
Führer!”: Hitler-Bilder in Ost und West’, in Rother and Herbst-Meßlinger,
Hitler darstellen, pp. 42–53.
20. The film critic of the New York Times, incidentally, concurred with the
German reviewers, calling The Last Ten Days a ‘profitless account of an
episode in history that can gratify only the morbid now’: see Bosely
Crowther, ‘ “The Last Ten Days”: German Film Tells of Hitler’s Downfall’,
The New York Times (12 April 1956).
21. For a comparative reading of Downfall and Pabst’s Der letzte Akt (The Last
Ten Days, 1955) see Andreas Kilb, ‘Ein Mahnmal, ein Reißer, ein Meisterwerk?
Das Ende Adolf Hitlers im Kino: Der letzte Akt von Georg Wilhelm Pabst und
Der Untergang von Oliver Hirschbiegel im Vergleich’, in Frölich et al. (eds),
Das Böse im Blick, pp. 87–98.
22. See, for example, Michael Kohler, ‘Der Untergang’, film-dienst 19 (16 Septem-
ber 2004), Jens Jessen, ‘Stilles Ende eines Irren unter Tage’, Die Zeit 36 (26
August 2004), and Wim Wenders, ‘Tja, dann wollen wir mal’, Die Zeit 44
(21 October 2004). A collection of critical interpretations can be found in
Introduction 23
Willi Bischof (ed.), Filmri:ss. Studien über den Film ‘Der Untergang’ (Münster,
2005).
23. See, for example, Frank Schirrmacher, ‘Die zweite Erfindung Hitlers’,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (16 September 2004), Claudia Schmölders,
‘Zum Tee beim Monster – “Der Untergang” als Zerreißprobe in den
Erinnerungskulturen’, Frankfurter Rundschau (25 October 2004), and Sven
Felix Kellerhoff, ‘ “Es menschelt nicht”: Die deutschen Historiker sahen “Der
Untergang” ’. Die Welt (17 September 2004). On the very positive initial
response to the film by the German print media see Rudolf Walther, ‘Die
Windmacher – “Hitler geht immer”: eine mediale Großkoalition wirbt für
den Film “Der Untergang” ’, Freitag (24 September 2004). For a survey of
the media response to the film see Waltraud Wende, ‘Mehr als Historizität:
Der Untergang (2004) als kontrovers diskutiertes Medienereignis’, in Waltraud
Wende, Filme, die Geschichte(n) erzählen. Filmanalyse als Medienkulturanalyse
(Würzburg, 2011), pp. 89–111.
24. The demand for Hitler documentaries and docudramas does not seem to
be waning, as evidenced by the recent slate of films directed by Bernd
Fischerauer, notably Hitler vor Gericht (Hitler before the Law, 2009) and Die
Machtergreifung (The Seizure of Power, 2012).
25. On Lommel’s Adolf und Marlene see Wolfgang Limmer, ‘Romanze in Ulk’, Der
Spiegel 17 (18 April 1977) and Hissen, Hitler im deutschsprachigen Spielfilm,
pp. 70–80.
26. On Schlingensief’s 100 Years of Adolf Hitler see Burkhard Lindner,
‘Schlingensiefs “Untergang” ’, in Frölich et al. (eds), Das Böse im Blick,
pp. 98–110, Bernd Maubach, Christoph Schlingensiefs Deutschlandtrilogie:
Geschichts- und Gesellschaftsdiagnose im Film (Norderstedt, 2005), and Hissen,
Hitler im deutschsprachigen Spielfilm, pp. 123–33. On the Hitler films directed
by Buttgereit and Karmakar see Hissen, Hitler im deutschsprachigen Film,
pp. 105–16.
27. See, for example, Joachim Güntner, ‘Der “Führer” als Spassfaktor’,
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (27 January 2007) on Levy’s Mein Führer; on
Goebbels and Geduldig see ‘Goebbels comedy hits Germany’, BBC News
(21 November 2002). Available online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
entertainment/tv_and_radio/2495839.stm (accessed 11 June 2012) and Mark
Landler, ‘German Comedy Lances the Nazis, but “The Producers” Is Safe’,
New York Times (25 November 2002): ‘The trouble with “Goebbels and
Geduldig,” some critics said, was the Nazi figure it chose to satirize. “We
know Goebbels did so much more than write speeches,” said Jürgen Michael
Schulz, a lecturer in film history at the Free University of Berlin. “He was one
of the masterminds of the Holocaust. In this film, we only see him giving
speeches.” ’
28. On Mein Führer see Cristina Nord, ‘Ein schüchterner Film’, die tageszeitung
(10 January 2007) and Michael Althen, ‘Die wirklich plattesten Plattheiten’,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (11 January 2007); on Goebbels and Geduldig
see Sven Felix Kellerhoff, ‘Dreiste Montage’, Die Welt (20 November 2002):
‘A comedy does not have to be historically accurate – Chaplin’s grotesque
[The Great Dictator, 1940] is not, and neither is Lubitsch’s satire [To Be or Not
to Be, 1942] nor Benigni’s parable [La vita è bella, English title: Life is Beautiful,
1997]. But a comedy has to be one thing for sure: funny. One can make jokes
about the Third Reich, even about its leadership, the most ridiculous and at
the same time the most violent gang of criminals in world history. Goebbels
and Geduldig, however, fails tragically.’
29. See ‘ “Harald Schmidt” gibt Hitler’, netzeitung.de (18 February 2005). Available
online at: http://www.netzeitung.de/medien/326235.html (accessed 11 June
2012). For an astute analysis of Schmidt’s uses of parody see Ofer Ashkenazi,
‘Ridiculous Trauma: Comic Representations of the Nazi Past in Contempo-
rary German Visual Culture’, Cultural Critique 78 (Spring 2011), pp. 88–118
(here 105–07).
30. See ‘Hitler’s Rant About a Leasing Contract a Hit on YouTube’, Deutsche Welle
(19 January 2007). Available online at: http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0„23132
47_page_0,00.html (accessed 11 June 2012).
31. ‘Dürfen wir über Hitler lachen? Interview mit Dani Levy’, Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung (17 December 2006). For a more general reflection on
comic representations of Hitler see Joachim Paech, ‘Das Komische als reflex-
ive Figur im Hitler- oder Holocaust-Film’, in Frölich et al. (eds), Lachen über
Hitler (Munich, 2003), pp. 65–82. See also Peter Finn, ‘Hitler humor, once
taboo, finds audience in Germany’, Washington Post (12 September 2000).
32. See Michael Bitala, ‘Der bekannteste Deutsche’, Süddeutsche Zeitung (9
November 1995).
33. See Hans-Jürgen Jakobs, ‘Die Clip-Schule vom Lerchenberg’, Der Spiegel 46
(15 November 1999).
34. See Hans-Ulrich Wehler, ‘Sondertalent Hitler: Eine Zwischenbilanz zur ZDF-
Serie’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 273 (23 November 1995).
35. Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory, pp. 175–7, 180.
36. See Verena Friederike Hasel, ‘Hitler: eine Medienkarriere’, Der Tagesspiegel (22
October 2007). On Hitler’s prominence in German popular culture more gen-
erally see Daniel Erk, So viel Hitler war selten: Die Banalisierung des Bösen oder
Warum der Mann mit dem kleinen Bart nicht totzukriegen ist (Munich, 2012)
and Erk’s ‘Hitler blog’, available online at http://blogs.taz.de/hitlerblog/.
37. Norbert Frei, ‘Gefühlte Geschichte’, Die Zeit 44 (21 October 2004): ‘There has
never been so much Hitler. The medial presence of the “Führer” that we are
experiencing at the moment is without equal, at least for the past 60 years.
It surpasses the dictator’s public presence in the months before his suicide
in the bunker and makes all previous Hitler waves seem flat. Compared to
the flood of fictional images and strained memoirs [forcierten Erinnerungs-
büchern] that is currently washing over us, the real “downfall” of the “Third
Reich” appears almost trivial.’
38. See Frölich et al. (eds), Das Böse im Blick, p. 8: ‘Film – whether it is documen-
tary, historical drama, or docu-drama – has proved to be the most dominant
historiographical medium; to such an extent that our historical knowledge
has become entirely dependent on it.’
39. Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German
Film, revised and expanded edition (Princeton, NJ, 2004), pp. 182–3.
40. See Eric Santner, Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory, and Film in Postwar
Germany (Ithaca, NY, 1990). See also Eric Santner, ‘The Trouble with Hitler:
Postwar German Aesthetics and the Legacy of Fascism’, New German Critique
57 (Autumn 1992), pp. 5–24.
41. See Pierre Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory, 3 vols (New York, 1996–98). See also
Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford, 1999).
Introduction 25
42. See Jan Assmann and Tonio Hölscher, Kultur und Gedächtnis (Frankfurt
am Main, 1988), esp. pp. 9–19; see also Jan Assman, ‘Collective Mem-
ory and Cultural Identity’, New German Critique 65 (Spring/Summer 1995),
pp. 125–33.
43. Gerhard Weinberg (ed.), Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein
Kampf (New York, 2003), p. xxvi.
44. Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford,
1989), esp. pp. 69–70.
45. See Martin Loiperdinger, Rituale der Mobilmachung. Der Parteitagsfilm
“Triumph des Willens” von Leni Riefenstahl (Opladen, 1987) and Linda
Deutschmann, Triumph of the Will. The Image of the Third Reich (Wakefield,
NH, 1991).
46. See Rudolf Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler: Fotografie als Medium des Führer-Mythos
(Munich, 1994). See also Martin Loiperdinger, Rudolf Herz and Ulrich
Pohlmann (eds), Führerbilder: Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Stalin in Fotografie
und Film (Munich, 1995), esp. the contributions by Richard Bessel, Eike
Henning, and Rudolf Herz (pp. 14–65).
47. See Stephan Dolezel and Martin Loiperdinger, ‘Hitler in Parteitagsfilm und
Wochenschau’, in Loiperdinger et al. (eds), Führerbilder, pp. 77–101, and
Peter Zimmermann and Kay Hoffmann (eds), Geschichte des dokumentarischen
Films in Deutschland. Band 3: ‘Drittes Reich’ (1933–1945) (Ditzingen, 2005).
Tony Barta, ‘Film Nazis: The Great Escape’, in Tony Barta (ed.), Screening the
Past: Film and the Representation of History (Westport, Conn., 1998), pp. 127–
48 (here p. 130) aptly remarks: ‘To this day many people consider Hitler
unlikely material for a star: don’t listen to their movie tips. That he was the
first and archetypal screen Nazi is of an importance hard to overestimate:
his performance and its presentation on the screen was designed, literally, to
upstage all others, to fix an image of the National Socialist movement and
its dynamic Leader in the consciousness of a newly film-conscious world.’
48. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Hitler – A Film from Germany, trans. Joachim
Neugroschel (New York, 1982), p. 5.
49. Santner, Stranded Objects, p. 143.
50. Some of the critics of the first Hitler wave had already argued that the
claim to historical objectivity was but a pretext for new myth-making: see,
for example, Jochen Teichler, ‘Die neue Lüge heißt Objektivität’, Vorwärts
1 (5 January 1978).
51. Charles Mitchell, The Hitler Filmography: Worldwide Feature Film and Television
Miniseries Portrayals (Jefferson, NC, 2002).
52. The Hitler films with Chaplin and Watson, of course, were themselves
critical responses to the glorified images of Hitler generated in Nazi pro-
paganda films such as Triumph of the Will (1934): see David Bathrick,
‘Cinematic Remaskings of Hitler: From Riefenstahl to Chaplin’, in Berghahn
and Hermand (eds), Unmasking Hitler, pp. 147–70. See Ronny Loewy, ‘Kon-
strukte des Bösen in den Filmstudios von Los Angeles: Hitler als Figur in
Hollywood’, in Rother and Herbst-Meßlinger, Hitler darstellen, pp. 34–41.
53. See, for example, Kilb, ‘Ein Mahnmal, ein Reißer, ein Meisterwerk?’,
pp. 87–98, and Michael Töteberg, ‘Kann man Hitler verfilmen? “Der
Untergang” hat einen historischen Vorläufer: G.W. Pabsts “Der letzte Akt” ’,
film-dienst 19 (16 September 2004).
54. The emergence of more globalized Hitlerbilder in the wake of a more

globalized film market cuts both ways, of course. Comparing the domes-
tic total gross of Downfall ($39,061,389), for instance, to its foreign total
gross ($53,119,521) and seeing the extraordinary popularity of the Downfall
parodies on YouTube – the vast majority of them with English subti-
tles – one could argue that screen images made in Germany have begun
to condition, in their turn, the ways that Hitler is viewed around the
world. Knopp’s Hitler documentaries have been broadcast in over 50 coun-
tries, notably on the History Channel (USA), RAI (Italy), Channel 4 (Great
Britain) and on Belgian, Latvian, and Israeli television. His five-part series
Hitler’s Children was recently aired in Burkina Faso. Frank Bösch, ‘Entgrenzte
Geschichtsbilder? Fernsehen, Film und Holocaust in Europa und den USA
1945–1980’, in Ute Daniel and Axel Schildt (eds), Massenmedien im Europa
des 20. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 2010), pp. 413–37, offers insightful reflections
on the ‘globalization’ of German history in the screen media.
55. See the perceptive remarks by Georg Seeßlen, ‘Mr. Tarantinos Kriegser-
klärung’, Der Spiegel (16 August 2009): ‘At the end of “Inglourious Basterds”
the representatives of absolute evil are more than dead. They are kaputt.
Hitler is gunned down, burnt, shot to pieces. And the film does not even
grant him an epic finale: there is no fade-out, no freeze frame, no last gaze
into the camera, no insert and no elegiac music. There is not even a proper
image of his destruction, to be exact. The fascist aesthetic shows the dying
hero in order to turn him into an eternal image, into a martyr . . . The death
images [Todesbilder] of post-fascism have only demonized this process or
associated it with regret. Thus the image lingered as an idée fixe. The “Hitler
within us”, the “human Hitler”, the immortal beast: these are the unfinished
images that post-fascist society fears and at the same time obsesses about.
German culture in particular has been inexplicably “addicted to Hitler”
[“Hitler-süchtig”]. [ . . . ] [“Inglourious Basterds” is] one of the few films that
does not, as it were, perpetuate the story of German fascism, that does not
fall for the Nazi death kitsch, that boorishly and effortlessly transcends the
burdensome myth . . . ’
56. Sue Summers, ‘Now the Germans have their say’, The Observer (20 March
2005), rightly emphasizes the differences: ‘The subject of Hitler’s final days
has been dealt with in many other films, notably in Hitler: The Last 10 Days
with Alec Guinness and The Bunker with Anthony Hopkins. There seems to
be no limit to the public appetite for chronicles of the weird atmosphere of
Hitler’s last refuge, with the Russians only a few streets away and the terror
of the Third Reich’s lost control manifested in all sorts of ways, including
drunkenness, fantasy and lechery. Some people have called this voyeuristic
fascination almost a kind of pornography. The great difference is that these
previous films were made by the British and Americans – ie the victors. Down-
fall is made by Germans – or, as Eichinger puts it, “the bad guys”. It is the
latest manifestation of the extended soul-searching that has been going on
in Germany since the war and the first feature film since 1956 to give Hitler
a central dramatic role’.
57. See, for example, Peter Beddies, ‘Bruno Ganz und sein Kampf mit Hitler’,
Die Welt, 7 July 2008; and Peter Beddies, ‘Desperately seeking Adolf’, The
Guardian, 25 March 2005.
Introduction 27
58. For more general methodological criticisms see Frank Bösch, ‘Das
“Dritte Reich” ferngesehen. Geschichtsvermittlung in der historischen
Dokumentation’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 50 (1999),
pp. 204–20, and Oliver Näpel, ‘Historisches Lernen durch “Dokutainment”?
Ein geschichtsdidaktischer Aufriss. Chancen und Grenzen einer neuen
Ästhetik populärer Geschichtsdokumentationen, analysiert am Beispiel der
Sendereihen Guido Knopps’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtsdidaktik 2 (2003),
pp. 213–44. See also Frank Schirrmacher, ‘Hitler, nach Knopp. Enthusiasmus
des Bösen – Die neue Ästhetik des ZDF’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(18 April 1998), Judith Keilbach, ‘Mit dokumentarischen Bildern effek-
tvoll Geschichte erzählen. Die historischen Aufnahmen in Guido Knopps
Geschichtsdokumentationen’, medien + erziehung 42 (1998), pp. 355–61,
Karsten Linne, ‘Hitler als Quotenbringer’, Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte
des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 17, 2 (2002), pp. 90–101, Peter Kümmel,
‘Ein Volk in der Zeitmaschine’, Die Zeit 10 (26 February 2004), and
Frank Bösch, ‘Holokaust mit “K”. Audiovisuelle Narrative in neueren
Fernsehdokumentationen’, in Gerhard Paul (ed.), Visual History. Die Historiker
und die Bilder (Göttingen, 2006), pp. 326–342.
59. For Welzer, this ‘recoding’ of German memorial culture is largely defined
by the new discourse on German victimhood. See his comments in
‘Die Nazizeit fasziniert noch immer, weil wir keine Utopien mehr haben’
(Interview with Aleida Assmann and Harald Welzer), taz (19 February
2005).
60. On this relationship see the classic studies by Paul Smith (ed.), The Histo-
rian and Film (Cambridge, 1976), Pierre Sorlin, The Film in History: Restaging
the Past (Oxford, 1980), Marc Ferro, Cinema and History (Detroit, 1988),
and Robert A. Rosenstone, Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to our
Idea of History (Cambridge, MA, 1995). See also Robert A. Rosenstone (ed.),
Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (Princeton, NJ,
1995), Marcia Landy, Cinematic Uses of the Past (Minneapolis, 1996), Vivian
C. Sobchack, The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television and the Modern
Event (New York, 1997), Tony Barta (ed.), Screening the Past: Film and the
Representation of History (Westport, CT, 1998), and Marcia Landy (ed.), The
Historical Film: History and Memory in Media (New Brunswick, NJ, 2001).
61. See Frank Bösch and Constantin Goschler (eds), Public History. Darstellungen
des Nationalsozialismus jenseits der Geschichtswissenschaft (Frankfurt, 2009).
62. See Saul Friedländer, Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the ‘Final
Solution’ (Cambridge, MA, 1992).
63. Terrence Des Pres, ‘Holocaust Laughter’, in Terrence Des Pres (ed.), Writing
into the World (New York, 1991), p. 278.
64. Der Fuehrer’s Face is the title of a popular anti-Nazi propaganda cartoon, star-
ring Donald Duck, released by the Walt Disney Studios in January 1943. See
Claudia Schmölders, Hitler’s Face: The Biography of an Image (Philadelphia,
PA, 2000) for an insightful discussion of the visual representations of
Hitler’s physiognomy up to the late 1940s. For the concept of narrative
‘emplotment’ see Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in
Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD, 1973).
65. Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Imagining Hitler (Bloomington, IN, 1985), a highly crit-
ical assessment of the first Hitler wave and its various ripples in popular
culture since the late 1970s, says he cannot. But cf. Frölich et al. (eds),
Lachen über Hitler, and see also the perceptive comments in Andreas Platthaus
‘Hitler-Parodien: Der Diktator als Prügelknabe’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(5 January 2007).
66. See Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil
(New York, 1998), pp. 251–67.
67. See Emil Fackenheim, Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy:
A Preface to Future Jewish Thought (New York, 1980), p. 157; and Emil
Fackenheim, To Mend the World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought (New
York, 1982), pp. 236, 238, and 319.
68. Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘ “Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead”: Film
and the Challenge of Authenticity’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television 8, 3 (1988), pp. 269–83.
69. See Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death, trans.
Thomas Weyr (New York, 1984), p. 21:
Attention has gradually shifted from the reevocation of Nazism as such,
from the horror and the pain – even if muted by time and transformed
into subdued grief and endless meditation – to voluptuous anguish and
ravishing images, images one would like to see going on forever . . . In the
midst of meditation rises a suspicion of complacency. Some kind of limit
has been overstepped and uneasiness appears: It is the sign of the new
discourse.
70. Ian Kershaw, ‘The Human Hitler’, The Guardian (17 September 2004).
71. On the important role of cinema in the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung
see Heide Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing
National Identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995).
72. Wulf Kansteiner, ‘Losing the War, Winning the Memory Battle: The Legacy
of Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust in the Federal Republic of
Germany’, in: Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner, and Claudio Fogu (eds),
The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (Durham: Duke University Press,
2006), pp. 102–47, here 129.
73. In an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Levy explicitly described
Mein Führer as a ‘Gegenfilm’ (‘counter-film’) to Downfall: see ‘Dürfen wir über
Hitler lachen?’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (17 December 2006).
74. This is a point made by several critics: see, for example, Diedrich
Diederichsen, ‘Der Chef brüllt schon wieder so’, taz (19 September 2004),
and Georg Seeßlen, ‘Das faschistische Subjekt’, Die Zeit (16 September
2004).
75. Hannes Heer, Hitler war’s. Die Befreiung der Deutschen von ihrer Vergangenheit
(Berlin, 2005).
76. See especially Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrear-
ing and the Roots of Violence, transl. Hildegard and Hunter Hannum (New
York, 1983), originally published as Am Anfang war Erziehung (Frankfurt,
1980).
77. On representations of Hitler in German documentary films see Judith
Keilbach, ‘Projektionsfläche Hitler: Zur dokumentarischen Inszenierung
einer historischen Person’, in Rother and Herbst-Meßlinger, Hitler darstellen,
pp. 54–63. See also Boris Schafgans, ‘Hitler als Hitler: Eine Archivfigur
Introduction 29
im Zeitalter von Histotainment und Reality-TV’, in Rother and Herbst-

Meßlinger, Hitler darstellen, pp. 64–85. On representations of the Third
Reich in German television more generally see Keilbach, Geschichtsbilder und
Zeitzeugen.
78. See Linne, ‘Hitler als Quotenbringer’, pp. 91–2.
79. Steve Anderson, ‘History TV and Popular Memory’, in Gary R. Edgerton and
Peter C. Rollins (eds), Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the
Media Age (Lexington, 2001), pp. 19–37 (here 20). On televised historical
dramas and the genre of the docudrama more generally see Derek Paget No
Other Way to Tell it: Dramadoc/Docudrama on Television (Manchester, 1998)
and Derek Paget, ‘Codes and Conventions of Dramadoc and Docudrama’, in
Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill (eds), The Television Studies Reader (London,
2004), pp. 197–208.
80. See Bill Nichols, Representing Reality. Issues and Concepts in Documentary
(Bloomington, IN, 1991) as well as Thomas Fischer and Rainer Wirtz (eds),
Alles authentisch? Popularisierung der Geschichte im Fernsehen (Konstanz, 2008).
81. For a more general discussion of the representations of the Third Reich in
German post-war documentaries see Frank Bösch, ‘Der Nationalsozialismus
im Dokumentarfilm: Geschichtsschreibung im Fernsehen, 1950–1990’, in
Bösch and Goschler (eds), Public History, pp. 52–77.
82. Wolfgang Benz, ‘ “Von den scheußlichen Dingen habe ich nichts gewusst”:
Albert Speer und die Reinszenierung seiner Legende’, Süddeutsche Zeitung (17
May 2005).
83. See Thomas Mann, ‘That Man Is My Brother’, Esquire 31 (March 1939),
pp. 132–3 and Thomas Mann, ‘Bruder Hitler’, Das neue Tage-Buch 7.13
(March 1939), pp. 306–9.
84. Von Moltke is quoting the Austrian critic Friedrich Torberg here: see the essay
by Michael Töteberg in this volume.
85. See Tanya Gold, ‘Nazi cows, Nazi cats, actors playing depressed Nazis. It’s all
just Hitler porn’, The Guardian (23 April 2009): ‘I could go on. I could fill
your eyes and ears with Nazi tat . . . I could tell you about the Cats Who Look
Like Hitler web page – “click here to add your Kitler”. I could tell you about
Norman Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest, which featured Hitler’s disgusting
adolescence. Hitler has guest-starred in South Park, The Twilight Zone, Red
Dwarf, Monty Python and The Simpsons. He has appeared in a sitcom called
Heil Honey I’m Home! . . . He appears in a video game called Snoopy Versus
the Red Baron and a comic called the New Adventures of Hitler. In novels he
has lived in a cage under the Kremlin and tried to clone himself. Salvador
Dalí painted Hitler Masturbating. In the film Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn,
he escapes from hell . . . This disgusts me . . . So I have Nazi ennui. Hitler
fatigue.’
Films cited
Adler, Peter, et al., Hitlers Manager (Germany, 2004).
Axer, Oliver and Susanne Benze, Hitlers Hitparade (Germany, 2005).
Bauer, Christian, The Ritchie Boys (Canada and Germany, 2004).
Baumann, Tobi, Der Wixxer (Germany, 2004).
Benigni, Roberto, La vita è bella (Italy, 1997).

Brauburger, Stefan, et al., Hitlers Kinder (Germany, 2001).
—, Hitlers Frauen (Germany, 2000)
Breloer, Heinrich, Speer und Er (Germany, 2005).
Brooks, Mel, The Producers (USA, 1968).
Buttgereit, Jörg, Blutige Exzesse im Führerbunker (West Germany, 1982).
—, Captain Berlin versus Hitler (Germany, 2009).
Chaplin, Charles, The Great Dictator (USA, 1940).
Chomsky, Marvin, Inside the Third Reich (USA, 1982).
Corti, Axel, Ein junger Mann aus dem Innviertel (Austria and West Germany,
1973).
Curtis, Dan, The Winds of War (USA, 1983).
De Concini, Ennio, Hitler: The Last Ten Days (UK and Italy, 1973).
Deick, Christian, et al., Hitlers nützliche Idole (Germany, 2007).
Dietl, Helmut, Schtonk! (Germany, 1992).
Douglas, Gordon, The Devil with Hitler (USA, 1942).
Duguay, Christian, Hitler: The Rise of Evil (Canada and USA, 2003).
Fest, Joachim and Christian Herrendoerfer, Hitler – Eine Karriere (West Germany,
1977).
Fíla, Ivan, et al., Hitler: Eine Bilanz (Germany, 1995).
Fischerauer, Bernd, Hitler vor Gericht (Germany, 2009).
—, Die Machtergreifung (Germany, 2012).
Hamburger, Oliver and Thomas Staehler, Familie Hitler: Im Schatten des Diktators
(Germany, 2005).
Hillesheim, Holger and Wolfgang Schoen, Hitlers Krieger (Germany, 1998).
Hirschbiegel, Oliver, Der Untergang (Germany, Italy, and Austria, 2004).
Hübner, Christoph, Thomas Harlan – Wandersplitter (Germany, 2007).
Karmakar, Romuald, Eine Freundschaft in Deutschland (West Germany, 1985).
Kasten, Ullrich, Hitler & Mussolini – Eine brutale Freundschaft (Germany,
2008).
Kinney, Jack, Der Fuehrer’s Face (USA, 1943).
Kloft, Michael, Ein Tag schreibt Geschichte – 30. April 1945 (Germany, 2011).
Knopp, Guido, Hitlers Helfer (Germany, 1996–97).
Leiser, Erwin, Den blodiga tiden (Sweden/West Germany, 1960).
Levy, Dani, Mein Führer: Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (Germany,
2007).
Lommel, Ulli, Adolf und Marlene (West Germany, 1977).
Lubitsch, Ernst, To Be or Not to Be (USA, 1942).
Maetzig, Kurt, Ernst Thälmann – Führer seiner Klasse (East Germany, 1955).
May, Juliet, Heil Honey I’m Home! (UK, 1990).
Mihaileanu, Radu, Train de Vie (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Israel, and Roma-
nia, 1998).
Moers, Walter and Felix Gönnert, ADOLF – Ich hock’ in meinem Bonker (Germany,
2005)
Mueller-Stahl, Armin, Gespräch mit dem Biest (Germany, 1996).
Müllerschön, Nikolai, Der rote Baron (Germany and UK, 2008).
Odermatt, Urs, Mein Kampf (Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, 2009).
Pabst, Georg W., Der letzte Akt (West Germany and Austria, 1955).
Reese, Laurence, The Nazis: A Warning from History (UK, 1997).
Introduction 31
Riefenstahl, Leni, Triumph des Willens (Germany, 1935).

Richter, Roland Suso, Dresden (Germany, 2006).
Schaefer, George, The Bunker (USA, 1981).
Schlingensief, Christoph, 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler – Die letzte Stunde im Führerbunker
(West Germany, 1989).
Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen, Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland (West Germany, France,
and UK, 1977).
Wessel, Kai, Goebbels und Geduldig (Germany, 2001).
—, Die Flucht (Germany, 2007).
Yamauchi, Shigeyasu, Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn (Japan, 1995).
Part I
Totem and Taboo
1
The Führer’s Fake: Presence
of an Afterlife
Eric Rentschler
Despite the massive amount of information at our disposal, we still do

not know for certain what caused Adolf Hitler to do the things that he
did.1 Soviet soldiers may have recovered his skull near the Berlin bunker,
but ‘a sure sense of Hitler’s mind’ escapes us.2 Both spectral and spectac-
ular, his ever-present countenance remains forever in flux. He may well
not have a grave or memorial, but he hardly lacks sites of remembrance.3
Memories of Hitler resonate above all in the sights and sounds of mod-
ern media rather than in written traces and printed artifacts. Triumph
des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935) has been far more influential in
shaping our sense of this personage than Mein Kampf. Indeed, Hitler’s
biography and his afterlife remain intimately bound to the various his-
torical shapes of audio-visual technology: photography, the print media,
radio, film, and now television and the internet. When Hitler appeared
‘live’, what did the masses see and hear? Now that he is dead, what is left
of him? What does the often-noted fascination with Hitler’s presence
have to do with the lasting presence of that fascination?
At first Hitler employed the live speech as his chief mode of pre-
sentation; he ‘talked for’ and even ‘screamed for’ his future, thrusting
himself onto his audience with his voice rather than (as later) with his
whole figure.4 Without the assistance of the mass media, however, the
orator could not have attained a national following. Coverage in the
Nazi Party daily newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, granted him multi-
regional exposure outside of Bavaria.5 The National Socialists went on to
diversify the politician’s appeal in more specialized organs such as the
radical and elitist Schwarze Korps and the crude and pornographic Der
Stürmer. Even though he ardently wanted to be in the public eye, Hitler,
for reasons that were not fully apparent, emphatically did not wish to
be photographed. To be sure, he was wanted by the police in Prussia
35
36 The Führer’s Fake
Figure 1.1 The trouble with Adolf: Helmut Dietl’s satire Schtonk! (1992) opens
with the toilsome incineration of Hitler (Günther Bader) and Eva Braun (Beate
Loibl). After carefully re-arranging his parting, the SS-man (Michael Kessler)
entrusted with the task discovers that ‘the Führer won’t burn’.
and various North German states where the Nazi Party was outlawed.6
Only in late 1923 did Hitler agree to stand before Heinrich Hoffmann’s
camera. The photographer remade the man, placing the politician in
theatrical poses redolent of silent cinema so as to accentuate certain
body parts, especially his hands (so that they appeared to have cura-
tive power and artistic strength) and his eyes (that became formidable
extensions of his hands). During his rise to power in the 1920s, Hitler
presented himself, much like the poet Stefan George, as a secret emperor
who promulgated the idea of a spiritual Reich. He also modeled himself
after Wilhelm II, the first German media star, who had appeared in over
100 newsreels.
The leader-to-be carefully cultivated a public image. Until 1928, audi-
ences may well have found themselves mesmerized by Hitler’s voice, but
they were often less smitten by his eccentric and unkempt stage pres-
ence. The Hoffmann portraits of 1928–29 were essential in cleaning up
the ruffian veteran’s act and thereby granting Hitler’s face product recog-
nition and the suggestive magnetism that would secure him celebrity
status. His voice resonated because it spoke so compellingly in the name
of dead soldiers, defending a generation of idealistic Germans which, he
claimed, had been betrayed and forsaken. With the coming of radio,
this voice was raised to a higher power. The medium transported his
Eric Rentschler 37
speeches to factories, bars, and the streets. ‘The Führer will now speak’,
it was said, and the nation listened to the radio. During the war, the peo-
ple were electrified by special announcements that were introduced with
a popular fanfare. By 1941, 65 per cent of German households owned a
‘people’s receiver’ (Volksempfänger).7
After Hitler’s ascent to power, Joseph Goebbels, his Reich Minister of
Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, enlisted cinema as the party’s
key instrument of political persuasion. With the arrival of sound film,
the refined image and the reproduced voice would find their ideal
transmitter. Leni Riefenstahl’s chronicle of the 1934 NSDAP Rally at
Nuremberg, Triumph of the Will, abides as National Socialism’s ulti-
mate self-advertisement, the celebration of a new order staged for
almost 60 cameras (30 cinematographers, plus a further 29 newsreel
cameras charged to capture additional footage). The party convention
offered a grand photo opportunity in which politics and showmanship
became indistinguishable, a proto-media event choreographed for and
performed in front of cameras, instigated to sanctify Hitler before mass
audiences all over Germany and throughout the world. The Nazis cau-
tiously stage-managed Hitler’s media appearances, painstakingly seeking
to avoid overexposure. We may occasionally glimpse pictures and busts
of Hitler in the era’s features, but we almost never see him onscreen.8
No actor was allowed to play him, and no feature film dramatized his
life’s story.9 In that sense, his strategic absence was a crucial part of his
captivating presence.
The Hitler that won over Germany, however, was not just the impos-
ing subject of monumental display and newsreel fanfare. His handlers,
especially before 1939, aimed to commingle awe and identification.
Equally important for the promotion of his myth were small-scale
posters and photographs (e.g., cards sold in cigarette packages and col-
lected in photo albums). A functional relation existed between grand
and small images, between overwhelming presentations at public ral-
lies and mass-produced images of stylized intimacy, shots where Hitler
moves among his people and stands with average citizens in unremark-
able situations.10 ‘While appearing as a superman’, Theodor W. Adorno
notes, ‘the leader must at the same time work the miracle of appear-
ing as an average person, just as Hitler posed as a composite of King
Kong and the suburban barber.’11 The charismatic Führer emanated as
the extension of state-of-the-art technology and audio-visual instrumen-
tation, larger than life and yet at times also an everyman. Immediately
recognizable, he is the twentieth century’s ultimate media celebrity and
in that regard still very much a man of our times.
Hitler’s afterlife is a thorny province of discussion and debate, in Ron

Rosenbaum’s assessment, ‘a terra incognita of ambiguity and incerti-
tude where armies of scholars clash in evidentiary darkness over the
spectral shadows of Hitler’s past and the maddening obscurities of his
psyche’.12 Amidst these exchanges, one crucial concern involves the
posthumous mass-mediation and mass marketing of Hitler. According
to Alvin Rosenfeld, Hitler has evolved into a fiction and a phantasm
divorced from historical fact. What dominates our attention today (and
has little to do with serious scholarly debates), he avers, is a make-believe
Hitler that is synonymous with power, pornography, and madness.
Hitler, Rosenfeld notes, ‘has become a kind of silly putty in the hands
of postwar fictioneers, who stretch him this way and that, devising
as many shapes from his memory as the motive for metaphor will
allow’.13 Popularized and commodified representations of Hitler prolifer-
ate in postmodern mass culture. Nazi icons circulate as floating signifiers
and mythical entities in countless postwar images, plays, stories, comic
books, songs, and films. These acts of recoding are for Rosenfeld pri-
marily the consequence of a ‘fascination that is relentlessly unhistorical
and hence an easy trigger for fantasies of the most extreme kind’.14 Such
transformations diminish and destroy the integrity of memory and are
for that reason dangerous. Indeed, the trivialization of the Third Reich
may well undermine history lessons about National Socialism and the
Holocaust.
Saul Friedländer shares Rosenfeld’s moral concern. In the initial
years after the war, claims Friedländer, the Nazi past was indicted
and castigated. By the end of the 1960s, however, the representation
of that past underwent a dramatic change throughout the Western
world. Attention shifted from memories of Hitler’s horror and violence
to visions of his banality and everydayness, of his love for sweets,
dogs, and dirndls. In books like Albert Speer’s Spandauer Tagebücher
(Inside the Third Reich, 1975), films such as Joachim Fest’s Hitler – Eine
Karriere (Hitler: A Career, 1977) and Hans Jürgen Syberberg’s tetralogy,
Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland (Our Hitler, 1978), the German leader
bears a double aspect. He is both a petit bourgeois and a superhu-
man force, a catalyzer of both sympathy and terror.15 Thus, submits
Friedländer,
We are here confronted with the two sides of Hitler: that of yesterday
and that of today: with the facts and with their reinterpretation; with
reality and with its aestheticization. On the one hand, the approach-
able human being, Mr. Everyman enveloped in kitsch; on the other,
Eric Rentschler 39
that blind force launched into nothingness. Each side did attract,
and, for some, as I try to show, the attraction continues to operate
today. The coexistence of these two aspects, their juxtaposition, their
simultaneous and alternating presence is, it seems to me, the true
source of this spell.16
Reflections on National Socialism, even serious and scholarly ones,

unwittingly become reflections of National Socialism – a fascination
recreated. This, for Friedländer, is the troubling mark of a new discourse
about Hitler and the Third Reich. ‘What is uncanny about the new
fascination with Hitler,’ concurs Rosenfeld, ‘is its resemblance – often
recognizable in impulse, idiom, tone, and direction – to the fascination
of the 1930s and 1940s.’17
These interventions, no matter how acute and incisive they might be
in comprehending the replication and reemergence of a former fascina-
tion, remain shortsighted in their approaches to representation. Images
of Hitler did not simply become dehistoricized and distorted in the
course of the postwar era. The tools of modern mass communication
served as the politician’s enabling act, implementing a mediated perfor-
mance that seized the moment and manipulated the past in accordance
with the needs of the present. Already in the 1920s, Hitler’s adversaries
at the Munich Post characterized him as a ‘political counterfeiter’, a
confidence man well versed in the ways of falseness and fraud.18 His first
Figure 1.2 Taking on Hitler’s handwriting in order to forge his diaries, Fritz
Knobel (Uwe Ochsenknecht) begins to take on the Führer’s facial features, too.
biographer, Konrad Heiden, lamented in 1936 that there existed no reli-

able images of Hitler, but rather only ‘different momentary takes of the
raw material Hitler. He is never himself; he is at each and every moment
a lie of himself; for that reason, every image [of him] is false’.19 Hitler,
as Hans-Jürgen Syberberg demonstrated, saw himself as a filmmaker
and his dramatic deeds as a film. ‘When history is made as cinema’,
Tony Barta observes, ‘we shouldn’t be surprised that its imaginative hold
increases as the reality recedes.’20 With performance standing in for real-
ity, the only truth on view is the fact of simulation and the fantasies
that generate and embrace it. With Hitler, according to Max Picard, the
lie was basic and essential. ‘The whole meaning of history – to represent
continuity, that is – was falsified and . . . human disjointedness masquer-
aded as a political system and claimed to be formative to history.’21 The
muddle of Hitler brought about the rubble of Europe. After the war, the
German leader did not simply evolve into a fiction because he never had
been real. What could be left of someone who was never all there?
Scenes from a debacle
During the course of 1982, Richard Hugo’s novel The Hitler Diaries
arrived in American bookstores. In this thriller, the secret journal of
Hitler’s valet surfaces in New York, containing lurid details about the
dictator’s sex life, accounts of clandestine meetings, and confidential
dealings. An even more impressive diary follows in its wake; it is from
1942 and allegedly in Hitler’s own hand. Magruder and his partner,
Hirsch, contemplate whether they should publish this document even
though they suspect it to be of dubious provenance:
‘You could try finding out whether it’s authentic.’
‘I think I know the answer to that one. It may be more interesting

to discover just how good a fake it is. But then what? . . . It still beats
every book on record I ever heard of.’
‘Let’s say we can persuade people the diaries are genuine: then what
do we have?’ He thought for a minute and then said, ‘You know, if
I had to think of a book that everybody in the world would want to
read, then this would be it.’22
Hugo’s pulp fiction was, for all its commercial sensationalism, bizarrely
prescient; within months, it found itself in competition with the
breaking developments of an international news story.
Eric Rentschler 41
On 22 April 1983, a press release from the prominent West German

weekly magazine Stern caused a worldwide sensation. The magazine
announced that one of its reporters had located Hitler’s diaries, precisely
those pages, in Hugo’s words, ‘that everybody in the world would want
to read’. On 28 April 1983, the cover of Stern proclaimed ‘Hitler’s Diaries
Discovered’ (‘Hitlers Tagebücher entdeckt’). The headline appeared in
large red letters over an image of black volumes, the top one of which
bore the initials ‘FH’. These materials, the subsequent text triumphantly
declared, promised extraordinary revelations about a host of matters,
including Hess’s wartime flight to Scotland, Hitler’s attitude towards
Ernst Röhm and Neville Chamberlain, his private thoughts about the
Kristallnacht and the Holocaust, and his relations with Eva Braun. After
the publication of the diaries, boasted Stern, ‘the biography of the dicta-
tor, and with it the history of the Nazi state, would have to be in large
part written anew’. It was, as the Daily Mail put it, a coup de theatre, as
if ‘Hitler had suddenly thrust an arm out of the grave’.23
Intrepid reporter Gerd Heidemann was responsible for the remarkable
‘find’ of some 60 volumes whose pages allegedly contained extensive
entries in Hitler’s hand from 22 June 1932 to his death in mid-April
1945. Heidemann, to be sure, was known by his colleagues to be an odd
duck, indeed something of a loose cannon. He was an ardent collector
of Third Reich memorabilia and an enthusiastic camp follower of Nazi
luminaries. Two SS generals had officiated at his wedding; he had spent
his honeymoon in South America looking for war criminals. He main-
tained that he possessed a recent photograph of Martin Bormann and
averred that he had proof confirming there had been secret wartime
negotiations between Churchill and Mussolini. During his investiga-
tions, Heidemann bragged, he had been offered a veritable treasure
trove of stunning materials, including a handwritten third volume of
Mein Kampf, Hitler’s plan for the ‘Final Solution’ in longhand, a book
detailing the dictator’s experiences with women, the leader’s notes from
the final days in the bunker, documents about his illegitimate French
son, books on Frederick the Great and King Ludwig II, as well as an
opera, Wieland the Blacksmith, which the young Hitler had supposedly
co-authored (Harris, 245–6).
The diaries had undergone, Stern officials assured the press and the
public, extensive verification by handwriting experts; no one less than
the highly regarded British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper had enthusi-
astically confirmed their authenticity. To be sure, Trevor-Roper would
quickly take back his words and regret his initial reaction for the rest
of his life. The examinations of the diaries, it quickly became quite
clear, had been at best cursory. Responses that called the documents
into question had either been disregarded or overruled by the Stern
editors. A full and careful laboratory test had in fact not taken place
prior to the immodest press release. Any competent forensic scien-
tist could have easily and quickly established that the diaries were
patently false.
The media circus after the initial statement rapidly escalated into
a grand-scale travesty. On 6 May, a long-anticipated report from the
West German Federal Archive, whose findings were devastating, was
presented to thunderstruck Stern lawyers. Chemical tests in Wiesbaden
and Berlin revealed that the paper used for the diaries dated from the
1950s. The binding, glue, and thread, likewise, contained chemicals of
postwar origin. Beyond these material insufficiencies, both the quan-
tity and the actual substance of these documents were judged to be
altogether scanty. Each of the 60 volumes ran an average of only 1000
words. Konrad Kujau, the fabricator of the Hitler diaries, an energetic
and successful confidence man of long standing, had not taken even
rudimentary precautions. Working out of his home office in Waiblingen,
he entered the diaries in ordinary school notebooks. The initials used for
the diary covers were purchased in Hong Kong.
Subsequent scrutiny made it all the more apparent just how crude,
clumsy, and transparent Kujau’s acts of counterfeit had been. To cre-
ate headed stationery, he used Letraset; he aged documents by pouring
tea over them. His spelling and grammar were faulty and the texts
abounded with factual errors. What Kujau lacked in precision, however,
he made up in energy and boldness. Writing with an unfailingly certain
hand and emulating the Old Gothic script preferred by Hitler, he could
complete an entire diary in about four and a half hours. His key resource
was a two-volume edition of Hitler’s speeches and proclamations, a daily
compilation of the leader’s activities from 1932 to 1945 published in
1962 by the German historian Max Domarus.24 Laboring under pressure
and with the incentive of escalating payments for each new volume,
Kujau, as Harris reports, ‘resorted to wholesale plagiarism, copying out
page after page from Domarus. The Hitler Diaries – the object of one
of the most extravagant ‘hypes’ in the history of journalism – were for
the most part nothing more interesting than a tedious recital of offi-
cial engagements and Nazi party announcements’ (Harris, 167). There
were, to be sure, a number of private observations as well, many of
which Kujau had come across in long articles in the German tabloid
Bild on Hitler and Eva Braun.25 A sample passage from June 1941 reads:
‘On Eva’s wishes, I am thoroughly examined by my doctors. Because of
Eric Rentschler 43
the new pills, I have violent flatulence, and – says Eva – bad breath.’ For
entries like this, Stern paid the equivalent of £50 a word (Harris, 169).
Stern invested several years and over 9 million marks in the Hitler
diaries. In what appeared to be a case of collective psychosis, the mem-
bers of the magazine’s staff let themselves be seduced by the promise
that they had found privileged access to the inner workings of Hitler’s
mind. Their poor judgment was the consequence of a credulity fueled
by greed and ambition. Extensive plans for publication throughout the
world were hammered out; intensive negotiations with a host of interna-
tional media agencies took place; and, it goes without saying, enormous
profits were expected. At a certain point no one at Stern or at its pub-
lisher, Gruner und Jahr, wanted to consider – or dared to acknowledge –
that the diaries were not the real thing. The entire affair caused the
magazine extreme embarrassment and a significant loss of prestige and
circulation. Most of the main players in the scandal were forced to
resign. For all of this, Stern still managed to make a profit of 20 million
marks from the Hitler disaster.26
The fiasco unfolded in the shadow of the fiftieth anniversary of the
Nazi rise to power. It was an extension of a ‘Hitler wave’ (Hitlerwelle), a
widespread renascence of interest in the leader and the Third Reich. Nazi
primers were reprinted, tapes and films from the era were distributed,
medals, insignias, and period regalia were marketed as mementoes from
Figure 1.3 Already as a boy, Knobel proves a successful forger of Hitler parapher-
nalia. Here he is seen with a copy of Mein Kampf.
an heroic age.27 This Hitler wave spanned a variety of sites, from tele-
vision series to pornographic movies and art house films, from glossy
magazine spreads to scholarly endeavors, from far-fetched novels to seri-
ous dramas. The Hitler diaries were thus no anomaly; they were simply
the most conspicuous products of a thriving industry that catered to still
resonant wishes to know the German leader and to have a purchase on
the Nazi past.
Even while alive, Hitler maintained an undeniable aura, a sense
of never being fully present even when he was standing before an
audience. Heinrich Hoffmann published a collection of 100 pho-
tographs in 1934, titled Hitler wie ihn keiner kennt (The Hitler Nobody
Knows).28 Not surprisingly, the first full spoken sentence in Triumph
of the Will is the mass chant, ‘We want to see our Führer!’ Since
the reports of his death in a Berlin bunker, the already considerable
unsatisfied curiosity and imaginative speculation about Hitler became
exponentialized:
Did he really die in the bunker? Is it true that he left behind a son?
Are there surviving letters or diaries that will at last unlock the secret
nature of the man and his ambition? Was he cruel or gentle with Eva
Braun? Are his followers today planning to establish a Fourth Reich
to rule the world according to his ideas?29
The media and the public fixated on the Hitler diaries with a fetishistic
abandon, fervently hoping that these entries might bring them closer
to the Nazi leader. These ostensible secret documents were, if anything,
both the creation of and the answer to secret desires, the missing pieces
to a fascinating puzzle as well as the function of, in Rosenbaum’s words,
‘a kind of epistemological optimism, a faith in the explicable world’.30
In short, the diaries promised, at long last, a sustained glimpse at the
Hitler nobody knows.
Hitler’s diaries: The film
The Stern scandal of 1983 was dramatized almost a decade later by

director Helmut Dietl in Schtonk!,31 the most expensive German pro-
duction since Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot (1981).32 The film received
numerous State Film Prizes; it also competed for Golden Globe and
American Academy Awards as the best foreign film of 1992. Featuring an
ensemble of well-known German actors (including Götz George, Heiner
Lauterbach, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Rolf Hoppe, Harald Juhnke, Christiane
Eric Rentschler 45
Hörbiger, and Veronica Ferres), it presented a fictional reenactment of

the affair. The narrative divided its attentions between a shameless
forger and a mercenary reporter, a fraud and a dupe who become collab-
orators, indeed an odd couple. Dietl’s scenario (which he co-authored
with Ulrich Limmer) had an acerbic tone and a satirical resolve.33 He
meant to chronicle a comedy of errors and to disclose the collective loss
of reality which had made the whole bizarre business possible. Much
of what happened during the scandal, Dietl claimed, was so absurd
and grotesque that it seemed contrived and overwrought. According to
reports, Heidemann had pretended to call Martin Bormann from the
Stern office and was heard to say, ‘Martin, everything’s going splendidly,
we’ll get twelve double pages’. What really stunned Dietl ‘was the way in
which, forty years since the war, people now deal with the myth Hitler,
as if to say, “swastikas sell”’.34
Dietl’s film begins with a flashback to Berlin during the last days
of World War II. The credits flash by while we hear an echo chamber
from the past. We listen to the music that preceded special announce-
ments (Sondermeldungen), followed by a station identification and the
announcement, ‘Hitler is once again in our midst, the Führer will now
speak’. A swift montage from a sonic archive ensues: marching boots,
a Wagnerian flourish, party fanfares, Hitler speeches, and the voices of
other political luminaries. The soundtrack segues seamlessly to a song
by the famous UFA diva Zarah Leander, ‘Davon geht die Welt nicht
unter’ (‘That Won’t Bring the World Down’), the signature tune from
Rolf Hansen’s box-office hit of 1942, Die große Liebe (The Great Love). The
song accompanies documentary images from Berlin, April 1945, shots of
tumbling bombs and shattered buildings, of anti-aircraft guns catapult-
ing fireballs into the night. This mixture of aural distraction and aerial
warfare mimics Nazi Germany’s instrumentalization of mass culture for
the purposes of mass mobilization. Popular tunes like Zarah Leander’s
performed a double duty: they diverted German audiences from the
war while heightening the war experience. ‘Davon geht die Welt nicht
unter’ and The Great Love became integral parts of a larger combat spec-
tacle, both disavowing and intensifying the collective experience of
danger. The scene also provides images that aestheticize the ordeal of
armed conflict, choreographing it as an intoxicating phantasmagoria
with expressive contrasts between dark silhouettes in profile and bright
searchlights in the background. Repeatedly a bursting bomb will give
way to an empty image, creating a tabula rasa in which the visual
pyrotechnics of the battleground merge with the projective space of
the screen.
We move from the wartime footage to a studio simulation in a smooth

and seamless cut.35 Figures scurrying across the frame to the right taken
from a newsreel spill into a perfectly matched shot filmed in the Bavaria
Studio, a transition edited so skillfully that the viewer easily overlooks
the leap of registers. This film about an act of forgery thus begins with
its own act of forgery in which Nazi footage is extended and pros-
thetically enhanced. These newsreels were of course instruments of
war produced by propaganda companies and functionalized as sources
of public misinformation. The reenactment of 1992 replicates images
whose truth status was manifestly specious, foregrounding the act of
forgery before our very eyes in the invisible cut between an image
caught by a Nazi newsreel camera and a tableau staged in a postwar
studio.
The opening sequence concludes with yet further acts of duplicity.
We behold Hitler’s limp body and cannot help but be reminded of the
protagonist from Charles Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Dietl’s ex-
Führer is more and less than an illusion. As a body double, he is a double
body, a stand-in at once for Germany’s Hitler and Chaplin’s Herr Hynkel.
The leader appears as a prop from a slapstick movie, dragged from the
bunker by two soldiers, placed in a bomb crater so that he can be incin-
erated. But this puppet resists easy disposal. A match is lit, but Hitler’s
body fails to ignite. ‘He won’t burn, Colonel’, reports a desperate min-
ion. ‘Who?’ ‘The Führer. And Frau Braun. She won’t burn either.’ ‘Douse
them with petrol’, screams the officer, ‘they’ll burn then.’ Gasoline is
tossed over the two bodies, another match is lit, and a grand explosion
follows. The image once again goes blank and gives way to what appears
to be grainy footage. In a subsequent mock biography of the film’s mas-
ter forger, a take-off on the ‘News on the March’ sequence from Orson
Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941; a mock newsreel in its own right), we see
scratches on the image, attempts to simulate material of older vintage,
quite in keeping with Knobel’s subsequent artificial endeavors to date
his bogus diaries. The opening sequence of Schtonk! offers a quite appro-
priate preview of coming attractions: its point of departure involves
multiple cinematic feats of forgery.
‘Hitler is once again in our midst, the Führer will now speak’: the
film’s opening words employ Nazi rhetoric to introduce its own tale of
a forgery. Knobel, an enterprising rogue who aims to make a killing,
animates the phantom dummy, mimicking his speech and even assum-
ing his demeanor. Knobel’s Hitler resembles the unassuming citizen of
Hoffmann’s Hitler, wie ihn keiner kennt, ‘a paragon of family-values nor-
mality, of wholesome German comradeliness’, in short, ‘Hitler’s own,
Eric Rentschler 47
preferred Hitler explanation’.36 The fantasy Führer is an amiable and

peace-loving person, a sensitive individual who is misled and deceived
by his scheming associates, a sincere person who acts in good faith. ‘The
private Adolf Hitler’ is no monster; indeed, he turns out to be ‘a human
being just like you and me. This is’, exclaims the publisher Wieland, ‘an
incredible sensation’. The Hitler who speaks is also a Hitler who cries.
He weeps, according to the entry from 20 April 1945, upon learning
that the plane bearing his journals has crashed in Börnersdorf. ‘From
this moment on’, proclaims one of the magazine’s chief editors, ‘large
portions of world history will have to be rewritten.’
Like the Stern affair, Schtonk! derives from and depicts a world that,
for all its avowed disdain for what one of the editors calls ‘Nazischeiss’,
ultimately has no compunctions about trafficking in the Nazi past.
At first skeptical about the reporter’s ‘brown slop’, Wieland lets himself
be persuaded by a colleague:
Of course we don’t like the idea of dirtying ourselves with this stuff.
I don’t either. But on the other hand we have to say to ourselves,
Herr Doktor, competition is tough. And let’s not forget that we could
sell something like this all over the world. When I think about how
much the Yanks made with the diaries of Albert Einstein. Millions.
And I think that Adolf Hitler is, from a world-wide perspective, a
much bigger name.
Hitler and the whole era, as a character in Don DeLillo’s Running Dog
(1989) observes, are ‘endlessly fascinating . . . People can’t get enough’.37
Willié, the errant reporter of Schtonk!, like his historical counterpart,
refurbishes Göring’s yacht, proudly donning the minister’s bathrobe
and bedding the Reichmarschall’s niece. One elaborately choreographed
sequence (clearly deferent to Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire
Killers, 1967) shows old Nazi dignitaries and their sympathizers cele-
brating Hitler’s birthday in an ornate castle.
Schtonk! intervened against the contemporary Hitler industry in the
form of a screwball comedy. Some of it was witty and amusing; much
of it, German critics complained, was inappropriate and in question-
able taste. Schtonk! nonetheless acutely recognizes that Hitler comes
to us above all as a function of the media (the film’s first words are
‘Here is the Radio of Greater Germany’). His legacy constitutes a site
of curiosity and desire and, as such, abides as the continuing object
of wide attention and commercial speculation. The forger Knobel (the
film’s counterpart for Kujau) is nothing less than the embodiment of a
free market economy that supplies consumer demand for Führer-related

artifacts.38
The fascination of a fake
The Hitler diaries were a textbook example of forgery as Monroe

C. Beardsley defines the term, an instance of ‘passing off one’s own
work as another’s’.39 (Given Kujau’s reliance on Domarus, the diaries
also consisted of an equal measure of plagiarism.) The homemade con-
coctions, however unremarkable, appealed to a mass desire to know
more about the leader’s private life. They represented forgeries for which
there was no original, for we know that Hitler did not like to write and
surely did not keep a journal. Indeed, he was a person loath to leav-
ing tracks, be they personal notes or letters. As Koch-Hillebrecht points
out, Hitler ‘did not wish to commit himself in writing and expressly
prohibited that graphologists might look at lengthier samples of articles
bearing his longhand’.40 Despite Hitler’s vanity, John A. Lukacs relates,
the leader
did not wish to see an adulatory biography of himself published dur-

ing his lifetime in Germany; in fact, except for a few odd earlier
biographies, photographic albums, and collections of his speeches,
there were none. . . . From his various remarks, it also seems that –
unlike Churchill or De Gaulle, or even Napoleon at St. Helena – in
the event of his retirement, Hitler would have had little inclination
to write or dictate his memoirs.41
When we speak of the historical figure Hitler, it is difficult to pin down

the object under discussion. In a crucial way he remains to this day an
imaginary signifier, a sign with an uncertain referent.
Postwar documentaries about the Third Reich would be unthink-
able without Riefenstahl’s stylizations, which themselves were acts of
aggrandizement and inflation meant to bolster the Nazi cause. Lacking
counterimages and counterstrategies, critical approaches to Nazi visual
culture customarily seek refuge in distanced verbal commentaries, par-
ing off words against far more powerful images, as in Joachim Fest’s
Hitler: A Career. ‘This film’, maintains Wim Wenders, ‘is so fascinated
by its object, by its importance, in which it takes part (“He [Hitler]
gave truth to the phrase that history on occasion loves to take shape
in a SINGLE person”), that this object again and again takes control of
the film, becoming its secret narrator.’ Fest, claims Wenders, is woefully
Eric Rentschler 49
mistaken in believing that his voice-over narration can compete with

the language of demagogic images.42 To this day, very few filmmakers
have succeeded in finding a visual or discursive distance from
Nazi images.
In looking back at the Third Reich, we always seem to be partaking of
Nazi simulations, experiencing the world through their eyes, participat-
ing in their fictions and sharing their fantasies, no matter how offensive
or horrific we consider them to be. Hitler has, as stated, no grave or
memorial. The site where we recall him and where he continues to live
is above all, the mass media.
If Hitler’s image appears to be unreal and mythical, however, this is
not solely the result of postwar distortion, but equally a consequence
of his own fraudulent legacy. To speak of a ‘real Hitler’ is difficult –
unless, as Rosenbaum argues, one seeks it ‘in his slippery, conniving
falseness’.43 How can we distinguish a private person from the pub-
lic presence given Hitler’s incessant posing and performativity? Even
statements made to intimate circles in his own quarters late at night
indicated how the leader remained ‘on’ during his downtime.44 Hitler’s
prime achievement, according to J. P. Stern, was
to introduce a conception of personal authenticity into the public

sphere and proclaim it as the chief value and sanction of politics.
What he does is to translate the notions of genuineness and sincerity
and living experience . . . from the private and poetic sphere into the
sphere of public affairs; and to validate this move by the claim that
he, the exceptional individual with his intimate personal experience
of ‘the little man’s weal and woe,’ is the Nation’s representative by
virtue of the genuineness of that experience.45
The element of deception (Betrug) was essential for Hitler; he wrote

about it candidly and at length in Mein Kampf. According to Alan Bul-
lock, Hitler initially only pretended to be a true believer. He would come,
however, to believe sincerely in his own dissimulation. He was an actor
inextricably bound to his own act, a man whose identity inhered in a
duplicity and fakery so intense that it took over his person. In Bullock’s
explanation, the leader’s dynamic
begins with what seems like a cynical, opportunistic calculation:

What is most important is not to believe but to be seen to believe;
that is, the acting of belief is more important than the sincerity.
But if there is calculation behind the act initially . . . , what follows
is ‘a remarkable process’ in which the actor-deceiver becomes car-

ried away, possessed, overcome by his own act, a believer in his own
deception. Possessed by himself.46
This notion of an identity that knows no real person finds a hyper-

bolic extension in Don DeLillo’s Running Dog. A host of parties search
for footage of Hitler in the bunker, hoping that it will reveal the true
leader during his final hours. When the film finally unreels, it proves to
be an altogether murky and inconclusive artifact. We see what appears
to be Hitler doing an imitation of Chaplin’s Great Dictator, that is, a sim-
ulation of a simulation. The mise-en-abyme effect of the image increases,
however, with the subsequent information that the onscreen figure may
himself be merely Hitler’s double.
Hitler, the great imposter and master plier of authenticity, represents
a radical extension of the Weimar Republic’s culture of cynicism. Para-
phrasing Erich Wulffen’s treatise of 1923, Die Psychologie des Hochstaplers
(The Psychology of the Imposter), Peter Sloterdijk explains how the
deceiver enacts collective dreams in a compelling performance which
becomes a practiced piece of art. ‘Swindle, like poetry and dramaturgy,
is dominated by the pleasure principle. It obeys the magical spell of great
roles, the pleasure in playing games, the need for self-aggrandizement,
Figure 1.4 Hitler’s handwriting turns out to be easily imitable, which accounts
for the surprising ease with which Knobel (Ochsenknecht) manages to dupe the
editors of a major German news magazine, who end up buying his forged Hitler
diaries for an exorbitant sum of money.
Eric Rentschler 51
the sense of improvisation. The great impostors build up nothing more

than the stages for their roles.’47 Hitler was a deceiver who was carried
away, overcome by a belief in his own deception, a man whose very
being was a show and a sham.
Authenticity mediated by lights, cameras, and microphones served as
this charlatan’s enabling act. Modern fascist leaders, as Horkheimer and
Adorno point out, are not so much supermen as the creations of propa-
ganda machines, the focal points at which mass fantasies come together.
These individuals, like movie stars, ‘are powerless in themselves but dep-
utize for all the other powerless individuals, and embody the fullness
of power for them, without themselves being anything other than the
vacant spaces taken up accidentally by power’.48 Hitler is above all the
nothingness of a projective space, a container for strong fantasies and
immense yearnings, the embodiment of great hates and fierce desires.49
In the Stern debacle, a transparent forgery and a poorly written fiction
assumed the status of a valuable property and a lucrative commodity.
Schtonk! dramatizes the loss of reality that gave rise to the affair (a con-
dition shared by the trickster and his dupes alike) not so much as a
pathology as an everyday state of affairs, a consequence of free mar-
ket enterprise and untrammeled avarice. The film’s picaresque drama
discloses the frenetic workings of the culture industry, an apparatus
inextricably bound to the buying and selling of allure and illusion.
And the scenario further demonstrates the continuing appeal of Hitler’s
Reich of fakery for our contemporary society of spectacle. Hitler and
the Nazis were consummate cynics and impressive showmen. As I have
suggested elsewhere, they might well be seen as postmodernity’s secret
sharers.50 The film is not only about an act of forgery; it foregrounds its
own workings as a film that shamelessly exhibits its own acts of forgery
in representing this forgery which itself is in fact an extension of a bogus
legacy.
Much of this mass market movie’s indictment of the culture indus-
try takes place in the top floor of a publishing house whose majority
owner was Bertelsmann, the largest German media concern. At a cru-
cial point, the editorial staff beholds the secret diaries and agrees they
should be published. ‘It would be a sensation.’ But the obvious question
poses itself: are they genuine? Why, someone asks, do the initials on the
cover read ‘FH’ rather than ‘AH’?51 (After all, the author’s name wasn’t
Fritz Hitler.) Consternation ensues as the figures try to account for the
discrepancy. No denying it, what they all see is FH. How can that be?
The sound F slides off the reporter’s tongue and expands into the phrase
‘Führer Hitler’.
‘That’s it!’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Flag on high [Fahne hoch], maybe.’
‘Baloney!’
‘Führer . . . Führer . . . Führer’s Heil, Führer’s hound.’
‘Führer’s hound . . . ’ [One editor sneers.]
‘Führer’s . . . hand . . . Führer’s head . . . quarters. Führer’s headquarters!’
That’s it. The figures in the room nod in agreement. Yes, it would seem,
they have found the answer: ‘Führer’s headquarters’.
But of course they have not. What do these letters really stand for?
There is an obvious, but unspoken conclusion. The ‘F’ is a purloined let-
ter, a letter there for all to see, but a letter that no one wants or manages
to read correctly. This letter, the evidence of a bungled forgery, makes it
apparent that the legacy that is the Führer’s is a fake, a falsification that
people want and need to believe in. Fälschung Hitler. Faszination Hitler.
Fantasie Hitler. Fake Hitler. The scandal around the Hitler diaries attests
to the lasting power and continuing fascination of that fakery.52
Notes
1. It has been far easier to discern the guilt of Hitler’s accomplices. As Eberhard
Jäckel puts it, ‘One can liken the mountain of written documents to a
pyramid. Although at the top there are next to none, the further one
descends, the more one finds.’ – See Eberhard Jäckel, ‘Die Entschlussbildung
als historisches Problem’, in Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer (eds), Der
Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt, 1985), p. 14.
2. Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil
(New York, 1998), p. xi.
3. Cf. Michael Cullen, Wo liegt Hitler? Öffentliches Erinnern und kollektives
Vergessen als Stolperstein der Kultur (Berlin, 1999), p. 10.
4. Claudia Schmölders, Hitler’s Face: The Biography of an Image (Philadelphia,
PA, 2006), p. 35.
5. Rudolf Herz, ‘Vom Medienstar zum propagandistischen Problem. Zu den
Hitlerbildern Heinrich Hoffmanns’, in Martin Loiperdinger, Rudolf Herz,
and Ulrich Pohlmann (eds), Führerbilder: Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Stalin in
Fotografie und Film (Munich, 1995), p. 53.
6. Schmölders, Hitler’s Face, p. 43. Hitler apparently insisted that no one be
allowed to take a picture of him. His desire to elude cameras surely struck
his contemporaries. The satirical journal Simplicissimus ‘asked in May 1923
Eric Rentschler 53
“What Does Hitler Look Like?” with the cartoonist’s commentary “Adolf
Hitler won’t let himself be depicted”’ (p. 42).
7. Manfred Koch-Hillebrecht, Homo Hitler: Psychogramm des deutschen Diktators
(Munich, 1999), p. 57.
8. The opening sequence of Eduard von Borsody’s Wunschkonzert (Request Con-
cert, Germany, 1940) provides a rare exception. A couple attends the opening
of the 1936 Olympics and take pleasure in catching a glimpse of the leader.
When Request Concert was initially rereleased after World War II, Hitler was
cut out of prints in an effort to de-Nazify the film. In Die grosse Liebe (The
Great Love, 1942), we hear a famous Hitler speech emanate from the radio,
but the voice that speaks is decidedly not Hitler’s.
9. On the other hand, Hitler was the only politician of the twentieth century
who would play the lead role in a feature-length film devoted to the creation
of his own political legend.
10. See Eike Hennig, ‘Hitler-Porträts abseits des Regierungsalltags. Einer von uns
und für uns?’, in Martin Loiperdinger, Rudolf Herz, and Ulrich Pohlmann
(eds), Führerbilder: Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Stalin in Fotografie und Film
(Munich, 1995), pp. 27–50.
11. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propa-
ganda’, in Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (eds), The Essential Frankfurt
School Reader (New York, 1978), p. 127.
12. Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, p. xii.
13. Alvin Rosenfeld, Imagining Hitler (Bloomington, IN, 1985), p. 4.
14. Ibid., p. xvi.
15. Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death
(New York, 1984), pp. 59–60.
16. Ibid., p. 72.
17. Rosenfeld, Imagining Hitler, p. xviii.
18. Ibid., p. 218.
19. Cited in Schmölders, Hitler’s Face, p. 152.
20. Tony Barta, ‘Film Nazis: The Great Escape’, in Tony Barta (ed.), Screening the
Past: Film and the Representation of History (Westport, CT, 1998), pp. 127–49,
here p. 130.
21. Max Picard, Hitler in Our Selves (Hinsdale, IL, 1947), p. 210.
22. Richard Hugo, The Hitler Diaries (New York, 1982), p. 32.
23. Quoted in Robert Harris, Selling Hitler (New York, 1986), p. 321. I have
relied on this invaluable study for many of the particulars about the Stern
scandal. All subsequent references from this source will be cited in the
main text.
24. Translated into English as Adolf Hitler, Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945:
The Chronicle of a Dictatorship, ed. Max Domarus (London, 1990).
25. Charles Hamilton, The Hitler Diaries: Fakes That Fooled the World (Lexington,
1991), p. 38.
26. Gisela Sonnenburg, ‘Carin II’, Die Tageszeitung, 7 June 2003.
27. See Bernd Weber, ‘Zur Aufklärung über Neonazismus und “Hitlerwelle”’, in
Anneliese Mannzmann (ed.), ‘Hitlerwelle’ und historische Fakten (Königstein,
Ts., 1979), p. 105.
28. Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler wie ihn keiner kennt: 100 Bild-Dokumente aus dem
Leben des Führers (Berlin, 1934).
29. Rosenfeld, Imagining Hitler, p. 44.

30. Ibid., p. xvi.
31. ‘Schtonk’ is the pet phrase of Chaplin’s Great Dictator; it is a variation on
the German ‘Schtunk’ which comes from Yiddish and means a terrible mess
(‘eine riesengroße Sauerei’).
32. Schtonk! was very expensive, costing 16 million marks at a time when ambi-
tious German features had budgets of about 5 or 6 million. The film drew
on seven sources: co-producer WDR, the FFA, the BMI, state subsidy funds in
Bavaria, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hamburg, and a distribution guarantee from
Constantin. All things considered, it did not prove to be as big a hit as had
been expected. More than 2 million tickets were sold, which only sufficed
to break even. In addition, the film found only a limited amount of foreign
exposure. See ‘Schtonk-Bilanz’, Tagesspiegel, 4 July 1993.
33. Peter Märthesheimer and Pea Fröhlich, hired by Bavaria in 1988, had writ-
ten an earlier script for Schtonk!, but producer Günter Rohrbach and Dietl did
not like the results. Years later, Märthesheimer took Dietl to court, alleging
that much of the film relied on his original choice of the material, the dra-
maturgic conception, the character constellations as well as the plot and the
comic style. See ‘Kryptomnesie’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 3 December 1993.
34. See Peter Körte, ‘Erst dämonisiert, dann banalisiert: Helmut Dietl über seinen
Hitler-Tagebuch-Fälschungs-Film Schtonk’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 12 March
1992.
35. Similar segues from documentary to fiction footage can be found at the start
of Lina Wertmüller’s Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties, Italy, 1975) and
Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron (UK/West Germany, 1977).
36. Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, p. xvii. Hitler liked to believe that he played a
dual role as German leader and man of the folk. It stands to reason that one
of his favorite films, Fred Sauer’s Die beiden Seehunde (The Two Seals, Germany,
1934), enacted this fantasy. A prince (played by the Bavarian character actor
Weiß-Ferdl) switches identities with a look-alike and mingles with his people.
See Thomas Brandlmeier, ‘Das Kino der Diktatoren: Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini’,
epd Film 10,7 (July 1993), p. 28 and p. 30.
37. Don DeLillo, Running Dog (New York, 1978), p. 52.
38. H. G. Pflaum, ‘Der ganz finale Wahnsinn: Helmut Dietls Film-Komödie
Schtonk’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12 March 1992.
39. Quoted in Sándor Radnóti, The Fake: Forgery and Its Place in Art (Lanham,
MD, 1999), p. 11.
40. Koch-Hillebrecht, Homo Hitler, p. 35. – See also Lukacs: ‘One of the problems
of the historiography of Hitler is the scarcity of written documents he left
behind.’ – John A. Lukacs, The Hitler of History (New York, 1997), p. 49.
41. Lukacs, The Hitler of History, p. 3.
42. Wim Wenders, ‘That’s Entertainment: Hitler (1977)’, in Eric Rentschler (ed.),
West German Filmmakers on Film: Visions and Voices (New York, 1988), p. 130.
43. Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, p. 73.
44. Cf. Lukacs, The Hitler of History, p. 157: “‘Private” may not always be a useful
term, since so many of his statements to his private circle were meant to
impress them.’
45. Joseph P. Stern, Hitler: The Führer and the People (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1975), p. 24.
Eric Rentschler 55
46. Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, p. 88.

47. Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (Minneapolis, 1987), p. 486.
48. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
(New York, 1972), p. 236.
49. Cf. Picard, Hitler in Our Selves, p. 79.
50. Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife
(Cambridge, 1996), p. 223.
51. The letters were bought by Kujau in a small stationery store at the Hotel
Ambassador in Hong Kong, simple tin plates that cost about 10 cents. At the
time of the purchase, according to his wife, the forger apparently mistook
the F for an A: Hamilton, The Hitler Diaries, p. 20. Neither in the Sütterlin
or Gothic script, as was often claimed, the letters were in Schwabacher –
which, in fact, was forbidden in the Third Reich. See Dieter Deul, ‘Vom
echten Fälscher kam nur Hohnlachen’, Die Welt, 14 March 1992.
52. This chapter is an expanded and a substantially revised version of ‘The Fas-
cination of a Fake: The Hitler Diaries’. – Eric Rentschler, ‘The Fascination of
a Fake: The Hitler Diaries’, New German Critique 90 (Fall 2003), pp. 177–92.
Films cited
von Borsody, Eduard, Wunschkonzert (Germany, 1940).
Dietl, Helmut, Schtonk! (West Germany, 1983).
Fest, Joachim, Hitler – Eine Karriere (West Germany, 1977).
Hansen, Rolf, Die große Liebe (Germany, 1942).
Peckinpah, Sam, Cross of Iron (UK/West Germany, 1977).
Petersen, Wolfgang, Das Boot (West Germany, 1981).
Sauer, Fred, Die beiden Seehunde (Germany, 1934).
and UK, 1977).
Welles, Orson, Citizen Kane (USA, 1941).
Wertmüller, Lina, Pasqualino Settebellezze (Italy, 1975).
2
‘Hitler’s Shadow Still Looms over
Us’: G. W. Pabst’s The Last Ten Days
as Film and Event
Michael Töteberg
The American news magazine Time hailed Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s drama-
tization of Hitler’s last days in the bunker, Der letzte Akt (The Last Ten
Days, 1955), as ‘perhaps the best picture produced in Central Europe
since the war’.1 In Germany, however, the film was considered an artistic
and financial failure. During its production, negative sentiments about
the project were already being expressed, and by the time the film pre-
miered in May 1955, general interest had dwindled to such an extent
that the film soon vanished from the German screens. This striking
lack of interest among the populace was noted with satisfaction in the
German press as an expression of ‘healthy common sense’, while the
news that the film had been sold abroad was perceived as ‘questionable,
or even disturbing’.2 By contrast, Peter Lorre’s film Der Verlorene (The Lost
One, 1951), which had also initially been a box office failure, was later
resurrected and given a respected place in the canon of German film his-
tory. The original negative response to The Last Ten Days in 1955 was,
however, never revisited or revised. It is continually overlooked, even
in the most extensive studies of German cinema. The few existing anal-
yses of The Last Ten Days in the limited available literature are merely
the result of particular interest in the work of two well-known con-
tributors to the film: the director, G. W. Pabst, and the novelist, Erich
Maria Remarque.3 In fact, the film appears to have made no mark on
German cultural memory; it does not feature in television programs or
film museums, nor was it ever released on video or DVD.
For almost 50 years, The Last Ten Days remained forgotten, until
it unexpectedly came into public focus for a short period of time in
connection with another film, Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), which
appears in many ways to be a remake of The Last Ten Days.4 The
56
57
Figure 2.1 The original program brochure of G. W. Pabst’s Der letze Akt (The Last
Ten Days), which premiered in Germany in 1955 to mostly negative reviews.
58 ‘Hitler’s Shadow Still Looms over Us’
comparison was bound to be drawn, since both films document the final
days that Hitler spent in the bunker and display a close resemblance
in thematic approach and dramaturgic style. Some of these unexpected
overlapping details can be explained by the fact that both films rely
on the figure of Traudl Junge. Junge worked as a direct advisor for The
Last Ten Days, and her memoirs, Bis zur letzten Stunde: Hitlers Sekretärin
erzählt ihr Leben (Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary), published
in 2002, served as the basis for the recent film Downfall, alongside
the 2002 book Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches
(Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich) by the histo-
rian Joachim Fest by the historian Joachim Fest.5 The 2004 blockbuster
film was also directly influenced by its little-known forerunner as the
film crew deliberately familiarized themselves with it. Bruno Ganz even
confessed that without having known Albin Skoda’s portrayal of the
Führer in The Last Ten Days, he would not have accepted the part of
Hitler in Downfall, stating that ‘this film convinced me that it really is
possible to play the role of Hitler’.6 Moreover, the recent discussions
which accompanied the premiere of Downfall in effect revisited aspects
of the debate which had already been conducted in 1955: ‘Is Adolf
Hitler filmable?’7 Nevertheless, Downfall was hailed as the first German
film in which Hitler was portrayed as a protagonist, and the film was
widely marketed as breaking a taboo. Yet the public response to the
media campaigns accompanying the respective openings of the 1955
and 2004 films differed considerably. Downfall attracted almost 5 million
cinema-goers, primarily from a generation that had received informa-
tion about the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship in school and in the
media. The audience of The Last Ten Days, however, had been contem-
porary witnesses of the Third Reich, a fact which lent the film a radically
different form of explosiveness, which spectators were not yet ready to
face ten years after the collapse of the Third Reich and Hitler’s suicide.
Notwithstanding the film’s possible artistic merits, it is the economic
disaster of this film which shines a spotlight on the mentality of post-
war West German society, a society which used repression as a mode of
survival.
In early 1955, the magazine Quick reported with alarm on the film-
ing of The Last Ten Days, under the headline, ‘We really are not spared
from anything: Hitler dies for the box-office’.8 The magazine’s tone was
unambiguous. The film project was repeatedly discredited as being the
work of foreign profiteers through remarks such as ‘an Austrian pro-
ducer is filming on behalf of an American rental firm’. G. W. Pabst was
presented as an ‘Austrian director’, and even Emmerich Nastl, who had
been an officer on guard in the bunker and was now acting as an advisor
Michael Töteberg 59
to the film crew, was depicted as an unscrupulous foreign opportunist

who did not hesitate to sell his story: ‘This Austrian, who now works
as a rep for a food company, is making money from his memories of
an awful time.’ Remarque, by contrast, was not depicted as an Austrian,
but as being stateless and disconnected from recent events in Germany:
‘Remarque wrote the screenplay for Der letzte Akt for the largest royalty
in the history of German post-war cinema – although he only knew
the Hitler period from hearsay.’ The story was spread that the fee for
the screenplay was 160,000 marks, and the magazine left no doubt as
to the motive of the film crew’s insertion of an additional text box with
bold writing into the article, citing the Latin proverb, coined by Emperor
Vespasian when he introduced a urine tax on Roman public toilets, that
‘money does not smell’. The report closed with the remark that ‘whether
this film will be good for the German people is a question which has not
even been posed’.
Once the first news items about the film began to appear in the
press, The Last Ten Days came under the critical observation of the West
German public. This film was a fringe production, created outside the
established mainstream film industry. It was only the coming together
of various interests and initiatives which had made the realization of
the film possible. As early as 1948, the director G. W. Pabst had had
the idea for a film about Hitler’s downfall, conceiving it as a tragedy of
Shakespearean dimensions. Indeed he had, together with his long-time
collaborator, Leo Lania, already developed a clear outline of the film.
However, Pabst’s success was fading and despite his efforts it proved
difficult to secure funding for his Hitler film. He had been one of the
most important and well-paid directors in the Weimar Republic, mak-
ing cinema history with films like Die freudlose Gasse (Joyless Street, 1925),
Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box, 1929), Westfront 1918 (Comrades
of 1918, 1930), and Kameradschaft (Comradeship, 1931), and while he
had continued to make films during the Third Reich, Pabst had great
difficulty in continuing his career in the post-war period.
On the other hand, money was no issue for the film’s producer Carl
Szokoll from the Wiener Cosmopol Film, who had found a strong finan-
cial partner in the millionaire Ludwig Polsterer. They had previously
successfully produced the Austro-Yugoslavian co-production of Helmut
Käutner’s Die letzte Brücke (The Last Bridge, 1954). Szokoll, who had been
a major in the Wehrmacht in the Viennese General Command, had later
become a member of a resistance group and had revealed German defen-
sive positions to the Russians at the end of the war. However, rather
than this bringing him fame and glory after 1945, he was treated with
political hostility. The original basis for the film The Last Ten Days was
a book by Michael A. Musmanno, titled Ten Days to Die: Eyewitnesses

Report on the End of Hitler, which had appeared in German in 1950.9 The
American author of this book had served as a judge at the Nuremberg
Trials and had interviewed roughly 200 eyewitnesses between 1945
and 1948, in order to counteract the circulation of myths surrounding
Hitler’s death. Among those interviewed was Hitler’s secretary, Traudl
Junge. Musmanno made all his interview material, consisting of 20 ring
binders, available to the film crew and in addition worked on the film
project as a historical advisor.
Musmanno, Pabst, Szokoll, and Traudl Junge, who was later also
present during filming in Vienna, frequently met in Munich. Following
Fritz Habeck’s completion of a first outline of the film, the group met
for three days, yet no compromise could be found on how to approach
the project. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in October 1954 that ‘one
member wanted to see the material transformed into a cabaret, while
another member wanted to treat it with historical seriousness’. The
eventual solution to the group’s internal lack of consensus was revealed
in the article’s headline: ‘Remarque writes screenplay for Hitler Film’.10
The name Erich Maria Remarque was a red flag. Since the appear-
ance of his international best-selling novel Im Westen nicht Neues (All
Quiet on the Western Front) in 1929, Remarque was perceived as a
‘subversive writer’, and the announcement of his involvement in the
Hitler film immediately mobilized old resentments.11 The American
film version of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), directed by Lewis
Milestone, had been fiercely contested in Germany. The Nazis had dis-
rupted performances until the German police eventually banned the
film, arguing that peace and order could no longer be ensured. After
that, Remarque moved to Switzerland, then France, before eventually
moving to America. His books had been burned in 1933, and in 1938 he
had been expatriated and had taken on American citizenship. Friedrich
Torberg, a Viennese writer who had emigrated in 1938 and returned to
his hometown in 1951, facilitated Remarque’s initial contact with the
film crew. Remarque noted the public reaction to his decision to write
the film’s screenplay in his diary:
The film is already making waves in the German press. How can
Szokoll and I dare to embark on this project, seeing that I frequent
Hollywood night-clubs and Szokoll is a traitor who did everything in
his power during the war to prevent Vienna from being destroyed?
One might think that any criminal would be allowed to make a film
about Hitler, but no – even now he is still the most sacred national
treasure.12
In fact, the question as to ‘whether the revival of this subject pushes the
boundaries of good taste’13 was raised in the press. One element of the
Hitler-myth which continued to dwell in the minds of the people was
the image – which had been reproduced countless times – of the Führer
in front of the grandiose backdrop of choreographed mass meetings in
which he was seen to be united with the German populace. Control
over the image of the Führer was absolute; there were no ‘snapshots’.
Even the pictures of the ‘private man’ Adolf Hitler were staged using
calculated poses and contrived arrangements. No historical photographs
of Hitler in the bunker exist as this would not be reconcilable with the
heroic image of Nazi propaganda. The dictator, buried in a catacomb,
blind to reality, and surrounded by fawning courtiers who, even in this
situation, did not put a halt to his criminal drives, but instead faithfully
carried out his senseless orders; this ghostly scenario was the setting of
the film. As a counter-image to the charismatic leader, a diabolical figure
had to be developed: a mentally confused tribune, oscillating between
apathy and hellish outbursts, and driven only by a destructive desire for
demise. Count Stauffenberg was apparently quoted as saying ‘Hitler in
the bunker – that is the true Hitler!’14 Indeed, by portraying him in this
Figure 2.2 A pensive Hitler (Albin Skoda) in conversation with Goebbels (Willy
Krause).
situation, his true character was to be revealed, and this was ultimately
how the film broke a taboo. On the other hand, the situation of a ruler
surrounded by enemies and abandoned by his supporters was bound to
contain an element of tragedy, thus raising the question of whether the
portrayal of the disintegration of former power and inevitable demise
would inadvertently trigger sympathy in the audience against all the
intentions of the film’s creators.
Issues relating to various dramaturgical effects dominated discussions
among the film crew. Because the film was restricted to the very last
act of the Hitler drama, the problem of developing positive counter-
parts arose. Inspired by old newsreel pictures which showed Hitler on
20 April 1945 decorating a few Hitler Youth members with the iron
cross (these children were the last contingent to defend Berlin, armed
with bazookas), Szokoll had an idea. He decided to devise a subplot
by creating the story about a boy named Richard and his family who
end up dying in a flooded underground shaft.15 Remarque introduced
a further figure called Captain Wüst, an iron cross wearer, who rep-
resents the ‘other Germany’ and who, at the end, on his deathbed,
captures the political moral of the story: ‘Be vigilant! Never say
yes again!’
Remarque wrote a screenplay which did not shy away from sensa-
tionalist effects and presented gaudy images of Hitler and Eva Braun
as narrow-minded members of the petty bourgeoisie. In a conversa-
tion with the press he declared: ‘We must show that Hitler died like
a rat in a cellar.’16 In his outline for the film, Remarque introduces
the running gag that Hitler wants to shoot himself, but is too cow-
ardly to do so. Everyone in the bunker is waiting for Hitler to commit
this act, and when two shots are finally heard, they all imagine that
he has indeed killed himself. Shortly afterwards, however, it is revealed
that he has instead shot his two dogs. Remarque made a mockery out
of Hitler’s character, and instead portrayed the real head of the Nazi
Party as being Martin Bormann. Bormann is shown to be convinced
that there was a future for the Nazis, even after defeat (‘One will need
us, because nothing else is there’) and in this post-war scenario, Hitler’s
death was to assume a propagandistic role of central importance: ‘No-
one will know anything about his death. He will be burnt and his
corpse never found. It will remain a secret. He will become a legend.’17
While Remarque’s books have often been made into films, he himself
was not a scriptwriter. His collaboration with the film is to be under-
stood instead as a part of his own political commitment; he wrote his
only screenplay as a warning against the return of the Nazis, which he
had diagnosed as being a serious contemporary threat. In the key scene
mentioned above, Bormann pledges that the Nazis might have to spend
a number of years going underground, but that they would not have
to start over again with 20 men in a beer cellar; instead, they would
resurface with a conspiracy implemented by ‘many millions of first-
class trained Nazis’. At the end of the film, after Hitler has finally ended
his life, Bormann has the last word: ‘We will return.’18 (The final plea,
‘Be vigilant!’, was not in fact in Remarque’s screenplay, but he adopted
this wording later for a political article in which he denounced former
Nazis who had been returned to high-ranking positions in the Federal
Republic). Remarque’s screenplay has been available in print since 1998,
and a comparison with the final version of the film allows an insight
into the scale of the debates that must have taken place among the film
crew. These differences became public because two other authors were
temporarily commissioned to edit the Remarque screenplay, yet they
later withdrew due to internal disputes. In the end the film credits ran as
follows: ‘Screenplay – Fritz Habeck, adapted from the unpublished draft
by Erich Maria Remarque’.19 Various statements made during the film’s
development and production reveal the differing approaches towards
the film material, the underlying intentions of the film and the figure of
Hitler himself. While Remarque’s agenda for the film was provocative,
the producer Szokoll declared that ‘we don’t want to shoot a propa-
ganda film against National Socialism’.20 He maintained that it would
be wrong to turn Hitler into a ‘ghastly-pathetic figure’, arguing that ‘a
man who made hundreds of millions of people tremble and whom it
took the entire world seven years to defeat was no clown’. Remarque,
on the other hand, wanted the film to be provocative, and professed in
a broadcast interview that the old Nazis should crawl out of their holes.
The press reacted to his performance with the suggestion that the emi-
grant Remarque was simply acting out ‘his anti-German sentiments in
a manner which was embarrassing and hurtful’.21 The producer Szokoll
increasingly feared that collaboration with the well known, yet contro-
versial writer constituted not just an advantage but also a burden for his
own film project.
Szokoll’s own public justifications for the film, ‘we want to depict the
tragedy of the figure of Hitler’, were so general and vague that the dif-
ficulties of legitimizing his film project become even more apparent.
On the one hand, he explained to Der Spiegel that The Last Ten Days
should ‘in a Freudian way achieve a form of redemption from the guilt
complex’:
by vocalizing the whole problem of Hitler and the whole guilt, we

want to take the feeling of guilt away from the German people. The
former Nazis should walk out after this film and say: “It’s only now
that we understand why we were for it. But it was wrong”.22
Yet how could a film which only portrayed the final days in the Führer
Bunker, the last act, achieve this without addressing how such events
came about? It was unlikely that this could be achieved by portraying
Hitler as the epitome of evil, by endowing him with Shakespearean
greatness or by comparing him to Julius Caesar. In contrast to Remarque,
who stated his firm opinion of Hitler with aggressive acridity, Szokoll,
at least in his public utterances, escaped into generalities and avoided
any political alliance. He informed journalists: ‘Our film will be less
directed against Hitler – that would be too tacky – instead it will
be directed against the same systems which exist perpetually in every
dictatorship.’23
Under pressure to prove the film’s legitimacy, even during the early
stages of production, Szokoll organized a public function at which the
philosopher Friedrich Heer, an authority in Viennese intellectual life,
argued in favor of the film with huge rhetorical energy: ‘Hitler and
Goebbels live off the breath of their audience, of their victims. However
they dissolve into nothingness the very moment “their” life breath is
taken from them.’24 Therefore the film was not to show the charismatic
orator and the tribune of the people, but instead the lonely despot at
his end in a cell. After this public function, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung
concluded that ‘the film wants to declare that every dictatorship has an
end, a necessary and consequent one’.25
Filming began in Vienna in November 1954; the outdoor location
shots of the bunker were filmed in ruins at the edge of the city, while
the indoor shooting took place in the Severing studio. The journalists
who visited the film set were impressed with its authenticity. ‘Neither
the double couch in Hitler’s bedroom nor the picture of Frederick the
Great over the desk are missing. Even the colour of the upholstery was
emulated perfectly’, they reported,26 which is ironic, given that it was
a black and white film. ‘There is huge interest in this film around the
world, even before it has been completed’, the newspapers proclaimed.
‘It will no doubt be a great commercial success. Let us hope that despite
the delicate subject matter, it will be a decent and proper film!’27
From a present-day perspective, The Last Ten Days was not a specu-
lative effort. To a great extent it is an intimate play; only rarely does
the camera leave the drama unfolding in the hermetically sealed bunker
in order to show the reality outside. While everything outside is being
turned into a wasteland, down below, protected by meter-thick cement
walls, the empty mechanics of the military apparatus continue to rule.

In this underground labyrinth, the Führer commands troops which in
reality no longer exist, while his generals do not dare contradict him.
Shakespeare provided the model: on the main stage, the political staff
continues to operate, holding meetings on current developments; while
on the side stage, the canteen is populated with inebriated soldiers and
female staff auxiliaries. Here a desperate Armageddon-style orgy is being
celebrated, driven on by incongruous jazz sounds and morale-boosting
musical hits. A waitress finds herself in an increasingly unrestrained
trance-like dance, while an astonished man with his arm in a splint
gets pulled into this frenzy and made to march. The canteen in the
bunker is a metamorphosis of the kind of setting which Pabst had used
in his earlier films to provide an interior window into society, as Klaus
Kreimeier remarked in his analysis of the film: ‘The bordello, that set-
ting in which private and societal obsessions merge in Pabst’s Weimar
films, has been transplanted onto a nationalistic stage; any moment
slipping into a raw, stomping death dance.’28 Following the aesthetic
standards of classic German film art, Pabst’s stage-management used
light and shadow and incorporated stylistic devices from the New Objec-
tivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) and Expressionism to such an extreme extent
that this was interpreted as a caricature by Andreas Kilb.29 In addition
to the scene of the orgy in the canteen, with its forced manic exuber-
ance creating a strange sense of oppressiveness, one of the few other
crowd scenes set outside the bunker, but also in an underground cata-
comb, makes a particularly strong impact. This scene depicts how, as a
result of the so-called Nero Decree by the Führer, an underground shaft,
into which the civilian population had unwittingly fled, is flooded. The
catastrophe of the crashing floods of water corresponds closely to a sim-
ilar scene in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (Metropolis, 1927), upon which the
cameraman of The Last Ten Days, Günther Anders, had also worked as an
assistant. According to Kilb, the images may appear ‘stiff and anachro-
nistic’ from a present-day perspective, yet contemporary critics did not
view them in this way.
Instead, the contemporary German audience was irritated by the act-
ing of the performers: most of the reviews concluded that the characters
resembled ‘wax figures’. Pabst had only permitted a realistic, psycholog-
ical style of acting when it came to one single fictitious character, who
was to embody the better Germany: Hauptmann Wüst, played by Oskar
Werner, was hailed by all critics as convincing and life-like. According
to the New York Times, in 1950, Pabst had originally cast Werner Krauß,
the demonic actor from Das Cabinet des Doktor Caligari (The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari, 1920) in the role of the Führer.30 While Krauß would
have been much too old to play this role, such a casting would have
meant that Pabst was realizing the title of Siegfried Kracauer’s book
From Caligari to Hitler in a very literal sense.31 Later on, when he was
actually in a position to make the film, Pabst chose actors from the
Burgtheater, whose appearance had very little similarity with the actual
historical figures whose images were nevertheless still fresh in the minds
of the audience. Indeed, reports from the premiere of the film reveal that
Hitler’s first appearance provoked laughter among the audience.
The United Press Association correspondent Wilfried Saliger reported
on the public’s reaction to the premiere of The Last Ten Days: ‘The
audience at the world premiere in Cologne experienced the film with
incredulous horror, guffawing over the unworldliness of the last days
of the war in the Reich Chancellery bunker, and with uncertainty asked
the question: “Was it all really so mad?” ’ In the wake of the premiere,
fierce public debates ensued. Saliger quoted a Cologne businessman as
uttering, ‘It was spooky.’32 The article, reprinted by numerous German
newspapers, appeared in Die Welt with the caption, ‘An American saw
the Hitler-film’. In its own review, the newspaper dissected the film argu-
ing that history had been rendered in a distorted manner, and that
The Last Ten Days was simply an ‘aberration’.33 ‘The political moral-
ity is as diffident as it is vague’, wrote Der Spiegel.34 Gunter Groll in
Süddeutsche Zeitung was in two minds: ‘Grim act, half document, half
operatic horror, half masterpiece and half contortion, half thriller and
half memorial.’35 While a critic from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
had also gone into the cinema full of skepticism and misgivings, particu-
larly in the wake of Remarque’s previous statements, he was nevertheless
positively surprised by the film: ‘Through the manner in which history
has become an artistic event which has in turn developed into an unmis-
takable warning cry, The Last Ten Days has emerged as a top film in the
otherwise very shallow waters of German-speaking productions.’ This
critic concludes that ‘Pabst’s courage in planning and creating this film
has been a very worthwhile endeavor’.36
The media’s response was seldom based on a reaction to the actual
film itself; a neat separation of the ‘artistic result’ from the ‘polit-
ical verdict’ was hardly to be achieved by a double review, as had
been attempted by the Berlin Tagesspiegel.37 ‘Hitler’s shadow still looms
over us’, declared the Münchner Merkur. The film was reviewed by
Hans Hellmut Kirst, author of the widely read and successfully filmed
“Landser” trilogy 08/15: ‘Just hearing Hitler’s voice causes deep anguish
or humiliation. Allowing him to appear nevertheless is more than
Figure 2.3 Facing defeat: a downcast Hitler (Albin Skoda) is framed by two mem-
bers of his entourage. In the background on his left appears what would become
one of the classic props of the ‘bunker film’ genre: the portrait of Frederick
the Great.
merely an experiment – it is bordering on arrogance.’38 In Aufbau, a

German emigrant newspaper in New York, it was reported: ‘The German
audience endures this film with clenched teeth, albeit in silence.’39 Evi-
dence that the old Nazis had not been completely silenced was provided
by the Munich newspaper, Die Nation. For this newspaper, The Last Ten
Days was ‘a foolish, ridiculous tendentious movie, every inch and meter
a tasteless denouncement’.40
The behavior of the representatives of the film industry was symp-
tomatic of the controversy surrounding the film. The film rating board
in Wiesbaden, a federal institution, refused to provide a rating for The
Last Ten Days, since this would have resulted in cinema owners receiv-
ing a tax concession upon screening the film. While the convoluted
letter of refusal praised the film’s artistic achievements, the ‘portrayal
of its main protagonists’ – namely Hitler, his vassals and the leaders of
the Wehrmacht – ‘[was] seen to be too much part of a historical space
which had not yet been clearly defined’.41 The film industry published
reviews which predicted a meager commercial success. Furthermore, the
Film-Echo warned cinema owners that viewers were being subjected to
‘a historical horror’: ‘The viewer silently leaves the cinema and wonders
why he needs confirmation from a film that he had been mistaken for
12 years. Women and the youth do not even go in the first place.’42
The predictions of the experts in the film industry were proven
correct; the film was overwhelmingly rejected, and the public responded
with a demonstrative lack of interest. The magazine Die Woche dis-
closed the opinions of some viewers. One doctor questioned ‘whether
one should stir up such things that had almost been forgotten’. A 19
year-old trainee declared that the younger generation no longer wanted
to learn about such matters: ‘At long last we just want to be left alone
to work, re-build and live in peace and freedom.’43 Indeed, these argu-
ments are quite familiar. The social climate of the Federal Republic in
the mid-1950s was characterized by repression, which was the result
of an intensive resistance towards blame, shame and fear, explored in
Alexander und Margarete Mitscherlich’s book Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern
(The Inability to Mourn) which appeared around a decade later. They
maintained that society had still not dealt with the death of the Führer,
which was not just the death of the real person but also ‘the extinction
of his representation as a collective ego ideal’.44
‘It is obvious to every reasonable person that today it is not yet
possible to shoot a Hitler film’, Paul Hühnerfeld wrote in Die Zeit
If one was to depict Hitler, as he was, as the manic devil with an

sense of evil mission, then the Mephistophelean characteristics of the
devil – the sheer attraction of absolute nihilism would necessarily also
need to be captured. To create this in a film today is too dangerous,
even if the intent is sincere.45
Friedrich Torberg, who had once facilitated the contact between Szokoll
and Remarque, also reflected upon why the film was a failure:
Was the timing scheduled too early? Or perhaps too late? One might
almost think that there will never be a right point in time; namely
because only in the absence of any ramifications whatsoever may
such a risky endeavor succeed – and in such blissful faraway times one
will presumably be occupied with better things than the production
of Hitler films.46
Abroad, none of these problems existed, and The Last Ten Days proved to
be a great hit when exported, eventually being marketed in 52 countries
around the world. ‘The power of this picture is the power of the night-
mare. The spectator is locked in the sinister bunker like Germany in its
obsession, and the end is less an exit than a cure.’47 By the time this
review appeared in Time magazine, one year after the world premiere,
the film had already disappeared from German cinemas.
Notes
1. Anon., Time, 7 May 1956.
2. Anon., ‘Noch einmal Der letzte Akt’, Die Welt, 29 July 1955.
3. See Marc Silberman, ‘Late Pabst: The Last Ten Days (1955)’, in Eric
Rentschler (ed.), The Films of G.W. Pabst. An Extraterritorial Cinema
(New Brunswick, NJ and London, 1990), pp. 208–16; Klaus Kreimeier,
‘Trennungen: G.W. Pabst und seine Filme’, in Wolfgang Jacobsen (ed.),
G.W. Pabst (Berlin, 1997), pp. 117–22; Heinrich Placke, ‘Die politischen
Diskussionen um den Remarque-Film Der letzte Akt (Österreich, 1955)’, in
Erich Maria Remarque Jahrbuch V (1995), pp. 65–87; Thomas F. Schneider,
“‘Ein ekler Leichenwurm”. Motive und Rezeption der Schriften Erich Maria
Remarques zur nationalsozialistischen deutschen Vergangenheit’, in Heinz
Ludwig Arnold (ed.), Erich Maria Remarque (Munich, 2001), pp. 42–54.
4. See Michael Töteberg, ‘Hitler – eine Filmkarriere. Der letzte Akt und andere
Filme über das Ende des Führers’, in Joachim Fest and Bernd Eichinger
(eds), Der Untergang: Das Filmbuch (Reinbek, 2004), pp. 405–25; Andreas
Kilb, ‘Ein Reißer halb und halb ein Mahnmal’, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, 15 September 2004; Andreas Kilb, ‘Ein Mahnmal, ein Reißer, ein
Meisterwerk?’, in Margrit Frölich, Christian Schneider, and Karsten Visarius
(eds), Das Böse im Blick. Die Gegenwart des Nationalsozialismus im Film
(Munich, 2007), pp. 87–97.
5. Traudl Junge and Melissa Müller, Bis zur letzten Stunde: Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt
ihr Leben (Munich, 2002) and Joachim Fest, Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende
des Dritten Reiches. Eine historische Skizze (Berlin, 2002).
6. Bruno Ganz in an interview publicized by Constantin Film. Available
online at: http://www.wissen.de/wde/generator/wissen/ressorts/geschichte/
index,page=1305586.html.
7. Friedrich Torberg, ‘Ist Adolf Hitler verfilmbar?’, Forum (May 1955), p. 189.
8. Undated extract from a four-page report, Schriftgutarchiv der Stiftung
Deutsche Kinemathek/Filmmuseum, Berlin. Large photographic reports on
the filming also appeared in the international press, though these were free
from such polemical tones. See Eugène Silianoff, ‘Erich-Maria Remarque fait
revivre les dix derniers jours d’Hitler’, Paris Match 302, 15 January 1955,
pp. 48–51.
9. Michael A. Musmanno, Ten Days to Die: Eyewitnesses Report on the End of Hitler
(New York, 1950).
10. Anon., ‘Remarque schreibt Drehbuch zu Hitler-Film’, Süddeutsche Zeitung,
9 July 1954.
11. Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues (Cologne, 1974).
12. Erich Maria Remarque, in Thomas F. Schneider and Tilman Westphalen (eds),
Briefe und Tagebücher, vol. 5 (Cologne, 1998), p. 502.
13. Anon., ‘Der letzte Akt’, Wiesbadener Kurier, 7 May 1955.
14. Fest and Eichinger, Der Untergang, p. 8.
15. Oliver Hirschbiegel picked up this motif for Der Untergang. In Hirschbiegel’s
film, the boy is called Peter Kranz.
16. Anon., ‘Story von Remarque’, Der Spiegel, 9 February 1955.
17. Erich Maria Remarque, in Thomas F. Schneider and Tilman Westphalen (eds),
Werke für Theater & Film, vol. 3 (Cologne, 1998), p. 139.
18. Ibid., p. 151.
19. The film forgoes using preliminary and closing credits. These developments
are well documented thanks to evidence from Remarque’s estate. See also the
editorial comments in Remarque, Werke für Theater & Film, pp. 261–4.
20. Anon., ‘Hitler war kein Kasperl’, Der Spiegel, 6 October 1954.
21. Martin Ruppert, ‘Der Anti-Heros: Zum Film Der letzte Akt von G.W. Pabst’,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 April 1955.
22. Anon., ‘Hitler war kein Kasperl’.
23. Ingo Wien, ‘Weder zu früh noch zu spät’, Der Tagesspiegel, 25 December 1954.
24. Source.
25. Anon., ‘Zur Problematik eines Hitler-Filmes’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 19 May
1955.
26. Wien, ‘Weder zu früh noch zu spät’.
27. Anon., ‘Das war Hitlers “letzter Akt”’, Abendpost, 4 March 1955.
28. Kreimeier, ‘Trennungen’, p. 120.
29. Kilb, ‘Ein Mahnmal’, p. 91.
30. Herman G. Weinberg, ‘G.W. Pabst to dramatize Hitler’s Last Days’, The
New York Times, 17 March 1950.
Film, revised and expanded edition (Princeton, NJ, 2004).
32. Wilfried Saliger, ‘Gespensterhaft!’, Telegraf, 17 April 1955.
33. Walter Görlitz, ‘In zehn Tagen kommt der Tod’, Die Welt, 23 April 1955.
34. Anon., ‘Der letzte Akt’, Der Spiegel, 11 May 1955.
35. Gunter Groll, ‘Der letzte Akt’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8 June 1955.
36. Ruppert, ‘Der Anti-Heros’.
37. Gerda Pfau and Joachim Bölke, ‘Der Diktator auf der Leinwand’, Der
Tagesspiegel, 4 May 1955.
38. Hans Hellmut Kirst, ‘So leicht wird Hitler nicht wieder lebendig’, Münchner
Merkur, 7 May 1955.
39. Bruno Manuel, ‘Remarques Hitlers letzter Akt’, Aufbau, 13 May 1955.
40. Quoted in Placke, ‘Die politischen Diskussionen’, p. 78.
41. Ibid., p. 84.
42. Werner Grünwald, ‘Der letzte Akt’, Film-Echo, 30 April 1955.
43. Cited in Placke, ‘Die politischen Diskussionen’, p. 81.
44. Alexander und Margarete Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern. Grundlagen
kollektiven Verhaltens, 2nd edition (Munich, 1977), pp. 34–5.
45. Paul Hühnerfeld, ‘Der letzte Akt – ein Film’, Die Zeit, 28 April 1955.
46. Torberg, ‘Ist Adolf Hitler verfilmbar?’
47. Anon., Time, 7 May 1956.
Films cited
Hirschbiegel, Der Untergang (Germany, Italy, and Austria, 2004).
Käutner, Helmut, Die letzte Brücke (Austria and Yugoslavia, 1954).
Lang, Fritz, Metropolis (Germany, 1927).

Lorre, Peter, Der Verlorene (West Germany, 1951).
Milestone, Lewis, All Quiet on the Western Front (USA, 1930).
Pabst, Georg W., Die freudlose Gasse (Germany, 1925).
——, Die Büchse der Pandora (Germany, 1929).
——, Westfront 1918 (Germany, 1930).
——, Kameradschaft (Germany and France, 1931).
——, Der letzte Akt (West Germany and Austria, 1955).
Wiene, Robert, Das Cabinet des Doktor Caligari (Germany, 1920).
3
Our Hitler: A Film by Hans-Jürgen
Syberberg
Thomas Elsaesser
A good deal of the interest aroused by the so-called New German

Cinema in the 1970s and 1980s was generated by the impression –
as well as the expectation – that the films of Werner Herzog, Rainer
Werner Fassbinder, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Wim Wenders, and others
were not just another European new wave but would show the world
how Germany intended to come to terms with, or move out of, the
shadows cast by its disastrous history. Especially in the late 1970s, an
image-composite emerged of the recent past, thanks to several films
by Fassbinder and the work of Alexander Kluge, films like Margarethe
von Trotta’s Die bleierne Zeit (The German Sisters, 1981), Helma Sanders-
Brahms’ Deutschland bleiche Mutter (Germany Pale Mother, 1980) and
Edgar Reitz’ monumental Heimat – Eine deutsche Chronik (Heimat –
A Chronicle of Germany, 1984): they all, directly or indirectly, re-assessed
West Germany’s self-understanding in relation to the Nazi legacy.1 But,
among these films, it was only in Syberberg’s brooding, melancholy
Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland (Our Hitler, 1978) that the figure of
Hitler himself was both thematized as a historical figure and repre-
sented on screen, albeit mostly in mockingly oblique guise, as puppet or
automaton or as an undead vampire rising from the grave, with features
borrowed from the circus, the cinema, the fairground, and the toy shop.
Syberberg broke ranks in other respects as well. Some accused him
of being far too sympathetic to Hitler as well as his closest associates
(Goebbels, Speer, and Himmler), all of whom are given monologues
of self-explanation or morbid rumination, which could be taken as
self-justifications. Others felt uncomfortable by what was perhaps the
overarching argument of this seven-hour film: that Hitler is part of ‘us’
(the Germans) and that Nazism cannot be regarded as a temporary aber-
ration, nor can the Führer be written off as a sociopath or gangster
72
Thomas Elsaesser 73
who had cheated or murdered his way to the top. But passages naming
prominent West Germans also seemed petty and vindictive, and the
‘us’ or ‘our’ was exclusive in its sweeping inclusiveness. For instance,
it clearly did not include the German Jews or other minorities and thus
risked reproducing the racially defined identity of Germans so reprehen-
sively introduced by Nazi policies. Outside Germany on the other hand,
and notably in the USA and France, the film was generally welcomed
as a serious moral attempt and a bold aesthetic experiment to come to
terms with the complex affective and ideational entanglements of ‘ordi-
nary Germans’ with such an odious regime, offering a ‘mea culpa’ on
behalf of the German people to the rest of the world.
However, within or alongside the claim that this was a film about
‘our Hitler’, other figurations (as well as the respective representations)
of Hitler can be made out, which range from Hitler the blank cipher
to Hitler the failed artist, and from Hitler the ventriloquist to Hitler
the greatest film director of all times. In what follows, I shall sketch
some of these mutations and transformations, without claiming either
to be exhaustive or to have found what ultimately holds them together
outside the universe of Syberberg’s historical imagination.
The film opens with an empty stage on which a back-projection of
King Ludwig II of Bavaria’s Munich residence slowly appears, while a
voice-over delivers the customary disclaimer about all events and char-
acters in this film being fictional. A young girl in black (the director’s
daughter, Amelie Syberberg) is playing with her dolls. Effigies of Ludwig
and Hitler can be seen in the background. The girl puts a toy dog with
the face of Hitler to bed in a cradle, and against a blow-up of Werner
Krauss as Dr Caligari, a devil figure turns into a black eagle. The Master of
Ceremonies (André Heller) announces the end of the world, which will
be ‘the greatest show on earth’. From inside the Black Maria, Edison’s
first film studio, Ludwig reminds us that we all need scapegoats. The
MC, now a fairground barker like Dr Caligari, calls upon his actors to
present themselves, and each one plays Hitler: as a house-painter, as
Frankenstein, as Caligula and Napoleon, and as Charlie Chaplin. Every-
one can play Hitler, must play Hitler. A terrified Peter Lorre from Fritz
Lang’s M (re-enacted by Peter Kern in SS uniform) confesses to child
murder and describes in detail how his compulsion takes hold of him.
Next, a circle in Hell, and out of their coffins step the Nazi lead-
ers, one by one. Manipulated puppets on strings, Goebbels, Goering,
Himmler, and Speer philosophize and explain themselves. Hitler, it tran-
spires, is too evil for hell, and so has to remain on earth. The girl in
black has been listening to the puppets and now takes Ludwig out of
74 Our Hitler
his coffin to carry him off. The MC hazards some guesses as to Hitler’s
present incarnations: from newsreels showing Hitler’s election victory
to Nazi judges in action and the bonfires of book-burnings, we move to
German filmmakers then and now, an inflatable sex doll, a blackboard
with names of West German film critics; McCarthyism is mentioned,
Hollywood, coffee-table books about Nazi victories, and Hitler memora-
bilia. In the foreground, the grotesquely charred remains of Goebbels,
and to the side, the girl in black is cradling her Ludwig doll.
The representations may be papier-mâché, grotesque and histrionic,
but Hitler, the historical figure, is introduced in language that para-
phrases ancient mythologies and biblical premonitions, along with
echoes from Friedrich Hölderlin and Arthur Schopenhauer, Oswald
Spengler, and Richard Wagner:
And there came one who knew – the greater the sacrifice, the greater
the God. And who knew that blood-sacrifices were required, with the
most sacred values of art and morality on the altar of faith. And they
also knew, out of an old feeling, and because he told them that those
who sacrifice, are part of the elect. An elected people. [ . . . ] Devil and
eternal tempter of democracy, or hypnotised medium of the world’s
masses, or tool of capitalist exploitation and social explosions, where
is his beginning, and how can we grasp it, represent it, in and through
the old images for our time? Once more, the old rites of Dionysos
and of self-sacrifice. Western ceremonies, celebrations of decline, a
last memory of distant myths about the nearness of the Gods dur-
ing blood-sacrifices and when Fathers slay their own sons. For they
know not what they do, waking in the end as if from a dream, dis-
tantly aware of their own guilt. Final attempt of Europe to realise itself
through its own ancient traditions in the age of the new law of the
masses. In despair, fainting, a puzzle, and a mystery to all spectators
forever [ . . . ].2
If this has the ring of incantation, its rhapsodic-prophetic tone reminis-

cent of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, then the diffident, respectful ques-
tion, by contrast, recalls also Serenus Zeitblom, the narrator of Thomas
Mann’s Dr Faustus. But whether deliberately bombastic or dipped in
malicious irony, the passage is undoubtedly disturbing: can Hitler really
be considered ‘a puzzle and a mystery . . . forever’, after (already by 1978)
more than 30 years of Faschismusdebatte and in the midst of a heated
public debate about the historiographical ‘representability’ of Hitler?
Joachim Fest’s massive Hitler – Ein Biographie was published in 1973, and
Thomas Elsaesser 75
Hitler – Eine Karriere, the film based on Fest’s book, was a huge pub-
lic success in 1977. In Syberberg’s film, the prevailing socio-economic
or Marxist analyses of Nazism are mentioned, only to be dismissed as
irrelevant. For instance, Brecht’s anti-Hitler plays, such as Arturo Ui, are
explicitly cited as inadequate models: ‘So, no private scenes about Fear
and Misery of the Third Reich and nothing about the cauliflower trust
and the political life of gangsters during the 30s. Rather [our show] is
about faith that can move mountains. Of a people’s tribune without
precedent.’3
As the prologue continues, one begins to grasp the point: we cannot
keep Hitler at arm’s length or treat him like any other subject for a his-
torical biography. The rhetorical stance acknowledges Fest, in that the
latter, book and film are present as the negative imprint of the Führer’s
popularity and his enduring lure of ghoulish fascination. But Syberberg
is also anti-Fest, in that his film – against the ‘Hitler-Welle’ (Hitler wave),
partly attributed to Fest – tries to carve out another space of negativ-
ity: the show opens in order to close expectations, and the show is a
show, precisely to deny conventional notions of spectacle. The charac-
ters appear on stage in order to disclaim that they are characters, and by
analogy, the film director warns against the attempt to flesh out narra-
tives from such ruins, or give the illusion of redeeming by recreation
and re-enactment what is past redemption. Furthermore, the spot-
light may be on the man who incarnates unspeakable evil and caused
unimaginable misery to millions, but Hitler is not the main protagonist:
There will be no hero, only us. And there will be no story, only
ours, within us . . . . Those who want to see Stalingrad once more,
or the lone wolf in his bunker . . . will be disappointed. We do not
show the non-repeatable reality, not the emotions of the victims and
their histories, not history as it appears in non-fiction best-sellers, nor
the [Hitler] industry that cashes in on morality and horror, fear and
death, penitence and arrogance and righteous anger.4
It is as if a tabula rasa had to be created, after all the speculations, inter-

pretations, preconceptions, and received wisdom, setting aside empirical
notions of cause and effect, or psychological accounts of personal-
ity and agency. Yet in order to produce a different kind of vacuum,
a different kind of conceptual void, the stage has to be filled with
non-entities and non-explanations: the puzzle is not to be solved, the
mystery is not meant to inspire awe: they are invoked in order to invent
a space, to establish Hitler as a ‘cypher’, and to make room for another
76 Our Hitler
protagonist – the spectators. As indicated, in 1977, this was a difficult

position to put forward, precisely because all possible theories about the
origins and nature of Nazism, whether ‘intentionalist’ or ‘conjunctural’,
whether attributable to Hitler’s personality or seen as the consequence
of the national (‘Teutonic’) character, had been so thoroughly aired and
debated. In the context of these (academic) discussions, the film could
not but seem ideologically ambiguous. On the one hand, Syberberg
appeared to revive the (mass-) psychoanalytical explanations of fascism
and Hitler, common for the first decade after 1945, without any of the
methodological rigour or sociological documentation of say, Adorno’s
Authoritarian Personality5 or Alexander Mitscherlich’s The Fatherless Soci-
ety.6 On the other hand, many of Syberberg’s formulations seemed too
close to a Faustian Manichaeism not to arouse suspicion about possible
mystification or failure to differentiate. Even Susan Sontag, the film’s
most enthusiastic supporter, voiced her concern, but then turned it
around:
Although Syberberg draws on innumerable versions and impressions

of Hitler, the film offers in fact very few ideas about Hitler. For the
most part they are the theses formulated in the ruins of post-World
War II Germany: the thesis that Hitler’s work was the ‘eruption of the
satanic principle in world history’, the thesis . . . that Hitler was the
logical culmination of Western progress. . . . In reviving those unmod-
ulated views of thirty years ago, their indignation, their pessimism,
Syberberg’s film makes a strong case for their moral appropriateness.7
This line of defense, however successful in preparing a sceptical

American public for the film’s reception, risked doing the director a dis-
service, especially if another epicentre of Syberberg’s project was not
stressed equally clearly. As the programmatic-polemical German title
Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland wanted to make evident, the film is
also about Hitler and cinema, that is, the mechanisms of identification
and the structures of identity, about spectatorship and participation,
about screens, mirrors, and the Medusa-face of specular fascination.8
Hence the elaborate framing metaphor of the show. The paraphernalia of
telescope, crystal ball, back-projection, and Edison’s Black Maria movie
studio are intended to make, from the opening, a grandiose gesture
at an essentially empty stage, where only puppets, voices, projections,
and cut-outs will be allowed to appear. Our Hitler signals – beyond and
against the unavoidable reference to Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the
Will – that Syberberg is interested in Hitler primarily as the focal point
Thomas Elsaesser 77
and imaginary construct of intersecting lines, as the zero-degree of a

system of co-ordinates (‘from the legendary nullity of nothingness’),9
whose axes are projection and identification.
In other words, the conjunction Hitler/cinema is more pervasive than
many early commentators were willing to consider, and certainly does
not exhaust itself in a series of suggestive facts or anecdotes about
Hitler’s sponsorship of Riefenstahl, Hitler the movie fan (of otherwise
banned Hollywood imports), or even the extended analogy of the War
conducted in the cutting rooms of newsreel studios for the Führer’s pri-
vate projection booth. These are symptoms rather than symbols in the
film, surface elements that do not penetrate to the core of the issue, for
the links between Hitler and the cinema extend across the whole seven
hours, at varying degrees of reference. The relation is – despite appear-
ances, and a contrario Susan Sontag – not a parallelism, but made up of a
double and asymmetric set of coordinates: one having to do with the
affective-addictive nature of (audio-visual) technology, and the other
with the idea of the world as spectacle, so that the equation ‘cinema,
the art of the twentieth century – Hitler, the subject of the twentieth
century’10 is as suggestive as it is potentially misleading, especially if the
terms hint at an equation, or a collapse of one into the other. Instead,
Hitler and cinema form a dialectical (or ‘heteronomic’) pair, each dis-
placed in relation to the other, determined by forces impinging from
outside, and needing to be kept at a distance that energizes the gap
between them.
In a first turn, then, Hitler in Syberberg’s film is both omnipresent and
dissolves as a ‘subject’ – as a historical individual and as a subject for
further biographical-empirical research. Instead, he is posited counter-
factually and provocatively as a ‘nullity’, in order for another subject to
project itself onto the blank wall or screen. The imaginary lines inter-
sect in a space that wants to designate an ‘us’: (German) spectators in
the cinema, (German) non-participating participants in history. Nazism
and the cinema, Hitler and film: two imaginary constructions of subjec-
tivity, problematic and potentially fatal as projections of the self onto
an Other, who comes to function as the ideal ego. Syberberg does not
assert outright a direct analogy between the dynamics of identification
by which the moving image captivates the spectator in the cinema, and
the inner dynamics, psychic structures or emotional matrix that held
the German ‘people’ in thrall to Hitler. His mode of argumentation is
both more oblique and proceeds by paradoxes, so that the unusually
startling comparisons between Hitler and Hollywood, Nazi judges and
West German film-critics, Goebbels and Playboy centerfolds, which pop
78 Our Hitler
up in Our Hitler as outrageous hyperboles, appear less gratuitous once the

implied terms of Syberberg’s cultural-historical cosmology can be recon-
structed. Ideally, such recovery work requires a detour via Syberberg’s
other films that make up the series of (tableau) ‘biographies’ and (imag-
inary) biographies, especially Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen
König (Ludwig – Requiem for a Virgin King, 1972) and Karl May (1974), but
also Theodor Hierneis oder: Wie man ehem. Hofkoch wird (Theodor Hierneis,
Ludwig’s Cook, 1973) and Winifred Wagner und die Geschichte des Hauses
Wahnfried von 1914–1975 (The Confessions of Winifred Wagner, 1975) –
all preceding the Hitler film and preparing for its central tenets, with
respect to the Germany of which Hitler is such an integral part. Here, a
mere summary of one central complex – the relation of history to myth
and myth to phantasmagoria – will have to do, before returning to the
question of projection and identification.
Hitler as kitsch: Mythology and phantasmagoria
What mediates and at the same time opens up the asymmetry between
Hitler (as the ‘consequence’ of German history) and cinema (as the
‘working through’ of this history) is the idea of myth, or rather, the
impossibility of a coherent, comprehensible, and closed world picture
in the modern age and in a secular world. This ‘loss’ stands in inverse
relation to the desire for its return, seeing how myth is intertwined with
the structures of anticipation and memory, with utopian longings and
the need to reassure oneself of one’s origins, that is, with narratives of
identity and belonging:
It would be . . . an error and a mistake, to deny the necessity of myth,

myth as the response to a reality forever beyond one’s grasp. . . . For
us today history becomes the material for our new mythologies, even
when communicated through the everyday rationality of scientific
paperbacks. . . . The key to the success of modern myth lies in tak-
ing seriously the banality of kitsch and the popularity of the trite
and trivial – the last traces of disappearing worlds from the primeval
depths of our historical past.11
History as the material for mythologies, myth as the second-order lan-

guage of history: Comparable to Roland Barthes, Syberberg emphasizes
that he is concerned with ‘myth today’, that is to say, with myth as an
aspect of our modernity, which is itself a historical phenomenon.12 Like
Barthes, for whom myth – as the reassuringly petit-bourgeois language
79
Figure 3.1 In Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Our Hitler (1977), Hitler is frequently

shown as a hand-held puppet.
80 Our Hitler
of ideology – becomes readable in the material objects and material-

ized images of technology, spectacle, and consumption, Syberberg sees
in the desire for a return to myth the filaments of a fractured total-
ity. Memory of an originary grand narrative, myth’s affective remains
are today only to be found in the banal, the evanescent, and the fabri-
cated, but whose rhetoric aspires to retain the reflected light of divinities
long departed. The name of this reflected light is kitsch, which in
Syberberg connotes less the aspect of the fake and captures more a
gesture of defiance or resilience. In this respect different from Barthes,
Syberberg’s kitsch has not yet made common cause with the commodity
and consumerism, however much kitsch expresses, besides an ineffa-
ble faith in the higher things in life, the need to belong, to share,
and to participate, at whatever price. Kitsch and myth, on this read-
ing, are both historical attempts to live outside history, understood as
that which isolates individuals from one another and subjects them
to the arbitrariness of the administered world. Where myth signifies
the unattainable ideal of the unbroken community, kitsch affirms one’s
belief in this ideal, in the language of shared reference, whose common
currency is the ‘trivial’ or ‘trite’. Hence the curiously ambivalent, but
symptomatic affinity of kitsch with the past, experienced not as his-
tory, but as time outside history. Yet nothing is more saturated with
the past than kitsch, whose passing it perpetually regrets and laments.
Kitsch is the gesture that embraces what once was the product of a
living tradition, a symbol of the chain of generations, covering the rup-
tures between past and present with the ersatz-aura and replica-dignity
of myth, a gap which otherwise only a properly historical-dialectic (or
‘materialist’) understanding could bridge. Kitsch and myth in Syberberg
thus preserve in their very a-historicity a negative relation to history, of
the kind famously diagnosed by T. W. Adorno with respect to Wagner:
It was denied to [Wagner] to call by its right name the totality thus
constituted [by the administered world]. Instead, it became metamor-
phosed into myth. The opaqueness and omnipotence of the social
processes are glorified as a metaphysical mystery by the individual
who suffers them and at the same time identifies himself with the
very powers that determine these processes.13
In one of the best-known scenes of Our Hitler, set against the back-
drop of Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth, we see Hitler (played by Heinz
Schubert) rise from Richard Wagner’s grave, recalling all the good and
evil genies that had brought him to power, his very appearance at this
Thomas Elsaesser 81
moment in time the logical outcome of Western civilization – effectively

suggesting that if he had not existed, he would have had to be invented.
Myth in this reading is not so much history denied or disavowed as it is
history become phantasmagoria, a spectral show of ghosts and appari-
tions, on whom to project one’s anxieties, one’s guilt, and failure, but
through whom one also communicates: with the departed and the after-
life, with one’s origins and one’s future prospects. In the genealogy of
cinema, the phantasmagorias of Etienne Robertson, Paul Philidor, and
similar spectacles occupy, of course, an important place.14 They stand
for the use of the cinematograph not as a representation of life, with the
screen opening a window on the world, but as an extension of life, with
projection providing the passage into a parallel world that encompasses
the past and the future. It is this phantasmagoria version of the cin-
ema that Syberberg invokes in the connections he draws between Hitler
and Hollywood, as well as between Hitler and the German people, and
which he literalizes and instantiates in his own film: by the use of back-
projection and puppetry, the allusion to Dr Caligari and his medium
Cesare, and an array of special effects in sound and lighting. The polit-
ical phantasmagoria that sustains itself through a negative-dialectic
relation to actual history is contrasted and countered with the cinematic
phantasmagoria that promises the possibility of giving living form to
anxieties and desires stirring among those ‘who suffer and at the same
time identify . . . with the very powers that determine these processes’.
Phantasmagoria in art preserves a truth about life, phantasmagoria taken
into life produce the ‘greatest show on earth’, one to end all shows.
Key notions in both types of phantasmagoria are identification and
projection. As we saw, from the opening titles onwards, Our Hitler
emphasizes spectator-positioning and modes of address. It starts in
much the way that Hollywood films draw in the spectator, with bold
special effects, which suggest the three dimensionality of the screen,
as objects come rushing towards the spectator from the infinite depth
of space.15 Syberberg cites these forms of direct assault, made familiar
through George Lucas’ Star Wars (1977), Steven Spielberg’s Close Encoun-
ters of the Third Kind (1977), and certain super-spectacular scenes from
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), only to reveal them
as artifices, as technological trompes l’œil, by gradually, through super-
imposition and dissolving, substituting a space that can be recognized
as ‘back-stage’: life-less, abandoned, full of dummies, debris, and props.
The uncanny power of the cinema to simulate perception in depth, as
well as animating the inanimate are conjured up, to be banished for the
rest of the film. As with the trope of the ‘show’, immersive plenitude
82 Our Hitler
stands at the beginning of the film to indicate the end of a (film-) his-
torical development. No more spectacle, no more illusionism on the
(world-as-a) stage.
A metaphoric chain – star, tear, and glass ball – concretizes the trans-
formation of ‘stage’, ‘world’, and ‘universe’ into the categories of vision,
sight, and eye, generating a set of equivalences between optical toys,
vision machines, and the conversion of the material world into ‘views’
and the subject into an ‘eye’. The snow globe contains a miniature ver-
sion of Edison’s Black Maria, which itself is both a projection booth
and an artificial eye. As a parable of the origins of cinematic vision, the
opening section, portentously titled ‘The Grail’, is set on an abandoned
stage, which in the subsequent sections (titled ‘A German Dream’ and
‘The End of the Winter’s Tale’) comes to symbolize Germany’s desolate
post-war state, emptied except for the broken dreams of its writers and
philosophers, now contemplating the nightmares their lofty prophecies
have wrought. Foremost among these prophets is Karl May, the famous
writer of boys’ own adventure fiction set in the Middle East and North
America, who passed off his tales as autobiographical travel accounts
and who is the subject of an earlier Syberberg film. Here he appears, as
if emerging from the Black Maria snow globe, which turns into a gigan-
tic eye, as he ascends towards a stage heaven. A model German town
appears in a sandbox, snow gradually covering its rooftops like dusted
sugar on a cake. Peering down on his childhood world, Karl May remem-
bers his life and how he dreamt of the Redeemer, but when he eventually
comes, woe to mankind if he should turn out to be the wrong one.
Snow is also falling on Caligari’s fairground, where clothes dummies
look on, as Heinrich Himmler’s masseur discusses his master’s theo-
ries of an impending ice age, and Hitler’s valet appears, surrounded
by magicians wearing Nazi insignia. The radio broadcasts news bul-
letins from the front, and a voice recites a roll call of German film
classics, such as Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu, eine Symphonie
des Grauens (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, 1922), Paul Wegener’s and
Carl Boese’s Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem: How He Came
into the World, 1920), Fritz Lang’s Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse the
Gambler, 1922), and Lang’s Metropolis (1927). As a life-size Punch and
Judy show, two men in smart 1920s suits argue about the future, wish-
ing for a strong man who, after the humiliation of Versailles, would lead
Germany into the new Millennium. At the men’s fond reminiscences
of how Hitler had instilled hope and self-confidence in ordinary men
and women with his beer hall speeches, the Goebbels puppet jerks into
life: establishing a trope that functions throughout the film, namely the
Thomas Elsaesser 83
invisible wires that control the rapport of forces activating the kinds
of causality Syberberg sees operative between historical agents and the
fantasies of the ‘common man’, between anticipation, hope on one end
of the string, and fulfilment, retribution and reckoning on the other.
Hitler and his henchmen are puppets of the will of the masses, whom
both democracy and dictatorship have brought into being, but once
‘on stage’, performing their ‘show’, with all the instruments that mod-
ern technology of mass media and mechanized warfare puts at their
disposal, these agents-actors cast their own spell and create their own
spectacular-phantasmagoric reality. One is reminded again of Adorno’s
modern subjects, who both ‘suffer [from] and identify with’ the powers
that ‘determine the [opaque] social processes’ ruling their lives. It is an
analysis which Syberberg amplifies by adding to it the Hegelian dialectic
of master and slave, when he brings on Himmler’s masseur and Hitler’s
valet as the authentic ‘his master’s voice’, possibly also borrowing from
Bertolt Brecht’s Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (Mr Puntila and His Man
Matti, first performed in 1948), where the master is all sweetness and
kind humanity when drunk, but a monster of cold calculation when
sober.16 Thus, for instance, stranded in an underground passage lead-
ing to the Führer’s hideout in Berchtesgaden, which also doubles as the
ruins of the Reichskanzlei, Hitler’s valet (Hellmut Lange) remembers the
day-to-day domestic crises of socks and underpants, his master’s sudden
outbursts, his tears, his loneliness, and his sentimentality.
However, for those familiar with an earlier attempt to establish an
obliquely causal connection between filmic nightmares and political
consequences, Syberberg’s trope seems like a quite literal reading of
Siegfried Kracauer’s main thesis in From Caligari to Hitler (1947), in
which the films of the fantastic and the macabre, of puppets and puppet
masters, of master criminals, hypnotists, and somnambulists, produced
in such numbers during the years of the Weimar Republic, are inter-
preted as both premonitions and anticipations of the political horrors
to come.17 Kracauer’s methodological assumptions still stand as a pio-
neering effort in analyzing the psycho-social dynamics of the modern
mass media (specifically that the cinema is capable of plumbing the
depths of the collective mind more accurately than any other art form,
transforming the law of supply and demand regulating the market, into
a more subtle give-and-take, leaving ambiguous and reversible, who
leads and who is being led). His specific argument, however, that the
films of Wiene, Murnau, Lang, and others somehow caused or sanc-
tioned Nazism and thus must bear some of the blame, has been widely
contested and refuted.
Figure 3.2 The many faces of Adolf Hitler: during a lengthy sequence in
Syberberg’s film, Hitler (Heinz Schubert) appears in a variety of incarnations – as
a mad ‘carpet eater’ . . . .
Figure 3.3 . . . as Charlie Chaplin . . . .

85
Figure 3.4 . . . as a painter . . . .
Figure 3.5 . . . and a standard bearer, enacting Hubert Lanzinger’s popular 1935
painting of Hitler as a knight which itself alluded to Dürer’s famous engraving
Knight, Death, and Devil.
86 Our Hitler
Ventriloquists and puppets: Who speaks?
Who then speaks in Syberberg’s film, and who is spoken to? As in

a cabaret or variety show, many speakers come on stage, do their
numbers or ‘turns’, before retreating back into the shadows or disap-
pearing altogether. As a typically Brechtian device, it underlines the
minimal, though essential distance between actor and role, body and
voice, speaker and mouthpiece, ideologue and populist, free agent and
captive instrument of the collective will. But given the emblematic
significance Syberberg invests in the mock-trial of the child-murder from
Fritz Lang’s M (1931), interrogated and almost lynched by an under-
world gang of criminals and beggars, the film stage is also something of
a kangaroo court, giving the Nazi murderers another chance to present
their case, this time to German posterity rather than the American
judges at Nuremberg, though perhaps also meant to remind us of the
Auschwitz trials held in Frankfurt, memorably transposed onto the the-
ater by Peter Weiss’ Die Ermittlung (The Investigation, 1964), which its
author called an ‘oratorio in 11 songs’. Similarly, Syberberg speaks of his
polyphonic method of different voices as a ‘monologue’, arranged like a
‘spoken score’.18
But as Albert Speer and Joseph Goebbels ‘take the stand’, their reports
of first encounters with Hitler center on visual seduction, the trans-
fer of charisma materialized in a gesture, underlining once more the
ambivalent agency of specular identification. Speer states:
It was one of those big public meetings to which friends used to take
me. He spoke. As he always spoke. There was an uproar, beer bottles,
broken chairs, eggs, my jacket was soaked and stained, suddenly he
stood in front of me, the nobody, took off his jacket and gave it to
me. I stood in front of him in his jacket. His jacket, like a mantle
protecting and burning. He had chosen me. Among the thousands,
chosen me. It was his choice, and the right one, as he always chose
the right ones. . . . I don’t know what it was in me that chose him. Had
he chosen me or I him? I don’t know. Somehow it was inevitable.
In Goebbels’ case, too, fascination becomes a form of quasi-religious

recognition:
I go forward, no, I am being driven towards the platform. There

I stand for a long time and look in His face. This isn’t a politi-
cal speaker. This is a prophet! . . . For a moment he looks down at
Thomas Elsaesser 87
me. . . . It’s like a command. From that moment I am reborn. . . . I’m

in a trance. . . . It’s like a vow for a lifetime. And my eyes drowned
themselves in two big blue stars.
Both scenes illustrate one of the tropes of the more popularizing Hitler
literature, namely how his public performances were said to exert a hyp-
notic pull on his listeners, but also how (national) isolation and (social)
marginality were overcome by a kind of rapture, swept away in the spon-
taneous reciprocity of recognition, whose agent was Hitler’s gaze, his ‘big
blue stars’. Two chief architects of the Hitler regime are here improbably
meant to stand for the ‘ordinary German’, seduced by the rhetoric of
religious conversion and the power of the look as command, with Nazi
ideology narrowed to the mutually sustaining self-confirmation of the
German male in the public sphere of urban life, outside the family and
home as the usual locus of bourgeois (and oedipal) socialization. Instead,
the places of initiation and the sites of such recognition are rallies, mass
meetings, beer halls, and street battles.
One of the most effective audio devices that Syberberg employs goes
in the same direction: the montage of radio broadcasts, signature tunes,
time-signals, and theme music of the Großdeutsche Rundfunk. During
the war, with the front lines of German troops stretched all the way
across Europe into Africa and Asia, it was State radio that created an
uncanny presence and illusory closeness across these vast distances.19
Syberberg edits the 1942 Christmas broadcasts (and a multi-voiced ren-
dition of ‘Silent Night’) to conjure up just such an occasion, where the
nation celebrates itself across the signs of self-confirmation and self-
presence, made possible by real time on-air feedback not only between
the battle front and the home front, but by highlighting accents, as
signs of (national) unity through (regional) diversity. The radio broad-
casts and ‘musical request programmes’ made evident the power of
media technology to bring about one of the regime’s key ideological
effects, the so-called Volksgemeinschaft, awakened during the war into a
Schicksalsgemeinschaft (community of destiny). This ideal of the racially
pure nation of the Volk united by a common destiny, so vital to Nazi self-
understanding, was given body and substance, one might say, only by
this chorus of disparate voices over the ether. It highlights the paradox
of ‘Nazi modernity’: an ideology that skilfully deployed the most sophis-
ticated electronic technologies and advanced mass-media techniques
was put in the service of some of the most retrograde and atavistic
notions of the people and the community.20
88 Our Hitler
How do these media pyrotechnics, still effective today, position the

contemporary spectator, between vicarious participation and playing
jury member at a virtual trial? There is a kind of mise-en-abyme of spec-
tacles, one show folded into another, until the very idea of the show is
put in the dock (as well as mourned). Partaking in its power, the specta-
tor is also made witness to the consequences of this power, instantiating
a relay of gazes, while also breaking the circuit of mutual confirmation.
In Our Hitler, the spectatorial stand-in for posterity is the young girl.
Walking towards the foreground, she is shown standing on the edge of
a ramp, part of the scenic space and enveloped by it. Looking at the cam-
era, she faces frontally an invisible audience. The master of ceremonies,
addressing that same audience, but also us, insists that history is not
res gestas (what happens), but a show ‘put on’: there is always a pub-
lic, real or imagined, to which ‘historic’ acts are addressed, and whose
response is monitored. Between these two – the seasoned showman and
the wide-eyed child – no direct exchange takes place: they embody roles,
that of addressor and addressee, across the gap of generational incom-
prehension and muteness, in ‘a dialogue which is really a monologue’.21
Both face the camera frontally, which means that only the implied but
never actualized audience, made to ‘return the gaze’, can close the gap
between them, but in a manner that brings home how incomplete, ‘par-
allax’ and deferred this closure actually is. Similarly, any notion of a
consistent point of view – ‘Olympian’, from hindsight, or that of the
‘common man’ – is undermined by the switches in perspective, size and
scale: the Master of Ceremony pulls out a telescope, to see the earth as
it appears from the moon, which turns out to be one of the snow globes
among the girl’s toys strewn across the stage. It complements the ‘mas-
ter’, seen from the point of view of the ‘slave’, whether the ‘slave’ hap-
pens to be Himmler’s masseur, Hitler’s valet, or Ludwig’s cook: the inti-
macy of skin, smell, or taste that is his bond with power is also the mirror
in which the ‘master’ mistakes his monstrosity as the human touch.
The ingeniously conceived puppets who in Our Hitler ‘are’ the Nazi
figures – Fredric Jameson calls them ‘the puppets of mythical German
heroes’, and he includes Syberberg himself among them22 – are not
merely there to remind us of the wire-drawn stiffness of goose-stepping
jackboots, or even as emblems of those socio-economic theories that
see Hitler as the ‘puppet’ of high finance and heavy industry. The
most striking formal device, and another twist that Syberberg gives to
the master-slave dialectic, is the use he makes of the actor animating
the puppet. Visibly present, his own right arm serves as the extension
of the puppet, which seems to agitate, gesture, and remonstrate with
Thomas Elsaesser 89
a living arm, complicating the relation of puppet and puppet mas-

ter, by suggesting that the puppet controls its master, but also how
much of these truncated beings have survived into the living present.
These puppets are more like dummies, engaged in a ventriloquist’s dia-
logue: who is seen speaking is not who speaks, and who speaks is
actually ‘what’ (or ‘it’) speaks through whom. Once more, Syberberg
conceives of the central relation between Hitler and Germany as a ques-
tion of mutual dependencies, mirror relationships, reciprocities, and
vicious circles, making it impossible to distinguish those who manip-
ulate from those being manipulated out of inner conviction: ‘I gave
them what they projected on me, what they wanted to hear, wanted
to do, what they didn’t dare do themselves, I did it, ordered them to
do it, for their sake, not mine. Germany, yes, I did truly love it, after
my fashion.’23 As Syberberg also reminds us, fascist propaganda kept
this interdependence of Germany electing Hitler and Hitler electing
Germany fully visible in its ideology of the Führer, fashioned as the
tool, the instrument – of predestination, fate, as the executor of German
history and the agency (the ‘right hand’) of the people’s (unconscious,
disavowed) will.
For these grandiloquent delusions, the puppet show and the ventri-
loquist’s dummy are deliberately low-brow, ‘childish’ devices, borrowed
from Punch & Judy matinees and the variety theatre: an ironic allusion,
perhaps, to Kleist’s Marionettentheater, German idealism’s most famous
meditation on the paradoxes of agency. It might have been in contrast
to Thomas Mann: In the language of literary modernism, Mann had
expressed some of the same ideas of seduction and temptation, disen-
chantment, and yearning. Clothed in the metaphoric garb of the Faust
legend (with its own self-divisions, diabolical pacts, and apocalyptic tele-
ology), Mann gave us Adrian Leverkühn as the emblem of the ‘failed
artist’ wanting to achieve in life what art could no longer give him.
Seeing Hitler as a ‘Hampelmann’ (a ‘Jumping Jack’: another reference
to Fritz Lang’s M) or as the Austrian ‘Kasperl’,24 must have appealed to
Syberberg, insofar as it allows him to express in ‘kitsch’ images what
Hegelian philosophy puts in loftier terms, while also keeping in play
the transgressive inappropriateness of the comparison, just as the (partly
apocryphal) exchange between Hitler and Karl Valentin, the Munich
professional Kasperl (whose kitsch postcard collection the Führer seems
to have coveted in vain) is so important to Syberberg, because they are
the two figures whose emblematic polarities do not fuse, but, across the
gap of comedian and dictator, energize the entire constellation he is
exploring in his film.25
90 Our Hitler
The monument whereby Hitler survives

is made of celluloid
One of the most generally upsetting (and, as I have been arguing, possi-
bly misunderstood) parallels which Syberberg seems to draw is between
Hitler and Hollywood. Not simply in the sense that Ufa, under Goebbels’
control, was as keen on (and almost as good at) churning out glamorous
star-vehicles, melodramas, and screwball comedies as the Hollywood
studio system, but by suggesting that Hollywood, like Hitler, promoted
spectacle and show as the apocalyptic teleology (what, under the name
of phantasmagoria, I earlier called an ‘extension’) of life. Or – if possible
even more offensive – that Hollywood (as the arm of the US Empire’s
soft power) is the continuation of Hitler by other means.26 During his
ventriloquist’s monologue, Hitler complains that he is being misused
and exploited by the entertainment business. Yes, having failed as an
artist, to his regret, he had to turn to politics to realize his vision. But
even in defeat, he has profoundly altered the world: the map of Europe
has changed, the Jews have their own state, the USA has become a global
player. The Third Reich was merely a foretaste of what the twentieth cen-
tury still had in store: for Africa, East Asia, South America, but also for
the United States of Europe, and for Germany itself. The world may have
defeated him, but at what cost to its ecological, spiritual, and ethical
survival?
This is provocative, to be sure, but it is put in the mouth of Hitler the
Kasperl, the evil-genius ‘jack-out-of-the-box’. As with other comic and
rhetorical devices, such as hyperbole, irony, pastiche, oxymoron, and
inversion, we are asked to switch perspective several times: for instance,
on the diachronic time-line axis (to free the mind from the wisdom of
hindsight) and via the defamiliarization device of ‘playing the devil’s
advocate’. If Hitler is allowed to gloat over his victory in defeat, the final
part of the film, titled ‘We Children of Hell’ also has André Heller berate
the Hitler puppet for destroying Germany: not just its cities and terri-
torial integrity, but its spirit and soul. Whatever was noble and idealist
about Germany had been turned into kitsch, commercialism, and senti-
mental trash. Can there be redemption for Western civilization, which
had used Hitler as much as it had been used by him: nowhere more
so than in bequeathing to posterity a morbid fascination with every-
thing to do with Nazism? Former party members made a profit from
Nazi glamor by turning it into tourist attractions and a souvenir indus-
try, writing biographies and memoirs, and – he might have added as
Thomas Elsaesser 91
Figure 3.6 Harry Baer (playing himself) in conversation with a Hitler puppet
who claims mass democracy as one of his (many) legacies.
another irony – giving the New German Cinema its most marketable
subject.
Syberberg made Our Hitler in answer to Joachim Fest’s Hitler – Eine
Karriere (Hitler: A Career, 1977) and in anticipation of NBC’s television
series Holocaust. Pitching his own film so much as a critique of showing
and looking, foregoing narrative continuity, character-consistency, and
cinematic realism, while nonetheless playing with special effects and
playing to the prurient interest and morbid fascination aroused by the
Hitler wave, the director cannot but acknowledge his own complicity
in making Hitler ‘the subject of the twentieth century’: rightly pointing
out that Hitler had already, in his appropriation and use of the media,
anticipated his own revival as a spectacle, that guaranteed his ‘survival
on celluloid’.27
The fractured perspectives opened up by Syberberg’s montage style
and post-surrealist phantasmagoria may nonetheless be merely the
jagged pieces of a single picture into which they can be fitted like a
jigsaw puzzle. This picture, most critics – and even Syberberg’s erstwhile
92 Our Hitler
admirers – now agree, is no longer a pretty one. From a filmmaker, who

claimed for himself the legacy of Brecht and Wagner in equal measure,
he has turned into a social conservative, a public intellectual with aristo-
cratic prejudices and nostalgia for the lifestyle of a Prussian landowner.
Once he made films that, as Fred Jameson tried to argue, wanted to carry
forward Ernst Bloch’s ‘cultural revolution’, namely to immerse his audi-
ence into the ‘destructive element’ of German Romantic irrationalism
and its popular culture of Grimm’s fairytales, Prague Gothic, sentimen-
tal songs, Karl May adventures and Bavarian kitsch, irrespective of its
commodification and sentimentality, in order to emerge ‘on the other
side’, so as to shake loose class-divisions enforced through taste-barriers,
by ‘de-reifying cultural representations’ and rescuing their subversive,
resisting, or merely stubbornly persistent energies.28 Now that he no
longer makes films, Syberberg is a pariah polemicist, feeling himself mis-
understood and having become ostracized, thanks to his increasingly
anti-Semitic views:
Jewish analyses, images, definitions of art, science, sociology, litera-

ture, politics, and the information media, dominate. Marx and Freud
are the pillars that mark the road from East to West. Neither are
imaginable without Jewishness. . . . The axis USA-Israel guarantees the
parameters. That is the way people think now, the way they feel,
act, and disseminate information. We live in the Jewish epoch of
European cultural history. And we can only wait, at the pinnacle of
our technological power, for our last judgment at the edge of the
apocalypse.29
Syberberg’s programmatic-polemical Hitler project, as I tried to show,

implied a two-fold offensive, conveniently encapsulated in the titles
Our Hitler and Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland. The first one invokes
‘Hitler’ as the mirror or projection screen on which German culture,
appropriated by the Nazi in its idealizing myth-making as well as its
terrifying self-delusions, had to be recognized as part of an ‘us’ that
could neither be angrily disavowed nor complacently acknowledged.
The mirage of the Schicksalsgemeinschaft needed to reform itself into a
community ready to collectively make itself accountable for what cer-
tain individuals had thought, said, and done in the name of the nation.
The second offensive took to task not only Germany, but Western capi-
talism and its ‘society of the spectacle’ which Hitler and the Nazi, while
seeming to fight it at the level of ideology, with diatribes against Jewish
Thomas Elsaesser 93
finance capitalism and an obsession with purity of blood, race, and soil,
actually helped to bring about, by pushing the use of mass media as
tools of entertainment and propaganda, or rather: of entertainment as
propaganda.
Many would argue that the introspective soul-searching on behalf of
Germany’s accountability (which was widely appreciated) had very lit-
tle to do with the anti-Hollywood, anti-American turn that his critique
of spectacle and of show business took (which was either dismissed
as cranky or attributed to too close a reading of Horkheimer/Adorno’s
‘culture industry’ chapter in Dialectic of Enlightenment). The embracing
frame within which these two halves may nonetheless be seen as belong-
ing together involves taking on good faith Syberberg’s entire poetic-
philosophical cosmos. It means granting his aesthetic-moral universe its
own inner consistence and coherence, but especially trusting the direc-
tor himself as the ‘artist’. It is an artist whose vocation, whose love of
truth and deeper insight into the heart of things give him license to
deploy entirely as he sees fit not only all the rhetorical tropes and poet-
ological devices his craft equips him with, but also to bend and shape to
his unique vision the materials of the real world, including the world of
history and politics.
Unfortunately for him, Syberberg belongs to the generation that came
to creative maturity in the mid-1960s, when this concept of art and of
the artist (bridging German ‘romanticism’ and European ‘modernism’)
was about to break up, even in Germany, where it extended its expiry
date, somewhat anachronistically, by migrating from the literary author
to the cinematic auteur. Our Hitler in this sense is the litmus test, poised
between representative vision and private fantasy, and thus proof of its
own historical truth. The fissures and cracks that appear are part of its
precarious moment in time – ironically underscored in the figure of the
film’s producer. Of a younger generation and of a different mind-set with
respect to both art and commerce, both German history and Hollywood,
Bernd Eichinger would, some 30 years later, as writer and producer, sign
another Hitler film: Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004). Syberberg might
think that this downfall, too, he correctly predicted.
Notes
1. Among the many studies of the New German Cinema’s ‘mastering the past’
(Vergangenheitsbewältigung), three of the earliest are Anton Kaes, From Hitler
to Heimat, or the Return of History as Film (Cambridge, MA, 1989); Thomas
94 Our Hitler
Elsaesser, The New German Cinema – A History (London, 1989); and Eric
Santner, Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory, and Film in Postwar Germany
(Ithaca, NY, 1990).
2. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland (Reinbek, 1978),
pp. 74–6.
3. Ibid., p. 81.
4. Ibid.
5. Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and
R.N. Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York, 1950).
6. Alexander Mitscherlich, Auf dem Weg zur vaterlosen Gesellschaft (Weinheim,
1963).
7. Susan Sontag, ‘Eye of the Storm’, The New York Review of Books, 27.2,
21 February 1980, p. 39.
8. ‘The dominant idea governing the film is the concept of ‘projection’.
Projection in the symbolic sense was one of Hitler’s great accomplish-
ments . . . . We will show the world of Hitler in the form of projections,
fantastic dreams, projections of the will which gave shape to these visions.’ –
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, in a television interview, translated and printed in
Framework 11,6 (Autumn, 1977), p. 15.
9. Syberberg, Hitler – Ein Film, p. 74.
10. Sontag may have taken the first part of her sentence from Syberberg him-
self: ‘I do not feel there is any need to justify making a film about Hitler.
It is the subject of this century – and not only for us Germans. – Framework
11,6, p. 13.
11. Syberberg, Hitler – Ein Film, pp. 17–18.
12. Roland Barthes, ‘Myth Today’, in Roland Barthes (ed.), Mythologies (London,
1972), pp. 109–59.
13. Theodor W. Adorno, Versuch über Wagner (Frankfurt, 1974), p. 112.
14. For a brief history of phantasmagorias, see Bruce Sterling, ‘Adventures
in Cybersound: Robertson’s Phantasmagoria’. Available online at: http://
www.acmi.net.au/AIC/PHANTASMAGORIE.html (last accessed 30 November
2008).
15. ‘It would be good to have a chapter of the film in pure Hollywood style, on
the gigantic scale of Jaws or King Kong. Speer had planned a victory parade
in Berlin for 1950.’ – Syberberg, quoted in Framework 11,6, p. 15.
16. Bertolt Brecht, Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti, 34th edition (Berlin, 2001).
Film (Princeton, NJ, 1947).
18. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Syberbergs Filmbuch (Munich, 1976), p. 22.
19. This is the central theme also in Fassbinder’s Lili Marleen (West Germany,
1981).
20. The most popular Ufa film during the Nazi years was Eduard von
Borsody’s Wunschkonzert (Request Concert, Germany, 1940), a love story
set in the first year of the war, whose narrative turns on missed
encounters, tragic accidents, and miraculous reunions are determined
by the chance selection of radio requests, whose very contingency lays
the foundations of the couple and by extension that of the national
community.
Thomas Elsaesser 95
22. Fredric Jameson, ‘In the Destructive Element Immerse: Hans-Jürgen

Syberberg and Cultural Revolution’, in Fredric Jameson (ed.), Signatures of
the Visible (London, 1990), p. 63.
24. ‘Adolf, the barbaric Kasperl. Mineral water instead of beer, vegetarian cook-
ing instead of pig’s trotter, Sieg Heil instead of Schlapperdipix, and Sieg Heil,
that’s progress made in Germany, Kasperl as the Führer.’ – Syberberg, Hitler –
Ein Film, p. 109.
25. ‘During the last war, when the great Karl Valentin . . . ’ – Syberberg, Our Hitler,
Part 1, Scene 8.
26. ‘Presenting Hitler as a would-be Cecil B. DeMille, Syberberg’s six-hour opus
proposed that twentieth-century show business and fascism were virtually
identical. According to Syberberg, both Hitler and Hollywood obliterated
the autonomy of art and used aesthetic experience for the purpose of mass
manipulation. . . . According to Syberberg, both Hollywood and Hitler de-
graded the mythic by transforming politics and culture into spellbinding
movie sets. Both exemplified a cynical triumph of instrumental reason over
the irrational substratum of what Syberberg understands as authentic cul-
ture. In the unyielding perspective of Our Hitler, Hollywood in fact turns
out to be even more fascist than fascism itself. For thanks to their hege-
monic position during the postwar era, Hollywood feature films exploited
the Germans’ need to mourn their past and thus extended Hitler’s strategies
of mass deception beyond the Nazis’ historical demise’ – Lutz Koepnick, The
Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, CA, 2002), p. 6.
27. ‘The monument whereby Hitler survives is made of celluloid.’ – Syberberg,
Syberbergs Filmbuch, p. 94.
28. Jameson, ‘In the Destructive Element Immerse’, pp. 70–1.
29. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Vom Unglück und Glück der Kunst in Deutschland nach
dem letzten Kriege (Munich, 1990), p. 15.
Films cited
Chomsky, Marvin, Holocaust (USA, 1978).
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, Lili Marleen (West Germany, 1981).
1977).
Kubrick, Stanley, 2001: A Space Odyssey (United Kingdom and USA, 1968).
Lang, Fritz, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (2 parts) (Germany, 1922).
——, Metropolis (Germany, 1927).
——, M (Germany, 1931).
Lucas, George, Star Wars (USA, 1977).
Murnau, Friedrich Wilhelm, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Germany,
1922).
Reitz, Edgar, Heimat – Eine deutsche Chronik (West Germany, 1984).
Sanders-Brahms, Helma, Deutschland bleiche Mutter (West Germany, 1980).
96 Our Hitler
Spielberg, Steven, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (USA, 1977).

Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen, Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König (West
Germany, 1972).
——, Theodor Hierneis oder: Wie man ehem. Hofkoch wird (West Germany, 1972).
——, Karl May (West Germany, 1974).
——, Winifred Wagner und die Geschichte des Hauses Wahnfried von 1914–1975
——, Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland (West Germany, France, and United
Kingdom, 1977).
Von Borsody, Eduard, Wunschkonzert (Germany, 1940).
Von Trotta, Margarethe, Die bleierne Zeit (West Germany, 1981).
Wegener, Paul and Carl Boese, Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (Germany, 1920).
Filmic representations of Hitler after 1945 were conditioned by the need to avoid,
indeed to subvert, the propagandistic images of the Third Reich, notably those
from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), above, and the Nazi newsreels,
below.
Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) was an early attempt to deconstruct
the image of the charismatic leader fabricated by Nazi propaganda and remained
an inspiration for numerous humoristic portrayals of Hitler after World War II,
including Dani Levy’s Mein Führer.
Disney’s Der Führer’s Face (1943), an animated short film featuring Donald Duck
as a hapless factory worker in Nazi Germany, was another landmark in the early
satirical depictions of Hitler, which reduced the latter to a figure of ridicule and
contempt.
There was no such thing as a ‘Hitler taboo’ in Anglo-American films about the
Third Reich. The actor to most frequently impersonate the Führer was Bobby
Watson, seen above in The Story of Mankind (1957). Below is a still from the pop-
ular American television series War and Remembrance (1988), featuring Steven
Berkoff as Hitler.
Kamping it up: Long before Helmut Dietl and Dani Levy, Mel Brooks exploited
the enormous comic potential of the post-war obsession with Nazism and the
personality of Hitler in The Producers (1968). Dick Shawn and Renée Taylor, below,
played the lead roles in the musical-within-the-film Springtime for Hitler: A Gay
Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden.
Alec Guinness’ portrayal of Hitler in the Anglo-Italian co-production Hitler – The
Last Ten Days (1973), directed by Ennio De Concini, in many ways anticipated
that of Bruno Ganz in Downfall (2004). Like Hirschbiegel, De Concini relied on
the 1947 book Hitler’s Last Days: An Eye-Witness Account by Gerhard Boldt, a
survivor of the Führerbunker.
Joachim Fest’s documentary Hitler – A Career (1977) consisted exclusively of his-
torical footage, drawn mainly from Nazi newsreels. The film proved controversial
and in the eyes of many critics, including Wim Wenders, failed to establish a
critical distance to its visual material.
Unlike Fest, Syberberg frequently highlighted the ‘staged’ aspects of National
Socialism and Hitler’s leadership in Hitler – A Film from Germany (1977). Above
André Heller is seen reading in front of a screen showing a Nazi newsreel. Heinz
Schubert (below) plays Hitler in various guises, but also impersonates Heinrich
Himmler.
Hitler – A Film from Germany (1977) oscillates between presenting Hitler as a myth-
ical incarnation of Germany’s dreams and desires and grotesque images like the
one below intended to expose him as ‘the greatest fart of the [twentieth] cen-
tury’. Like Downfall thirty-odd years later, Syberberg’s experimental biopic was
produced by Bernd Eichinger.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder shows Hitler at the beginning and the end of two films
in his so-called BRD Trilogy: as a background image to the opening credits of The
Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), above, and as a dazzling light emanating from an
office in the Reich Chancellery in the final scene of Lili Marleen (1981).
George Schaefer’s CBS television film The Bunker (1981), featuring Anthony
Hopkins as Hitler, ended with a scene that Hirschbiegel’s Downfall carefully –
and significantly – avoided: a shot of the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun (Susan
Blakely) after their joint suicide.
Christoph Schlingensief’s 100 Years of Adolf Hitler – The Last Hour in the Führer
Bunker (1989), released during the centenary year of Hitler’s birth (and the year
of German reunification), was a dimly lit farce that dispensed with all claims to
historical accuracy. Hitler, played as a morphine addict (and smoker) by Udo Kier
(above), is killed by Eva Braun (Brigitte Kausch) who takes on both his mous-
tache and his role as Führer, before leaving the bunker with her new paramour
Hermann Fegelein (Volker Spengler).
Schtonk (1992), Helmut Dietl’s Oscar-nominated satire, pokes fun both at the
popular fascination with the historical Hitler, not least among the right-wing
establishment, and the notion of a ‘Hitler within us all’.
The 1990s brought an unprecedented number of Hitler documentaries to the
German television screens, most notably Guido Knopp’s Hitler: A Profile (1995),
which contained a lot of unseen footage of the Führer, much of it from Eva
Braun’s private recordings.
German ‘docu-dramas’ like Speer & Hitler were partly inspired by North American
productions such as Christian Duguay’s Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003), with Robert
Carlyle in the role of the young Hitler and Julianna Margulies, above, as Helene
Hanfstaengl.
The most successful Hitler film from Germany, Downfall (2004), directed by
Oliver Hirschbiegel and produced by Bernd Eichinger, garnered an Oscar
nomination and grossed almost 100 million US dollars worldwide. Bruno Ganz’s
portrayal of Hitler, in particular, received much critical acclaim. He is seen here
outside the bunker (above), with Albert Speer (Heino Ferch) and below, at his
last-minute wedding to Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler).
Many scenes in Downfall (2004) show Hitler framed by his followers and gen-
erals, which adds to the sense of claustrophobia that the film captures so well.
Hirschbiegel and Eichinger went to great lengths to reconstruct the appearance
and atmosphere of the Führerbunker by drawing on eyewitness accounts such as
those found in the memoirs of Albert Speer and Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge.
The film’s screenplay (written by Bernd Eichinger) was based on the book by
Joachim Fest Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich.
The Führer smiles: upon a Hitler Youth (Donevan Gunia), above, and in the com-
pany of the Goebbels children in Downfall (2004). In the light of scenes like
these, the New Yorker film critic David Denby wondered whether the film’s insis-
tence that ‘the monster was not invariably monstrous – that he was kind to his
cook and his young female secretaries, loved his German shepherd, Blondi, and
was surrounded by loyal subordinates’ was a ‘sufficient response to what Hitler
actually did’.
Downfall (2004) frequently shows Hitler in domestic settings – above, at the
dining table with his cook (Bettina Redlich) and his secretary (Alexandra Maria
Lara) and below in his bedroom – where he appears unguarded, even vulnerable.
This does not necessarily arouse feelings of sympathy on the part of the viewer,
however. ‘As we regard this broken and pathetic Hitler’, film critic Roger Ebert
remarked, ‘we realize that he did not alone create the Third Reich’.
Nazi ideology, and racism in particular, are hardly addressed in Downfall (2004).
They are largely reduced to occasional remarks by Hitler (Bruno Ganz), such as
the anti-Semitic outburst above and some Social Darwinist asides during his table
talk. Historian Michael Wildt pointed out in this context that all the victims of
National Socialism shown in Downfall are German. It was this exclusively German
perspective, according to Wildt, that gave the film a false ‘tragic’ pathos.
Downfall (2004) is also a study of Hitler’s continuing charismatic hold over his fol-
lowers, in particular female figures such as Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch),
above. As such, it provides, in the words of German historian Hermann Graml, a
unique ‘insight into the nature of the [National Socialist] regime’.
Downfall (2004) was criticized, among other things, for depicting the end of the
Third Reich almost exclusively from the point of view of Hitler and his entourage
and thereby representing it as a German ‘self-sacrifice’ (Jost Dülffer). Other crit-
ics, notably Wim Wenders, denounced Hirschbiegel’s ‘prudish’ refusal to depict
Hitler’s dead body, thus transforming him into a ‘mythical figure’.
One of Dani Levy’s declared intentions in making Mein Führer: The Truly Truest
Truth about Adolf Hitler (2007) was to ridicule the pathos and the historical ‘real-
ism’ of Downfall. Levy’s Hitler, played by German comedian Helge Schneider, is
seen working out in a golden Nazi tracksuit (above) and celebrating New Year’s
Eve 1944 with a hesitant Eva Braun (Katja Riemann). Says Levy: ‘Comedy is more
subversive than tragedy. It can assert things that aren’t possible in an authentic,
serious portrayal.’
Levy’s Mein Führer (2007) is full of visual allusions to Chaplin’s Great Dictator and
yet in the eyes of many commentators failed where the earlier film succeeded.
Most of the satire is too tame, critic Henryk Broder remarked, and ‘depicting
Hitler as someone who likes to sink boats and play with himself in the bathtub
. . . is only marginally humorous and does little to de-demonize him as a person’.
Alongside numerous comic set pieces – among them Hitler’s nocturnal prom-
enade through Berlin with his Alsatian Blondi, above – that show him as an
absurd, ridiculous figure, Mein Führer (2007) also contains didactic scenes in
which Levy tries to articulate a psychological theory according to which Hitler’s
actions were determined by early childhood traumas. His final speech (below),
for instance, suggests that Hitler’s suffering at the hands of his father predisposed
him to ‘make the world suffer’. ‘I have been wondering for a long time’, said Levy,
‘why nobody made a film about this link, in the form of a drama or a comedy.’
Walter Moers’ animated short ADOLF – I’m Sitting in My Bunker (2006) proved
more successful as a comic portrayal of Hitler. The clip received 5 million hits
on YouTube and MyVideo, and in September 2006 its soundtrack entered the
German charts.
In Heinrich Breloer’s television mini-series Speer & Hitler: The Devil’s Architect
(2005), Hitler (Tobias Moretti) is presented as a charming, indeed enthralling
personality, whose charisma seduces both Speer and the German people.
Speer & Hitler (2005) explores the intimate friendship between the Führer (Tobias
Moretti) and his favorite architect (Sebastian Koch). According to Speer’s biog-
rapher Gitta Sereny, Speer’s life during the Third Reich ‘can only be understood
in the context of his strange relationship with Hitler . . . What is to be learned
about these two men should make us ponder the nature of love and the perils of
emotion.’
Hitler – A Film from America. Action-packed, allusive, and playful in its treat-
ment of historical events, Quentin Tarantino’s World War II spectacle Inglourious
Basterds (2009) presents Hitler (Martin Wuttke) both as an evil megalomaniac and
as a movie aficionado whose passion proves fatal when he is assassinated during
the screening of a Nazi propaganda film.
The first of many Hitler sketches on the “Harald Schmidt” show (above), broad-
cast on 17 February 2005 by ARD, poked fun not only at Bruno Ganz’s recent
impersonation of Hitler in Downfall, but also at the popular Hitler television series
overseen by Guido Knopp on rival network ZDF. The latter were also the butt of
faux-documentary Hitler in private (below), screened in 2007 by NDR Extra Drei,
which ridiculed Knopp’s attempts to reconstruct Hitler’s everyday life.
Based on a true story. Shot on location in Munich and Landsberg and draw-
ing heavily on the actual files of Hitler’s trial, Bernd Fischerauer’s docu-drama
Hitler in Court (Hitler vor Gericht, 2009) is a painstaking re-enactment of the events
surrounding the failed Beerhall Putsch of 1923, starring Johannes Zirner in the
title role.
She saved Hitler’s brain. His former physician Dr Ilse von Blitzen (Claudia Steiger),
below, is trying to bring the Führer back to life in 1970s Berlin for another run at
world domination in Jörg Buttgereit’s low-budget farce Captain Berlin versus Hitler
(2009). Her cunning plan to re-embody Hitler’s brain with the help of Dracula
is eventually foiled by Germany’s last remaining superhero, the eponymous
Captain Berlin.
Part II
Another Hitler
4
Entombing the Nazi Past:
On Downfall and Historicism
Sabine Hake
In July 2008, a new branch of Madame Tussauds opened on Berlin’s

famous boulevard Unter den Linden, displaying amidst its motley group
of politicians, celebrities, and historical personalities, a wax figure of
Adolf Hitler. But instead of the vibrant, youthful Führer from the
London branch, visitors found only the defeated old man of the last days
in the bunker. Controversies had surrounded the Hitler figure from the
start, with politicians denouncing the exhibition as a ‘Nazi Disneyland’
and protesting the frivolous display of this personification of evil in
such proximity to two foremost symbols of Germany’s troubled past, the
Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust Memorial. On opening day, a man
ripped off the figure’s head, making it, in the words of one commenta-
tor, the only successful assassination attempt on Hitler. The figure was
quickly repaired and, despite the usual uproar in the media, Madame
Tussauds announced that it has no intention of removing the offending
display.
The wax figure could just as well been taken from Der Untergang
(Downfall, 2004) and modelled on Hitler performer Bruno Ganz. Made
by prolific producer and screenwriter Bernd Eichinger in collabora-
tion with leading Hitler biographer Joachim Fest and emerging director
Oliver Hirschbiegel, Downfall brings together a distinguished group of
screen actors for a symbolically charged performance of German history
that, like Madame Tussauds, thrives on populist sentiments and spec-
tacular effects. In ways that will prove crucial to my contribution to this
anthology, Downfall, too, uses the last days of the war as a lens through
which to explain the Third Reich and commit its legacies to history
once and for all. The heavy reliance of the staging conventions of the
wax cabinet, a pre-cinematic popular diversion, is not coincidental. Both
the blockbuster film and the wax cabinet share an approach to history
99
100 Entombing the Nazi Past
grounded in nineteenth-century Historismus (historicism), especially its

belief in the distinctness of all historical periods and its insistence on
showing history ‘as it really was’ (Leopold von Ranke), that is: with-
out judgment, falsification, or embellishment.1 In both settings, history
is recreated through a static mise-en-scène and a staged performance
that keep the spectators at a safe distance and, in so doing, create the
illusion of objectivity and authenticity. Furthermore, both media rely
on a (proto) postmodern aesthetic of simulation and are profoundly
aware of the constructed nature of history and its heavy dependence
on audiovisual media. Once again, at the beginning of the twenty-first
century, historicization and medialization join forces, but this time in
the service of an almost obsessive fixation on history and memory in
literature, art, architecture, and museum culture; an emphatic rejection
of the politics of nationalism in favor of its imaginary subject effects;
and a programmatic opposition to ideology as a driving force in history
and an instrument of analysis and critique.2
Enlisting familiar illusionist methods in the making of a post-national
and post-ideological imaginary, Downfall’s historicist sensibilities open
up a space for new conceptions of German history and identity, concep-
tions developed within contemporary media society and Eventkultur [sic]
but modelled on the historicism of the nineteenth century. Not only is
everything presented as historically specific; everything is also explained
historically. With such particularism comes an uncritical acceptance of
the world as given, inaccessible to critical reflection and political cri-
tique but fully available to historical understanding through the lens
of visual spectacle and mimetic representation. The historicist mental-
ity embodied by the Hitler of Downfall and Madame Tussauds emerged
after the founding of the Wilhelmine Empire in 1871 and, once again,
after German unification in 1990. However, in today’s cabinet of hor-
rors, this process takes place within a globalized culture industry that
reduces the national to a defensive strategy, retrograde aesthetic, and
nostalgic phenomenon. And today, it is the identification with Germans
as victims, and with German history as a series of crises, traumas, and
failures (in short: downfalls), that gives rise to the national as a per-
formative category in tightly orchestrated media practices and public
events.
As a multimedia event and perfect example of Eventkino (to cite RTL
programming), Downfall must be situated within the expanded field
of historical culture defined by mass publishing, academic research,
audiovisual practices, and new digital media. It is a field marked
by important anniversaries, museum exhibitions, and commemorative
Sabine Hake 101
Figure 4.1 Seen from the perspective of Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara, far
right), Hitler (Bruno Ganz) first appears as a friendly, almost avuncular figure in
Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall (2004).
sites, and continuously reconfigured through the public reception of

key figures and symptomatic works. It is also a field that takes full
advantage of the growing relevance of historical films – and other spec-
tacular entertainments – in addressing the challenges of, in the words
of Robert Rosenstone, ‘looking at the past in a postliterate age’.3 The
synergies among the institutions of traditional high culture (including
book publishing), an increasingly image-driven and scandal-obsessed
political culture, and a profit-oriented global entertainment culture are
nowhere more pronounced than in the medialization of the Third Reich
that since 1989 has provided legitimizing narratives for the new Berlin
Republic and served as an emotional matrix for the rearticulation of his-
tory, nation, and heritage beyond the established political rhetorics and
explanatory narratives.
Using Downfall as a case study, this essay contributes to the debate
on Nazi history, memory, and heritage in post-unification German
cinema by asking a number of deceptively simple questions, beyond
the conceptual binaries – conservative vs. progressive, subversive vs.
affirmative – often evoked to dismiss historicization as problematic
on aesthetic and political grounds: what does historicization in filmic
and audiovisual media look like? How does it work and what does
it achieve? In what ways does it move from the postwar discourses
of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (‘coming to terms with the past’) toward
a very different understanding of German history, namely as part of

a ‘natural history of destruction’ (W. G. Sebald) replete with national
crises, disasters, and catastrophes and continuously rewritten through
the public rituals of forgetting and remembering? And in what ways
does historicization bracket the political affects that informed East and
West German analyses of fascism and enlist the confrontation with the
Nazi past in the very different affective regimes of post-nationalism and
post-ideology?
Downfall is only the most famous and most controversial in a group
of recent German films and television dramas that approach the Third
Reich as a distinct historical period, an integral part of post-fascist iden-
tity construction, and a profitable subject matter in the domestic and
foreign marketing of audiovisual productions.4 Often described as her-
itage films or historytainment (or histotainment), these productions
have been accused of depoliticizing the Nazi past through their pref-
erence for melodramatic or sentimental treatments, their affinity for
popular traditions and conventional styles, and their heavy reliance on
personalization and psychologization. Like its precursors, Downfall takes
full advantage of the often bemoaned commercialization, banalization,
and kitschification of the Third Reich by the culture industry, on the
one hand, and the highly circumscribed discourse of guilt, mourning,
and taboos prevalent in political life and scholarly debate, on the other.
Approaching the question of nation from a post-ideological perspective,
the film contributes to a momentous shift from the postwar project of
Vergangenheitsbewältigung to the very different post-unification discourse
of history, memory, and heritage culture. In the process, nationalist ide-
ologies are replaced by national identity as a consumable good. With
the nation reduced to one site of identity formation among others,
its difficult history can finally be experienced and appreciated without
guilt, qualities that play a key role in the domestic reception of recent
German films and television dramas about the Nazi past. As a histori-
cal metaphor and a marker of trauma, ‘downfall’ in this larger context
subsequently refers to the almost compulsive reenactment of the final
days as a process of distancing, of closing off, in short: of musealiza-
tion; the fixation on the apocalyptic end serves to prove that this period
has finally ended.5 As a performance of incomprehensible otherness, the
Nazi past can thus be purged of the rhetoric of collective guilt and inte-
grated into the heterogeneous narratives that today constitute German
identity within the discourses of the post-national.
In initiating a new phase in the seemingly interminable process of
Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Downfall has reconfigured basic elements of
Sabine Hake 103
the Third Reich narrative: from the focus on ordinary Germans back
to the political and military leadership; from examples of individual
resistance to rationales for its difficulty or futility; and from confronta-
tion with the victims of the Nazi regime to the validation of Germans
wartime suffering.6 In the claustrophobic space of the bunker, there is
no room for the German-Jewish love stories introduced elsewhere to
suggest the possibility of post-Holocaust reconciliation. The limitation
to the German perspective in the Eichinger-Hirschbiegel production and
the focus on the Nazi elites at the moment of their self-destruction serve
to prove the finality of that ‘downfall’ and consequently make possible
the liberation of the present from the burdens of the past. By offering
no Other through which to confront the atrocities of the Nazis, the film
makes the Nazis the Other from which the contemporary audience can
withdraw any residual sense of guilt or shame.
In initiating a very different process of working through the past,
Downfall requires neither identification with the main characters nor
understanding of their personal and political choices. Through a combi-
nation of textual characteristics and contextual effects, the film provides
a mechanism of detachment that, paradoxically, makes possible the
(self-) recognition of contemporary (German) audiences as the vic-
tims of their own history. The affective investments organized by the
film are not located within the diegesis, but emerge instead from the
audience’s relationship to the Nazi past and its political significance
today. This fundamental tension between detachment from the his-
torical events and attachment to its legacies produces the attitudes,
mentalities, and sensibilities generally associated with historicization;
it also marks the end of the project of post-fascism and its hauntings.
In the following, this process will be traced on three levels: the visual
and narrative elements that align the film with a historicist aesthetic;
the intertextual references that link it to other filmic representations of
the Nazi past; and the critical debates that make historicization part of
a new event-based media culture.
Visual and narrative elements
The question of historicization, first raised in the Historikerstreit (His-

torians’ Debate) of the 1980s, has always hinged on two issues: the
relationship between historical narrative and historical explanation, and
the relationship between historicization and normalization of the Nazi
past.7 The rejection of the theories of fascism developed in the context
of ideology critique and the return to a Hitler-centric historiography has
been an integral part of this process.8 Moreover, because of the strong

reliance on the visual, the naive belief in the transparency of historical
representation has found a particularly fertile ground in mainstream
cinema and television. Taking, in the words of Hirschbiegel, ‘a new
approach to history’,9 Downfall uses a highly conventional narrative,
familiar characters, naturalist acting styles, and television-like camera-
work and production design to achieve its historicist effects through
a fixation on the Hitler figure familiar from Hollywood productions.
The constitutive elements are taken from the filmic and audiovisual
archives of National Socialism, a reassemblage of the typical charac-
ters, places, events, rituals, and symbols catalogued in the appropriately
named Hitler Filmography.10 Based on such an imaginary movie cata-
logue, Eichinger and Hirschbiegel introduce recognizable types such as
the Hitler Youth confronting the betrayal of his ideals, the artist-minister
torn between institutional reason and personal loyalty, and the army
doctor saving lives in the midst of carnage. The stock scenes from other
films about the Nazi past include official ceremonies and military rituals,
dance-on the-volcano debaucheries, infighting among the military lead-
ership, excessive brutality and violence, and plenty of senseless orders,
mad confessions, and last-minute suicides by members of Hitler’s inner
circle. The emotional world of National Socialism is recreated through
the dichotomies of fanaticism and opportunism, cynicism and ideal-
ism, and grandiosity and subservience routinely evoked to account for
Hitler’s uncanny power over his followers. It is from this archive of
preexisting images and stories that the film builds its historicist dream
world and offers up its dramatic reenactment as historical fact.
In the cinema, historical reconstruction is usually achieved through
formal strategies that deny the constructedness of the fictional world
and promote mimesis and empathy as conduits to knowledge and
understanding. Using the last ten days as a lens through which to make
sense of the entire Third Reich, the film opens with the official celebra-
tions on 20 April 1945 – Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday – and ends with
Hitler’s suicide (together with Eva Braun) on 30 April and the uncondi-
tional surrender of the German army on 2 May 1945. Bracketed by these
dates, the events unfold seemingly without agency or causality, except
for the hidden forces alluded to by the Spenglerian rise and fall of the
film title. Through the bunker as the primary setting, the events are lit-
erally contained within an unrepeatable past. With all elements aligned
toward their inevitable demise, history proceeds in the form of negative
teleology, unencumbered by competing points-of-view and alternative
interpretations. Individuals rather than universal principles or ideas
determine its course. Detailed description and complete immersion in
Sabine Hake 105
the facts take the place of the theoretical concepts that distinguish the
analysis of fascism in the East German antifascist films of the 1950s and
1960s and the socio-psychology of authoritarianism in the West German
films of the 1970s. Critical reflection on historical agency and causality
gives way to an obsession with the visible, and with an unmediated vis-
ibility as the foundation of historical reality, that in Downfall promises
to grant access to the hidden truth of National Socialism.
All of these points come together in a scene that lasts little more
than one minute: Hitler’s abdication of power (Figure 4.1). This pivotal
moment occurs after a tense meeting with the generals that the Führer
cuts short with the fateful words: ‘It is over. The war is lost. . . . Do what-
ever you like.’ The scene opens with a medium shot of the bunker’s
occupants standing in the hallway, their backs to the camera, staring
at the door whence such unimaginable pronouncements emanate. Sud-
denly the door opens, and the men and women create a passageway for
Hitler as he moves toward the camera. Cut to a medium shot of Hitler
walking slowly past Traudl Junge, Gerda Christian, and Otto Günsche.
Cut to a medium shot of the generals watching Hitler pass through the
hallway. Cut to the group of officers as he reaches his private quarters
and turns around to address the two women. Cut to a close-up of Junge’s
face as she listens to his plan for her flight from Berlin. Cut to a medium
shot of Hitler and Eva Braun, with him declaring: ‘Everything is lost.’
Cut to Junge’s face in close-up, with the camera moving in on her eyes
as she hears him repeat: ‘Hopelessly lost’ (Figure 4.2). Cut to Hitler and
Figure 4.2 When Hitler (Ganz) acknowledges defeat, his entourage reacts in a
variety of revealing ways.
Figure 4.3 The face of Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge (Lara), shown in close-up,
suggests disbelief.
Braun who takes his hands and declares: ‘You know I’ll stay with you.
I won’t let you send me away.’ Cut to Hitler kissing her on the mouth
while the others look away in embarrassment (Figure 4.3). Cut to a
medium shot of the officers, generals, and secretaries, all made uncom-
fortable by this unexpectedly intimate scene. Cut to a medium shot of
the couple still kissing, and then another close-up of Junge’s face as
she declares: ‘My Führer, I am staying too.’ Cut to a medium shot of
Hitler and Braun retreating to his private quarters. Cut to the gener-
als standing frozen in a medium shot, with Goebbels rushing toward
the camera and then, followed by the panning camera, exiting on the
left. Close-up of Goebbels entering the bathroom and looking into the
mirror (Figure 4.4). Cut to a medium shot of one of the officers asking
‘What now?’.
What happens in this scene? At the moment that the Nazi dream
of world domination is invaded by the bitter realities of war, a new
fantasy takes over the film, the fantasy of politics as a series of indi-
vidual decisions and personal relationships. The sudden power vacuum
caused by the abdication of the Führer must be negated, compensated,
and overcome through the production of intimacy, but it is an intimacy
that is uncomfortable and almost repulsive. Hitler’s concern for the wel-
fare of Junge and his public displays of affection for Braun announce
nothing less than his psychological withdrawal from Germany and
the emergence of the surrogate figure of ‘Hitler as a human being’.
At the moment that the political actors, quite literally, lose their script,
the relationship of historical agency to spectatorship and performance
Sabine Hake 107
Figure 4.4 Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler) declares that she will stay with Hitler in
Berlin, whereupon he embraces her, to the embarrassment of various onlookers.
Figure 4.5 Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) quickly absconds to a private room where
he stares intently at his own reflection in a mirror.
becomes glaringly apparent, a moment acknowledged by the Minister

of Propaganda as he rehearses his new tragic persona in the bathroom
mirror.
Significantly, the collapse of the Nazi power structure is presented
through a series of spectatorial relationships: of the bunker inhabitants
looking expectantly at the Führer and then averting their eyes from
the man, but also of Hitler taking in the sight of his subordinates
standing motionless and in silence. The only character to appear in
close-up is Junge, with her rosy complexion and dewy eyes the embodi-
ment of goodness and innocence. Functioning like a blank screen, her
face captures the entire range of emotions present at the scene: disbe-
lief, helplessness, abandonment, bewilderment, fear, shock, and terror,
but also blind love and utter dependency. This kind of psychologiza-
tion has profound implications for the patterns of affective engagement
and disengagement during the remainder of the film. Producing dis-
tance precisely through the lack of a clear narrative point-of-view, the
film approaches historical events exactly as the participants experience
them: as primal scenes of powerlessness and victimization. Not surpris-
ingly, the suggestion by Fegelein that ‘we should end the spectacle’ fails
to result in any decisive actions. In a world where only ‘the Führer is the
Führer’, to quote a particularly absurd (but also very revealing) expla-
nation for the pervasive sense of paralysis, disengagement becomes the
only appropriate mode for responding to the forces of doom, and that
holds true for the historical figures as well as for film audiences today.
In this context, Fest’s declaration that ‘I have always approached
Hitler like a scientist studying a strange reptile under the microscope’11
can be read as a defense against melodramatic excess and a pre-
scription for the emotional detachment necessary to the process of
historicization. The introduction of an eyewitness supports his underly-
ing claims to historical authenticity and instant medialization. Framing
devices are a frequent feature of the nineteenth-century historical novel
where they usually serve to legitimize the truth-value of a story that
seems to tell itself. In this case, the appearance of the 82-year-old
Junge from Im toten Winkel (Blind Spot, 2002), the acclaimed film por-
trait by André Heller, provides the appropriate tone of guilt and regret
to justify the spectator’s subsequent immersion in what Eichinger and
Hirschbiegel depict as the incomprehensible tragedy of German history.
In choosing a naive young woman, Downfall offers access to the cen-
ter of power without demanding responsibility for any decisions. As a
stand-in for the spectator, the Junge figure reconciles knowledge of the
historical facts with the desire to partake in the blamelessness of the
passive observer. Anticipating this strategy of disengagement in the lin-
guistic shift between first and third person singular, she confesses in the
opening sequence:
I have the feeling that I should be angry with this child, this childish
young thing, or I shouldn’t forgive her for not realizing the horrors,
Sabine Hake 109
the monster, before it was too late, for not realizing what she was
getting into . . . And yet, it is very hard to forgive myself for doing it.
Through this vacillation between guilt and innocence, Traudl Junge

(and, to a lesser degree, Albert Speer) provides a privileged point-of-view
into the world of the bunker and a model of positive self-identification
for contemporary audiences. Her double appearance as a young woman
in the fictional world and an old woman in the documentary sequences
allows the discharge of her (and our) shame into the mediated spaces
of public debate and cultural life. The wrinkled face of the real Junge
serves not only as a convenient marker of time but also defines the
historical distance from which later generations – perhaps as young
as Junge when she became Hitler’s secretary – are to view the events
depicted on the screen. As a consequence, National Socialism is demar-
cated, separated, and externalized and becomes, in the words of Junge,
‘the dream from which we want to awaken but can’t’. Describing this
process in psychological terms, Jens Jessen argues that the film, through
the presence of Junge, ‘organizes an enormous emotional detachment
(Absetzbewegung) for the spectator. It looks at Hitler’s world as if it were
an absolute Other, a completely sunken world. . . . To the spectator, the
Germany in which Hitler was possible seems entirely gone.’12 But pre-
cisely this sense of puzzlement, Jessen concludes, is never translated into
real understandin.g, the kind of understanding that would require the
acknowledgment of history as a site of contestation and that invariably
involves awareness of its political uses and abuses.
To a large degree, historicization depends on visual registers and spec-
tatorial effects, but in Downfall, it is neither a realist nor a modernist
aesthetic that deconstructs the historical process by making visible the
underlying social and political forces. Infusing the naturalist attention
to detail with the glossy surface of simulation, the film insists on the
accessibility of the past and the representability of history.13 The mecha-
nisms of power are recreated through the compilation of discrete scenes
into a colorful panorama of history. Based on this additive principle,
the film consists almost entirely of close-ups and medium shots whose
television-style of composition, lighting, and depth of field betray
years of work in television by cinematographer Rainer Klausmann. The
greyish-greenish tones in the bunker scenes (evocative of the Feldgrau of
the Wehrmacht uniforms) add historical patina through a technical pro-
cess known as desaturation, which depletes the color scheme to suggest
the passing of time. By contrast, the intense reds and blues of the bat-
tle scenes add a much-needed sense of drama, with the ubiquitous fires
a convenient symbol of the conflagration and purification of history.

Throughout the static camerawork underscores the tableau-like quality
of the images and heightens the pervasive sense of confinement and
powerlessness. Especially the lighting of the bunker achieves a separa-
tion of figure and ground that shares with blue screen technology a
similar disregard for the integrity of the filmic image and the contin-
gencies of narrative space. Even where more subjective point-of-view
shots (e.g., in the introduction of Junge) depart from the conventional
shot/counter-shots pattern, the film offers no clear narrative point-of-
view, reason enough to take a closer look at production design as a key
element of historical reconstruction.
The world of historicism is a world of props, costumes, and set pieces.
Part Titanic, part Big Brother, Downfall restages the last days of the
Third Reich as a series of carefully composed interiors and exteriors.
Having established his reputation for claustrophobic settings with the
psycho thriller Das Experiment (The Experiment, 2001), Hirschbiegel – in
collaboration with production designer Bernd Lepel – relies heavily on
the spatial order of the proscenium stage to separate the spectators
from the catastrophic events depicted in the diegesis. As in the battle
panoramas of the pre-cinematic era, historical reality is evoked through
a enormous collection of ‘typical’ objects that, through their placement
in the mise-en-scène, give the past both a material basis and, rather
ironically, a manageable scale. Despite its epic length of 155 minutes,
Downfall feels small, static, lifeless, and self-contained, a long series of
tableaux vivants that strives toward the monumental but achieves only
miniatures. Even the battle scenes and bombing raids cannot distract
from the film’s heavy debt to the 1920s Kammerspielfilm (chamber play
film), with the bunker meticulously reconstructed according to histori-
cal records and furnished with the greatest attention to detail. From the
floral-patterned yellow sofa in Eva Braun’s private salon and the ornate
red carpet in the hallway to the Bauhaus style lamps in the staff quarters
and the monogrammed tableware in the dining room, the film recreates
the scene of the crime, as it were, without revealing anything about the
protagonists, their motives, or their attitudes.
Animating these living pictures, the actors’ screen personas and act-
ing styles complete the transformation of the past into a consumable
spectacle. The dependence of history on performativity is acknowledged
openly when Speer says to Hitler: ‘You must be on the stage when the
curtain falls.’ Once again, the prevailing approach is naturalist, with any
expressive excess or psychological depth contained within a historicist
preoccupation with costumes, poses, and gestures. Bruno Ganz, who
Sabine Hake 111
Figure 4.6 The weak dictator: Hitler’s trembling hands are shown repeatedly in
Downfall as manifestations of his physical frailty.
prepared for the role by studying newsreels and photographs, received

special praise for reproducing Hitler’s mannerisms with great preci-
sion and for performing the Führer as a ‘human being’ (Figure 4.6).14
In interviews, many of the leading actors spoke proudly of their striv-
ing toward highest authenticity. However, authenticity in the historicist
universe can only mean a conception of character outside any social
factors or political explanations. Precisely this mechanical approach to
acting, in combination with the static camerawork and mise-en-scène,
accounts for the conventionality of the performances and prevents audi-
ences from gaining access to the inner world of the protagonists and
what they represent: National Socialism. Trapped within the politics-
as-performance metaphor, the historical figures disappear behind the
screen personas of the leading stars of German cinema. This constitu-
tive tension in the historicist performance between the fetishization
of authenticity and the dramatic techniques of imitation accounts for
the lack of character development noted, with much indignation, by
Wim Wenders: ‘I didn’t see Hitler at all. Or Goebbels and his wife. All of
the them remained altogether invisible.’15 By giving the audience only
Bruno Ganz, Ulrich Matthes, and Corinna Harfouch, Downfall effec-
tively blocks access to the ideological foundations of National Socialism
and reduces the main perpetrators to figures from a house of wax:
history displayed for the cheap thrills and therapeutic needs of later gen-
erations. Even the occasional gestures toward melodrama – Hitler’s tears,
Junge’s sobbing, and Magda Goebbels’s cries – fail to grant access to the
socio-psychological foundations of National Socialism and the affective
politics of ‘fascinating fascism’. Instead, the audience is left with the
same curious detachment and spectacular enthrallment experienced by
visitors of the battle dioramas and wax cabinets of the late-nineteenth
century and the heritage parks and history museums of the early twenty-
first century. Whatever is lacking in relationship to the characters is
more than compensated for by the affective politics of historicization
that make the audience both detach from the Nazi past and accept its
legacies as an integral part of their national heritage. Guilt replaced by
acceptance: this is indeed the ultimate goal.
Intertextual references
Historicization, as the historians’ debate has shown, means the appli-

cation of new research questions, comparative perspectives, and inter-
pretative methods to established fields of inquiry. Contributing to the
process, some of the debates since the 1980s have focused on the
singularity of the Holocaust and the specificity of National Socialism,
the ideological foundations of the Third Reich, and the close attention
to local and regional differences in Alltagsgeschichte (history of everyday
life). Scholars have approached these questions with an acute aware-
ness of the centrality of the Nazi past to the self-understanding of the
Federal Republic and, today, the Berlin Republic. But as the genera-
tion of historical eyewitnesses passes away and the Nazi past joins the
German postwar division in providing narratives of legitimacy and iden-
tity, historicization becomes increasingly dependent on medialization
and its particular modes of representation. Given the degree to which all
revisionist projects involve narrative constructions, it is not surprising
that we find very similar strategies in the fictional worlds of cinema and
television: in the German-Jewish stories of reconciliation and redemp-
tion; in the focus on Germans as victims and innocent bystanders;
and in what appears to be a widespread desire for a less problematic
relationship to German history.
While unique in its status as a blockbuster and media event, Downfall
was not the first post-unification film to approach the Nazi past through
the lens of historicization and the post-fascist imaginary. In fact, it
belongs to the larger constellation of historical revisionism and polit-
ical conservatism that gave rise to what Eric Rentschler (somewhat
prematurely) describes as a ‘cinema of consensus’16 but cannot be
reduced to such labels. Reinstating the individual and private life as the
driving force of history, Comedian Harmonists (The Harmonists, 1997),
Sabine Hake 113
Aimée & Jaguar (Aimée & Jaguar, 1999), Leo und Claire (Leo and Claire,
2001), Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa, 2001), and Rosenstrasse
(2003) rely on German-Jewish love stories to redeem the past through
the loving sacrifices of German women on behalf of their Jewish part-
ners. In other films, the idealism of youth inspires compelling stories
of seduction and betrayal in the style of Napola (Before the Fall, 2003)
but also reveals, as in Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl –
The Last Days, 2005), the power of personal ethics and Christian
faith. The difficult moral choices by historical figures are explored
in a number of co-productions about famous or extraordinary men,
from the docudrama Bonhoeffer – Die letzte Stufe (Bonhoeffer, Agent of
Grace, 2000) to Der Fall Furtwängler (Taking Sides, 2001) by István Szabó,
while a very different conflict between politics and religion informs
Volker Schlöndorff’s Der neunte Tag (The Ninth Day, 2004). Confirm-
ing the international marketability of these films, the nominations for
Best Foreign Language Film over the last two decades have repeatedly
included German-language films about the Third Reich: The Nasty Girl
in 1990, Schtonk! in 1992, Downfall in 2004, and Sophie Scholl in 2006;
Nowhere in Africa received the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
in 2003, and Stefan Rudowitzky’s Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters, 2007)
in 2008.
Films like these continue to present the Nazi past to an interna-
tional audience, but the most significant work of historicization is
currently taking place on television. This shift to television as the priv-
ileged medium for big budget productions and important media events
accounts for the significant differences in the international and national
reception of Downfall and shows the historicist project as one specifically
aimed at a German audience.17 Since the early 1990s, journalism profes-
sor Guido Knopp has produced numerous multipart documentaries for
ZDF (Second German Television) in the style of Hitlers Helfer (Hitler’s
Helpers, 1996–98), Hitlers Krieger (Hitler’s Warriors, 1998), Hitlers Kinder
(Hitler’s Children, 2000), Hitlers Frauen (Hitler’s Women, 2001), and so
forth. More recently, television has become the preferred venue for
big-budget, multipart miniseries. The unabated fascination with Hitler’s
inner circle inspired Holocaust comedies in the vein of Goebbels und
Geduldig (Goebbels and Geduldig, 2001) but also gave rise to televi-
sion plays such Stauffenberg (2004) and miniseries such as Heinrich
Breloer’s three-part Speer und Er (Speer & Hitler: The Devil’s Architect,
2005). Last but not least, Hans-Christoph Blumenberg’s docudrama Die
letzte Schlacht (The Last Battle, 2005), Roland Suso Richter’s controver-
sial Dresden (2006), and Kai Wessel’s Die Flucht (March of Millions, 2007)
transformed the experience of World War II and the expulsion from the
East into colorful allegories of German suffering and sparked intense

debates about the historical sentiments and political affects obviously
serviced by these epic scenarios.
Notwithstanding its unique status, Downfall must therefore besituated
within two larger developments in the medialization of the Third Reich:
the emergence of what has alternately be called retro films, heritage
films or nostalgia films, and the popularity of historical docudramas
and miniseries – of historytainment – on television. Whereas the her-
itage films tend towards privilege stories of ordinary Germans caught
in extraordinary times, sometimes reducing the Third Reich to a mere
backdrop for family melodramas and sentimental love stories, most
television productions seem to favor the grand scales of history, with
individuals, whether famous or not, presented as part of larger collective
struggles and enduring national traumas. In a peculiar reversal of media
hierarchies, with film traditionally regarded as the preferred medium
for grand récits, German film companies since the early 1990s have sub-
mitted fully to the conventions of genre cinema and global nation
marketing, whereas television has successfully reconciled the compet-
ing missions of information and entertainment in the hybrid form of
historytainment and its unabashedly emotional address to a domestic
audience.
Central to both media contexts is nostalgia for the nation in the
post-national age; the Nazi past, it seems, is no longer a burden but
a heritage, invested with all the sentiments, pleasures, and beliefs that
the term implies. In the moment that the Third Reich can be disen-
gaged from ideology critique and become subject to historicization, the
meaning of politics also becomes available to renegotiation. Thus in
sharp contrast to the West and East German films that, whether through
the discourse of antifascism, the analysis of authoritarian society, or
the critique of patriarchy and masculinity, took a clear political posi-
tion vis-à-vis the events depicted on the screen, the films produced
since unification consciously reject such overt political readings and
use the historicist mode in disavowing the power of ideas and ideolo-
gies and reducing history to personal passions and ambitions, including
the pathology of Hitler. The result is a highly contradictory mixture of
political affects and effects that drives the historicization of the Nazi past
in post-unification audio-visual media: rejection of the ideological fer-
vor that distinguishes both the Nazi fanatics and their politicized critics
in East and West but nostalgia for the power of conviction that produces
meaning and identity; opposition to the core assumptions of nation-
alism but continued fascination with German history as a ‘negative’
mark of distinction; and denunciation of the aestheticization of politics
Sabine Hake 115
but aesthetic engagement with the fascist body and mass spectacle as a
media event.
In almost all of the examples cited above, the narratives are con-
structed around apolitical individuals, who function as the victims of
history and the agents of its overcoming. Yet the flight from the Nazi
past – captured in the many closing images, including in Downfall,
of a woman and child escaping from a past world contaminated by
ideology – requires a fundamental rearticulation of politics as a per-
sonal and private experience. Accordingly, political resistance is found
above all in the pursuit of individual happiness, an approach that,
once again, stands in marked opposition to the obligatory sacrifices
for the collective in the East German antifascist film and the equa-
tion of the political and the personal by the representatives of New
German Cinema. And in ways that are crucially important for the
larger questions addressed in this anthology, political passions and
convictions are rejected as suspect and dangerous, forever tied to
the evils of the Third Reich and replaced by the personal commit-
ments formed around such presumably universal categories as love
and faith. Private virtue instead of public morality, familial conflicts
instead of political struggles, affect and empathy instead of critical
analysis – these, then, are the new post-ideological coordinates of
historicization.
How do concepts like nostalgia and heritage help us to understand
the particular affective investments mobilized by, and projected onto,
Downfall? Rob Reiner has coined the term ‘Nazi-retro film’ to describe
the tension between reflection and retrospection as constitutive already
of West German cinema since the end of World War II, with le mode
retro suggesting critical engagements as well as consumerist pleasures,
painful confrontations as well as nostalgic yearnings.18 By contrast, Lutz
Koepnick and others have appropriated the notion of heritage films
from British cinema to identify a noticeable paradigm shift between
films about the Nazi past made before and after 1989, and to assess
their contribution to the post-unification search for a national heritage.
Like the British heritage films made during the conservative Thatcher
era, their German equivalents must be seen as a product of the social
conservatism, economic neoliberalism, and historical revisionism of the
Kohl era. Accordingly, The Harmonists, Aimée & Jaguar, Nowhere in Africa,
and other films break with the art cinema tradition of New German Cin-
ema by embracing populist sentiments and popular traditions and by
providing ‘sweeping historical melodramas that reproduce the national
past, including that of the Nazi period, as a course of nostalgic pleasures
and positive identifications’.19
However, what separates the German heritage films from the British
originals is, first of all, the absence of aesthetic qualities that deconstruct
the meaning and function of history and that, especially in the post-
modern style of post-heritage cinema, open up a space for self-referential
formal experiments with generic conventions and alternative histories
of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. Instead of the subversive mixture of
melancholy, irony, aestheticism, and hedonism that distinguishes the
critically acclaimed Merchant Ivory productions as well as more recent
post-heritage imaginings of British history and Empire, Joseph Vilsmaier
(Koepnick’s main example) and Eichinger and Hirschbiegel, for that
matter, produce little more than naturalist milieu studies weighted
down by sentimental tone and didactic intent; they are far removed
from any kind of critical self-referentiality. More important for my pur-
poses, the filmic representation of the Third Reich remains haunted by
the presence of the referent and the ensuing representational taboos.
Sufficiently removed in time to be historicized but too close to be
mythologized, its representations cannot fall back upon an established
iconography of imperial power and use the archives of historical char-
acters, stories, and settings as a source of aesthetic pleasure. As a result,
heritage in the German context remains inextricably tied to, and prob-
lematically defined by, the failure of nation; hence its most greatest
successes in nostalgic reenactments of local and regional culture (e.g.,
in the new Heimatfilm). Thus what Koepnick calls the heritage films’
‘semantic inventories of banal nationalism’ and what he dismisses as
a ‘chimera of national normalcy’20 may very well describe some forms
of nostalgia for nation that haunts the post-national, post-ideological
imaginary of the Berlin Republic, but it functions in fundamentally
different ways from the triumphs and defeats of Empire in the British
heritage films – and that despite the appearance of Nazis among the
British aristocracy in one of its best-known examples, James Ivory’s The
Remains of the Day (1993).
In the search for generic precursors, aesthetic traditions, and
intertextual references, we might be better served by situating Downfall –
as well as other recent German films about the Nazi past – within West
German film history and the intense preoccupation with the legacies
of fascism since the Young German Cinema of the early 1960s. Down-
fall can thus be described as a reworking of the formal conventions and
thematic emphases that have governed the filmic representation of the
Third Reich, including Hitler; in other words, its historicist approach is
based not on history or historiography, but on the history of histori-
cal films. As one of several films to use the last days in the bunker as a
Sabine Hake 117
lens through which to explain the Nazi dictatorship, Downfall emphat-

ically rejects the combination of political moralism and expressionist
stylization used by G. W. Pabst in Der letzte Akt (The Last Ten Days,
1955) in expressing the official stance of ‘never again’.21 The relationship
between aesthetics and politics is even more pronounced in Downfall’s
other secret reference point, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Hitler – Ein Film
aus Deutschland (Our Hitler, 1978). Whereas Syberberg rejects filmic real-
ism as an appropriate register for representing the Nazi past and relies
heavily on deconstructive strategies in attacking the postwar culture of
amnesia, Eichinger and Hirschbiegel turn to historicist styles to advance
the project of historical reconstruction and, with it, political normal-
ization. Confirming performativity as a key to historical understanding,
Hitler actor Ganz similarly completes the equation of National Social-
ism with Hitler’s physical and psychological frailty already found in
Armin Mueller-Stahl’s portrayal of the hundred-and-three-year-old man
in Gespräch mit der Bestie (Conversation with the Beast, 1991). At the same
time, the claustrophobic mise-en-scène of reality television and its own
brand of banality, obscenity, and the grotesque found first expression
in Christoph Schlingensief’s 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler: Die letzte Stunde im
Führerbunker (100 Years of Adolf Hitler: The Last Hour in the Führerbunker,
1989), a sort of Downfall without the good intensions (or pretensions).
The most recent manifestation of this continuing expansion in the
performative registers of German Hitler films is of course Dani Levy’s
deeply flawed farce Mein Führer: Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf
Hitler (Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler, 2007) with
comedian Helge Schneider in the title role.
Sustained by such intertextual references, the post-unification films
open up new perspectives on German guilt and suffering, but do so
within the continuities of West German cinema. As they complement,
revise, and reject earlier representational models, these films revisit the
Nazi past not only as part of the political legacies of the Cold War, the
German division, and the 1968 generation; they also present their post-
ideological project in acute awareness of the highly mediated nature
of these legacies. Downfall may therefore be described as a rewriting
of Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot (1981) that recreates the claustropho-
bic interiors of the submarine in the underground world of the bunker
but shifts the location from the periphery to the centre of the Third
Reich and replaces the figure of the true hero/leader (i.e., the captain)
with the weak self-proclaimed leader abandoning his people. By focus-
ing on interpersonal dynamics, Eichinger in both cases relies on Fest’s
central thesis, presented in his journalistic and scholarly works, about
the origins of National Socialism in a unique relationship that made

Hitler the voice of the Germans and that, consequently, ended with the
death of the Führer.
Any discussion of the intertextual references organized by Downfall
must also take into account how history is performed by its major
and minor players, beginning with the Swiss-born Bruno Ganz in the
role of Hitler. While Ganz’s stature as one of the greatest actors of
the German-speaking stage and his international fame as the antihero
of the New German Cinema (and, later, the European art film) works
against any facile equation of actor, character, and historical figure,
his association (since the 2000 Peter Stein production) with Goethe’s
Faust as the embodiment of German character was bound to essential-
ize the underlying struggle between knowledge and power. In casting
the other inhabitants of the bunker, Eichinger brought together a group
of leading actors from stage and screen, including Corinna Harfouch
as Magda Goebbels, Heino Ferch as Albert Speer, and Juliane Köhler
as Eva Braun. With the exception of newcomer Alexandra Maria Lara,
‘the German Kate Winslet, the survivor of Eichinger’s Titanic’,22 all had
already participated in the ongoing revisions of German history ini-
tiated by The Harmonists, Aimée & Jaguar, Rosenstrasse, and The Ninth
Day, to name only the better known productions. In the process, these
actors have become identified with a uniquely German physiognomy, a
physiognomy marked as German through both its association with an
extremely nationalistic period of German history and its difference from
the normative standards of beauty, glamor, and sex appeal established
by contemporary Hollywood stars. Eichinger’s assertion that ‘history
is made by individuals’ (see quotation below) thus finds indirect con-
firmation in the practice that historical films are made by stars, and
the stars demonstrate that awareness of the performativity of history
is entirely compatible with essentialist notions about character and
historical agency.
The integrative qualities of this star-based physiognomy of the Third
Reich are especially pronounced whenever actors are cast on both sides
of the German-Jewish dynamic of victim and perpetrator or when they
play members of the Nazi regime and of the resistance movement. Blur-
ring the boundaries between individual films, the composite figures
produced through such an intertextual conception of role, perfor-
mance, and star persona establish Germanness as an integrative category
beyond the old binaries of political struggles and allow for a perfor-
mative reenactment of history through the identificatory structure of
the star system. Profiting from these rich intertextual references, Ulrich
Sabine Hake 119
Matthes’s hollow-cheeked portrayal of Propaganda Minister Joseph

Goebbels in Downfall thus references his appearance in the same year as
a Catholic priest on furlough from the Dachau concentration camp in
The Ninth Day. As Magda Goebbels, Corinna Harfouch performs Aryan
womanhood with the same intensity as the famous German actress who,
in Die Schauspielerin (The Actress, 1988), converts to Judaism in order
to live and die with her Jewish lover. Juliane Köhler’s interpretation of
the Eva Braun character combines aspects of the naive Aryan Hausfrau
in love with a Jewish woman from Aimée & Jaguar and the resource-
ful German-Jewish wife and mother in the émigré story of Nowhere in
Africa, whereas Heino Ferch, the romantic lead of many relationship
comedies from the 1990s, approaches the part of Albert Speer with the
same masculine composure that distinguishes his earlier appearance as
an SS officer in Schlöndorff’s Der Unhold (The Ogre, 1996) and one of the
Jewish members of the famous a capella singing group in The Harmonists.
Ulrich Noethen, first seen as the second Jewish member of the Come-
dian Harmonists, returns in Downfall as Heinrich Himmler, but only
after having been cast in two other films about the rise of National
Socialism, as a fanatical Nazi in Viehjud Levi (Jew Boy Levi, 1999) and the
Jewish writer Kurt Tucholsky in Gripsholm (2000).23 However, as I will
argue in the third and last part of this essay, a full understanding of
the new star system and genre cinema and their contribution to the
performativity of history requires us to focus on the affective qualities of
event culture and consider its significance in establishing historicization
as one of the post-unification methods of dealing with the Nazi past.
Critical debates
Historicization is a process of visual and narrative reconstruction, a

reworking of images and feelings that needs the release of its affec-
tive investments into social interactions and cultural practices in order
to realize its full meanings. This revisionist process shares with the
historical celebrations, anniversaries, and monuments of the late nine-
teenth century, a fundamental dependence on Öffentlichkeit (public
sphere or publicity) in producing both a new historical consciousness
and a different understanding of political affect. In the Berlin Republic,
historicization has taken place primarily as a generational project, pro-
pelled forward by the opposition to the legacies of the 1968 generation
shared by their historical antagonists, the conservative elites, and their
post-ideological children and grandchildren. But it has also occurred
as part of seismic shifts in the contemporary media landscape: from
the clear hierarchies between film and television toward a wide range
of overlapping distribution systems and modes of reception (DVD,
internet); from top-down models of historical knowledge, political com-
mentary, and cultural critique to interactive, rhizomic, and occasionally
viral strategies of historical revisionism; and from a public sphere dom-
inated by literary critics and the feuilleton toward a multi-tiered system
that includes the official culture of commemoration and a decidedly
populist approach to the politics of history and memory.
In audio-visual media, this means moving beyond the identity pol-
itics of ‘postmemory’ (to use a term coined by Marianne Hirsch),
so central to the generational mourning work of women filmmakers
like Helma Sanders-Brahms and Margarethe von Trotta, and integrat-
ing the traumas of the past into the more conventional narratives of
German history. Instead of deconstructing classical narrative as a way
of working through the complicated entanglements of the personal
and the political, historicization relies on the participatory aspects of
multimedia events in order to turn the Nazi past into an easily con-
sumable object of historytainment. Historicization allows those growing
up in post-unification Germany to reject what many regard as the
self-righteous habitus of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the tradition of
Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and the 1968 generation and to assert
their own views of the German past through the public rituals and
political affects to be described on the remaining pages. Once again,
my purpose is to move beyond the high-culture/low culture divides
(Adorno vs. Knopp, Shoah vs. Holocaust) that still define the proper ways
of Vergangenheitsbewältigung and to identify, without moral or politi-
cal judgment, the conditions under which the historicization of the
Nazi past is de facto taking place; the critical reception of, and ongoing
fascination with, Downfall is very revealing in this regard.
Downfall benefited greatly from the new alliances between contem-
porary media culture and post-ideological political culture that consol-
idated around the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II in
2005. As the best-known product of that moment, the film reflects a
momentous shift in the historical imagination from the Holocaust as the
telos of Nazi ideology to a self-consciously German history written from
the perspective of World War II. This shift has made possible a growing
recognition of German wartime suffering and an, at times problematic,
emphasis on Germans as victims rather than only as perpetrators. The
complicated dynamics of literature, memory, and trauma were explored
in W. G. Sebald’s influential essay on ‘Luftkrieg und Literatur’ (‘Air
War and Literature’, 1999) and Günter Grass’s Im Krebsgang (Walking
Crossways, 2002), whereas the presentation of history as catastrophe
Sabine Hake 121
found its most controversial expression in Jörg Friedrich’s account of

the bombing of German cities in Der Brand (The Fire, 2002). Yet in the
same way that Downfall took part in the media frenzy around World
War II, it also contributed to the equally important history of forgetting
that erupted in occasional public pronouncements about ‘the innocence
of being born late’ (Helmut Kohl), and ‘Auschwitz as a moral cudgel
[Moralkeule]’ (Martin Walser).24
In the case of the Eichinger-Hirschbiegel production, balancing the
demands of remembering and forgetting meant mobilizing all forces in
the literary and post-literary public sphere to get the maximum return
on the considerable investments in financial and political capital. The
cost of the film production, which at ¤14.5 million was very high by
German standards, required that every stage, from the preproduction
phase (e.g., the choice of source texts, casting decisions) to the post-
production phase (e.g., advertising, marketing, merchandizing), be fully
aligned with the symbolic economy of event culture. Personifying the
contemporary auteur as event manager, Eichinger made sure that the
film attracted the widest possible audience, received the greatest media
coverage, and became the ‘most important’ media event of the year.
Aiming for maximum synergies, he relied on two well-known source
texts, a historical account of the last days in the bunker by leading
Hitler biographer Joachim C. Fest and an autobiographical account
by Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge (née Humps). The re-publication of
Junge’s Bis zur letzten Stunde (Until the Final Hour) in 2004 gave addi-
tional credence to her film appearance as a historical witness, with
the interview scenes at the beginning and the end taken from the
above-mentioned Heller documentary.25 Even Fest’s historical sketch for
Downfall was reprinted together with the screenplay to produce the
obligatory ‘book to the film’, thus continuing ‘the recycling mecha-
nisms of Führer marketing’26 that earlier had led to the film adaptation
of his own Hitler biography in Hitler – Eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career,
1977).
When Downfall opened on 16 September 2004, it entered the domes-
tic market with a record number of 400 prints; 750,000 people saw the
film during the first week after its opening. (The luxury edition of the
DVD, complete with interviews and scenes from the set, was released
in March 2005. A three-hour, two-part television version – the direc-
tor’s cut, in Hirschbiegel’s words – was shown on ARD (First German
Television) on 19 and 20 October 2005 and reached more than 20 per
cent of the television audience.) From the beginning, the film gener-
ated two fundamentally different but equally intense responses, which
in turn became an integral part of its status as a media phenomenon.
Audiences were either deeply moved or felt bored and indifferent, a

division that found telling expression in the public statements by two
directors from the old New German Cinema. On the one side, there was
Volker Schlöndorff declaring at the international premiere in Toronto
that ‘he rarely has been so moved and agitated. Downfall will divide film
history in a before and after.’27 On the other side, his colleague Wim
Wenders expressed puzzlement about his complete lack of an emotional
response. ‘This couldn’t have been it! Something must to be missing!’,
he declared incredulously.28
Within the circular reasoning that characterized much of the crit-
ical reception of Downfall, the seemingly endless discussions about
Hitler, World War II, and, to a lesser degree, National Socialism, became
irrefutable proof of the film’s artistic qualities, and the increasing will-
ingness in public debate to acknowledge German suffering and victim
status a clear indication of its political relevance. Already before the
official release, several articles and interviews appeared in the country’s
major newspapers assessing the significance of what was (inaccurately)
referred to as the first German film about Hitler. The countless interviews
given by Eichinger and his associates were meant to dispel concerns
about a banalization of the Nazi past while supporting calls for a nor-
malization of German history. After the premiere, the German mass
media responded with a steady stream of reviews, interviews, polemics,
editorials, and critical essays. On morning radio and late night televi-
sion, in newspapers and magazines from Bild and Playboy to Die Zeit
and Die Welt, and in the special displays of the large book chains and
the customer comment sections of Amazon.de, Downfall was instantly
treated as the media event it was intended to be. The official webpage
for Downfall (http://www.untergang.film.de) catered equally to the film
fans’ demand for drama and suspense and the history buffs’ interest in
authentic detail. Acknowledging the need for further didactic instruc-
tions, the website (now defunct) even included materials for the class-
room, complete with discussion guidelines for high school teachers.29
The German reception of Downfall, while still dependent on the tra-
ditional venues for film criticism, realigned the categories of evaluation
with the new realities of historytainment and event culture; performa-
tive rather than substantive, these debates then were really about the sta-
tus of history and historical representation in post-unification Germany.
On the feuilleton pages of Die Zeit, Die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, and Süddeutsche Zeitung, the nation’s leading critics produced
responses ranging from grave concern and aesthetic repulsion to feigned
indifference and tentative praise.30 Following patterns established in the
Sabine Hake 123
political culture of the Federal Republic, Downfall’s aesthetics of histori-

cal reconstruction was often equated with a conservative agenda and the
film attacked for what it does not do.31 Predictably, many reviewers com-
plained about the conventional style of a big production that, like Das
Boot 23 years earlier, reduced World War II to grand historical spectacle.
Some extolled the skilled performance of the actors, especially Ganz,
while complaining about Hirschbiegel’s uninspired direction. Others
found the film disappointing, a sort of oversized television play, but
gave the filmmakers credit for overcoming a supposed ‘Hitler taboo’ –
even if this meant little more than a conventional take on Hannah
Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ thesis. Much of the discussion focused on the
legitimacy of portraying Hitler as a human being without ever clarify-
ing the significance of such a representation for an understanding of the
Nazi past (Figure 4.7). Even Bild asked: ‘Should it be allowed to depict
Hitler as a human being?’32 According to a survey commissioned by the
weekly magazine Stern, 69 per cent of Germans approved of Eichinger’s
decision to approach the equation of Hitler with evil and madness from
the side of his humanity. Throughout, two tendencies can be identi-
fied, the relative indifference to aesthetic criteria in the evaluation of the
film and the intense attention to its status in the shifting terrain of the
post-fascist imaginary. Central to the latter position are the emotions,
Figure 4.7 The raging tyrant: Hitler (Ganz) embarks on a violent tirade against
his general staff. Behind him the silhouettes of Goebbels (Matthes, left) and
Martin Bormann (Thomas Thieme). This sequence quickly became an online
sensation, spawning numerous viral videos.
attitudes, and dispositions validated by the film – not by the film as

film, but as the signifier of a different approach to the Nazi past.
Encouraging such symptomatic readings, the filmmakers knowingly
identified their project with a self-consciously German perspective and
a long-overdue generational shift. Eichinger himself set the tone when
he declared prior to the film’s release that some ‘subjects are so spe-
cific that a nation must be able to give them artistic expression’.33 In a
later interview with Frank Schirrmacher, the editor of the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, he confessed working through his own ‘traumas’
as a West German eager to leave behind the politically correct, overly
moralistic, and oppressively egalitarian public culture of the 1968 gen-
eration of Gutmenschen (literally ‘good human beings’) and to return
to the more conservative model of ‘history made by individuals’.34 For-
mer DEFA actress Harfouch also shared that desire, admitting that ‘this
film has brought us some sort of emotional-intellectual peace . . . because
after the film, I am now able to compare the two systems [i.e. the Third
Reich and the German Democratic Republic]’.35 Mockingly, Diedrich
Diederichsen described that interview as yet another scene from the
bunker and, by extension, contemporary media culture, concluding,
‘the head of the entertainment industry and the head of the feuilleton,
joined by the great actress . . . It is a meeting of power-hungry people.’36
As might be expected, the filmmakers’ direct address to a German
audience prompted angry protests as well as passionate endorsements.
Historians took the lead, including former chancellor Helmut Kohl
who declared proudly that ‘the film had to be made’.37 Those assem-
bled at the forty-fifth Historikertag in Kiel wavered between praise
for the film’s historical accuracy and concern about its conventional
narrative but overall, they, too, professed to have been moved.38 Mean-
while, the Sektion Politische Psychologie im Berufsverband Deutscher
Psychologinnen und Psychologen denounced Downfall as psycholog-
ically manipulative, intent on weakening ‘the [audience’s] cognitive
ability to distinguish between reality and its reconstruction’.39 In a
perfect simulation of German Streitkultur, a culture invigorated by con-
troversy, Eichinger elicited two intense reactions from fellow members
of the cultural establishment. Theater producer Peter Zadek aimed for
maximum shock effect when he compared the 3 million Germans who
went to see the film to the 3 million Germans who had voted for
Hitler in 1933.40 Opting for a more serious tone, Wenders declared the
film’s lack of a clear narrative perspective (Erzählhaltung) and position
(Standpunkt) politically and aesthetically suspect; hence his conclusion
in a much discussed Zeit editorial: ‘Downfall serves neither the large nor
Sabine Hake 125
the small “G” of Geschichte (in the sense of history and story). Above
all, the film has no opinion, neither of fascism nor of Hitler.’41
Not surprising given the changing coordinates of the post-literary
public sphere, much of the controversy surrounding Downfall took
place outside the refined world of the feuilleton and the academy. The
heated debates about what it meant to make a German film about the
German past quickly moved from morning radio and late night tele-
vision to new digital formats such as internet pages, discussion boards,
and the personal web logs of cinephiles, history buffs, and right wingers,
where contemporary event culture continues in global contexts and
virtual communities.42 On the discussion board connected to the offi-
cial film website maintained by Constantin Film, participants pondered
questions such as ‘How important is the film for Germany?’ and ‘How
will it be perceived abroad?’ When not quibbling over minor histor-
ical details, most participants seemed to agree on several key issues:
that it was high time for Germans to take control of their own his-
tory; that Germans, while no longer guilty, are still responsible for the
crimes of the past; and, a particularly frequent comment, that Germans
have as much the right to feel patriotic as the people of other nations,
especially the United States (e.g., on the now defunct Diskussionsforum
on www.untergang.film.de). In the first months after the film’s release,
many contributors speculated anxiously about the film’s reception in
the United States and, in a sort of preemptive strike, accused Americans
of being completely ignorant of German history, prone to equate all
Germans with Nazis, and guilty of the same militaristic aggression
as the Nazis.43 Ironically, it is in the transnational, virtual commu-
nities of the internet that ‘Germanness’ continues to function as a
category of product differentiation and identity construction, with the
equation of ‘German’ and ‘Nazi’ a driving force behind the seemingly
inexhaustible fascination with this particular period of German history.
It is also the internet, as an integral part of contemporary event culture,
that aligns historicization most strongly with the virtual identities in
which Germanness functions as little more than a voluntary or tempo-
rary identity performance, unencumbered by the constraints of social
reality. In this context, referring to Downfall as a German film, made
by German filmmakers, about a German topic, and with a new take
on German history means constructing a fiction of nation from a post-
national perspective; to ascribe to it a particular political position (e.g.,
conservatism) would be premature at best.
In order to fully understand Downfall’s function as a catalyst for
old arguments (e.g., about German guilt and responsibility) and new
attitudes (e.g., toward German history and identity), it is necessary to

account for the growing significance of event culture and its unique
function as a surrogate public sphere and a laboratory of publicly con-
sumed sensations and emotions. Events are the products of a contem-
porary media society characterized, on the one hand, by an accelerated
consumption of culture and knowledge and, on the other, by a predom-
inance of mediated forms of communication and sociability. Organized
by a new breed of event managers and cultural impresarios, these events
usually take place outside established institutions such as art museums,
exhibition centres, concert halls, and public libraries. As media events,
they are not identified with a particular work or place but refer instead
to the discursive and affective space created by the release of a film
(or book). These forms of engagement are a constitutive part of the
work and often overshadow it in terms of social relevance. On the
most basic level, then, event culture provides the kind of experiences
of community and belonging that constitute what Gerhard Schulze
calls Erlebnisgesellschaft, a society held together by commercially pro-
duced and socially based experiences; therein it closely resembles the
late-nineteenth century culture of national anniversaries, pageants, and
ceremonies.44 According to Schulze, this new experience-based society
produces a profoundly different relationship between self and world
in which the world is expected to adjust to the narcissistic needs and
hedonistic desires of the self. Often evoked in critical writings on con-
temporary museum culture, cultural tourism, and the heritage industry,
the operative category of Erlebnis suggests a cultural experience that
remains short-lived and does not enter into the fabric of tradition; its
emotional qualities do not automatically give rise to aesthetic experi-
ences or critical insights. Thus in the same way that Erlebnis does not
necessarily translate into Erfahrung, defined as something meaningfully
experienced, an Erlebnis-driven event remains dependant on the cultural
commodities and media productions that give rise to it in the first place.
Described in this way, Downfall aims at an Erlebnis-based understand-
ing of the Third Reich; it provides its affective investments on the
periphery of the diegesis, in the interspace between film spectatorship
and historical consciousness. Whereas the world of the diegesis pro-
duces emotional detachment, the world in which the film is consumed
generates an intense emotional involvement with the past, namely
through the relationship to the past established through film specta-
torship and reception. Like all historical films, Downfall reconstructs the
past through invention, alteration, and condensation, and other nar-
rative strategies. Yet through its status as a media event, the Eichinger
Sabine Hake 127
production also creates a discursive space in which audiences become

consumers of Germany’s difficult past: they take possession of the
past through the imaginary experience of ‘we Germans’ and ‘our his-
tory’. In other words, emotional reactions are generated not through
immersion in the fictional world of the bunker but through the overde-
termined meaning of this setting and its protagonists in relation to
postwar Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the very different configurations
of history, memory, and spectacle in contemporary mass media. These
mediated experiences serve as the shared reference point for the virtual
communities and public spheres involved in the making of a post-
ideological approach to German history and a post-national definition
of German identity.
The result in the case of Downfall? The enlistment of a national block-
buster in the making of an audience specifically addressed as German
and validated in its desire to approach the Nazi past on historical terms.
The production of a collective ‘we’ through the formal conventions of
illusionist cinema and the pseudo-participatory structure of contem-
porary media culture allows the Eichinger production, more than any
other recent German film about the Nazi past, to transform the past into
an object of performative identification and consumerist desire, includ-
ing the desire for a less problematic relationship with history and a
more uncomplicated approach to Germanness as a category of voluntary
self-identification. The film achieves this distancing effect by historiciz-
ing the Nazi past through the formal means and strategies described
above as historicist and the discursive strategies developed in conscious
opposition to the model of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. However, as I have
also argued, these textual and intertextual effects are fully realized only
in the larger context of contemporary media and event culture and
their contribution to the changing configurations of the national and
the post-national. They fuel and sustain the historicist tendencies in
German cinema today, and they will continue to play a key role in defin-
ing the meaning and function of the Nazi past within the contemporary
stagings of history, memory, and heritage, including the figure of Hitler.
Notes
1. Historicism (Historismus) in this context combines two meanings, both
equally relevant to the understanding of Downfall (and neither one to
be confused with the kind of contextualizing textual readings of history
associated with Anglo-American New Historicism). In the first sense,
Historismus refers to a tradition in nineteenth-century German historical
thought, analyzed by Ernst Troeltsch and Friedrich Meinecke, that empha-

sizes the historicity of social and cultural phenomena and the uniqueness of
all historical periods. In the second sense, Historismus refers to the eclectic
architectural styles of the Wilhelmine Empire and the self-reflexive styles of
postmodernist architecture; both aspects, the alliance of architecture with
power and the aesthetics of simulation, can be found in Downfall’s approach
to production design. The Wertfreiheit of historicism is briefly discussed in
Alexander Ruoff, ‘Die Renaissance des Historismus in der Populärkultur: Über
den Kinofilm Der Untergang’, in Willi Bischof (ed.), Filmri:ss: Studien über den
Film ‘Der Untergang’ (Münster, 2005), pp. 69–78. A later, revised version of
this essay can be found in Sabine Hake, Screen Nazis: Cinema, History, and
Democracy (Madison, 2012), pp. 224–253.
2. On the new Geschichtsgefühl and its resonances in Downfall’s effective use
of emotion, affect, and empathy, see Johannes von Moltke, ‘Sympathy for
the Devil: Cinema, History, and the Politics of Emotion’, New German Cri-
tique 102 (2007), pp. 17–43. – On the broader political implications, also
see Norbert Frei, 1945 und wir: Das Dritte Reich im Bewusstsein der Deutschen
(Munich, 2005), and Hannes Heer, Hitler war’s: Die Befreiung der Deutschen
von ihrer Vergangenheit (Berlin, 2005).
3. Robert Rosenstone, ‘The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate
Age’, in Marcia Landy (ed.), The Historical Film: History and Memory in the
Media (New Brunswick, NJ, 2001), p. 61.
4. Daniela Berghahn, ‘Post-1990 Screen Memories: How East and West German
Cinema Remembers the Third Reich and the Holocaust’, German Life and
Letters 59.2 (2006), pp. 294–308.
5. Cf. Jean-Charles Margotton, ‘Le dimension apocalyptique dans le film Der
Untergang (La chute)’, Cahiers d’études germaniques 51 (2006), pp. 91–102.
6. Paul Cooke, ‘Der Untergang (2004): Victims, Perpetrators, and the Continuing
Fascination of Fascism’, in Helmut Schmitz (ed.), A Nation of Victims? Repre-
sentations of German Wartime Suffering from 1945 to the Present (Amsterdam,
2007), pp. 247–61.
7. Cf. Peter Baldwin (ed.), Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Histori-
ans’ Debate (Boston, MA, 1990), p. 77–101; Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable
Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA, 1997),
pp. 121–32; Shiobhan Kattago, Ambiguous Memory: The Nazi Past and German
National Identity (Westport, CT, 2001).
8. Rainer Rother and Karin Herbst-Meßlinger (eds), Hitler darstellen: Zur
Entwicklung und Bedeutung einer filmischen Figur (Munich, 2008).
9. Oliver Hirschbiegel, Interview with Anke Westphal, Berliner Zeitung,
11 September 2004.
10. Charles P. Mitchell, The Hitler Filmography: Worldwide Feature Film and
Television Miniseries Portrayals, 1940 through 2000 (Jefferson, NC, 2002).
11. Joachim C. Fest, Interview with Christoph Amend, Die Zeit 42 (2004).
12. Jens Jessen, ‘Stilles Ende eines Irren unter Tage’, Die Zeit 36 (2004).
13. Christine Haase, ‘Ready for His Close-Up? On the Success and Failure of
Representing Hitler in Der Untergang’, Studies in European Cinema 3.3 (2005),
pp. 189–99.
14. Bruno Ganz, Interview with Andreas Kilb, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszei-
tung, 21 September 2003, p. 21.
Sabine Hake 129
15. Wim Wenders, ‘PResident Evil oder Das einheimische Böse’, NDL: Zeitschrift
für Literatur und Politik 52.562 (2004), p. 58.
16. Eric Rentschler, ‘From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of
Consensus’, in Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (eds), Cinema and Nation
(London, 2000), pp. 260–77.
17. Tobias Ebbrecht, ‘Docudramatizing History on TV: German and British
Docudrama and Historical Event’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 10
(2007), pp. 35–53.
18. Robert C. Reimer and Carol J., Nazi-Retro Film: How German Narrative Cinema
Remembers the Past (New York, 1992), p. 1–13. The term ‘retro’ is inspired
by Baudrillard’s analysis of 1970s French films about Vichy France: see Jean
Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, transl. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor,
MI, 1994).
19. Lutz Koepnick, ‘Amerika gibts überhaupt nicht: Notes on the German Her-
itage Film’, in Agnes Müller (ed.), German Pop Culture: How American Is It?
(Ann Arbor, MI, 2004), p. 192.
20. Ibid., pp. 197–8.
21. The two other English-language bunker films are Hitler: The Last Ten Days
(1973) with Alec Guinness and The Bunker (1981) with Anthony Hopkins;
both closely follow the account given by Hugh Trevor-Roper in The Last Days
of Hitler (1947).
22. Rüdiger Suchsland, ‘Geburt einer Nation in der Illusionsmaschine: Vor dem
Filmstart von Bernd Eichingers Der Untergang’, Telepolis, 7 September 2004.
23. This phenomenon can also be found in television features as evidenced by
the casting of Sebastian Koch as the title figures in both Stauffenberg and
Speer & Hitler: The Devil’s Architect.
24. The references are to Helmut Kohl’s speech before the Israeli Knesset on
24 January 1984 and Martin Walser’s acceptance speech of the Friedenspreis
des Deutschen Buchhandels on 11 October 1998.
25. Traudl Junge, Bis zur letzten Stunde: Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt ihr Leben, written
with Melissa Müller (Berlin, 2004).
26. Reinhart Mohr, ‘Soll man Hitler etwa als Elefant zeigen?’, Spiegel Online,
24 September 2004. Available online at: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/
gesellschaft/0,1518,319650,00.html.
27. Jordan Mejias, ‘Der Untergang im Ausland: So muß es gewesen sein’,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 September 2004.
28. Wenders, ‘PResident Evil’, p. 58.
29. Kulturfiliale Gillner und Konrad (ed.), Materialien für den Unterricht, Vera
Konrad, with authors Karin Springer and Dr. Bernhard Springer (no longer
available). The PDF version could be found at www.untergang-special.film.
de under the category of ‘Bildung’. The official English-language website
www.downfallthefilm.com is still functional.
30. John Bendix, ‘Facing Hitler: German Responses to Downfall’, German Politics
and Society 25.1 (2007), pp. 70–89.
31. Daniel Kothenschulte, ‘Hitler – eine Barriere: Oliver Hirschbiegels und Bernd
Eichingers Film Der Untergang versucht die Rekonstruktion und scheitert an
der Erfindung’, Frankfurter Rundschau Online, 14 September 2004. Available
online at: http://www.fraktuell.de/ressorts/kultur_und_medien/feuilleton/?
cnt=503722.
32. Anon., ‘Darf man Hitler als Mensch zeigen?’, Bild, 16 September 2004.
33. Marian Blasberg and Jörg Hunke, ‘Hitler ist greifbarer geworden: Bernd
Eichinger über sein Bild des Despoten und wie die Deutschen ihre Geschichte
aufarbeiten sollten’, Frankfurter Rundschau (Magazin), 11 September 2004.
34. Frank Schirrmacher, Interview with Bernd Eichinger and Corinna Harfouch,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 22 August 2004.
35. Ibid.
36. Diedrich Diederichsen, ‘Der Chef brüllt wieder so’, taz, 15 September
2004.
37. Anon., ‘Kohl lobt Der Untergang’, netzeitung, 17 September 2004. Available
online at: http://www.netzeitung.de/entertainment/movie/305430.html.
38. Sven Felix Kellerhoff, ‘ “Es menschelt nicht”: Die deutschen Historiker sahen
Der Untergang’, Die Welt, 17 September 2004.
39. Anon., ‘BRD-Psychologen halten den Film Der Untergang von Oliver
Hirschbiegel für ein Machwerk’, Junge Welt, 11 November 2004.
40. Peter Zadek, ‘Wer hat Angst vor Adolf Hitler?’, Cicero 12 (2004). Available
online at: http://www cicero. de/97.php?item=358&ress_id=7.
41. Wim Wenders, ‘ “Tja, dann wollen wir mal”: Warum darf man Hitler in Der
Untergang nicht sterben sehen? Kritische Anmerkungen zu einem Film ohne
Haltung’, Die Zeit 44 (2004).
42. Perhaps the most revealing insights into the complete convergence of the
Third Reich with its media effects can be found on the internet, especially
YouTube, where parodies of Downfall have taken on an almost viral after-
life, beginning with the Walter Moers-inspired ADOLF – ich hock in meinem
Bonker (I Am Sitting in My Bonker, 2006). Yet whereas the animated short
still uses the original for a political critique, the majority of clips function
according to the principle of remixing and remastering. It is in that spirit of
appropriation that the central scene from Downfall – the ‘It is over. The war is
lost’ scene analyzed earlier – continues a very different life in the more than a
hundred parodies that add different English subtitles to the German original.
All revolve around crises of leadership and experiences of defeat. These new
versions either refer to the battle of competing media technologies and infor-
mation systems (Xbox Live, Broadbent, Blu-ray, Wikipedia, Second Life), or
they focus on recent political rivalries, with Hitler ventriloquizing Hillary
Clinton and John McCain or responding to catastrophic events such as the
global economic recession. In one clip, the generals tell Hitler that he has
become an online phenomenon to which he respond: ‘Six million views!
Every one at my expense! . . . I am a god-dam meme . . . .’; Anon., ‘Adolf
Hitler is a Meme’. Available online at: http://www.break.com/usercontent/
2008/5/Adolf-Hitler-Is-A-Meme-504160.html.; Cf. Virginia Heffernan, ‘The
Hitler Meme’, The New York Times Magazine, 24 October 2008, pp. 20–2.).
And indeed, his presence has become so ubiquitous that the same Hitler in
one clip rails: ‘How many times do we have to see that damn Downfall clip?
Just stop – please just stop’; Anon., ‘That Damn Downfall Clip’. No longer
available online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7dkK6r2mHU.
43. David Bathrick, ‘Whose Hi/story Is It? The U.S. Reception of Downfall’, New
German Critique 102, 34 (2007), pp. 1–16.
44. Cf. Gerhard Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart
(Frankfurt, 1992).
Sabine Hake 131
Films cited
Baier, Jo, Stauffenberg (Germany, 2004).
Blumenberg, Hans-Christoph, Die letzte Schlacht (Germany, 2005).
Brauburger, Stefan, et al., Hitlers Frauen (Germany, 2001).
Breloer, Heinrich, Speer und er (Germany, 2005).
Danquart, Didi, Viehjud Levi (Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, 1999).
Dietl, Helmut, Schtonk! (Germany, 1992).
Färberböck, Max, Aimée & Jaguar (Germany, 1999).
1977).
Gansel, Dennis, Napola (Germany, 2004).
Heller, André and Othmar Schmiderer, Im toten Winkel – Hitlers Sekretärin (Austria,
2002).
Hillesheim, Holger, Wolfgang Schoen, and Matthias Unterburg, Hitlers Krieger
(Germany, 1998).
Hirschbiegel, Oliver, Das Experiment (Germany, 2001).
——, Der Untergang (Germany, Italy, and Austria, 2004).
Ivory, James, The Remains of the Day (United Kingdom and USA, 1993).
Knopp, Guido, Hitlers Helfer (Germany, 1996).
——, Hitlers Kinder (Germany, 2000).
Koller, Xavier, Gripsholm (Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, 2000).
Kühn, Siegfried, Die Schauspielerin (East Germany, 1988).
2007).
Link, Caroline, Nirgendwo in Afrika (Germany, 2001).
Mueller-Stahl, Armin, Gespräch mit der Bestie (Germany, 1996).
Petersen, Wolfgang, Das Boot (West Germany, 1981).
Rothemund, Mark, Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Germany, 2005).
Ruzowitzky, Stefan, Die Fälscher (Austria and Germany, 2007).
Schlingensief, Christoph, 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler – Die letzte Stunde im Führerbunker
Schlöndorff, Volker, Der Unhold (France, Germany, and United Kingdom, 1996).
——, Der neunte Tag (Germany, Luxembourg, and Czech Republic, 2004).
and United Kingdom, 1977).
Szabó, István, Der Fall Furtwängler (France, United Kingdom, Germany, and
Austria, 2001).
Till, Eric, Bonhoeffer – Die letzte Stufe (Canada, Germany, and USA, 2000).
Verhoeven, Michael, Das schreckliche Mädchen (West Germany, 1990).
Vilsmaier, Joseph, Comedian Harmonists (Germany and Austria, 1997).
——, Leo und Claire (Germany, 2001).
Von Trotta, Margarethe, Rosenstraße (Germany and Netherlands, 2003).
Wessel, Kai, Goebbels und Geduldig (Germany, 2001).
——, Die Flucht (Germany, 2007).
5
Tragedy and Farce: Dani Levy’s
Mein Führer
Michael D. Richardson
In 2004, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s epic portrayal of the last days of the

Nazi regime, Der Untergang (Downfall), premiered to critical controversy
for the centrality of its representation of Hitler by a German (actually
Swiss) actor, the first since Georg W. Pabst’s 1955 Der letzte Akt (The Last
Ten Days). But despite the intense criticism of the film by German movie
reviewers, historians, and cultural critics alike, Downfall, which has been
seen by more than 4.6 million viewers in Germany and taken in over
$85 million worldwide, has become the highest-grossing German film in
history. In 2007, a very different sort of film about the closing months of
Hitler and the Third Reich, Dani Levy’s Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste
Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler),
was met with a similar mixture of popular success and critical attack.
What both films had in common was their perceived taboo-breaking
status – both featured Hitler in a starring role, a rarity in German main-
stream cinema, and both raised questions about the appropriateness
of such a focus. But it is there that their similarities ended. Although
Downfall’s dramatic portrayal of a seemingly insane Hitler debilitated by
Parkinson’s disease, ordering the movements of phantom armies, award-
ing medals to children conscripted to fight in the decimated German
army, and engaging in compassionate exchanges with his subordinates
provoked controversy for its ostensible humanization and hence poten-
tial evocation of sympathy for Hitler, supporters and detractors alike
concurred with Hirschbiegel’s claim of historical accuracy, praising in
particular Bruno Ganz’s versimilitudinous portrayal.1
Levy’s film is a black comedy in which Goebbels rescues Hitler’s
old acting coach, the Jewish Professor Adolf Israel Grünbaum, from
Sachsenhausen in order to help Hitler regain his killer instinct for an
important speech. Aside from the sheer implausibility of its premise,
132
Michael D. Richardson 133
the film adhered little to principles of historical veracity, least of all in its
portrayal of Hitler. It was not surprising that before Mein Führer’s release,
public figures such as Lea Rosh and Ralph Giordano castigated Levy for
his conjoining of Hitler and humor, arguing that the film trivialized the
horrors of the Holocaust by turning Hitler into a laughing stock. If a
serious dramatic portrayal of Hitler could cause so much consternation,
a humorous one, to some, was even more dangerous.2 As was the case
with Downfall, this taboo had less to do with the mere existence of such
a portrayal and more to do with the fact that it was a German-made
film. Even this was less of a taboo than it was made out to be. While
no dramatic fictional film made in Germany had afforded Hitler a cen-
tral role since Pabst, during the Hitler wave of the 1970s, Hitler was
the focus of both Joachim Fest’s Hitler – Eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career,
1977) and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s seven-and-a-half-hour epic Hitler –
Ein Film aus Deutschland (Our Hitler, 1978). And this is not to mention
the steady saturation of historical documentaries about Hitler that have
been broadcast on German television – Hitlers Krieger (Hitler’s Warriors,
1998), Hitlers Helfer (Hitler’s Helpers, 1996), Hitlers Frauen (Hitler’s Women,
2001), Hitlers Kinder (Hitler’s Children, 2000) – spearheaded by Germany’s
most prominent television historian, Guido Knopp. In short, Hitler has
never been far from sight on German television or in German cinema.
More significantly, this assertion makes a claim about the production
of films about Hitler in Germany, but not their reception. There has
certainly been no shortage of fictional representations of Hitler, both
dramatic and comedic, in the past 60 years – nearly 80 actors have por-
trayed Hitler, ranging from bit players to major stars such as Anthony
Hopkins and Alec Guinness. With few exceptions, these representations
have found their way to the German public. Without discounting the
variance in psychic import of domestic and foreign representations of
Hitler and the Nazis, given the tremendous impact that American pro-
ductions have had on shaping German public consciousness about the
Nazi era, it is clear that films such as Downfall and Mein Führer are
nonetheless part of a much larger matrix of Hitler representations. Thus,
while German filmmakers may have felt a taboo in presenting Hitler, no
such taboo exists in Germany regarding the media exposure to repre-
sentations of Hitler, whether they be dramatic or comic, documentary
or simply exploitative.
But the critical reception of the film that followed its premiere had
a notable shift in tone, focusing much less on this ostensible taboo.
In their post-screening responses, many critics noted that, indeed, from
Chaplin and Brecht to Mel Brooks and Walter Moers, a rich tradition of
134 Tragedy and Farce
Hitler comedy already existed. Rather, the film came under the most
criticism precisely because it was not deemed sufficiently generically
pure and therefore not funny. Peter Zander in Die Welt wrote that ‘One
cannot reproach Levy for making a comedy about Hitler, but rather for
having done so half-heartedly . . . As a result, Mein Führer is perhaps the
worst thing that one can say about a comedy – it is too harmless.’3
Harald Peters in Welt am Sonntag concurred, lamenting the fact that the
film’s humor was not ‘evil and cold-bloodedly revealing’, writing that
Mein Führer ‘is supposed to be a comedy, but instead of being funny,
it is above all bizarre’.4 Even Helge Schneider distanced himself from
the film before its premiere, expressing regret about his participation
in a portrayal of Hitler that was ‘too profane’, adding that ‘I’m sorry,
but I just don’t find the film so funny.’5 The problem, according to
most critics, was that the film could not decide whether it was a com-
edy or a drama, and thus lacked a coherent identity or critical power.
Henryk Broder, writing in Der Spiegel, defended Levy’s Entdämonisierung
(de-demonization) of Hitler, but similarly faulted it for its hybrid status:
‘Thus the film falls apart: into an absurd part that is not absurd enough,
and a moral part that is too moral.’6
The film is certainly not the slapstick farce that some might have
dreaded – or desired. Though comedic moments abound, including
scenes of Hitler playing with battleships in a bathtub and down on
all fours, barking like a dog as his German Shepherd Blondi tries to
mount him from behind, the film is also largely driven by Grünbaum’s
attempts to protect his family, preserve his moral integrity, and leverage
his sudden indispensability to force Goebbels to close Sachsenhausen.
In its portrayal of Hitler and the Nazis, the film swings, as Harold
Martenstein noted in Die Zeit, between two prevailing modes – ‘on the
one hand, the traditional, realistic Nazi of television documentaries, and
of Schindler’s List, and on the other the entertainment and comedy Nazi,
freed of realism and pseudorealism, as in the films of Walter Moers or in
Indiana Jones’.7
What I would like to argue is that it is precisely this sort of duality that
is the film’s greatest strength.8 The opposing approaches the two afore-
mentioned models of Hitler film representations employ – drama and
comedy – each enmesh viewers in a process of identification that clearly
delineates between good and evil, hero and villain, by defining the view-
ers’ relationship with ‘the real’ in a particular way, either by asserting its
own authenticity, and thus engendering an emotional response such as
pity or fear, or by positioning itself as decidedly fantastic and irreal, thus
engendering an intellectual response, such as ridicule.9 In the former,
audiences are offered a positive counter-figure whose status as hero or,

at the very least, its clear differentiation from Hitler and the Nazis estab-
lishes an oppositional relationship that locates the viewer’s stand-in
clearly in the anti-Nazi camp; in the latter, the distance from reality
both in concept and in the particular representation of Hitler permits
the audience to feel superior to and essentially distinct from Hitler as
a figure of derision. These models, in a more or less generically pure
form, have been dominant for so long because both reinforce an exist-
ing mode of response to Hitler and, by extension, to the Holocaust. This
mode provides the audience with a pre-digested sense of understanding,
whereby the confrontation with Hitler on screen does not challenge the
audience or disrupt one’s own sense of identity vis-à-vis Hitler or the
Nazi regime. In either case, the audience views Hitler at a safe distance.
By alternating between the comic and dramatic mode, Levy’s film chal-
lenges the audience’s level of engagement with the reality of the film,
generating the sort of dynamic described by Geoff King in his study of
film comedy, where he argues: ‘Comedy plus seriousness . . . generates,
potentially, a state of unstable and contradictory emotional response,
a quality that can be both disturbing and exhilarating in its refusal
of the reconciliatory dynamics of mainstream film comedy.’10 Levy’s
film shares qualities with other black comedies, most notably Georg
Tabori’s play Mein Kampf (1987) and Radu Mihaileanu’s film Train de
Vie (Train of Life, 1998). Like these two works, Levy’s film begins with
an absurd premise, and, in its deliberate oscillation between comedy
and drama, between tragedy and farce, seeks to destabilize an ostensi-
bly clear presupposition, a second binary relationship that traditionally
underlies this distinctions as they pertain to representations of Hitler
and the Nazis, namely the split between fact and fiction, the ques-
tion of authenticity. In doing so, Levy’s film challenges both the role
that authenticity plays in the current discussion of Hitler representa-
tions as well as the nature of historical memory of the Holocaust in
contemporary Germany.
George Tabori’s Mein Kampf
Since its premiere in 1987, Georg Tabori’s Mein Kampf has become
his most performed play. This ‘love story between Hitler and his
Jew’, as Tabori has called it, centers on the two residents of a dreary,
turn of the century Viennese flophouse: Shlomo Herzl, an old Jewish
bookseller and would-be author, and the young Adolf Hitler, fresh
from the Austrian provinces. Against the protestations of another
Figure 5.1 Humorizing Hitler: In Dani Levy’s Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth
About Adolf Hitler (2007), the Führer is repeatedly portrayed as a risible, but also
pitiable figure.
flophouse resident, Lobkowitz, a former kosher cook turned God imper-

sonator, Shlomo quickly takes Hitler under his wing – preparing him
for his ill-fated interview at the Academy of Art, consoling him upon
his rejection and encouraging his turn into politics. Despite Hitler’s
blatant anti-Semitism and fits of rage, Shlomo even hides Hitler in
the bathroom when Frau Death comes looking for him. As reward
for Shlomo’s good deeds, the newly empowered Hitler unleashes on
Shlomo his gang of ‘Tyrolean Leather Freaks’ lead by his second-in-
command Himmlisch, who brutally – and bloodily – dismembers and
cooks Shlomo’s beloved chicken Mitzi before leaving for good with the
newly returned Frau Death.
Tabori’s grotesque farce alternates between horror and levity. From the
opening lines, which echo the beginning of Waiting for Godot – ‘So there
you are. Am I?’ – to Frau Death’s final words to Hitler – ‘The beginning
of a wonderful friendship’ – which invokes the ending of Casablanca,
the play is a jumble of styles and tones, quotations and deliberate mis-
quotations, by turns an homage to the slapstick of Buster Keaton and
the linguistic play of the Marx Brothers, and an often devastatingly
macabre invocation of the Holocaust. In its characterizations, Tabori
is no more clear-cut. Tabori’s Hitler is a pathetic, yet violent loser –
prone to fits of childish rage, hypochondria, and delusions of grandeur,
unable to accomplish even the simplest of adult tasks without Shlomo’s
help, but nonetheless capable of instigating brutality. But Shlomo is no

stereotypical noble Jew, and his motivation for helping Hitler cannot
be ascribed to a clear moral superiority. Gullible, impotent, and inept,
Shlomo is a schlemiel and a loser, a captive to his own negative stereo-
type. Their relationship is built on mutual hatred, but also on mutual
need – in Tabori’s formulation: ‘What would Hitler have done without
the Jews, Iago without his Othello?’
The end result of Tabori’s juxtapositions is a work that seeks to
destabilize meaning by shifting between comic and tragic modes. His
humor functions aggressively and subversively; Hitler is clearly a figure
of ridicule and Shlomo the hero. And yet the looming weight of the
Holocaust, intimated in lines such as Hitler’s threat to Shlomo – ‘When
my time has come, I shall reward you suitably. I’ll buy you an oven,
so you’ll be warm, and when you get old I’ll find you a solution’11
– negates the easy satisfaction one might feel, leading to a tremen-
dous unsettling of the audience and a refusal to provide the audience
with clear statements about anti-Semitism or about the nature of Jewish
identity. As Jack Zipes notes, ‘Tabori’s plays are so powerful because
he does not pretend to have an answer and even mocks the possi-
bility that there might be an answer.’12 The very absurdity of Mein
Kampf ’s premise, coupled with the relentless levelling of stereotypes,
myths, and expectations, challenges an audience to question not only
the essential nature of the characters on stage, stripping away labels
such as Jew and Nazi, but, by extension, their own relationship to
these stereotypes. Ultimately, there is no essence to be found, only the
linguistic constructions that define identity, constructions that some-
times, but not as a rule, reflect a truth content or a relationship to
authenticity.
Radu Mihaileanu’s Train of Life
Radu Mihaileanu’s 1998 French film Train of Life, a deeply funny, and
yet ultimately sad black comedy, similarly seeks to destabilize notions
of Jewish identity by disrupting generic film conventions. The film tells
the story of the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Poland who
deport themselves in order to escape the approaching Nazis and reach
the Soviet Union and then Palestine. In order for their ruse to succeed,
half of the village must dress up, and act like Nazis, leading to a series
of comic confrontations: with each other, as the ‘Nazis’ are accused
of acting like Nazis; with partisans whose attempt to destroy the train
founders when they see the phony soldiers praying like Jews; with real
Germans; and finally with another military detachment, which reveals

itself to be a group of gypsies who have similarly disguised themselves.
Train of Life relentlessly deconstructs the notion of Jewish identity, like
Tabori’s play, by embracing stereotype after stereotype, until the whole
notion of an essential Jewish identity is defunct. Performativity is a key
aspect of the film’s disruption of traditional modes of identification,
as an essentialist notion of Jewish identity gives way to one rooted in
behavior and even appearance. The lumber dealer Mordechai, at first
reluctant to take on the role of a Nazi officer, at times finds the lure
of the fascist power fantasy of control irresistible; his fellow villagers
meanwhile treat him with suspicion almost immediately after he dons
the Nazi uniform. In these moments, the film recalls Ernst Lubitsch’s
1942 deconstruction of Nazi performativity To Be or Not to Be, whose
central motif of acting, impersonation, functioned as a direct attack on
the excessive theatricality of the Nazi regime and similarly challenged
reductive images of German, or Jewish, identity.13
It does so by deftly moving from the comic to the dramatic. In an
essay on Train of Life, David Brenner argues that it is precisely this
hybrid status that makes the film so effective, arguing that ‘The film’s
postmodern irony, which tends toward the grotesque theater of the
absurd, sidesteps the redemptive sacralization that accompanies unmod-
ified modes of emplotment such as pure tragedy or pure comedy.’14 The
Germans in the film are, at times, buffoonish, inept, and easily duped, to
the point of loading up the Jews’ train with provisions (the meat is even
slaughtered in a kosher fashion). But the reality of the situation, the pre-
cariousness of the Jews’ safety, is never far from the screen. The comic
effect of the German soldiers wandering around the deserted shtetl just
hours after the Jews’ departure quickly gives way to images of the vil-
lage’s destruction by fire, as the camera lingers over burning objects,
both personal and sacred. Indeed, the question of redemption is left
open at the end of the film. Each narrow ‘escape’ becomes increasingly
more humorous, but the stakes become increasingly higher. Abandon-
ing any pretense of realism, the film concludes, or seems to conclude,
with the train of Jews and gypsies crossing the border into the Soviet
Union amid a barrage of shells and mortar fire, the town fool Shlomo
dancing lustily on its roof. Shlomo provides the usual closing narration
of the telescoped futures of his friends, uttering a last sentence, ‘There.
That’s the true story of my shtetl’, before pausing to add, ‘Well . . . almost
true’, as the camera pulls back to display him dressed in the uniform of
a prisoner behind the fence of what is either a concentration or death
camp. Suddenly, the entire narrative is called into question, and the
happy ending is revealed as the fantasies of a doomed jester.
Dani Levy’s Mein Führer
Though not as rich in allusions as Tabori’s play, Mein Führer clearly con-
tains numerous references to earlier Hitler representations, allusions that
function to alternate the modality of the film. The trope of Hitler need-
ing an acting coach echoes Brecht’s early Hitler satire, Der aufhaltsame
Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, 1941). Another early
comic sequence – Grünbaum’s arrival at the Nazi headquarters – features
soldiers caught in an infinite loop of ‘Heil Hitlers’, a perhaps less direct
reference to the Academy Award-winning Disney short Der Führer’s Face
(1943), in which Donald Duck is a swastika-wearing munitions worker
who must similarly give the Hitlergruß every other second. And the final
scene of the film, Hitler’s and Grünbaum’s speech to the adoring masses,
which I will discuss in greater detail later, is a highly recognizable refer-
ence to the end of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), which at
first recalls the seriousness of Chaplin’s plea, before again reverting to a
more humorous tone.
The dual nature of Levy’s film, and its engagement with the question
of authenticity, is made clear from the outset. The film opens with Nazi
propaganda footage of Hitler parading through a cheering city in an
open car, signaling a potentially serious treatment, but it is accompa-
nied, and undercut, by an ironic off-screen narration, provided, as we
soon find out, by Grünbaum who informs the audience that this film,
The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler, will not be Hitler’s story, but his
own. Giving the date as 1 January 1945, Grünbaum announces that he
is directly under Hitler, and the film cuts to a shot of Grünbaum peek-
ing out from behind a curtain with a tragic smile. Though he is shot in
black and white, the obvious disjunction between the two film sources is
apparent.15 Also apparent from the outset is Grünbaum’s eventual fate:
as the narration comes to a close and the film turns from black and white
to color, we see blood dripping down his head from an unseen wound.
As Grünbaum’s off-screen narration continues, a montage of short
comic scenes detail the bureaucratic steps needed to secure his release.
When the film shifts to Sachsenhausen, however, the tone abruptly
changes. Grünbaum, still unaware of why he was pulled off a work
detail, stands naked in an empty shower room, his body revealing the
abuse inflicted upon him by the Nazis. His palpable anxiety about what
will come out of the showerhead – Zyklon B gas or merely water – recalls
a similarly suspenseful scene towards the end of Schindler’s List, when
Schindler’s female workers have been taken to Auschwitz, stripped,
and forced, without explanation, into a large shower room. Here, as
there, after a few tense moments, water comes down instead of gas.
In Spielberg’s film, this moment functioned as stock moment of height-
ened suspense, but here, it functions differently, marking as it does the
beginning of Grünbaum’s odyssey into the heart of the Nazi private
sphere, and signalling that things will not be as they seem, either for
Grünbaum or for the audience. But while Grünbaum’s expectations have
been determined by his first-hand experiences with the Nazi machinery,
ours are primarily a result of an understanding mediated less by history
than by cinematic representation. In either case, this scene highlights
that the Nazi world is not fully intelligible. A Jew sent to the showers is
actually expected to shower.
A similar moment of misunderstanding occurs moments later when
Grünbaum is left alone with Hitler for the first time. To Grünbaum’s
‘How are you doing?’ Hitler responds ‘Heilen Sie mich’. Given the far-
cical repetition of the Hitler greeting that marked his entrance to the
Nazi headquarters, Grünbaum, like the audience, assumes that Hitler
is demanding the familiar greeting of obedience. But when Grünbaum
obediently offers a loud ‘Heil Hitler’, Hitler elaborates upon his request:
‘Heal me [Heilen Sie mich], if I have a chance of being healed at all.
I’m not doing well.’ Again, we are confronted with what seems to be a
comprehensible situation, yet our expectation of the meaning of certain
words is shown to be at odds with the reality of it. Throughout the film,
Grünbaum struggles with navigating a safe route for him and his family,
first by playing along, then by deception. At every turn, he is stymied
by the utter incomprehensibility, and absurdity, of his situation.
It is this absurdity that provides the most comedic moments in the
film. Certainly, the humor of the film is less pointed than Tabori’s,
but the film is not without moments that betray a macabre wit, such
as when Grünbaum, clearly hungry, stares uncertainly at the ham
and cheese sandwich provided for him, before removing the ham and
shoving it under a rug. In mid-bite, Grünbaum is greeted breezily by
Goebbels who asks, ‘Where did we dig you up?’ Hearing the response,
‘Sachsenhausen’, Goebbels responds with surprise, ‘I though we’d put
you in Terezin. It’s our nicest camp!’, before quickly adding, ‘The idea
of the Final Solution . . . You shouldn’t take it personally.’ For the most
part, however, the humor is light and broad. Forced by Grünbaum to
shed his uniform for an athletic tracksuit, Hitler, feinting and jabbing
like a boxer, taunts Grünbaum, until Grünbaum, unable to restrain

himself, fights back, quickly knocking Hitler out with one blow. But
it is crucial to note that these moments are often immediately offset
by stark reminders of the brutal reality of the Nazi era. While Adorno
famously criticized The Great Dictator, arguing that it lost its satirical
force and became obscene for showing a Jewish girl hitting stormtroop-
ers on the head with a pan without being torn to pieces,16 Grünbaum’s
slapstick, knock-out punch of Hitler is shown to have real violence as an
answer, when, in the next scene, we see Grünbaum held down and bru-
tally beaten. This pattern continues throughout the film – a scene that
opens with Goebbels sheepishly emerging from under a desk, caught
in flagrante performing oral sex on his secretary, abruptly shifts tone,
when Grünbaum’s demand that Sachsenhausen be closed in exchange
for his work is met with a curt dismissal from Goebbels, who sends the
Grünbaum family back to Sachsenhausen in the very next scene. Later
in the film Hitler, like a teenager after curfew, sneaks out of a chancellery
window, his dog Blondi in tow, hanging forlornly from its leash before
being unceremoniously dropped to the ground. But the film then cuts to
a bombed-out Berlin and close-up shots of Hitler are replaced by frames
in which a landscape of urban ruin dwarfs Hitler. However laughable
the Nazis may seem, the film never strays far from reminders of the
underlying brutality and devastation of the Nazi era.
Figure 5.2 Sleeping with the enemy: Worried about his forthcoming speech,
Hitler (Schneider) seeks refuge in the bed of Grünbaum (Mühe) and his wife
(Adriana Altaras).
The tension between comedy and drama also plays out in the film in
the relationship between Grünbaum and Hitler. Unlike his counterpart
Shlomo, Grünbaum is clearly marked from the outset as a tragic hero,
and very little of the film’s humor, save in the film’s early moments,
comes at his expense. Instead, he stands as an easily recognizable figure
of identification – a morally superior victim of persecution forced into
collaboration with the Nazis. Grünbaum’s allegiance to a strict moral
code not to hurt the defenseless leaves him unable to kill even Hitler
once he recognizes him as a human being.
The obvious counterweight to this dramatic hero is Hitler. Hitler the
clown, the bed-wetter, the impotent hypochondriac. Within the film’s
representation of Hitler lies a second tension between comic and dra-
matic. As much as Grünbaum, and the film, humiliates Hitler, this
humiliation stops short of dehumanization. Hitler is clearly a laugh-
able figure in this film, but one who is also essentially human. Like
Grünbaum, the audience is made aware of the reality that Hitler is, in
fact, responsible for the atrocities of the Nazi era, but is also, in fact, a
pathetic human being. Precisely because he is so pathetic, and because
his confessions are presented in such a comical manner, he remains
outside of the mechanism of identification. Following Aristotle, iden-
tification with a tragic hero allows for us to feel pity and fear, but the
reverse – that we identify with characters for whom we feel pity – is not
necessarily true. At best, one could feel sorry for him and imagine that
there are in fact other factors at work in his persona than an unfettered
desire to be evil. Levy’s use of Alice Miller’s contention in Am Anfang
war Erziehung (For Your Own Good, 1980) – that Hitler was a victim of
his damaged upbringing – came under attack as a crass reduction of the
Holocaust to one man’s childhood trauma.17 But here too, things are
not so simplistic. Hitler’s abusive nature is traced back to his father, but
Levy does not let the audience forget that Hitler is also part of a larger
matrix of power, one that has no compunction replacing a Führer who
has outlived his usefulness.
The question of the humanization of Hitler remains a highly con-
troversial aspect of the discussion of the Nazi era. On one end of the
spectrum of this discussion is the notion that Hitler must be preserved
as a figure of mythic evil. Ron Rosenbaum writes that Claude Lanzmann
was furious at the very idea of publishing baby pictures of Hitler, for
fear that this would allow even the slightest sympathy for him.18 But
after 60 years, is it still impossible to acknowledge that Hitler was, in
fact, flesh and blood? More to the point: if a single representation of
Hitler as a pathetic, even sympathetic loser can outweigh 60 years of
utter vilification, one has to ask if there is not something much more
disturbing lurking in the German collective unconscious. The perpetual
demonization of Hitler comes at the cost of a nuanced historical under-
standing of the dynamics of the Nazi ideology, the Nazi power structure,
and its hegemonic legitimacy. Further, the insistence on the figure of
Hitler as all-powerful demon, as Henryk Broder has argued with respect
to Levy’s film, often has less to do with a ‘respect for the victims’ than
the contemporary German relationship to the Nazi era: ‘to be seduced by
a demon is bad, to be seduced by a weiner is embarassing . . . This is what
afflicts the Germans even today, what they cannot forgive themselves
for: The Third Reich embarasses them.’19
Like Train of Life, Mein Führer takes as a central moment a dissection of
Nazi performativity. This question of performativity, of what Goebbels
called inszenierte Wirklichkeit (staged reality), resonates throughout the
film on several levels. On the most obvious level, it refers to Goebbels’
cynical calculation that the appearance of victory – the staging of
Hitler’s procession through a Berlin whose bombed out buildings are
hidden by movie set facades – is more important than reality itself. Even
more, it refers to Goebbels’ plot to assassinate Hitler and rule together
with Himmler, with Grünbaum as the convenient Jewish scapegoat, giv-
ing the Nazis a ‘legitimate’ reason to persecute the Jews. And, of course,
it refers to Goebbels’ attempt to deceive Grünbaum into believing that
Sachsenhausen has indeed been closed by arranging for a telephone call
from Grünbaum’s fellow prisoner, whose affirmative responses are belied
by his bruised and bloodied face and the gun held inches from his head.
But the film also employs this trope of ‘staged reality’ as a form of
self-commentary. From the outset, the film constantly foregrounds its
own fictional nature. In doing so, it challenges what Levy has elsewhere
called an obsession with the authentic. Although Levy insists that his
film was not a cinematic ‘answer’ to Downfall, he clearly engages here
with the essential claim of Hirschbiegel’s film. In an interview published
in Die Welt, he remarked that it was precisely this obsession, which
he saw as part and parcel of a larger problematic, that ruined the film
for him, noting that ‘in his crotchety seriousness, his absolute claim of
authenticity, to show the absolute truth, I found him at times ridiculous,
involuntarily comedic. And also annoying.’20
Much has been made of the historical authenticity of Downfall, which
draws its account from two primary sources: Traudl Junge’s 2002 autobi-
ography Bis zur letzten Stunde: Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt ihr Leben (Until the
Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary, 2004) and Joachim Fest’s Der Untergang:
Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches (Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days
Of The Third Reich, 2002), a broader study of the last days in the Hitler
bunker.21 The film may rightly assert that it is based on events and con-
versations supported by documented eye-witness accounts, but given
the provenance of these accounts, the fact that surviving eyewitnesses
would be inclined to defend rather than condemn themselves, uncor-
roborated exculpatory accounts of private heroism and resistance – such
as Albert Speer’s claim to have defiantly confessed to Hitler that he
did not sabotage needed civilian supply lines – should hardly be taken
as incontrovertible historical truths. In the case of other minor heroic
figures who appear in the film, such as Prof. Dr Ernst-Günter Schenck, an
SS doctor heroically risking his life to secure medical supplies and care
for wounded soldiers, or General Wilhelm Mohnke, the noble, loyal,
and honorable old soldier, charged with defending Berlin, Hirschbiegel
and Eichinger’s slavish adherence to authentic documents led them to
exclude any mention of Schenck’s brutal experimentation on prison-
ers or Mohnke’s role in the massacre of British prisoners at Dunkirk,
with Hirschbiegel offering the somewhat lame excuse that these crimes
were not referenced since they were never fully proven. Nor is any men-
tion made of the fact that the sympathetic outsider, Traudl Humps, as
she is first introduced in the film, was in fact married to an SS-officer,
Hans-Hermann Junge, who died in battle in 1944. It may seem unfair
to criticize the film for what it fails to portray, but given the circum-
stances, and the claims the film makes regarding historical accuracy,
such critiques are not unwarranted.
The dubious nature of the recollections of the film’s secondary char-
acters equally calls into question the authenticity of Ganz’s portrayal.
Again, the problem here is the film’s narrow insistence of a concept of
authenticity that is entirely dependent upon potentially self-serving rec-
ollections. Even Hitler’s supposed humanity is mediated: based as it is on
Junge’s recollections, her accounts of his human side serve to exculpate
her, or at least explain how she was able to work for him, rather than
make Hitler more sympathetic. The personal sympathy that Junge feels
for Hitler becomes a testament to her own goodness rather than his: if
one can feel bad even for Hitler, one must be a decent person.
Levy’s critique of Downfall comes not in the form of a direct attack
on this problematic claim to historical veracity, but via an undermin-
ing on the very notion of authenticity. Misrecognition again plays
a prominent role here, but it is not Grünbaum, rather the crowds
gathered to hear Hitler’s speech that experience this. This misidentifi-
cation was precipitated by Grünbaum’s successful restoration of Hitler’s
Figure 5.3 Searching for his voice: their roles reversed, Hitler (Schneider) looks
down from the rostrum to . . . .
Figure 5.4 . . . his ‘Führer’ Grünbaum (Mühe) who is forced at gun point to read
out the speech that Hitler himself can no longer deliver.
will. Shortly before leaving to prepare for his speech, the newly rein-
vigorated Hitler has a final conversation with Grünbaum, punctuated
by Hitler calling Grünbaum ‘Mein Führer’. From this moment on,
Grünbaum will in fact become Hitler. First, after he calls out the window
to his family, now freed, Grünbaum’s wife Elsa shouts his name (Adolf),
prompting the crowd to believe that it is Hitler at the window. Moments
later, after Hitler loses his moustache and then his voice, Grünbaum
is forced to give Hitler’s speech for him.22 Hidden underneath Hitler’s
podium, Grünbaum orates while Hitler pantomimes. As with The Great
Dictator, the masses are easily fooled by what should be an obvious
artifice, and they listen not to their Führer, but to his Jewish double.23
And like Chaplin’s impassioned plea, this speech has two addressees –
the German crowd within the film and the German audience in the
movie theater. Unable to continue his charade, Grünbaum strays from
his script, but unlike Chaplin, he does not make a plea for tolerance, but
instead offers a bitter condemnation:
I thank you for your blind trust in me. As loyal Germans you have
followed me and made the world into sauerkraut. Today our father-
land lies in ruins. And all of you are Aryans, blond [arschblond] and
blue-eyed, except for me. And yet you cheer me. Heil myself! [crowd:
‘Heil!’] Why do you do it? I am a bed-wetter, a drug addict. I can’t get
an erection. I was beaten by my father so often that my feelings are
dead. So I torture defenseless people as I was once tortured myself.
I take revenge all over Europe on Jews, homosexuals, and the sick for
the agony I suffered when I was a child. Every hate-filled half-pint
can rule the world when millions follow.
Shot mid-sentence by Speer, he manages one last sentence to the

crowd – ‘Heilt euch selbst’ (heal yourselves) – which functions simul-
taneously as an exhortation to reject Hitler as well as an abdication of
the notion that a contemporary cathartic artistic representation of the
Nazi era would heal the German psyche. Predictably, the audience in
the film, hampered by its limited frame of reference, can only ascribe,
as Grünbaum himself did earlier, a single meaning to the verb ‘heilen’.
Assuming that this is part of the familiar rhetoric to which they are
supposed to respond, they chant first tentatively, then more assuredly,
‘heil mich selbst’ (heal myself), yet another film reference, this time to
Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, never seeming to suspect that this hijacked
speech could be subversive. While a contemporary audience is capable
of understanding this moment of linguistic confusion, whether or not
they recognize their implication in this scene is less clear.
Grünbaum’s final words to the audience, in the form of a voice-over,
return to the problematic nature of his representation. In a moment that
recalls the end of Train of Life, Grünbaum states that ‘That was my story.
It’s absolutely true. I promise’, before quickly conceding that ‘Okay, per-
haps I exaggerated a few things. That is possible. You don’t believe me?’
This admission forces us to reconsider the film. What is the nature of
Grünbaum’s exaggeration? Is it possible to read this admission as one

that undercuts the legitimacy of the entire film? Perhaps none of these
events happened. Perhaps Grünbaum’s trip to the showers is indeed a
scene of death, though admittedly the film gives no visual evidence of
this. In challenging the very legitimacy of the film’s narrative, even the
moral status of Grünbaum may be questioned, thereby further under-
mining any sense of closure. Before the podium inevitably explodes, the
narration concludes:
It will take 119 more days before the 1,000-year nightmare is over and
the Führer makes his escape by taking cyanide and shooting himself.
One hundred years from now, authors will still write about him, and
actors and comedians will still depict him. Why? Because we want to
understand what we will never understand.
This refusal to provide an understanding, to even admit of the possi-

bility of understanding, echoes Tabori’s refusal to ‘answer’ the Jewish
question. Here, however, Levy is not referring to the complicated rela-
tionship between Germans and Jews, leading up to the Holocaust, but to
the broader question of a contemporary historical understanding of the
Nazi era. Despite a few moments of soul searching, the minor moral cri-
sis that leads Grünbaum to sacrifice himself to save his family and refuse
to participate any further in a charade that could prolong the war, in
Levy’s film, unlike Tabori’s play or Mihaileanu’s film, the identity of the
central Jewish figure (or figures) is not problematized. What Levy’s film
shares with Hirschbiegel’s – indeed with many of the recent films about
Hitler – is that it is ultimately not about the Jews, or even about Hitler,
but rather it functions as an allegory for a German understanding and
mastery of its Nazi past. But while Downfall allows Germans to reclaim
a measure of victim status while avoiding the more difficult question of
the cultural normativity of perpetrator behavior and the direct and indi-
rect complicity of the German populace in the Holocaust and the exter-
mination of the Jews, Mein Führer challenges the audience by refusing
to offer either an understanding of the true nature of Hitler or even the
possibility that such an understanding is nothing more than absurd.
A brief coda to the film appears as an inset over the final cred-
its and reveals exactly how unproductive a discussion of authenticity
in Hitler representations is, particularly when historical consciousness
is so problematic. In a series of short interviews, conducted by Levy
throughout Berlin during postproduction, ordinary Germans are asked
‘What do you know about Adolf Hitler?’ The interviewees are ordered
from young to old, and their answers are by turns depressingly funny in
their misinformation and just plain depressing, ranging from children’s

responses: ‘He screams’; ‘He made people into sausages’ to those of
teenagers: ‘He was Jewish or something like that’; ‘Sexually frustrated’ –
to those of adults: ‘I don’t know him. He must have been a roofer’; ‘He
did it with his cousin’ – to those of senior citizens: ‘He was our Führer;
‘Unworthy of the German people’; ‘Oh, leave me alone! We know all
about him!’ Then, going from oldest to youngest, these same Germans
are asked about the fictitious Adolf Grünbaum. That most of their
answers – ‘Sounds like a Jewish name’; ‘An actor?’; ‘A Jewish scholar
maybe?’; ‘An opera singer during the Third Reich?’; ‘He was pretty well
known. A great striker’ – are oblivious is predictable. How indistinguish-
able these statements are from their responses about Hitler is tragic.
Notes
1. In an interview shortly before the release of Der Untergang, Hirschbiegel
asserted the accuracy of his reconstruction of the last days of the Nazi
regime, asserting, ‘In principle we follow the real events. We attempt to
trace what happened there. One cannot really speak of an interpretation.
I saw myself as sort of an “agent” [Beauftragter] in the sense of Germany
history. My idea with this film had always been to provide the impe-
tus for a new engagement, a new perspective, a new point of departure,
which attempts to truly get inside the material and to illuminate the
historical background’. – Anon., ‘Interview mit Oliver Hirschbiegel’, Kultura-
Extra, 13 September 2004 [accessed 23 December 2008]. Available online at:
http://www.kultura-extra.de/film/filme/untergang.php#interview. In fact, it
was precisely the film’s attention to historical fact that evoked the most
criticism, as many argued that this detail came at the expense of historical
analysis. Wim Wenders called Der Untergang a ‘film without a standpoint’;
while historian Hans Mommsen complained that ‘the reduction of history to
purely personal history is completely unsuited for conveying an understand-
ing of larger historical processes’. – See Wim Wenders, ‘Tja, dann wollen wir
mal’, Die Zeit, 21 October 2004. – Anon., ‘Faktisch genau, dramaturgisch lau’,
Spiegel-Online, 16 September 2004.
2. See, for example, Peter Kasza, ‘Hi hi Hitler: Am Donnerstag kommt Dani
Levys Naziparodie in die Kinos. Und mit ihr die alte Frage: Darf man über
Hitler lachen?’, Der Tagesspiegel, 6 January 2007.
3. Peter Zander, ‘Ein Adolf kommt selten allein: An Levys Hitler-Komödie Mein
Führer entzündet sich eine Debatte. Dabei ist der Film dafür zu harmlos;
Levys Hitler-Komödie Mein Führer’, Die Welt, 6 January 2007.
4. Harald Peters, ‘Hitler, menschlich gesehen: Dani Levy wollte mit Mein Führer
eine Komödie über Hitler drehen. Und nahm dem Stoff jeden Witz’, Welt am
Sonntag, 7 January 2007.
5. Helge Schneider, ‘ “Ich kann über diesen Hitler nicht lachen” ’, Süddeutsche
Zeitung, 5 January 2007.
6. Henryk Broder, ‘Der Jud tut gut’, Der Spiegel, 8 January 2007.
7. Harald Martenstein, ‘Adolf auf der Couch’, Die Zeit, 4 January 2007. These
two modes, whereby Hitler is either evil, incarnate, or a harmless clown (but
never anything in between), encompass nearly all of the Hitler representa-
tions since the beginning of the Second World War. Nuance is not a trait
characteristic to the filmic portrayal of Hitler.
8. In an admittedly defensive response to criticisms of his film that was
published as a letter to the editor in Die Welt and is available on the
website for the film, Levy characterizes the genre discussion as ‘a German
sickness . . . comedy and tragedy, serious theses and subversive laughter – why
shouldn’t there be room for that in a film?’ – Dani Levy, ‘Levy schreibt
an die Kino-Besucher: “Lachen ist ein Politikum” ’, Die Welt, 20 January
2007.
9. In his essay ‘Holocaust Laughter?’, Terrence Des Pres articulates the differ-
ence between drama and comedy in terms of a relationship to mimesis:
‘In its homage to fact, high seriousness is governed by a compulsion to
reproduce, by the need to create a convincing likeness that never quite
succeeds, never feels complete, just as earnestness feels inadequate to best
intentions. Comic works, on the contrary, escape such liabilities; laughter
is hostile to the world it depicts and subverts the respect on which rep-
resentation depends’. – Terrence Des Pres, ‘Holocaust Laughter?’, in Berel
Lang (ed.), Writing and the Holocaust (Teaneck, NJ, 1988), pp. 216–33, here
p. 219–20.
10. Geoff King, Film Comedy (London, 2002), p. 196. Put more concisely, he cites
J. L. Styan’s seminal work on dark comedy, where he notes ‘The detachment
of comedy is not allowed us nor the sympathy of tragedy’.
11. Georg Tabori, ‘Mein Kampf ’, in Carl Weber (ed.), Drama Contemporary:
Germany (Baltimore, MD, 1996), pp. 39–83, here p. 55.
12. Jack Zipes, ‘Georg Tabori and the Jewish Question’, Theater 29.2 (1999),
pp. 98–107, here p. 105.
13. For an extended analysis of To Be or Not to Be, see Gerd Gemünden, ‘Space
Out of Joint: Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be’, New German Critique 89
(Spring/Summer 2003), pp. 59–80. For a broader discussion of the motif
of impersonation within film comedies about Hitler and the Nazis, see
Michael Richardson, ‘ “Heil Myself!” Impersonation and Identity in Comedic
Representations of Hitler’, in David Bathrick, Brad Prager, and Michael
D. Richardson (eds), Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents, Aesthetics, and
Memory (Rochester, NY, 2008), pp. 277–97.
14. David Brenner, ‘Laughter amid Catastrophe: Train of Life and Tragicomic
Holocaust Cinema’, in Bathrick, Prager, and Richardson (eds), Visualizing the
Holocaust, pp. 261–76, here p. 268.
15. The title sequence and the montage of Grünbaum being brought into Berlin
continues the film’s juxtaposition of real documentary footage and fea-
ture film. An anachronistic aerial shot of the rubble of Berlin – taken from
Allied postwar footage of the city – cuts away to the interior of Grünbaum’s
car. But the exterior view of Berlin provided by the documentary footage
remains visible through the windows of the car, the product of an outdated
and obvious special effect, whereby moving exterior footage of buildings
and surroundings is back projected on a screen behind actors seated in a
stationary car.
16. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Commitment’, in Ronald Taylor (ed.), Aesthetics and

Politics: The Key Texts of the Classic Debate within German Marxism (London,
1990), pp. 184–5.
17. Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots
of Violence (New York, 1983). First published in German: Am Anfang war
Erziehung (Frankfurt, 1980).
18. Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler (New York, 1998), pp. xvi–xviii.
19. Broder, ‘Der Jud tut gut’.
20. Peter Zander, ‘ “Ich will die Geschmacksnerven der Zuschauer strapazieren”:
Der schweizerische Regisseur Dani Levy über seinen Film Mein Führer, die
erste deutsche Hitler-Komödie’, Die Welt, 8 January 2007.
21. Traudl Junge and Melissa Müller, Bis zur letzten Stunde: Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt
ihr Leben (Berlin, 2004). – Joachim Fest, Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des
Dritten Reiches. Eine historische Skizze (Berlin, 2002).
22. Given the symbolic significance of Hitler’s moustache to his visual represen-
tation, his sudden rhetorical impotence is not a surprise. The role of Hitler’s
moustache and the inability of Hitler to be Hitler (or at least to be recognized
as Hitler) without it is a common filmic trope.
23. In his analysis of To Be or Not to Be, Gemünden addresses the penchant for
misrecognitions among Hitler’s supporters who, one would think, would be
more likely to distinguish between the real Hitler and an imitation, assert-
ing that ‘only someone who has not entered the symbolic order of Nazism
will remain able to distinguish . . . . Those who have been taught to obey the
Führer by respecting his metonymic representations – his portrait, the Hitler
salute, etc. – relinquish the ability to question the authenticity of represen-
tations’. – See Gemünden, ‘Space Out of Joint’, p. 67. Gemünden’s argument
is equally applicable to both Chaplin’s film as well as Levy’s.
Films cited
1977).
Kinney, Jack, Der Führer’s Face (USA, 1943).
——, Hitlers Krieger (Germany, 1998).
——, Hitlers Kinder (Germany, 2000).
——, Hitlers Frauen (Germany, 2001).
2007).
Mihaileanu, Radu, Train de Vie (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Israel, and
Romania, 1998).
Spielberg, Steven, Schindler’s List (USA, 1993).
6
Man, Demon, Icon: Hitler’s Image
between Cinematic Representation
and Historical Reality
Michael Elm
Since his death on 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler has tended to be viewed
as the epitome of evil. This moral judgment is particularly apparent
in the various representations of him which have emerged in feature
films produced in the post-war era. Although historians have empha-
sized Hitler’s decisive role in the Holocaust,1 it is nevertheless somewhat
misleading to portray him as a demon. Indeed, although Hitler himself
was unquestionably wicked, the bureaucratic organization and efficient
implementation of the Final Solution cannot be perceived as the act
of a single person. Viewing it as such risks overlooking the role played
by the many knowledgeable German citizens who actively assisted with
or took advantage of the deportations and murders.2 Many will have
witnessed their Jewish neighbors fleeing the country or being deported,
and almost every family will have had at least one member carrying
out active military service. Although anti-Semitism itself was promoted
by Hitler’s policies, it cannot purely be seen as a direct consequence
of them.
This observation is of vital importance for an understanding of the
portrayal of Hitler in post-war feature films. Because any such depic-
tion is both socially and politically loaded, he has tended to appear
in cinema not as a historical figure, but as an icon. In the public dis-
courses of the post-war period, Hitler figured as an embodiment of
evil, a portrayal which simply inverted his idealized pre-war image,
and provided the German population with an explanation for their
defeat and absolution from their responsibility. This chapter considers
the recent debates about the depiction of Hitler in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s
151
152 Man, Demon, Icon
Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004) and Dani Levy’s Mein Führer – Die wirk-
lich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (Mein Führer: The Truly Truest
Truth about Adolf Hitler, 2007) in the light of this socio-historical con-
text. It will be argued that these films form part of a wider reassess-
ment of the past which is currently taking place in German collective
consciousness.
In their much-quoted essay, ‘Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern’, Alexander
and Margarete Mitscherlich analyze the surprising speed with which
many Germans appeared to overcome their admiration for Hitler.
Instead of succumbing to melancholy, the majority managed to separate
the recent past from their present lives. The Mitscherlichs argued that
such behavior corresponded to what can be described by the psychoan-
alytic term ‘derealization’: namely, the perception of the past as unreal,
as though it was experienced by another person. This form of splitting
enabled many Germans to continue with their daily lives by creating
a historical narrative that featured Hitler as the true villain. ‘He’3 was
seen as being responsible both for Germany’s involvement and defeat
in World War II, and for the mass murder of the European Jews. The
bonds which had previously existed between Volk and Führer were now
thought to be either invisible or unreal.
As well as considering this historical narrative, it is also necessary
to take into account the representation of Hitler in the media of the
Third Reich when discussing his portrayal in recent films. Hitler’s pho-
tographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, went to great lengths to show him as
belonging to the German people and at the same time as elevated above
them through his messianic mission. Hoffmann and other propagan-
dists sought to depict Hitler both as ‘one of them’ and time, as nobly
sublime. They therefore adopted the populist strategy, well-known to
politicians at the time, of depicting him as the heir to Bismarck, whose
task it was to liberate Germany from the shackles of Versailles. The
notion of the emperor’s two bodies – the divine and the human –
proved to be a defining feature in the iconography of Hitler. Its reli-
gious associations reinforced his image as the savior of the German
nation.4
Although such an image had already been in existence before the
Nationalist Socialist movement came to power in 1933, it was subse-
quently developed and refined by the propagandists, who cultivated
the idolization of Hitler both at rallies and party conferences, and in
newsreels and speeches given by Hitler himself. In September 1936, for
example, he addressed an audience of regional political leaders with the
following words:
Michael Elm 153
Whenever we meet here, we are filled with the miraculous nature of

such a gathering. Not all of you can see me, and I cannot see each
of you. But I can sense you, and you can sense me! It is faith in
our nation (Volk) which has made small people like us great, which
has made wavering, cowardly and fearful people like us brave and
courageous, which has made the errant see and which has brought us
together. Thus on this one day, you have all left your small villages,
your market towns, your cities, your mines, factories, and ploughs
to come to this town. You have come from the small surrounds of
your daily struggle for existence and your fight for Germany and our
people (Volk), in order to sense once and for all that we are now
together, that we are with him and he is with us, and that we are
now Germany!5
The proliferation of religious imagery in this excerpt emphasizes Hitler’s

self-presentation as Germany’s redeemer, while the repetition of the pro-
noun ‘we’ creates a sense of the mutual bonds existing between him
and the German people. It is precisely this relationship between Volk
and Führer which was denied by many Germans after World War II,
in a manner which paved the way for the distorted representation of
Hitler in the post-war era.6 This is because the depiction of Hitler as
the personification of evil means that the German population is more
likely to be perceived as his victim. The propaganda image of Hitler as
Germany’s savior is thereby inverted; loaded with cultural significance,
it becomes a taboo subject which underpins the collective memory of
post-war Germany.
It is for this reason that the direct engagement with the representa-
tion of Hitler in collective German memory which we see in films such
as Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall and Dani Levy’s Mein Führer has been
particularly welcomed by sociologists and historians. Hirschbiegel, for
example, sought to counter the representation of Hitler as a demon by
showing his human side. In one interview he explains: ‘People tend to
wish that those who bring such suffering and misery upon the world
were monsters, with bloodshot eyes and terrible fangs. However, the
painful truth is: they are people and I have to represent them as peo-
ple.’7 Dani Levy’s film develops this technique further by attempting to
deconstruct the conventional image of Hitler. Hirschbiegel’s film had
been criticized by a number of commentators, including Wim Wenders,
who argued that its failure to depict Hitler’s corpse indicated that it
was still to a large extent influenced by the myth of the ‘great dicta-
tor’. Levy, similarly, criticized this scene in Hirschbiegel’s film, which, he
Figure 6.1 The tenderness of Wolf: An emotional Hitler (Bruno Ganz) bids
farewell to his secretary Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) whose Wrong syl-
labication; should be: me-moirs provided the template for Hirschbiegel’s attempt
at a historically accurate reconstruction of the last days in the Führerbunker in
Downfall (2004).
suggested, was too emotionally charged and bound up with its project
of historical authenticity to offer the audience any chance to question
the depiction of Hitler’s status.8
Hirschbiegel’s Downfall, based on a screenplay written by Bernd
Eichinger, cannot deliver a convincing answer to the various questions
it raises. The audience is presented with two contrasting representations
of Hitler. The first depicts him in his private life, away from the pub-
lic sphere, through his relationship with his fiancée Eva Braun (Juliane
Köhler), and through his apparently genuine concern for his private sec-
retary, Traudl Humps/Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) (Figure 6.1). At the
outset of the film, for example, Hitler’s human side is displayed through
the reassuring comments he makes to the nervous typist. The second
image shows Hitler as a ruthless military leader and fanatical anti-Semite
(Figure 6.2). While the actor Bruno Ganz is equally convincing in both
roles, the relationship between the two is nevertheless problematic: each
role appears to be unconnected to the other, and, more importantly,
neither adequately reflects the propagandist self-portrayal of the Führer.
Thus, on the one hand, the separation of the two roles lures the specta-
tor into thinking that we are presented with an authentic view of Hitler’s
Michael Elm 155
private life. This is strengthened by several dramaturgical aspects of the

film. At the outset, he behaves as a fatherly figure, implicitly confirming
the reason why so many Germans felt able to trust him. As Germany’s
military situation worsens, however, he is transformed into a maniac,
an impression which is emphasized by the many images of Traudl Junge
appearing either frightened or surprised by the cruelty of his decisions.
It is ironic that the question – ‘What will happen to the children?’ –
raised by Hitler in Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s first bunker film, Der letzte Akt
(The Last Ten Days, 1955), is now uttered by Traudl Junge in her concern
for the six children of Joseph Goebbels. In many respects, the mise-
en-scène of Junge supports the conventional view that Hitler seduced
the German people and that they only became aware of his evil inten-
tions when it was too late to do anything to stop him. On the other
hand, the film overlooks the fact that the images of Hitler in his pri-
vate life were in fact just as much a part of his political self-presentation
as the more conventional depictions of him as a public leader. Many
images from contemporary newsreels show him caring for wounded
soldiers, visiting the front line or patting the blond heads of children
he encountered on his parades, thus highlighting the fact that his pro-
paganda operated on a scale which was clearly underestimated by the
filmmakers.
The authentic representation of Hitler’s private life within the frame-
work of a fictional film demands close attention to trustworthy historical
sources, an aspect which appears to be flawed in Downfall. The two sides
of Hitler are not presented impartially; rather, we witness them through
the eyes of Traudl Junge, Albert Speer (Heino Ferch), and Ernst-Günther
Schenck (Christian Berkel). The latter is depicted in the film as a doctor
who cares about the suffering of the civilian population and opposes the
suicide of several individuals in the final days of the Third Reich. In real-
ity, however, he was involved in carrying out scientific experiments on
inmates at Dachau, and failed to display any sign of regret after the
war.9 A similar alteration of historical fact is evident in the depiction
of Albert Speer,10 who is well known in German collective memory for
having changed his mind after the war. In reality, his disillusionment
with Nazi ideology was brought about by Germany’s military defeat;11
in the film, however, this turn is located temporally in the final days
of the war, and appears to stem from his more humane side. Traudl
Junge’s break with Hitler – reflected symbolically in the image of the
sun shining on her as she cycles out of the ruined city into the woods –
is idealized and highly sentimental, since it implies that this act marks
both the beginning of her ability to exercise free will and the birth of
a new Germany. At the end of the film, we are presented with docu-
mentary footage of the real Traudl Junge explaining her realization –
through her discovery that she was the same age as Sophie Scholl – that
her youth was no excuse for her involvement with Hitler. This reflec-
tion, however, appears to be irrelevant in the context of the rest of the
film, which depicts a seemingly innocent woman seduced by the charm
of the Führer. The documentary scene appears to add authenticity to the
film, yet in reality it merely points to the unreliability of its historical
account.12
In many respects, then, the film fails to fulfil the task it set itself of
countering the conventional representation of Hitler, since it paradoxi-
cally repeats the stereotyped view of ordinary Germans being seduced
by their Führer. With few exceptions, this – together with the film’s
questionable historical authenticity – has been overlooked by those par-
ticipating in the widespread debate in Germany over the permissibility
of depicting Hitler in a humanized fashion.13 This is partly due to the
tendency on the part of filmmakers and critics to try to minimize the
inevitable distance which arises between the past and our understanding
of it, which is constructed under the conditions of the present. When
we distinguish between historical reality and the collective reception of
Hitler as the ‘epitome of evil’, it becomes apparent that many attempts
to achieve authenticity – through the use of eyewitness accounts, for
example – serve commercial rather than historical purposes. The use
of biographical accounts merely heightens the emotional dynamic of
the narrative; it does not open up a realm of personal experience that
questions, and thereby deepens our understanding of history.14 For this
reason, the filmmakers’ project of representing the past must be seen
as inseparably linked to the changing historical narratives which are
woven in collective discourses.
Dani Levy’s film Mein Führer engages in a kind of dialogue with Down-
fall. Levy strongly believed that the time had come to abolish historical
realism in this genre of feature film, which, he suggested, only ever
led to flawed depictions of Hitler. However, his ambitious enterprise
is not without its own problems. In Mein Führer, Hitler is played by
Helge Schneider, a comedian renowned for his absurd, often surreal
form of humor, and for this reason, critics had high expectations for
the film. However, Levy’s characterization of Hitler is imbalanced, since
it shows only his ridiculous side: he is portrayed as an impotent bed-
wetter whose lust for life is fuelled only by his anti-Semitism. There are
a few scenes that exploit Schneider’s peculiar talents: the image of Hitler
Michael Elm 157
Figure 6.2 Turning on his own people: A stone-faced Hitler (Ganz) repeats
to Speer the so-called Nero Decree, demanding the complete destruction of
Germany’s infrastructure.
playing a Hammond organ, for example, can be seen as an allusion to

the comedian himself, who usually performs his songs on this instru-
ment. In other scenes, Hitler plays the role of a fool, a characterization
which would be convincing, were it not for the film’s repeated attempts
to convince the audience of its own realism. Levy often relies on Alice
Miller’s psychological approach to explain Hitler’s behavior as result-
ing from his suffering at the hands of his domineering father, and
the film therefore seeks to create its own authentic portrayal of Hitler.
Like Hirschbiegel’s attempt to show the private side of Hitler’s charac-
ter, Levy’s attempt to overcome the reverential realism of the genre is
ultimately thwarted.
The misunderstanding of the filmmakers’ intentions in depicting
Hitler and his role in German history has contributed significantly to
the ongoing controversy surrounding recent films. Some critics argue
in favor of a historically accurate depiction of the past, while others
place more emphasis on the history of reception, focusing in particular
on the ways in which Hitler and the German population are depicted
in the media. Although both sides know that their positions are in
fact intertwined, their opposing views are nevertheless strengthened
by generational variation and by their differing theoretical approaches:
whereas media experts tend to favour constructivist theories, historians
are more likely to use a source-based approach. In the following section,
I shall distinguish between a concept of the past as a heuristic pattern of

irretrievable events and an understanding of history in which the past
is mediated by the present.
Laughing about Hitler?
It is clear that humor offers a possible means of dealing with the past,
particularly if it engages with the trend in post-war cinema to depict
Hitler as the ultimate villain. In German television, this image has been
propagated above all by the documentaries produced by Guido Knopp
for ZDF.15 In the documentary Holokaust, for example, Hitler is pre-
sented as a kind of mad professor who longs to control the world.16
Knopp uses National Socialist newsreels without revealing them to be
propaganda. His form of documentary has been widely ridiculed, for
instance in Rainald Grebe’s song, ‘Guido Knopp’, which jokingly sug-
gests that the documentary-maker has lived in the same flat as Hitler
because of his apparent familiarity with him, and Walter Moers’s ani-
mated cartoon ADOLF – I’m Sitting in my Bunker, which humorously
depicts Hitler’s final days in the bunker to the accompaniment of a
reggae song.17
Yet how are we to address the ethical questions raised by such
humorous engagements with the Nazi past? One might wonder why
a younger generation should not be permitted to laugh at Hitler’s
grotesque gestures and the pathetic staging of his speeches. Laughing
at a historically distant regime which has no power in the present
world cannot be banned. Moreover, as the example of National Social-
ist architecture demonstrates, the aesthetic of this era, which included
the staging of the cult of the Führer, was intended to be appreciated
in its own time. Since the demise of the Third Reich, many of the
elements which were previously attractive or threatening have faded,
either becoming invisible or appearing absurd to current onlookers. It is
perhaps for this reason that such images are frequently used to cre-
ate historical narratives which appear at best superficial and at worst
bizarrely implausible. Nevertheless, as Adorno warns in his essay, ‘Zur
Dialektik von Heiterkeit’, there is a problem inherent in any ridicule of
Nazism, since the adoption of a critical position ought to prevent the
assumption that the battalions of history are on one’s side.18 National
Socialism viewed itself as a product of modernity, and not as a mere
accident in the course of history. Mocking the stupidity of Nazism,
though apparently harmless, nevertheless brings about the danger of
Michael Elm 159
overlooking the existence of certain patterns of continuity between past

and present.
This danger of misinterpreting the past can be illustrated further by
considering an example of personal experience. Recently I was com-
pelled, for journalistic purposes, to listen to a radical speech by Christian
Worch, a well-known political figure of the far right in Germany,
and this provided me with considerable insight into the historical
movement of National Socialism. The speaker conveyed his hatred of
those who were not part of the group, thus creating an antagonis-
tic divide between the insiders and the outsiders which was intended
to arouse either anger or fear in the listener. It became highly appar-
ent that Nazism does not tolerate the existence of any differences
beyond its control, and as such it marks the opposite of Adorno’s
concept of utopia as a condition in which people can live out their
differences without fearing retribution. The threat of violence experi-
enced at the Neo-Nazi speech must therefore act both as an injunction
to the public not to forget the brutality of the Nazi past and as a
plea to directors to reflect upon the potential for such aggression in
their films.
Figure 6.3 Hitler buffo: in his comedy Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About
Adolf Hitler (2007), Dani Levy undermines the epic as well as the historicist
aspirations of Downfall by depicting the end of the Third Reich as a series of
farcical episodes, including a shaving accident that disfigures Hitler’s trademark
moustache and . . . .
Figure 6.4 . . . a failed attempt at lovemaking with a visibly frustrated Eva Braun
(Katja Riemann).
Future perspectives
Since regaining full political sovereignty in September 1990, Germany’s

relationship with the past has altered considerably. The Bundeswehr
now participates in international military operations, thus moving away
from the Federal Republic’s former pacifist foreign policy, which it culti-
vated according to the motto ‘Never again’. The necessity of re-writing
the traditional narrative of German history has been voiced, not only
in conjunction with domestic politics, but also in debates about the
possibility of German military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This cultural shift in the perception of the past is clearly linked to the
aesthetic re-writing of history which we see occurring in German cin-
ema. Films such as Downfall, Roland Suso Richter’s docudrama Dresden
(2006), and Kai Wessel’s film Die Flucht (March of Millions, 2007) have
been preoccupied with the question of German victimhood, while more
recently, directors have begun to focus on honoring German military
figures and achievements.19 Nikolai Müllerschön’s film Der rote Baron
(The Red Baron, 2008), for example, deals with the legacy of Manfred
von Richthofen, a legendary fighter pilot from World War I. As one
of the first film narratives since German reunification to depict a sol-
dier at war, it is notable for its depiction of the protagonist, Manfred
von Richthofen (Matthias Schweighöfer), as a heroic role model, who
treats war as though it were a kind of sport. The plot resembles that
Michael Elm 161
of a Bildungsroman, as Richthofen fulfills his childhood dream of flying,

albeit in the unforeseen horror of war.
As director of the film, Müllerschön was faced with the difficulty of
creating engaging depictions of air battles and portraying a hero who
was living out his dream without glorifying war itself. He overcomes
this by inventing a love story between Richthofen and the nurse Käte
Otersdorf (Lena Headey), which enables him to highlight the brutal-
ity of the fighting. Thus, at one stage, the nurse guides Richthofen
through one of several provisional hospital wards, where he encoun-
ters a large number of wounded soldiers, the sight of which marks
the beginning of his disillusionment with the politics of the German
Empire. In another scene, his change of attitude is emphasized when he
turns down a promotion which he has been offered by Kaiser Wilhelm
II. Aware of his own iconic status in the German Empire, Richthofen
not only explains to the Kaiser that he believes the war to be lost, but
also suggests that the concept of German cultural superiority is merely a
myth and that he regards the French, English, and Americans as his
equals. Richthofen is chastised for his views and is sent back to his
squadron, who, surprisingly, share his political beliefs. This appears to
be an allusion to the situation at the time of filming, since the radi-
cal views of his fellow soldiers seem more appropriate in the context of
the NATO-led Implementation Force than among the nationalistic and
imperialistic discourses which were common at the start of the twen-
tieth century. Although the film does not directly show Richthofen’s
subsequent death, we are encouraged to view this as a tragic and heroic
sacrifice, since he turned down the chance to work for the German gov-
ernment in order to support his fellow soldiers at the front. Although
in historical reality, it was more likely that Richthofen was shot by a
soldier during his attempt to hunt down another pilot for no apparent
military purpose,20 Müllerschön exploits his humane side as a means of
highlighting the futility of human conflict.
Such reinterpretation of events held in the collective memory of a
population is not necessarily planned deliberately. It arises from a vague
longing for a sense of identity brought about by changes occurring in
the present, and only gradually becomes explicit. The shift in German
memory politics became particularly apparent in the debate over Bryan
Singer’s film, Valkyrie (2008), a debate which began long before the
German release of the film in January 2009. Valkyrie depicts the story
of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, one of the conspirators in the
attempt to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944. The film therefore engages
with one of the few examples of resistance among high-ranking German
officials in the National Socialist era. Director and scriptwriter Stephen

McQuarrie cast Tom Cruise in the role of Stauffenberg, a controver-
sial decision which led to a heated debate over the appropriateness of
appointing a prominent member of the Church of Scientology – an orga-
nization which is under the surveillance of the Bundesnachrichtendienst
(Federal Intelligence Service) – to play a German resistance fighter. Peter
Steinbach, then director of the German Resistance Memorial Center in
Berlin, argued against shooting the film in authentic locations such as
the Bendlerblock, the site where Stauffenberg and three other prison-
ers were executed. Behind this controversy lay the fear that Hollywood
might appropriate one of the most important events in German collec-
tive memory, an event which has hitherto bestowed legitimacy upon
the Bundeswehr as the legitimate replacement of the Wehrmacht, and
which seems to demonstrate that there was, even in Germany’s darkest
hour, the potential for a different kind of regime.
The important place that the 20 July Plot occupies in German col-
lective memory is illustrated by the number of cinematic depictions
of the event. In 1955, two films appeared on the subject – one by
G. W. Pabst and one by Falk Harnack. Both faced the difficult task of
explaining the assassins’ motives to audiences which still tended to
regard such behavior as an act of high treason (Vaterlandsverrat).21 As a
result, both films contain numerous scenes in which the conspirators
Figure 6.5 In Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie (2008), Hitler (David Bamber) is frequently
shown from behind, with the camera focussing on his hands – a classic technique
to evoke a sense of dread and suspense.
Michael Elm 163
debate their various political, military, and humanitarian motives and

attempt to agree on the best way of carrying out the assassination. These
scenes are interspersed with documentary footage illustrating the over-
whelming destruction of German towns and cities, thereby situating the
assassins’ actions in their historical and ideological context. Jo Baier’s
film Stauffenberg, which was produced in 2004 on the occasion of the
sixtieth anniversary of Stauffenberg’s death, goes one step further in
its treatment of the protagonist’s biography. Baier makes it clear that
Stauffenberg was initially in favor of Hitler’s politics, and that he also
held anti-Semitic and racist views. Moreover, his admiration for Stefan
George and his military position led him to adopt undemocratic beliefs
which Baier alludes to, albeit indirectly. The film therefore begins to
question the conventional view of Stauffenberg as an iconic figure in
German history.
Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie differs considerably from its predecessors in its
depiction of Stauffenberg. The film opens with images of an attack on
Stauffenberg’s military unit in North Africa, which cost him a hand and
an eye, but which ultimately strengthened his determination and self-
reliance. The ensuing narrative focuses on Stauffenberg as the leading
figure in the assassination plan; his co-conspirators Friedrich Olbricht,
Ludwig Beck, and Carl Goerdeler are shown to be much more hesitant in
their attitude towards the scheme. Singer simplifies the story in order to
Figure 6.6 The casting of Tom Cruise in the role of Hitler’s would-be assassin
proved highly controversial in Germany. Here Stauffenberg (Cruise) is seen fixing
his eyes on Hitler (Bamber) during a visit to the Obersalzberg.
depict Stauffenberg as a resolute character whose political views are irrel-

evant in the face of his opposition towards the National Socialist regime.
Hitler, too, along with his elite, is depicted in a highly conventional
manner.
Ironically, the controversies about Singer’s film abated following its
German release. This might be put down to the fact that the specifically
American view of National Socialism and the Holocaust discernible in
Valkyrie is actually quite similar to the new conception of the past cur-
rently emerging in Germany. This view focuses on the potential of the
individual to muster whatever strength he can to fight against abso-
lute evil embodied by Hitler and his elite. Another reason behind the
cooling of the furore might be the international success of the film
and the recognition which it lent to the German resistance fighters.
As Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, director of Das Leben der Anderen
(The Lives of Others, 2006), has suggested, international acknowledgment
of Stauffenberg and his military resistance to Hitler is more impor-
tant to Germany than winning ten football World Cup tournaments.22
With the exception of the negative attention paid to the war crimes
of the Wehrmacht,23 the German military has seldom received such
widespread attention.
The film has nevertheless been criticized by several reviewers for
its hagiographic approach towards Stauffenberg. The British historian
Richard Evans, for example, questioned Stauffenberg’s viability as a
role model for contemporary Germany, given his militaristic and anti-
democratic attitude.24 Shortly afterwards, Karl Heinz Bohrer, a well-
known German literary critic, published a response, accusing Evans
of an unhistorical attitude towards German history and its Roman-
tic tradition. According to Bohrer, Evans fails to acknowledge the fact
that the German conservative tradition cultivated a specific moral atti-
tude which, though no longer appropriate in our present-day society,
nevertheless empowered the conspirators. Thus, Bohrer suggests, the
conspirators ought to be honored for their attempt rather than criti-
cized for holding political ambitions cultivated in an age very different
from our own.25 The main flaw in Bohrer’s argument is that he, just like
the film itself, overlooks the fact that several of the other conspirators
held different views to Stauffenberg Bohrer’s claim that their resistance
was closely bound up with an older conservative tradition is therefore
only partially valid.
Germany’s Nazi past poses a specific problem: how can the country
move forward while also acknowledging its status as a nation of (former)
perpetrators. Accepting the impossibility of breaking with the past
Michael Elm 165
has become an important premise of German memory politics in recent

years. Since the mid-1980s, this has resulted in an adept handling of
the history of violence in the cultural sphere, a position which, at least
in part, strengthens Germany’s re-emergence as a political agent in the
international arena. Films such as Downfall address this delicate problem
by dint of a narrative strategy that personalizes the past while at the
same time creating a sense of liberation from the past. Such liberation,
of course, remains illusory. What Downfall shows, among other things,
is just how powerful this illusion can be.
Notes
1. See Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpreta-
tion, 4th edition (London, 2000).
2. See, for example, Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler
Sozialismus (Bonn, 2005).
3. It is often the case that Hitler is not introduced by name. As in the tele-
vision documentaries produced by Guido Knopp, we are presented with
contemporary footage accompanied by somber music and a commentary
explaining that ‘he’ was responsible for certain actions, or that the German
people followed ‘him’. – See Michael Elm, ‘The Holocaust and Infotainment:
An Analysis of Guido Knopp’s Television Series Holokaust’, in Jan H. Brinks
et al. (eds), Nationalist Myths and Modern Media: Contested Identities in the Age
of Globalization (London and New York, 2006), pp. 153–61.
4. See Alke Vierck, ‘Führerbild und Bildführung: Maurizio Cattelans Him (2001)
und Heinrich Hoffmanns Hitlerbilder’, in Inge Stephan and Alexandra
Tacke (eds), NachBilder des Holocaust (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2007),
pp. 271–83, here p. 274.
5. Hitler, as cited by Max Domarus in Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–
1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, Vol. 1, Triumph (1932–
1938) (Neustadt a. d. Aisch, 1962): ‘Wenn wir uns hier treffen, dann erfüllt
uns alle das Wunderbare dieses Zusammenkommens. Nicht jeder von euch
sieht mich, und nicht jeden von euch sehe ich. Aber ich fühle euch, und
ihr fühlt mich! Es ist der Glaube an unser Volk, der uns kleine Menschen
groß gemacht hat, der uns wankende, mutlose, ängstliche Menschen tapfer
und mutig gemacht hat; der uns Irrende sehen machte und der uns zusam-
menfügte! So kommt ihr aus euren kleinen Dörfern, aus euren Marktflecken,
aus euren Städten, Gruben und Fabriken, vom Pflug hinweg an einem
Tag in diese Stadt. Ihr kommt aus der kleinen Umwelt eures täglichen
Lebenskampfes und eures Kampfes um Deutschland und für unser Volk ein-
mal das Gefühl zu bekommen: Nun sind wir beisammen, sind bei ihm und
er bei uns, und wir sind jetzt Deutschland!’
6. This denial is also discussed in Karl Jaspers’ famous essay Die Schuldfrage
(Heidelberg and Zürich, 1946), pp. 55–56. Jaspers distinguishes between
political, moral, individual, and religious guilt and must be understood as
an attempt to provoke discussion in Germany at a time when few people
wished to engage with this topic.
7. ‘Man wünscht sich, dass es Monster mit blutunterlaufenen Augen und

schrecklich langen Zähnen sind, die alles Leid und Elend über die Welt
bringen. Die schmutzige Wahrheit ist: Es sind Menschen und ich muss sie
als Menschen darstellen.’
8. Cf. Dani Levy, ‘Mein Führer – Interview mit Dani Levy’. Available online
at: http://www.spielfilm.de/special/interviews/631/mein-fuehrer-dani-levy.
html.
9. Christoph Kopke, ‘Heil Kräuter: Der gute Mensch in Hitlers Bunker? Die
Rolle des Arztes Ernst-Günther Schenck im Untergang’, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, 20 September 2004. See also Michael Wildt, ‘Der Untergang:
Ein Film inszeniert sich als Quelle’, Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in
Contemporary History, Online edition, 2.1 (2005). Available online at: http://
www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/16126041-Wildt-1-2005.
10. Hannes Heer, Hitler war’s: Die Befreiung der Deutschen von ihrer Vergangenheit
(Berlin, 2005), p. 74.
11. See Richard Evans, ‘The Deceptions of Albert Speer’, in Richard Evans
(ed), Rereading German History: From Unification to Reunification, 1800–1996
(London, 1997), pp. 199–204.
12. A film that hints at a different female relationship with Hitler is Die
Hitlerkantate (Hitler Cantata, Germany, 2005) by Jutta Brückner, which
explores the loss of faith of a convinced Nazi. Like Der Untergang, the film
depicts the female idealization of a father figure embodied by Hitler.
13. Thorsten Körner, ‘Viel Spaß mit Hitler! Big Bunker: Einst bot das Fernsehen
den NS-Staat wie ein Pädagoge an, nun werden die braunen Machthaber dort
menschlich’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15 September 2004.
14. Thomas Fischer and Rainer Wirtz (eds), Alles authentisch? Popularisierung
der Geschichte im Fernsehen (Konstanz, 2008). – See also Michael Elm,
‘Zum Illusionscharakter authentischer Geschichtsdarstellungen’, Rundfunk
und Geschichte 34.3/4 (2008), pp. 63–4.
15. See Wulf Kansteiner, ‘The Radicalization of German Memory in the Age
of its Commercial Reproduction: Hitler and the Third Reich in the TV
Documentaries of Guido Knopp’, in Norbert Finzsch and Ursula Lehmkuhl
(eds), Atlantic Communications: The Media in American and German His-
tory from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Providence, RI, 2004),
pp. 335–72; Judith Keilbach, ‘Von Hitler zu Holokaust’, in Susanne
Düwell and Matthias Schmidt (eds), Narrative der Shoah (Paderborn, 2002),
pp. 127–42; and Michael Elm, Zeugenschaft im Film: Eine erinnerungskulturelle
Analyse filmischer Erzählungen des Holocaust (Berlin, 2008).
16. According to Knopp, Holokaust was written to emphasize German responsi-
bility for the Holocaust. See Guido Knopp, ‘Vorwort’, in Guido Knopp et al.
(eds), Holokaust (Munich, 2000), pp. 9–22, here p. 20; see also Elm, ‘The
Holocaust and Infotainment’.
17. Grebe’s lyrics are available online at: http://www.lyrix.at/de/text_show/
7d6a2661b76090c5a2adf0899aa562b8-Rainald+Grebe_-_Guido+Knopp.
18. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Zur Dialektik von Heiterkeit’, in Theodor W. Adorno
(ed), Noten zur Literatur (Frankfurt, 1994), pp. 599–604.
19. Dresden is a television drama portraying the American and British bombard-
ment of the city in February 1945 with particular emphasis on the suffering
Michael Elm 167
of the German civilian population. The film narrates a tragic yet unrealis-
tic love story between a British bomber pilot and a German woman. March
of Millions is a television drama depicting the flight of the German civil-
ian population from the Red Army in East Prussia. The film uses a love
story between a German woman and a French officer to create a sense of
melodrama and to avoid kindling revanchist sentiment.
20. See Christian Schröder, ‘Der blutrote Baron’, Tagesspiegel, 6 April 2008.
21. Rudolf Tschirbs, ‘Zur filmischen Rezeptionsgeschichte des 20. Juli’, in Günter
Brakelmann and Manfred Keller (eds), Der 20. Juli 1944 und das Erbe des
deutschen Widerstands (Münster, 2005), pp. 210–38.
22. See Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, ‘Deutschlands Hoffnung heißt Tom
Cruise’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 July 2007.
23. Cf. for example Heinrich Senfft, ‘Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Medienbilder
zweier Ausstellungen’, 1999 – Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21.
Jahrhunderts 17.2 (2002), pp. 172–91.
24. Richard J. Evans, ‘Der heikle Heilige: Warum der Hitler-Attentäter
Stauffenberg trotz allem nicht zum Vorbild taugt’, Süddeutsche Zeitung
(Magazin), 23 January 2009, pp. 8–10.
25. Karl Heinz Bohrer, ‘Die Entlarvung des 20. Juli’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 30 Jan-
uary 2009.
Films cited
Baier, Jo, Stauffenberg (Germany, 2004).
Brückner, Jutta, Die Hitlerkantate (Germany, 2005).
Harnack, Falk, Der 20. Juli (West Germany, 1955).
Levy, Dani, Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (Germany,
2007).
Lewis, Jerry, Which Way To The Front? (USA, 1970).
Müllerschön, Nikolai, Der rote Baron (Germany, 2008).
——, Es geschah am 20. Juli (West Germany, 1955).
Remy, Maurice P., Holokaust (Germany, 2000).
Singer, Bryan, Valkyrie (USA, 2008).
Wessel, Kai, Die Flucht (Germany, 2007).
7
Hitler Wars: Guilt and Complicity
from Hirschbiegel to Harald
Schmidt
Michael Butter
In the introduction to his study, Hitler war’s: Die Befreiung der Deutschen
von ihrer Vergangenheit, Hannes Heer offers an insightful survey of the
ways in which German intellectuals have sought to ‘come to terms’ with
the Nazi past over the last 60 years.1 I would like to sketch this narrative
here before turning to Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004) and Mein Führer –
Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (Mein Führer: The Truly
Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler, 2007), two films that reflect and simul-
taneously shape the image of Hitler that informs the new discourse of
Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) in twenty-first
century Germany. These two films, as I will argue below, are represen-
tative of two contesting conceptualizations of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
past which are currently prevalent in German culture. They offer pow-
erful projections of Hitler that perform two markedly different kinds of
cultural work.2
Referencing the work of Saul K. Padover, who, on behalf of the US gov-
ernment, studied the attachment of ‘ordinary’ Germans to the Hitler
regime in areas occupied by American forces, and who essentially failed
to locate anyone who admitted to having previously supported Nazism,
Heer confirms the now well-established consensus among historians
that the vast majority of the population in the immediate post-war
years was only too happy to blame Hitler and a small circle of Nazi
perpetrators for the crimes of the Third Reich.3 As Heer convincingly
argues, this account of what happened, which I will refer to here as
the ‘Hitler war’s’ or ‘blame Hitler’ narrative, was deployed and perpet-
uated over the following years by a range of historians who depicted
Hitler and the other Nazi leaders either as demonic seducers or as
168
Michael Butter 169
criminals who had imposed their will on the innocent German people.
In Golo Mann’s Deutsche Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (1958),
for example, Hitler and his henchmen are cast as ‘foreign invaders’.4 The
Germans are clearly distinguished from the Nazis in this version of the
story and figure as their first victims; they are thus absolved from any
responsibility for the atrocities and genocide committed between 1933
and 1945.5
During the 1960s, a very different and more self-critical account
emerged which emphasized and insisted on the responsibility of a
large number of Germans. Among others, two trials, the heavily pub-
licized Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and, closer to home, the Frankfurt
Auschwitz trial, led to a growing interest in the origins and causes of the
Holocaust.6 The student movement, rebelling against many dearly held
beliefs of the Adenauer era, challenged the apologetic stories of their
parents and teachers. The younger generation thus voiced a demand
that was both fuelled and satisfied by more sophisticated historiographic
approaches which downplayed the role of individual actors and high-
lighted social, cultural, and ideological factors instead. Diagnosing if
not outright supporting the at least silent complicity among the major-
ity of the German population, the new narrative about the past that
materialized stressed a certain amount of moral responsibility on the
collective level. Over the following decade, this version of history came
to dominate the curriculum in schools and universities.
Unsurprisingly, however, the ‘blame Hitler’ narrative never disap-
peared completely. No longer the dominant and official account, it
nevertheless survived in texts such as Joachim Fest’s Hitler biography
from 1973, which powerfully presents Hitler as an almost supernatu-
ral seducer of the German people, and in other works produced during
the so-called Hitler wave of the 1970s. In fact, the German origin of
the term, ‘Hitler-Welle’, which was coined by historian Eberhard Jäckel,
immediately suggests that alongside the increased historiographic inter-
est in social history and collective guilt, a certain fascination with
Hitler’s personality and a tendency to blame him personally for all that
had happened prevailed among a considerable group of historians and
their audiences.7
However, it was only during the second half of the 1990s and
thus after Germany’s reunification that the ‘blame Hitler’ narrative re-
emerged as a widely accepted alternative to the emphasis on collective
responsibility. According to Heer, public German television played a cru-
cial role in legitimizing this old/new template.8 On 14 January 1997,
ZDF, one of Germany’s two major public television stations, aired the
170 Hitler Wars
first episode of Hitlers Helfer (Hitler’s Helpers, 1996), a documentary mini-

series that traced the careers of Rudolf Heß, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph
Goebbels, and several others who belonged to Hitler’s inner circle.
Devised, directed and produced by ZDF chief historian Guido Knopp,
the mini-series became the most-widely watched historical documen-
tary in the history of German television.9 It was followed in subsequent
years by other mini-series such as Hitlers Krieger (Hitler’s Warriors, 1998)
or Hitlers Frauen (Hitler’s Women, 2001). As the titles already indicate,
these documentaries project the history of the Third Reich as the his-
tory of certain individuals whose lives are only of interest because
they were somehow connected to Hitler. Hitler, as Heer persuasively
argues, is continually cast by Knopp as a demonic, Mephistophelean
character,10 and the German people are in turn portrayed as ‘seduced
or deceived victims’.11 Through the rapid montage of historical mate-
rial, interviews, and reconstructed scenes – scenes that invariably end
in close-ups on the protagonists and that anticipate the genre of the
Dokudrama – social and cultural causes for the rise of Hitler and the Nazis
dissolve; a sophisticated historical argument is not even attempted.
Instead, Hitler’s deviant and demonic personality is presented as the
major factor for understanding the Third Reich and its history of
atrocities, while the population is ultimately absolved from guilt and
responsibility.
Exactly the same, I shall argue here, happens in Downfall. While not
explicitly drawing on the essentialist rhetoric of good and evil, the film
nevertheless presents Hitler as malevolent, as a figure who, when he was
still alive, cast a spell over his naïve victims. Mein Führer, by contrast,
challenges such a simplistic notion of historical cause-and-effect. More-
over, Levy’s film self-consciously negotiates Hitler’s status as an icon of
popular culture and dramatizes how the process of remembering Hitler
is inextricably connected to a history of fictional and non-fictional rep-
resentations. If Downfall shares major characteristics with Knopp or Fest,
Mein Führer, I will suggest, has much in common with such diverse cul-
tural artefacts as Walter Moers’ graphic novel Adolf or the Hitler jokes
of Harald Schmidt, who used to host a David-Letterman-like late-night
show on German television. All three challenge the increasingly popu-
lar image of Hitler as a powerful figure of evil by means of parody, and
might therefore unwittingly work to perpetuate it. After analyzing the
two films, I will conclude by briefly addressing why the memory of the
Nazi past seems to be changing in post-reunification Germany. I will, of
course, be unable to offer a definite answer. Rather, I will raise certain
questions that merit further scholarly exploration.
Michael Butter 171
Downfall (2004)
Oliver Hirschbiegel and Bernd Eichinger’s Downfall, based both on

Joachim Fest’s book of the same name about Hitler’s last ten days in
the bunker in April 1945 and on Bis zur letzten Stunde, the memoirs
of Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge, was released in autumn 2004. Even
before the film premiered in Munich on 9 September, it had already
sparked a heated debate among journalists and intellectuals, a debate
that increased in intensity when the film proved highly popular with
German audiences and became an immediate box-office hit. Discussions
tended to focus on whether or not the film’s attempt to humanize Hitler
was successful, and, if so, whether this was to be regarded as positive
or negative.12 What I will argue here is that Downfall does exactly the
opposite. Instead of humanizing Hitler, the film ‘others’ him through a
variety of narrative and cinematic devices and casts him as the demonic
seducer of the innocent German people. It is true, of course, that the
movie contains several scenes that show Hitler engaging in small-talk
with Eva Braun, Traudl Junge and other members of his female staff,
scenes that tend to present Hitler as a benign and paternalistic employer,
as the father-like guardian of his inferiors. These scenes, however, have
to be seen in context and cannot be regarded outside the film narrative
as a whole.
To begin with, the film repeatedly presents Hitler as a merciless
warlord who does not care about the loss of human lives and the suf-
ferings of the civilian population. Remarkably, this trope is introduced
even before the actual film begins by the poster that was widely used
to advertise the film (Figure 7.1). It shows Hitler standing at the open
entrance of the bunker, looking to the ground, his feet hidden behind a
heap of rubble that represents the destruction he has brought over Berlin
and Germany. We do not see Hitler’s face, because it is hidden by his hat.
While his body language might signal regret over what he is witness-
ing, a quote ascribed to him that dominates the top right-hand corner
of the poster immediately negates this possibility. ‘If the war is lost, it
doesn’t matter if the people vanish. I couldn’t shed a single tear over it,
because they wouldn’t deserve anything else then’, Hitler is shown to
declare in a script almost as large as the actors’ names at the very top of
the poster, thus expressing his derision of the people he led and setting
the scene for the image of him that the film goes to great lengths to
construct.13
Twenty-five minutes into the film, Hitler repeats this condemnation
with a slight variation while talking to Albert Speer. When Speer urges
172
Figure 7.1 The original German poster for Hirschbiegel’s Downfall (2004)
presents Hitler both as witness to and originator of Germany’s destruction.
Michael Butter 173
him not to destroy roads, harbors, factories, railways, and the like, as this
would mean the death sentence for the people, Hitler replies: ‘If the war
is lost, it does not matter if the people are also destroyed.’14 Through this
and similar utterances, the film suggests that Hitler is waging war not
only against the Allies, but also against his own people. In fact, as it is set
entirely in Berlin, a city which Hitler, significantly, refuses to evacuate,
the film focuses solely on the misery of Germans and projects them as
Hitler’s first and also last victims, while never showing how German
Jews or people from other countries suffered under the Third Reich. The
opposition created thus between Hitler and the Germans is continually
reinforced by cross-cutting between Hitler’s cynical comments in the
bunker and the slaughter of Germans in the streets of Berlin.
Hitler’s contempt, the film further suggests, is a result of his having
lost touch with reality. Repeatedly, he is shown studying maps and mov-
ing armies that no longer exist in reality, planning counterattacks that
will never take place, and losing his temper when he is informed that
his orders have proven impossible to put into action. His unjust reac-
tions and his scorn for soldiers who die for him not only alienate him
from the generals surrounding him, but also create an unbridgeable dis-
tance between him and the spectator. His mental derangement is thus
employed not as a means of invoking pity for him, nor of releasing
him from responsibility for his actions, but rather in order to other him
further. The same is true of his physical ailments. In fact, Downfall down-
plays Hitler’s health problems to a considerable degree, granting more
prominence to Eva Braun’s worries about his having put on weight than
to his more serious illnesses. Close-ups of his trembling hands usually
only occur after his anger attacks, leaving it open whether his hands
tremble as a result of his wrath or whether this is due to some entirely
physical suffering. Only once, prior to his official birthday celebrations
in the chancellery, does the film openly hint at the fact that Hitler might
have suffered from Parkinson’s disease. The scene opens with a shot that
shows a calm Hitler approaching the big hall where the other Nazi lead-
ers are waiting to congratulate him. The camera moves along with him,
focussing on his trembling left hand that he hides behind his back prior
to and while saluting those awaiting him. Again, the effect thus gen-
erated is not one of sympathy. Rather, the gesture assumes a certain
symbolic significance. Just as Hitler conceals his weakness behind his
back, he has hidden his disdain for those serving him all along. While
his mental and physical illnesses may therefore partly figure as explana-
tions for his behavior, they are not projected as excuses for his actions
and decisions.
174 Hitler Wars
The way Hitler is filmed and framed throughout most of the film also
works to distance him from those around him. Although he is frequently
shown in interaction with others, most notably with his generals, he
is at the same time separated from them through a variety of devices.
When he is talking to his generals, they are usually standing while he
is sitting. As a consequence, we hardly ever see their faces together in
a single frame. We either see Hitler’s face and parts of their torsos, or
we see the back of Hitler’s head and their faces. The mise-en-scène not
only singles out Hitler, it also highlights the growing alienation between
the two parties and expresses the moral and strategic superiority of the
generals, since they look down on him. They provide sound military
guidance or ask him to take measures to protect the civilian population,
but he ignores them, just as he ignores Speer’s similar advice. It is no
surprise, then, that Speer is also shown looking down on him in these
scenes.
Speer does not look down on Hitler, though, when they inspect the
model of Germania, the new capital that Hitler wanted to build for the
victorious Third Reich. This scene further increases the sense of Hitler
having lost touch with reality, as he is still planning for the future of the
city when the war has obviously long since been lost. Speer, however, is
distanced from Hitler by other visual means in this scene. When Hitler
looks at him across the model, this subjective shot is filmed with a wide-
angle lens that increases the sense of space between the two figures and
thus indicates how far their positions differ at this precise moment. Sec-
onds later, when Hitler has walked over to where Speer is standing, they
are shown in the same frame, but are still kept apart both by their dif-
ferent body languages – Speer’s stiffness contrasts with Hitler’s slightly
hunched position – and by the vertical patterning of the wall behind
them, a pattern that creates the impression that a line has been drawn
between the two (Figure 7.2). Moreover, due to the color of his suit,
Speer almost merges with the background, creating the impression that
Hitler is alone in the frame after all. This technique is employed not only
in this scene but also repeatedly during the various briefings with his
generals. While Hitler and especially Goebbels with his brownish uni-
form stand out against the grey walls, the generals tend to blend into
the walls, distancing the soldiers from the convinced Nazis and indicat-
ing that the former are not listened to and are prevented from making
their own decisions.
Hitler behaves quite differently during scenes that focus on the inter-
action with his female staff, and he is also filmed differently in these
Michael Butter 175
Figure 7.2 Hirschbiegel’s mise-en-scène highlights the increasing ideological dis-

tance between Hitler (Bruno Ganz) and his once-beloved architect Albert Speer
(Heino Ferch) who is here presenting to his Führer a small-scale model of the
‘People’s Dome’ (Volkshalle) to be erected after the projected renewal of Berlin as
Germania.
moments. He behaves especially kindly towards Traudl Junge, through

whose eyes we see Hitler in several shots. And while most of the male
figures, such as Speer, eventually abandon him, the women stay with
him until his death. The reason for this gendered behavior is that the
men and women in the bunker represent different groups of the German
population. The women, and Junge in particular, synecdochically stand
for the misled and seduced Germans who have fallen prey to what Ian
Kershaw has called the ‘Hitler myth’ and who cannot free themselves
from the spell cast over them. Only Hitler’s death releases them from
their fatal allegiance and enables them to think of escape and survival.
Their counterpart in the second plotline set outside the bunker, though,
is not another group of women, but Peter, an indoctrinated member
of the Hitler youth. While the women inside the bunker are obviously
distinguished by their sex, Peter is singled out by his age: he is by
far the youngest member of his group. And whereas the women need
Hitler’s death in order to be able to see reason, Peter’s worldview col-
lapses in the carnage he experiences on the streets of Berlin and through
the murder of his parents at the hands of die-hard Nazis, who do not
fight the Russians but instead hunt down alleged subversives among the
Germans.
176 Hitler Wars
The faction of staunch Nazis in the bunker comprises Hitler, other

leaders such as Goebbels and Bormann, and several of the generals and
lower ranked soldiers. Magda Goebbels is the only woman among these
men. Since she believes that a world without National Socialism is not
worth living in, she comes to the bunker with her six children, whom
she poisons before committing suicide with her husband. Contrasting
her ideologically motivated cruelty towards her offspring with the ten-
derness which Junge displays towards the children, the film casts her
as distinctly unfeminine, thus keeping the gendered separation between
the Nazis and their seduced victims largely intact.
The film clearly distinguishes between the convinced Nazis in the
bunker and those German soldiers who have long since become dis-
affected with the war and with Hitler. In the bunker, the representatives
of this group do all they can to convince Hitler to evacuate the civilian
population; on the streets of Berlin, they take care of the injured or try
to hold the defence lines as long as possible. These soldiers do not rebel
against Hitler because they feel bound by the oath they have sworn to
him, but they no longer actively support his plans and tend carefully to
voice their criticism. They therefore have a lot in common with the disil-
lusioned population of Berlin, represented most prominently by Peter’s
father, a veteran who has lost an arm on the front. No longer bound
by an oath of loyalty, he expresses his discontent much more explicitly
and thus clashes repeatedly with the remaining fervent supporters of
the regime. While we do not see how he and his wife die – instead we
accompany Peter when he finds his hanged body – we are led to infer
that he was hanged by the fanatical Nazi that we saw earlier searching
for men still capable of fighting and killing those unwilling to do so.
When Peter finds the corpses of his parents, he finally recognizes how
he has been misled and decides to flee from Berlin. On the outskirts
of the city he meets his counterpart from inside the bunker, Traudl
Junge, who is with a group of soldiers who have left the bunker follow-
ing Hitler’s suicide. When they are surrounded by Russian soldiers, the
men are taken prisoner. Traudl and Peter, however, walk hand in hand
through the ranks of the Russians, who, as the camerawork and dialogue
imply, are potential murderers and rapists, and escape. On a bike that
Peter with boyish ingenuity detects in a river, they cycle west through
a suddenly peaceful landscape that contrasts markedly with the may-
hem and street fighting of the Berlin they have left behind. The German
people, these final images imply, will not go down with Hitler, as he
anticipates and desires in the quotation on the poster. Instead, Hitler’s
death and the end of the war mark their liberation and spiritual rebirth.
Michael Butter 177
Young and innocent, they may have fallen prey to Hitler – whose actual
hold over the population is simply taken for granted in the film and is
never explored or explained – but now, freed from the shadow he cast
over them, they naturally move towards a better, democratic future, just
as Traudl and Peter move, significantly, westwards towards the area that
will soon become the Federal Republic.
This implicit argument about guilt and innocence is made explicit by
the captions that follow a final shot of Traudl and Peter’s young, beau-
tiful, and hopeful faces enlightened by the first ray of sunlight in the
whole film. These inform the viewer about the unconditional surren-
der a few days later, the 50 million dead of the war and, finally, the
Holocaust. Written in white lettering against a black background, they
contrast with the warm colors of the previous scene and the friendly
smiles of the film’s young survivors, who are thus visually detached
from these crimes. This impression is reinforced further by the pas-
sive voice used in the captions, a grammatical construction that leaves
the question of agency open. ‘Six million Jews had been murdered in
German concentration camps’, reads the last of them, suggesting that
the extermination was done in the name of the German people but not
necessarily by them.15 Traudl and Peter, synecdoches for the German
people, are associated with the victims of the Third Reich, while Hitler
and a small circle of Nazi leaders, singled out throughout the film by
the plot and the camerawork, are implicitly cast as responsible for these
atrocities.
Furthermore, I would suggest that the simplistic ‘blame Hitler’ (and
some Nazis) narrative that Downfall thus projects is not challenged,
but actually strengthened by the images of the actual Traudl Junge
from André Heller’s documentary Im toten Winkel: Hitlers Sekretärin
(Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary, 2002) that frame the historical narrative.
While her account as a whole does in fact humanize Hitler and thus
challenges simplistic explanations of good and evil, the excerpts cho-
sen by Eichinger and Hirschbiegel work in precisely the opposite way.
At the outset of the film, after the opening credits, the aging Junge
says: ‘I have the feeling that I must be angry with this child, with
this childish young thing, or that I can’t forgive it for not recog-
nising the monster in time.’16 She then goes on to declare that she
accepted the job as Hitler’s secretary out of ‘curiosity’ and not because
she was a fervent National Socialist. Significantly, she thus dehuman-
izes and ‘others’ Hitler as a monster, while casting herself as a young
and innocent, maybe even childish, but by no means evil victim.
She blames herself for what she did, but the silent notion conveyed
178 Hitler Wars
by her testimony is that she simply behaved in an all too human

manner.
Even her second testimony at the very end of the movie does not
unsettle the dichotomy – which is by now firmly established – between
innocent Germans and the guilty Hitler, although Junge now explic-
itly addresses her own guilt and, referring to Sophie Scholl, who was
exactly her age, blames herself for not inquiring more deeply into what
was done to the Jews and to other victims of the regime. Before her
image momentarily freezes and is replaced by the final credits, she says:
‘At that moment [passing the plaque commemorating Sophie Scholl at
Munich University, M. B.] I actually felt that being young is no excuse,
that one perhaps might have known things.’17 How she phrases this
self-accusation is quite revealing. Words such as eigentlich (actually) and
vielleicht (perhaps) modify her critique, while the neutral man (one)
indicates how she is still distancing her older from her younger self.
And whereas Junge is obviously someone who could have found out
more, due to her position in the chancellery, Sophie Scholl’s outstand-
ing courage is certainly no workable model for the general public, who
are thus given the chance to claim that they could not have known any
further details because they were neither as courageous as Scholl nor
as close to Hitler as Junge. Moreover, the example of Scholl also calls
to mind what happened to those who fought the regime, echoing the
executions that take place in the film until the very end. Last but not
least, thirty seconds of the aging figure of Junge are simply not enough
to dispel the message created by more than 140 minutes of a film that
professes to show what ‘really happened’. Downfall, therefore, blames
Hitler and absolves ‘ordinary’ Germans of all guilt.
Mein Führer (2007), Adolf, and Harald Schmidt
Dani Levy’s Mein Führer is a response not only to the re-emergence of the
‘blame Hitler’ narrative in general, but also in particular to Downfall, and
it therefore projects a very different image of Adolf Hitler and the Third
Reich. Since Michael Richardson analyzes the film in detail in his contri-
bution to this volume and since I agree with most of his findings – I, too,
believe that the oscillation between comedy and tragedy constitutes the
film’s major strength and I will return to this point when relating it to
Walter Moers and Harald Schmidt – I shall keep my discussion of Mein
Führer brief.
Levy’s film contains a multitude of references and allusions to the
rich history of cinematic and dramatic representations of Adolf Hitler:
Michael Butter 179
Charles Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), Bertolt Brecht’s play Der
aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, 1941),
and Ernst Lubitsch’s film To Be or Not to Be (1942), in which a Polish
actor, judged a miscast by his director due to his benevolent character,
eventually plays the part of Hitler in order to enable the resistance fight-
ers’ escape to Britain. Lubitsch’s film is also evoked through the obsessive
and ridiculous hailing that the Nazis perform when Grünbaum arrives at
the chancellery. When Grünbaum first meets Hitler, Hitler commands:
‘Heilen Sie mich!’, and Grünbaum, thinking that he expects to be hailed,
gives him the Hitler salute. What Hitler means, however, is ‘heal me!’ – a
demand that immediately signifies that the version of Hitler Mein Führer
presents is markedly different from the Hitler portrayed by films such as
Downfall or by Guido Knopp’s documentaries.
If Downfall professes to paint a realistic picture of the last ten days
in the bunker, the excessive intertextuality of Mein Führer – there are
many more allusions and quotations which Richardson discusses in
detail – challenges these claims to authenticity, stressing that represen-
tations, and even cinematic representations, do not offer any privileged
access to ‘the real’, but refer to and depend instead on other represen-
tations. Levy’s film thus lays bare and satirizes what Eichinger’s film
tries to veil. It does not offer ‘the truest truth about Adolf Hitler’, as
its subtitle ironically promises, but adds one more clearly fictional ver-
sion of Hitler to the already rich archive of representations of that
figure. Several times, the film draws attention to the fact that a par-
ticular actor, the comedian Helge Schneider, is playing Hitler, most
notably in the scene in which Hitler plays the piano for Eva Braun
and sings a song for her in his best Helge Schneider fashion. What is
more, the choice of Schneider for the leading role immediately under-
mines any claims to realism, since Schneider, known for his excessive
acting style, his frequent acts of frame-breaking and his absurd slap-
stick routines, stands for the exact opposite of what Bruno Ganz, a
celebrated actor, represents. Ganz, of course, was chosen by Eichinger
and Hirschbiegel not merely because of his superb acting skills, but
also because his participation would ensure that the image of Hitler
projected in Downfall was taken seriously. The casting of Schneider in
Mein Führer, however, was to have the opposite effect: from the outset
it undermines the image of Hitler which Levy’s film constructs. This
subversive strategy culminates during the final credits when members
of the crew and passers-by talk in exactly the same fashion about the
historical Hitler and the fictional Professor Grünbaum, thus erasing the
differences between fact and fiction and highlighting once again that
180 Hitler Wars
what the film projects is not the ‘real’ Adolf Hitler, but simply another
fictional version.18
The film’s ironic destabilization of the realist paradigm clashes with
the psychological interpretation of Hitler that the film also features,
challenging its validity from the start. Quite obviously, Mein Führer can
on one level be read as a dramatization of theories that the psycholo-
gist Alice Miller formulated in For Your Own Good.19 For Miller, Hitler’s
actions as an adult are the direct result of the abuse he suffered at the
hands of his father while still a young boy. Mein Führer draws on this
theory in several scenes during which Grünbaum has Hitler recount
and relive the physical and psychological violence of his childhood.
These scenes create odd moments of intimacy between the two char-
acters, because Grünbaum pities Hitler and therefore does not follow
through with his original plan of killing him (see Figure 7.3). The emo-
tionality that characterizes their relationship in these moments is also
reflected by the film’s mise-en-scène and framing techniques. If Downfall
aims throughout to create distance between Hitler and those interacting
with him, Mein Führer, at certain moments, consciously stages the dis-
appearance of this distance. During the build-up to their first ‘training
session’ in Hitler’s office, for example, Hitler and Grünbaum are initially
Figure 7.3 Patient Hitler: Reclining on a couch, the Führer (Helge Schneider)
reveals his traumatic childhood experiences to his Jewish therapist Grünbaum
(Ulrich Mühe) in Dani Levy’s Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler
(2007).
Michael Butter 181
placed at considerable distance from each other in a shot that echoes

similar ones from Downfall. Yet whereas Eichinger’s film maintains this
distance, Levy’s then goes on to diminish it. As Hitler starts moving
towards Grünbaum, the camera, in a long shot, moves with him until
the two can be framed together in a medium long shot.
However, after abandoning the spatial and emotional distance
between Hitler and others, and, by implication, the viewer, Mein Führer
then invariably recreates it. Moreover, via its characters, the film also
explicitly argues against Miller. Immediately after Hitler has revealed
how he was beaten by his father, a confession that has stopped
Grünbaum from smashing his skull with a paperweight, Hitler rejects
Grünbaum’s sympathy with the words: ‘Wipe your ass with your pity.’20
And most importantly, by depicting, albeit in comical fashion, the
inhuman workings of the Nazi bureaucratic machinery, the film per-
sistently stresses that the roots of the Third Reich and the origins of the
Holocaust must not be reduced to Hitler’s personality and his childhood
experiences, but that larger structural and social forces were at work.
Hitler’s traumata may be important, the film holds, but they are neither
an excuse for his deeds nor an explanation for what happened during
the Third Reich.
It is no coincidence, however, that Mein Führer grants considerable
space to Miller’s approach, as it is the idea of a weak, bed-wetting Hitler,
a figure haunted by the shadows of his own past, that most powerfully
challenges the image of Hitler as the demonic seducer and mastermind
of the Nazi era which dominates Downfall. Casting Hitler as a case for the
psychiatrist, Levy’s film effectively deconstructs the demonic exception-
ality that Eichinger’s film grants the figure. Since the narrative structure
of the film requires a villain, Levy casts Goebbels in this role, present-
ing him as the true master of the Chancellery, as the one who pulls the
strings, and as a traitor who wants to kill Hitler and blame Grünbaum
for the deed so that he can assume power himself. Goebbels, how-
ever, cannot simply make decisions on his own, but needs to convince,
bribe, or deceive the other Nazi leaders: a clear hint that power relations
during the Third Reich were not as simple as films such as Downfall
suggest. In addition, the actor who plays Goebbels, Sylvester Groth,
consistently undermines the character’s villainous persona by subtle
gestures and facial expressions that transform horror into humor. The
film thus challenges the ‘blame Hitler’ narrative perpetuated by Down-
fall, demanding and hinting at, but ultimately not delivering a more
sophisticated historical explanation.
182 Hitler Wars
Mein Führer’s attempt to deflate the image of Hitler is mirrored on

the diegetic level by Grünbaum’s attempt to destroy Hitler’s public per-
sona during the New Year’s speech that he delivers in his stead. Since
Hitler has earlier lost not only his moustache (see Figure 7.4) but also his
voice, he can only move his lips to the words Grünbaum, hidden under
the podium, speaks into the microphone. While he initially sticks to
the manuscript, Grünbaum, aware that he will be killed anyway soon,
finally makes good use of the opportunity given to him: an opportu-
nity to attack not Hitler the man, as it was offered to him earlier in the
Chancellery, but to target the Hitler myth. The audience at the speech,
however, ignores the meaning of the self-accusing words he puts into
Hitler’s mouth and continues cheering their leader, thus hinting at the
great popular support which the regime enjoyed until the very end of
the war. The speech, though, also targets another audience, namely the
twenty-first century viewers in the cinema, whose memory of Hitler and
the ‘blame Hitler’ narrative connected to it is supposed to be challenged
by the film.21
Levy’s film is one of several satirical critiques of this narrative pro-
duced in recent years. Walter Moers’ graphic novel Adolf, published
in three volumes between 1998 and 2006, is another example. Based
on the assumption that Hitler escaped from the bunker and somehow
survived for 50 years in the canalization of Berlin, the first two vol-
umes employ the convenient device of a time-travel helmet to transport
Figure 7.4 Deprived of his moustache and his voice, Hitler (Schneider) is barely
recognizable as the charismatic leader of the Third Reich.
Michael Butter 183
Hitler through 2000 years of history and into the future (see Figures 7.5
and 7.6). Among others things, Hitler almost crucifies Jesus, accidentally
sinks the Titanic, involuntarily kills Archduke Franz Ferdinand and thus
triggers World War I, inadvertently assassinates John F. Kennedy, pre-
vents, again by accident, World War III, and finally, far in the future,
unwittingly provokes World War III after all. By satirically holding
Figure 7.5 In Walter Moers’ grotesque counter-factual cartoon series Adolf, die
Nazi-Sau (Adolf, the Nazi Pig), the first volume of which appeared in 1998, Hitler
returns from the sewers of Berlin decades after World War II to find himself con-
fronted with a series of radically new challenges. Here he experiences a moment
of post-coital doubt next to a transsexual Hermann Göring.
184 Hitler Wars
Figure 7.6 In a typically counterintuitive turn of events, Moers’ Adolf joins the
peace movement in order to ‘chase hippie skirt’.
Hitler, and Hitler alone, responsible for almost every disaster and mur-
der that ever occurred and not only for those committed between 1933
and 1945, Adolf parodies the ‘blame Hitler’ narrative and suggests that
during the Third Reich, there were other forces at work besides Hitler’s
evil. Like Levy, Moers may thus be humanizing Hitler, but, as Thomas
Jung has argued, ‘One never suspects from Moers’s treatment that Hitler
and the crimes of his system should be trivialized.’22 Instead, the comic
critiques historical trajectories that imply that there was no system and
that nobody other than Hitler, with the possible exception of a few other
convinced Nazis, was accountable for the genocide and the atrocities
committed during the National Socialist era.
In a similar fashion, German late-night television host Harald Schmidt
frequently incorporated jokes about Hitler and the Nazi era in his rou-
tines. As with Moers, the butt of his jokes is not the historical figure
but the way in which Hitler is portrayed by the likes of Guido Knopp
and Bernd Eichinger. On 18 February 2005, for instance, while Downfall
was still successfully running in German cinemas, Schmidt dressed up
first as Bruno Ganz and then as Hitler, all the time discussing what he
was doing with his sidekick, Manuel Andrack. Introduced by the caption
‘Der Führer warnt’ and a voice from the off that resonated with notions
of the familiar mode of narration used in television documentaries
about the Nazi past, Schmidt/Ganz/Hitler then delivered a firm warning
against neo-Nazism: ‘Believe you me, I know where this leads to.’23 The
irony of the sketch is of course that Hitler is the most unlikely person
to speak out against right-wing violence. But by having Hitler protest
Michael Butter 185
against intolerance and fascism, the sketch achieves much more. Com-
bining an allusion to Downfall’s presentation of Hitler as the evil seducer
of the innocent German people with a pressing social concern, the par-
ody highlights a fundamental problem of much contemporary discourse
about the Nazi past: a society that increasingly puts most, if not all of
the blame on Hitler and continues to be enthralled by this figure (Hitler
is frequently on the cover of the weekly Der Spiegel), faces huge problems
when it comes to controlling the fascination it simultaneously fuels.
Fully aware of this, Schmidt has for years criticized the way history
is projected by Guido Knopp’s documentaries. When Hitler’s Helpers
was first aired, he suggested that the logical sequel would be Hitlers
Höschen (Hitler’s Panties), implying that Knopp could not go much
lower. At other times, Schmidt has even more openly criticized the ten-
dency to blame a small group of Nazis and cast the rest of the population
as innocent. During a 2003 show, he suddenly changed the topic while
talking to Manuel Andrack and declared completely out of context: ‘This
is just as it was in 1933 when we wanted only peace and were suddenly
overrun by the Nazis.’ Alluding to the displays of public support for
Hitler that, for example, Mein Führer dramatizes in its final scene, but
that Downfall denies, he then mockingly continued, raising his hand
for the Hitler salute and, capitalizing on the ambiguity of the gesture,
said: ‘Back then, thousands went out on the streets and declared: No,
not with us!’
Schmidt’s satire relies heavily on frame-breaking. The ‘metafictional’
commentary that he provides as a narrator addressing either the audi-
ence or Manuel Andrack is as important as the comic act as such. He
thereby diminishes the chance that somebody might miss the paro-
dic effect of his comedy and read it realistically. Moers counters this
danger by giving up any pretense at realistic representation, present-
ing an implausible, fantastic plot in a decidedly anti-mimetic fashion
that reduces the representation of Hitler in particular to the basic
necessities. His graphic novels implicitly evoke the rich history of rep-
resentations of the figure, emphasizing that the object of his criticism
is not so much the historical persona but the way Hitler has been
depicted in recent years. This, of course, is what Mein Führer also stresses
through its rich intertextuality. Levy’s film, however, employs a further
technique in order to prevent its representation of Hitler from being
taken realistically. By oscillating between comedy and tragedy, by con-
centrating on Hitler and the fate of the Grünbaum family, the film
comes closest to offering what Hannes Heer calls Gegenreden (objec-
tions) in the study mentioned at the beginning of this essay. Heer’s
186 Hitler Wars
Gegenreden are investigations by historians or sharp-minded analyses by

Hitler’s contemporaries that do not focus on Hitler and other Nazi lead-
ers, but rather on the structural and ideological dimensions of the Third
Reich. This is something that Moers and Schmidt cannot and proba-
bly do not want to provide. As parodies, their texts, to borrow Linda
Hutcheon’s succinct definition, ‘repeat with critical difference’ the dis-
course on Hitler and push it to extremes.24 However, they also single
out Hitler, if only in order to critique the act of singling him out, and
thus, despite all precautionary measures they might take, they always
risk involuntary perpetuating what they set out to criticize. By focussing
not only on Hitler but also on the Grünbaum family and by employ-
ing Professor Grünbaum as the narrator, it seems to me that Mein Führer
effectively avoids this pitfall. Its satire might thus be less harsh than that
of Moers and Schmidt, but it may be all the more effective for it.
Why now?
That is the question that Peter Novick asks on the very first page of
his seminal work The Holocaust in American Life, referring to the strange
phenomenon now commonly referred to as the ‘Americanization of the
Holocaust’, which began during the early 1960s.25 It is also a question
that I have been thinking about in relation to German culture’s renewed
fascination with the figure of Hitler. This is not the place to provide any
definite answers, but I would like to conclude by speculating about some
of the reasons for Germany’s (re)turn to Hitler.
Recent work on collective and cultural memory and the construc-
tion of ‘usable pasts’ is particularly useful in addressing this question.
Accepting Jan Assmann’s notion that after about 80 years, commu-
nicative memory is renegotiated as and replaced by cultural memory,
one might argue that the memory of Hitler and the Third Reich is
currently undergoing exactly such a transformation. In fact, develop-
ing his theory, Assmann actually mentions Richard von Weizäcker’s
famous speech commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Germany’s
unconditional surrender in 1985, and argues that it was this that ini-
tiated the so-called Historikerstreit. According to Assmann, it comes as
no surprise that the process of renegotiation began exactly halfway
through the 80-year period.26 The Historikerstreit was perhaps the first
serious manifestation of a shift in thinking about German guilt that
the conservative government under Helmut Kohl, who came to office
in 1982, carefully promoted. Kohl and Ronald Reagan’s honoring of SS
soldiers at Bitburg cemetery in 1985 is another example of the attempt
Michael Butter 187
to establish a different narrative about the past. Public and popular dis-
course, though, remained at first largely unaffected by this (re)turn to a
simplistic perspective on the Nazi era.
The past fifteen years, however, have been characterized by an ever-
growing interest in the German victims of the war, in those who died
either at the hands of their own countrymen or those of the Allies.
These are, of course, perfectly legitimate concerns and issues that need
to be addressed. To date, however, German culture has not yet found
an appropriate mode of narrating what happened to Germans without
downplaying issues of collective guilt and largely ignoring the atroci-
ties committed in their name and, at least partly, with their support.
Kai Wessel’s popular television mini-series Die Flucht (March of Millions,
2007) is a case in point here. Claiming historical accuracy, like Downfall,
the movie projects an overly simplistic worldview in which characters
are either Germans or Nazis, good or evil, and in which the Holocaust
and the war of extermination against the Soviet Union appear only for
a few seconds in the captions that frame the narrative. Consequently,
the film transforms those who ideologically and economically benefited
from the regime into its victims. The refugees from Eastern Pomerania
are threatened not only by the invading Russian army, but also by the
Nazis. Thus, although March of Millions does not feature Hitler at all, the
historical trajectory which it constructs corresponds to that of Downfall.
What we apparently learn from both movies is that the vast majority of
the population was innocent and that all crimes were committed by a
small circle of Nazis around Adolf Hitler.
It seems to me that the fascination with this new and dangerously
simplistic account of the Third Reich stems partly from an ever-
increasing focus on victimhood that has characterized US culture for
several decades and that is now also prevalent in Germany.27 I would
also suggest that the way the GDR past is mostly dealt with in post-
reunification Germany has contributed to making this paradigm more
acceptable. The former citizens of the GDR, too, are now almost uni-
versally cast as victims and absolved of guilt. Whereas the memory of
the Nazi past projects the guilt onto a small group around Hitler and
others, the fatal realities of the communist regime in East Germany
are, as Hubertus Knabe and others have argued, being largely ignored.
If guilt is acknowledged at all, it tends to be projected onto the Soviets
and thus completely externalized. Given the desire for homogenous
accounts without ruptures and discontinuities, it appears only logical to
construct a backward continuity that presents Germans during the Third
Reich as victims both of their Nazi superiors and of the Russians as well.
188 Hitler Wars
The reasoning I have provided here, however, is merely speculation.

Whether or not I am correct, and if so, the way this process operates
and other contributing factors must be the topic of another study.
It remains to be seen whether, once the Hitler wars that are cur-
rently being waged are over, German culture can develop modes of
narration that do not place all the blame on Hitler and a small circle
of perpetrators and that acknowledge instead some degree of collective
responsibility while simultaneously doing justice to the sufferings of the
civilian population.
Notes
1. Hannes Heer, Hitler war’s: Die Befreiung der Deutschen von ihrer Vergangenheit
(Berlin, 2005).
2. I have adopted the term cultural work from Jane Tompkins’s seminal study
Sensational Designs. Like Tompkins, I believe that cultural artefacts are
‘attempts to redefine the social order. . . . They offer powerful examples of the
way a culture thinks about itself, articulating and proposing solutions of the
problems that shape a particular historical moment’: Jane Tompkins, Sensa-
tional Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860 (New York,
1987), p. xi.
3. See Saul K. Padover, Experiment in Germany: The Story of an American
Intelligence Officer (New York, 1946).
4. ‘[W]ie fremde Eroberer’: Golo Mann, Deutsche Geschichte des neunzehnten
und zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt, 1958), p. 866. Unless otherwise
indicated, the following translations are my own.
5. The gist of this apologetic narrative is encapsulated in the quotation that
serves as a title for a collection of essays on the Wannsee conference: ‘Ich
wars nicht, Adolf Hitler ist es gewesen’ (It wasn’t me, Adolf Hitler did it):
Viola Schubert-Lehnhardt (ed.), ‘Ich war’s nicht, Adolf Hitler ist es gewesen’:
Symposium zum Anlass des 60. Jahrestages der Wannseekonferenz zur ‘Endlösung
der Judenfrage’ (Gerbstedt, 2003).
6. For different reasons, something similar happened synchronously in the
United States. See Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York,
1999), esp. Chapters 7–9 for a concise analysis of this development.
7. See the idiosyncratic, yet comprehensive study by John Lukacs, The Hitler of
History (New York, 1997).
8. Heer, Hitler war’s, p. 161.
9. On average, almost 7 million people watched each episode: see Heer, Hitler
war’s, p. 366.
10. Ibid., p. 187.
11. ‘als verführtes oder getäuschtes Opfer’: Ibid., p. 178.
12. See the media survey conducted by Jürgen Danyel and André Kockisch,
Pressestimmen zum Kinofilm Der Untergang: Eine Auswahl, 23 March 2005.
Available online at: http://www.zeitgeschichte-online.de/Portals/_rainbow/
documents/pdf/presse_untergang.pdf.
Michael Butter 189
13. In German: ‘Wenn der Krieg verloren geht, ist es vollkommen egal, wenn das
Volk mit untergeht. Ich könnte darüber noch keine Träne vergießen, denn
es hätte nichts anderes verdient.’
14. ‘Wenn der Krieg verloren geht, ist es vollkommen wurscht, wenn auch das
Volk verloren geht.’
15. ‘Sechs Millionen Juden waren in deutschen Konzentrationslagern ermordet
worden.’
16. ‘Ich habe das Gefühl, dass ich diesem Kind, diesem kindischen jungen
Ding, böse sein muss oder dass ich ihm nicht verzeihen kann, dass es die
Schrecken . . . dieses Monster nicht rechtzeitig erkannt hat.’
17. ‘Und in dem Moment hab ich eigentlich gespürt, dass das keine
Entschuldigung ist, dass man jung ist, sondern dass man auch hätte viel-
leicht Dinge erfahren können.’
18. Ironically, for me and many others, Schneider’s performance is at times
much more realistic and believable than that of Ganz.
19. Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of
Violence. Trans. from German by Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum (New York,
1983).
20. ‘Ihr Mitleid können Sie sich am Arsch abwischen.’
21. In his contribution to this volume, Michael Richardson quotes extensively
from this speech and analyses it in more detail.
22. Thomas Jung, ‘Pop-icon Adolf Hitler: Hitler-Comics and Collective Mem-
ory in Contemporary Germany’, in Klaus L. Berghahn and Jost Hermand
(eds), Unmasking Hitler: Cultural Representations from the Weimar Republic to
the Present (Frankfurt, 2005), p. 251.
23. ‘Glauben Sie mir, ich weiß, wo das hinführt.’
24. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art
Forms (New York, 1985), p. 20.
25. Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, p. 1.
26. Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische
Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich, 1992), p. 51.
27. On the US culture of victimization and the dangers of grounding identity in
victimhood, see Novick, The Holocaust in American Life.
Films cited
Brauburger, Stefan, et al. Hitlers Frauen (Germany, 2001).
Heller, André and Othmar Schmiderer, Im toten Winkel (Germany, 2002).
2007).
Wessel, Kai Wessel, Kai, Die Flucht: Die Flucht (Germany, 2007).
Part III
Approximations
8
Hitler Nonfictional:
On Didacticism and Exploitation
in Recent Documentary Films
Kerstin Stutterheim
This essay investigates the development of the changing representa-

tions of the Third Reich and the figure of Adolf Hitler in German
documentaries of the post-war period. Beginning with an examination
of the role of German film in the initial years after World War II, which
proved to be a defining era both for the development of documentary
film and for cinematic depictions of Hitler, the chapter suggests that the
genre’s treatment of the Third Reich was largely shaped by its didactic
function. It then goes on to outline certain developments which have
occurred in the genre over the past few decades, before finally discussing
the presentation of Hitler in contemporary documentary film through
an analysis of recent productions.
In the years immediately following the end of World War II and the
collapse of the Third Reich, documentary films – which were used both
to shock and inform audiences – played a crucial role in the re-education
program. In the West, this was implemented through the early Marshall
Films,1 which were produced for the American, British, and French
occupation zones, whereas in the East, it was realized through films com-
missioned by the Soviet occupation zone. A central topic in the former
was the recent Third Reich and the politics of Adolf Hitler, examples
of which can be seen in the films Hitler Lives? (Don Siegel, USA 1945)
and Here Is Germany (Gottfried Reinhard, USA 1945). By contrast, the
early DEFA documentary films tended not to focus on the recent past,
emphasizing instead a forward-looking perspective.2 These films were
particularly concerned with creating role models and with introducing
the concept of a ‘new’ man,3 which was intended to represent both the
people’s desire for change and their sense of historical progress.4 Early
193
194 Hitler Nonfictional
German documentary cinema therefore developed in a different context

from the feature film, since it was largely dedicated to confronting vari-
ous aspects of the recent past and was not solely focused on Hitler as an
individual.
For many years, the quality of documentaries appeared to be much
less consistent than that of feature films. It is important to note in
this context that documentary cinema tends to be viewed as a ‘record
of the unscripted social “fact” ’5 which represents the real world, and
is thus apparently based on the truth. At the same time, however,
documentaries employ techniques of argumentation and persuasion
which seek to convince the audience that events occurred exactly as
we perceive them on screen. As Bill Nichols explains:
The documentary tradition relies heavily on being able to convey

to us the impression of authenticity. It is a powerful impression.
It began with the raw cinematic image and the appearance of
movement. . . . When we believe that what we see bears witness to the
way the world is, it can form the basis of our orientation towards or
action within the world.6
This self-presentation as truthful documentation of reality paradoxically

leads to the adoption of cinematic techniques which are more often
associated with feature films, as David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
suggest:
A documentary typically comes to us identified as such – by its title,

publicity, press coverage, word of mouth, and subject matter. This
labeling leads us to expect that the persons, places, and events shown
to us exist and that the information presented about them will be
trustworthy. Every documentary aims to present factual information
about the world, but the ways in which this can be done are just as
varied as for fiction films.7
As we will see, this phenomenon is particularly apparent in films dealing

with the Third Reich and the figure of Hitler.
Whereas contemporary feature film has in recent years witnessed
a ‘return of Hitler’ to the screen, this is not the case in documen-
tary cinema. Here, the figure of Hitler has been of ongoing interest to
producers and directors, emerging at particular points throughout the
post-war period. There are many reasons behind this, not least the afore-
mentioned educational function of the documentary film, which has
resulted in a sustained exploration of the Third Reich and its politicians.
Kerstin Stutterheim 195
One particularly pertinent example of this can be seen in the film Den
blodiga tiden (Mein Kampf, 1959) by Erwin Leiser, which continues to
exert its influence on documentary film today.8 Leiser creates a montage
of original material – primarily newsreels, but also propaganda films
from the Third Reich and material from the period leading up to 1933 –
in order to trace the chronological development of Adolf Hitler and the
NSDAP. An objective commentary explains the historical facts and con-
text of what is being shown and refrains from any overt expression of
emotion. The overriding tone of the film is therefore one of clarification
and factual report. There are no unexpected images in the montage, the
narrative voice is clear and dispassionate, and the audience is presented
with an overview of historical events conveyed by an unambiguous,
critical authorial stance. While Adolf Hitler is situated at the center of
the action, he is not depicted as the sole instigator of the events which
occur. Erwin Leiser’s film is undoubtedly the most renowned film in
Germany on this subject, not only because it attracted considerable crit-
ical attention, but also because it was frequently shown to young people
in schools and other educational institutions.
Following Leiser’s film, several documentary films of differing lengths
were produced for cinemas, which dealt, among other things, with
the figure of Hitler. Most worthy of note is Das Leben von Adolf Hitler (The
Life of Adolf Hitler, 1961) by Paul Rotha. Rotha adopts the style of the
Stuttgart School, a form of documentary film-making which emerged in
Germany in the 1960s, and which was based at the SDR television chan-
nel. Reacting against the traditional style of the German ‘Kulturfilm’, the
Stuttgart School sought to reflect reality in the most critical way possi-
ble. Thus in the documentaries directed by Heinz Huber, Dieter Ertel,
and Roman Brodman, we see the reality of everyday life in Germany
being exposed and dissected. These directors look beyond superficial
respectability, using bitterly ironic commentary and shrewd editing in
order to convey their strongly held political stance.9 Like Leiser’s film,
The Life of Adolf Hitler is essentially a compilation film. However, Rotha
combines both familiar and lesser-known archive footage of events from
the rise of Hitler and other Nazi leaders with filmic depictions of every-
day situations. He chooses material less for its aesthetic impact than for
its striking ability to depict displays of power and create an overwhelm-
ing sense of threat. The film also includes images that evoke elements of
destruction and tragedy, and to this extent Rotha draws not only upon
German sources, but also on British newsreels. His editing of the mate-
rial is highly pointed, and he accompanies it with an overtly political
perspective and an at times ironically worded commentary.10
Documentaries of this kind – those by Leiser and Rotha, along with

some of those discussed in the following pages – tend to present reality
in an expository mode. As Bill Nichols explains:
This mode assembles fragments of the historical world into a more

rhetorical or argumentative frame than an aesthetic or poetic one.
The expository mode addresses the viewer directly, with titles or
voices that propose a perspective, advance an argument, or recount
history. Expository films adopt either a voice-of-God commentary
(the speaker is heard but never seen) . . . or utilize a voice-of-authority
commentary (the speaker is heard and also seen), such as we find in
television newscasts.11
Since in this mode, the argument presented by the commentary is of

utmost importance, the images and sound are organized in such a way
as to establish and maintain rhetorical continuity rather than conveying
a sense of spatial or temporal unity. Nichols continues:
In a reversal of the traditional emphasis in film, images serve a sup-

porting role. They illustrate, illuminate, evoke, or act in counterpoint
to what is said. The commentary is typically presented as distinct
from the images of the historical world that accompany it. . . . The
commentary is therefore presumed to be of a higher order than
the accompanying images. It comes from some place that remains
unspecified but associated with objectivity or omniscience. . . . The
expository mode emphasizes the impression of objectivity and well-
supported argument. The voice-over-commentary seems literally
‘above’ the fray; it has the capacity to judge actions in the historical
world without being caught up in them.12
The expository mode therefore suits the overt didactic function of these
documentaries, since it seeks to deliver a clear interpretation of past
events which is intended to be fully accepted by an unquestioning
spectator.
In the late 1970s, Joachim Fest and Christian Herrendoerfer directed
a new compilation film, Hitler – Eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career, 1977).
The film premiered at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale) and was
rated by the German Film Assessment Board as worthy ‘of special merit’.
Since Joachim Fest was regarded as the definitive expert on the subject
of Hitler and the Third Reich, the film represented a new milestone.
Its reception was for the most part critical, however, since it presents
Figure 8.1 Hitler’s private life plays a prominent role in Guido Knopp’s docu-
mentary television series Hitler: Eine Bilanz (1995).
Hitler’s plans for a triumphal arch in a disturbingly positive light by

creating a strong sense of fascination, rather than opening them up to a
critical examination.13 Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s film Hitler – Ein Film aus
Deutschland (Our Hitler, 1977) also met with a negative response among
German audiences, this time because it provocatively affirmed the exis-
tence of residual forms of National Socialism in contemporary Germany,
which Dietrich Kuhlbrodt terms ‘the Hitler in me’.14 Internationally,
however, this film was successful and highly acclaimed.
In the wake of both of these films, interest in Hitler as a subject for cin-
ema documentaries declined. One explanation for this can be found in
the large financial cost of depicting him. All propaganda films and news-
reels originally produced in the Third Reich now belong to the German
state, and a collecting society holds the rights to the material and
consequently demands the payment of corresponding royalties. Since
documentary budgets are usually limited, directors must think hard
about whether they can afford to have Hitler appear in a sequence of
edited original material. Despite the decline in Hitler’s presence in cin-
ema documentaries, however, his personality has nevertheless proved to
be an unending fascination for television producers. Indeed, in recent
Figure 8.2 Knopp generously employs original footage of both Nazi propaganda
films and private recordings from Hitler’s entourage.
years, program-makers have devoted so much attention to Hitler that

he has, in the eyes of the average television viewer, become the most
famous German of all time. As Don DeLillo suggests in his 1985 novel
White Noise, Hitler is an omnipresent figure on our television screens,
and it would therefore be very difficult to imagine what this particular
medium would be like without him.15
The German public-service television broadcaster ZDF has arguably
become the most influential center for the production of television
documentaries about Hitler and the history of the Third Reich. For many
years, Hitler was the dominant theme in the documentaries produced by
Guido Knopp, head of the editorial team for the ZDF series Zeitgeschichte
(contemporary history). The television documentaries produced under
his direction include Hitler – Eine Bilanz (Hitler: A Profile, 1995), a series
consisting of the following episodes: Hitler – Der Verführer (Hitler: The
Seducer), Hitler – Der Erpresser (Hitler: The Extortionist), Hitler – Der Diktator
(Hitler: The Dictator), Hitler – Der Kriegsherr (Hitler: The Warlord), Hitler –
Der Verbrecher (Hitler: The Criminal), and Hitler – Der Privatmann (Hitler:
In Private). In addition to this, we find programs such as Hitlers Helfer
(Hitler’s Helpers, 1996), Hitlers Frauen (Hitler’s Women, 2001), and Hitlers
Krieger (Hitler’s Warriors, 1998), where Hitler is not the direct focus of
attention but nevertheless exists as a central figure and point of ref-
erence. Hitler’s Women, for example, depicts not only the women he
loved or admired, but also those who had more distant encounters with
him, such as Zarah Leander and Marlene Dietrich. Likewise, in Hitler:
In Private, the structure of Hitler’s biography is shaped by his various
affairs, whether real or imagined. Knopp’s documentaries, which led
the field in this kind of documentary filmmaking, developed a specific
form, modifying the aforementioned expository mode by interspersing
the voice-of-God commentary with bold eye-witness accounts.
Knopp’s documentaries all follow a similar pattern, which begins with
a series of heavily edited opening credits and a selection of archive mate-
rial, which has been arranged in such a way that it enhances the overall
sense of melodrama. Throughout the program, the commentary is alter-
nated with eyewitness statements and framed by music. The first-person
witnesses are both involved and influenced by the events they describe,
and the narrator punctuates and interprets their statements. As the
film develops, however, it is revealed that the witnesses played only
minor roles in the progression of historical events. In some respects,
the structure resembles that of a classic Hollywood film, since events are
described as progressing teleologically towards a historical caesura, thus
endowing the course of history with a distinctly dramaturgical dimen-
sion. This effect is often heightened by the addition of a subplot, which
complicates the main narrative: the death of Hitler’s niece, for example,
remains shrouded in mystery throughout the film, thus creating a sense
of intrigue.
It is interesting to note in this context that the first-hand testimony
has all been recorded in the studio. By darkening the space around
the witness and using a kicker light to illuminate his/her face, Knopp
draws attention to the head and upper body of the speaker, thereby
creating a sense of his/her impartiality. However, any reference to the
current situation of the speaker is at the same time removed, thus rais-
ing questions about his/her identity and biography which force the
spectator into an active role, encouraging him/her to supplement the
gaps in the individual’s narrative through his/her own knowledge of
the situation. As Michael Elm has suggested, the role of the contem-
porary witness in Knopp’s documentaries is primarily to illustrate the
key points in a narrative dominated by commentary and also to lend
an emotional dimension to the documentary through the depiction of
his/her individual fate.16
It is also significant that the majority of contemporary witnesses are

introduced as ordinary people. Thus it is rare, for example, for a for-
mer member of the SS or SA to appear brutal or even fanatical, and
the female witnesses frequently state, often in highly emotive, trem-
bling voices, that they only recently learned, to their great indignation,
about the atrocities of the regime or about the behavior of a partic-
ular relative or acquaintance. This technique raises questions about
the much-discussed notions of infotainment and the personification of
history, while also underlining a further problem associated with this
kind of documentary: namely, the emotional invalidation of histori-
cal images. It is impossible to equate the jovial, slightly rotund, and
apparently normal, man in the recent full-color footage with the bru-
tal figure in the grainy film material from the 1930s and 1940s. The
elderly ladies, too, seem to be very convincing, since it is easy to pic-
ture them adopting a grandmotherly role. We are thus presented with
a bold contrast between harmonization on the one hand and horror
on the other. The relatively high number of contemporary witnesses in
proportion to the archive material and the doubling of the narrative
commentary throughout the film create the misleading impression of
the existence of a diversity of opinions. In using this format for his his-
torical documentaries, Guido Knopp has greatly influenced the manner
in which we perceive the history of this period. These programs were
extensively marketed and advertised, and it is therefore reasonable to
assume that over the years, they have been watched by a large number of
spectators.
Knopp’s films share certain characteristics – not least the altered form
of the expository mode – with more recent television documentaries
such as Hitler & Mussolini (2008), which was scripted by Hans von Brecus
and Ulrich Kasten and directed by the latter. This film reconstructs the
fascist period of 1933 to 1945 through the lens of what the director
terms a ‘brutal friendship’, a technique which enables the authors to
adopt a different perspective with regard to Hitler. The film not only
outlines the key details of the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini,
but also takes into account the importance of various historical events,
such as the creation of the Rome-Berlin Axis, which helped to shape this
distinctive friendship. By focusing on these two figures, the filmmakers
are able to adopt a sense of distance, which enables them to depict Hitler
in an apparently unbiased light. Helpful in this regard is the use of mate-
rial from Italian newsreels, which has a more removed and journalistic
approach than the familiar German newsreels, and which has less of a
tendency to idolize particular historical figures.
The overriding tone of the film is immediately captured in its opening

shots. We are presented with images of a shop containing devotional
objects relating to Hitler and Mussolini, where an elderly man greets
us using the characteristic fascist salute. Meanwhile, the commentary
reflects on the nature of history and its legacy through a quotation
by the historian Sebastian Haffner. This raises our expectation that the
documentary will be highly critical, based on thorough research and
historical knowledge. The form of the documentary is shaped around
evidentiary montage: the visual material is organized in such a way as to
maintain the spoken argument and support the perspective of the narra-
tor. The tone of the commentary fluctuates between the factual and the
ironic, but it also tends to emphasize the dramatic quality of particular
features, thus transforming the factual narrative into an emphatic one.
Moreover, images are usually depicted as evidence or a demonstration
in favor of what is being said, thus echoing the tradition of the German
‘Kulturfilm’. Through the commentary, we are presented with a com-
bination of historical facts, quotations, interpretation, brief references,
and allusions, while its message is emphasized further by the use of
grandiose music, which consists partly of themes from Wagner’s Parsifal.
In the first section of the film, ‘Venedig 1934’, Hitler is depicted as
an inept and eccentric character. We are told that he has worshipped
Mussolini for many years, and on his first visit to Italy, his contrast
with the Italian leader, which emerges in part through their differ-
ent social classes, is conspicuous. The second chapter, dealing with
Mussolini’s visit to Germany, presents a radically altered characteriza-
tion of Hitler: this time, he appears smartly dressed in military uniform.
Nevertheless, the commentator’s description is still highly critical, and
it is impossible to watch the images on screen, which support the
stance of the commentator, without being influenced by the voice-of-
God commentary. In some sequences, these images consist of simple
scenes, often of an indirectly symbolic nature, which provide an effec-
tive visual accompaniment to the philosophical views expressed in the
commentary. Although the overall form of the film traces the relation-
ship between Hitler and Mussolini, it is at times interrupted by short
references to Hitler’s own biography, which are always critical and ironi-
cally phrased. The tone of the commentary oscillates between the formal
and the conversational, and these shifts are edited to create maximum
contrast and strong emotional impact. Finally, since the soundtrack
to the archive film contains no speech, but simply the jubilant cries
of the crowds, the audience is forced to trust the explanations provided
by the commentary for Hitler and Mussolini’s thoughts and behavior.
Figure 8.3 Repeatedly, the voice-over in Knopp’s documentary suggests insights

into Hitler’s private thoughts and indeed his emotions.
In many ways, the depiction of the relationship between Hitler and

Mussolini that we see in Ulrich Kasten’s film follows the paradigmatic
structure of screenplay writing, as outlined by Syd Field in his influen-
tial study The Screenwriter’s Workbook:17 the exposition presents Hitler
and Mussolini as dissimilar friends; the second section follows Hitler’s
development as a leading character; the third shows the German occu-
pation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, with the outbreak of World War II
forming the central point of the film; the fourth section presents the
war on the Eastern Front, along with the difficulties of the Italian Army
in Greece; the catastrophe is represented by the Allied landing in Italy
and the capture of Mussolini, while the retarding momentum is cre-
ated by the subsequent liberation of Mussolini and re-conquering of
Italy. Finally, the fifth part depicts the breakdown of the German-Italian
alliance: Mussolini is shot, and two days later, Hitler commits suicide.
The use of this structure is significant, since it enables the filmmakers,
through their juxtaposition of commentary and edited material, to sug-
gest that Hitler was partly responsible for bringing about Mussolini’s
demise through his desire for Italy to implement the disastrous policies
of the NSDAP. The archive material is interpreted to this effect, and we
therefore gain the impression that Hitler is at once demonized and yet
also depicted, somewhat paradoxically, as a kind of hero. Above all, we
are presented with a radical personification of history resembling that
which has become increasingly apparent in television productions in
recent years. Both Hitler and Mussolini are presented as lone figures,
acting of their own volition, while the other individuals in the film
assume the role of passive bystanders, receiving instructions and acting
as messengers for their leaders.
Although it was decided not to use archive material which explic-
itly idolizes Hitler, Hitler & Mussolini nevertheless ends up demonizing
a previously heroicized image of him while simultaneously justifying
the veneration of Mussolini through the pronouncements of the com-
mentary. Throughout the film, Hitler is depicted as a solitary politician
and aggressor and as a disloyal friend and thoroughly objectionable
individual. While the commentary is clearly intended to distance the
spectator from the subject matter, its patterns of emphasis continually
place the protagonists in the spotlight. The technique of reducing the
narrative to the form of an uninterrupted commentary, interspersed
with extracts from the two leaders’ speeches and letters, renders the
film suitable for the cinema, yet also potentially undermines its own
project. The use of one single narrative voice in the mode of the
‘voice of God’ endows it with a sense of absolute authority, while the
absence of any clear shift in perspective prevents the spectator from
critically opposing the main argument. This technique is heightened
further by the repetition of derogatory comments made about Hitler
and Mussolini which prevent the visual material from being interpreted
in its own light, and by the juxtaposition of historical material and
recent footage which dramatically emphasizes the gulf between past
and present. Meanwhile, the accompanying music increases the tension
conveyed by the narrative, yet this is simultaneously undermined by
the fact that the commentary is unsettlingly detailed in its charting of
the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini. Overall, the film offers a
novel interpretation of Hitler and his motivation, since he seems to be
driven by both his admiration for and his rivalry with Mussolini. In this
respect, the film effectively illustrates the extent to which Knopp’s
model of documentary has influenced other directors in their use of
contemporary eyewitnesses. This raises the question of whether these
directors feel unable to rely upon the audience’s ability to react critically
towards fascism, or whether the model – like Syd Field’s paradigm for
screenplay writing18 – has now become so widespread that producers
demand this format from directors as a means of guaranteeing the film’s
success.
The film Hitlers Hitparade (Hitler’s Hit Parade, 2003) also depicts Hitler
as a symbolic icon, portraying him as an ongoing source of popu-
lar appeal. This is conveyed primarily through the juxtaposition, near
the opening of the film, of a bust of Hitler – depicted through a long
shot, in keeping with his symbolic status – and images of radios and
record players, highlighting the transmission of his appeal to the gen-
eral public. This introduces an aesthetic which operates throughout the
film: namely, the exposure of the relationship between Hitler as an
individual and his appeal to the masses through images conveyed by
the media and the entertainment industry. The documentary, which
was advertised as ‘a compilation of sound and image’, consists of a
selection of film clips and popular music from the period 1933–45.
This contrast between high and low art forms is thematized explic-
itly in the opening scene of the film which depicts a young man
playing a concert hall organ. Moved by the music, a piece by Bach,
he remarks to the woman sitting next to him: ‘That’s the beginning
and end of it. Everything else is small and wretched in comparison.’
Although the woman initially agrees, she expresses her desire to hear
popular, more light-hearted music, characteristic of the films from
this era.
The first chapter of the film, titled Blühendes Land (Flourishing Coun-
try), seeks to convey the ideal way of life as depicted by Nazi propaganda.
The sequence opens with color footage of carefree young people work-
ing on a farm, accompanied by an instrumental medley of well-known
popular music from the period. These images recall the images of
farming and harvests found frequently in the introductory sequences
of Nazi feature films, thus alluding to this fictional genre within the
documentary framework. A similar technique occurs in the second
chapter, titled Schnell und modern (Fast and Modern): here, images of
zeppelins, family excursions, idyllic landscapes, and state-of-the-art cars
highlight the utopian idyll, while the background music – a catchy
dance number – emphasizes the status of the images as belonging to
the popular imagination. In the chapter Neues Leben (New Life), we are
once again presented with idealized scenes of marriage and life, set to a
romantic love song which at once confirms and ironizes the harmony
which is describes. Elsewhere, this idyll is undermined by images of vio-
lence and destruction, as in the chapter Im Schutz der Nacht (Under Cover
of Night): the ironic title pre-empts images of the Gestapo approach-
ing a house and banging on its door, an act which shatters the security
of the family home and contrasts with the sanctuary described by the
contemporary love-song accompanying the scene.
Throughout the film, the audience is encouraged to question why

Hitler possessed such popular appeal. Thus in the chapter Wir gehören
Dir (We Belong to You), images of young people engaged in activities
associated with the Hitler Youth raise questions about the ways in which
they were encouraged to adopt active roles within National Socialism.
This becomes particularly apparent when the images on-screen begin
to move between depictions of a sleeping boy and a portrait of Hitler,
while the accompanying music describes a lover with a tender gaze and
captivating appeal: the implication is that Hitler inhabited the dreams
of the ordinary people to such an extent that they were easily lured into
his snare. The chapter Feiner Führer (A Fine Führer) also shows Hitler at
the centre of his followers’ attention. At the outset is a color sequence
taken at the official opening of the Haus der Kunst in 1937, an exhi-
bition of National Socialist artwork that went on display in Munich,
which is followed by scenes depicting Hitler in various official situations.
Some of these shots capture moments in which Hitler is behaving oddly,
while others are rendered strange through the addition of certain sound
effects: the image of Hitler kissing someone’s hand, for example, is set to
the sound of a particularly noisy kiss, which renders it grotesquely comic
and unsettling. The chapter ends with a sequence from a feature film in
which a young housewife threatens the gas man by making reference
to her connections to the Nazi party. Initially, this sequence appears to
be out of keeping with the subject of the previous images, yet it never-
theless continues to raise questions about Hitler’s appeal: how, we are
forced to ask, were women such as these able to love a man so perturb-
ing? Did they adore him because he was so powerful? Or was it precisely
the opposite: did they support him because at times he appeared to be
so helpless?
Most of the chapters in the film follow a similar structure. Material
taken from shows, advertisements, fictional films, amateur footage, and
newsreels is combined with peculiar sound effects and snippets from
various film dialogues in such a way that the contents of each sequence
is rendered strange to the spectator. What is particularly interesting is
the intensity with which these images still communicate the specific
aesthetic that permeated many of the films from the period, even when
they have been taken out of context and subjected to heavy re-editing.
The music and fragmentary statements that accompany the images
convey the manner in which they are to be interpreted by current audi-
ences. The lyrics of pop songs serve as an ironic counterbalance to the
montage of film clips, and they are present throughout the film, even
when images of concentration camps are displayed on-screen. Despite
the heavy use of irony in Hitler’s Hit Parade, the film’s consistent and
exclusive use of music from the Nazi era is nevertheless highly problem-
atic. The soundtrack does not convey a critical external standpoint, but
rather stands for the very attitudes and ideals which were propagated
during the Third Reich. As an embodiment of their hopes and dreams, it
presents people with an escape from war and violence, and for this very
reason, it undermines the possibility of offering an intellectual critique
of the montage.
Peter Schubert’s film Ich diente nur der Forschung (I Only Served Research,
2009) demonstrates that it is indeed possible for the medium of tele-
vision to produce an insightful and thought-provoking documentary.
Unlike the previous films discussed, this one presents Hitler only indi-
rectly, through quotations and occasional appearances in the archive
footage. Instead of personifying history, the film instead focuses on peo-
ple and projects representing different scientific fields, a process which
emphasizes the fact that National Socialism and the Third Reich were
not mere manifestations of Hitler’s power, but rather that many differ-
ent people were engaged in furthering its aims. The film exploits the
contrast between archive material and interviews in a manner that goes
beyond merely illustrating the points made in the commentary. This is
particularly evident in two different images from the archive footage.
The first is taken at an automobile trade fair and shows Hitler rounding
a corner and climbing into a car, while the second shows him watching
a military parade. Both clips, though brief, evoke a particular attitude
towards Hitler: he functions both as a symbol of himself and of the Third
Reich, but does not represent a personification of history per se. The
information and perspective which the film presents invite the viewer
to reflect on this, and the audience is left to draw its own conclusions
from the material provided.
Hitler evidently plays a minor role in the documentary films of con-
temporary German cinema; he is rarely featured at all, and where he
does appear, this mainly occurs in the context of specific personal mem-
ories. Given current regulations governing the funding of documentary
production, it is becoming more common for films to arise through col-
laboration with particular television channels. The following two films
can be considered as examples of such a partnership.
Christoph Hübner’s film, Thomas Harlan – Wandersplitter (Thomas
Harlan: Moving Shrapnel, 2006) takes the form of a series of answers
to questions posed by the filmmaker. After a couple of opening shots
that establish the setting of the conversation, the film alludes to the
long shadow of the past that was cast over the life of the writer and
film-maker, Thomas Harlan. The figure then explains why he was ini-
tially opposed to the project’s intention to narrate his life story and
expresses his ongoing sense of doubt which arises from his convic-
tion that his life was governed more by chance coincidences than by
other aspects of his biography. The implication that people are inter-
ested in him purely because he is the son of the director Veit Harlan
frames our perception of his story which is directly associated with the
Third Reich and the figure of Hitler. As we learn from a text scroll that
appears on the screen, Thomas Harlan was invited, along with his father,
to dine with Hitler in 1937. In the years following this, he spent time
in Poland, was evacuated in 1942, and returned to Berlin after the war,
only to emigrate to France in 1948. Between 1959 and 1963, he con-
ducted research into the crimes carried out by the Nazis in Poland and
thereby established the basis for a series of lawsuits. Following that, he
lived in Italy and France, where he wrote screenplays and made films.
Since 2001, he has been an in-patient at a lung clinic in Bavaria, with
a view overlooking the Obersalzberg, the site of Hitler’s former vacation
residence.
The first story that Harlan narrates is an anecdote from his stay in
Moscow in December 1953. The tale reveals a great deal about his
character, his historical and cultural knowledge, his perception of him-
self, and various other details about his life, which serve as a point of
orientation in the following sections of the film. After discussing his
understanding of language and story-telling and their relationship to
reality, Harlan moves on to describe the afternoon he spent with Hitler.
At the outset of this, he mentions the problem of excessive devotion
and its tendency to distort the way one perceives reality, giving as an
example his own positive memory of the afternoon. The visit itself con-
sisted of a midday meal with six people, and the discussion focused
mainly on the development of the Volkswagen. Harlan vividly describes
his sense, which he still possesses today, that Hitler resembled a magi-
cian; even now, when he hears recordings of Hitler’s speeches, he is
inclined to recall his spellbinding quality. Following this personal mem-
ory of Hitler, Harlan goes on to recount his own experience as a child
and young person in the period leading up to 1942, when he turned 13.
Interspersed with this account, however, are thoughts and reflections
gained through hindsight. At one stage, for example, he makes the fol-
lowing claim with regard to Hitler: ‘The achievement of this criminal
was so uniquely outstanding that I can well understand how he could
turn a people into a mob.’ Moreover, he discusses his lack of surprise
at the fact that this man was able to mould the German people into
a mass, and, despite his recognition that his own parents provided him
with both material possessions and affection, he describes himself as the
son of henchmen. Harlan’s memory of Hitler thus serves as a dramatic
reference point in the film, triggering his actions and bringing about
the development of his highly critical stance towards National Social-
ism. By drawing on this technique, Christoph Hübner creates a more
balanced depiction of Hitler which proves to be a far cry from the more
personalized documentaries made by Knopp and his contemporaries.
The second contemporary television film which I shall discuss is titled
The Ritchie Boys (2004) and describes the experiences of a group of male
Jewish refugees who emigrated from Germany to the US in the period
leading up to World War II. Each member of the group sought to join
the US army, since they were keen to fight against the National Social-
ist regime, as one of the group, Fred Howard, explains: ‘I felt outraged
at what happened to Europe, I felt outraged at what happened to Jews.
Europe was raped.’ After several attempts, the men were finally permit-
ted to enlist, and they were sent to the US-Intelligence Training Center
at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, because of their knowledge of the language
and psychology of the enemy. Fred Howard was 21 when he joined the
army, and for him, the event marked a new beginning: ‘We could inves-
tigate our past and we could do something about it and do something
about what we didn’t like. And simultaneously we could do something
for this fantastic country that permitted me to life.’
In this film, the figure of Hitler is presented as a symbol of German fas-
cism, an association which is immediately raised by the familiar open-
ing shots, presenting a brief montage of images showing Wehrmacht
soldiers on parade and a close-up shot of Hitler. Such symbolism is also
apparent in the speech of at least one of the Ritchie Boys, Si Lowen, who
frequently mentions Hitler when he is actually speaking of German fas-
cism in general. At one stage he suggests: ‘I knew I had to fight fascism
and Hitler had to be defeated, yea. But in terms of – what we think in
terms of a tough soldier – I was not tough. I wasn’t much of a soldier.
Basically I’m an artist.’ These references aside, Hitler does not feature
very prominently in the rest of the film, despite the many atrocities
described. The only subsequent reference to him occurs in an amusing
anecdote recounted by the two central characters towards the end of
the film. Shortly after Germany’s surrender, they filed a report in jest
stating that they had captured Hitler’s bathroom attendant, who had
revealed to them that Hitler had a particularly small scrotum. Following
the accidental communication of the report to Washington, an officer
was sent to interrogate the man who claimed to have had such intimate
knowledge of the Führer. Because this man did not really exist, however,
the two fabricators of the story were disciplined. The episode was then
forgotten until recently, when two historians came across the report
while undertaking research in the National Archives. Considering it to
be an important document, they included it in a scholarly publication.
The structure of The Ritchie Boys closely follows the experiences of
its protagonists, who were, at the time of production, all elderly men.
After the introduction to the film, each of them is briefly introduced
through images from both World War II and the present day. How-
ever, these are not intended to illustrate what is said, but rather allow
us to imagine it for ourselves. Archive material accompanied by factual
commentary is alternated with sequences featuring individual protago-
nists, and emphasis is placed on scenes in which former members of the
unit recount lively anecdotes and recall memories of their experiences.
Archive material is used sparingly, and the documentary lacks a com-
mentary; witnesses are allowed to speak for themselves, while additional
information is provided only by the images on screen.
How, one might ask, is it possible to account for the alterations which
have occurred in documentary representations of Hitler in recent years?
On the one hand, it is possible that the surviving historical material
from the Third Reich has become so recognizable to audiences that it
can no longer offer any new interpretation. On the other, the over-
exploitation of the topic in the previous decades means that filmmakers
are now turning to other topics from recent history in order to create
more original programs. While these topics might be associated with
German fascism, they are by no means dominated by the figure of Hitler.
What is clear is that, at a time when documentary material has become
hackneyed and over-familiar, the shift to the preoccupation with Hitler
in feature film might well lead to the recounting of stories which cannot
be told in documentary form. Perhaps, too, the gaps that remain will be
filled by newly created narratives.
Notes
1. Sandra Schulberg, ‘Selling democracy worldwide’, in Rainer Rother (ed.),
Selling Democracy (Berlin, 2005), pp. 12–15, here p. 12.
2. Günter Jordan and Ralf Schenk, Schwarzweiß und Farbe: DEFA-Dokumentarfilme
1946–1992 (Potsdam, 1996).
3. Kerstin Stutterheim, ‘Das Alte und das Neue: Identifikationsangebote in
den frühen nonfiktionalen Filmen der DEFA’, in Tobias Ebbrecht, Hilde
Hoffmann, and Jörg Schweinitz (eds), DDR – Erinnern, Vergessen: das visuelle
Gedächtnis des Dokumentarfilms (Marburg, 2009).
4. Anton Ackermann, Unsere kulturpolitische Sendung (Berlin, 1946), p. 48.

5. John P. Springer and Gary D. Rhodes, Docufictions (London, 2006), p. 3.
6. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington, IN, 2001), p. xiii.
7. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (Boston,
MA and Toronto, ON, 2008), p. 338.
8. See Eric Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Nonfiction Film (New York and
Oxford, 1993), p. 199.
9. Rüdiger Steinmetz and Helfried Spitra (eds), Dokumentarfilm als ‘Zeichen der
Zeit’ (Munich, 1992).
10. See Barnouw, Documentary, p. 199.
11. Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, p. 105.
12. Ibid., p. 107.
13. Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Deutsches Filmwunder: Nazis immer besser (Hamburg,
2006), p. 36.
14. Ibid., p. 38.
15. Don DeLillo, White Noise (New York, 1985), p. 63.
16. Michael Elm, ‘Hitler in echt: Die Authentifizierung des Führerbildes durch
Zeitzeugendarstellungen im Film Der Untergang und der TV-Dokumentation
Holokaust’, in Margrit Frölich et al. (eds), Das Böse im Blick: Die Gegenwart des
Nationalsozialismus im Film (Munich, 2007), pp. 142–159.
17. Syd Field, The Screenwriter’s Workbook (New York, 1984).
18. Ibid.
Films cited
Axer, Oliver and Susanne Benze, Hitlers Hitparade (Germany, 2005).
Bauer, Christian, The Ritchie Boys (Canada and Germany, 2004).
Brauburger, Stefan, et al., Hitlers Frauen (Germany, 2001).
1977).
Hübner, Christoph, Thomas Harlan – Wandersplitter (Germany, 2006).
Leiser, Erwin, Den blodiga tiden (Sweden, 1959).
Reinhard, Gottfried, Here Is Germany (USA, 1945).
Rotha, Paul, Das Leben von Adolf Hitler (West Germany, 1961).
Schubert, Peter, Ich diente nur der Forschung (Germany, 2006).
Siegel, Don, Hitler Lives? (USA, 1945).
9
Encountering Hitler: Seductive
Charisma and Memory Spaces
in Heinrich Breloer’s Speer & Hitler
Axel Bangert
An encounter with a film usually begins with its title, and in the case
of Heinrich Breloer’s Speer und Er (Speer & Hitler: The Devil’s Architect,
2005), this is especially telling. At first sight, the pronoun ‘Er’ does not
demand explication, since the connection between the life of Albert
Speer, which symbolically illustrates Germany’s post-war struggle with
questions of guilt and responsibility, and the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler
is apparently self-evident. The German viewing public could obviously
be expected to recognize such an allusion in advance, and it responded
to the prospect of the film with great interest.1 In May 2005, shortly
after the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II, an average of
3.84 million viewers followed the prime-time transmission of Breloer’s
three-part docudrama on the German state television channel ARD,
a figure almost as high as that attracted by his film Die Manns – Ein
Jahrhundertroman (The Manns: Novel of a Century, 2001).2 Of course, the
implicit reference to Hitler in the German title Speer und Er serves to
underline the significance of his persona for the film. On the one hand,
it presents him as a legendary and almost godlike figure, and is thus
uncomfortably reminiscent of the rhetoric of Nazi propaganda. On the
other, the specularity of the title’s visual design, with its mirroring of the
syllable Er (which also encodes the missing ‘Hitl’er), already hints at the
narcissistic relation between Speer & Hitler projected by the docudrama.
Indeed, Breloer and his co-author Horst Königstein show the two figures
in an extremely close, homoerotically charged relationship, at once sat-
isfying Speer’s desire for recognition as an architect and Hitler’s desire
for an aura of artistry (Figures 9.1 and 9.2). In more general terms, the
interaction between Speer & Hitler provides an allegory for the nature
211
212
Figure 9.1 Mephistophelian gaze: In Heinrich Breloer’s television mini-series

Speer & Hitler: The Devil’s Architect (2005), Hitler (Tobias Moretti) first lays eyes
on Speer at the latter’s atelier in Berlin. Soon enough . . .
Figure 9.2 . . . the two men seem to be united by a homoerotic bond.

Axel Bangert 213
and the effect of Hitler’s seductive charisma, thus serving as a model for
the collective adoration of the Führer during the Third Reich.
In her close reading of Breloer’s docudrama, Judith Keilbach identifies
the intimate relation between Speer & Hitler and its allegorical quality
as salient features of the film’s historical vision.3 Keilbach convincingly
analyzes how the mise-en-scène of reciprocal gazes in Speer & Hitler
construes a homoerotic and essentially narcissistic attraction between
the two figures. Moreover, she notes that although Hitler remains a
fragmentary figure, he nevertheless exercises a crucial function in serv-
ing to illuminate the protagonist Speer. Building on this observation,
I shall argue that large parts of the docudrama, both fictional and non-
fictional, are in fact centered on the figure of the Führer, or, more
precisely, arranged around the myth of his seductive charisma. To sup-
port my claim, I propose an interpretation of the film through the
category of space, demonstrating how Hitler repeatedly functions as
the present or absent midpoint of its topographic and, by implication,
thematic structure. This approach does not overlook the other visual
qualities of Speer & Hitler, or its use of duration and sound, but rather
organizes a discussion of these around the dominating feature of the
docudrama’s account of Speer, the representative architect of the Third
Reich. Thus, the concept of topography serves as a point of departure
for analyzing the manner in which Breloer uses certain techniques of
mise-en-scène to attribute a central position to the figure of Hitler.
In particular, I focus on the notion of the homoerotic, examining its
consequences for spectatorship and distinguishing it from representa-
tions of homosexuality which pervaded films about fascism and Nazism
during the 1970s.
The second aim of my contribution is to situate Speer & Hitler within
the broader context of German Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the process of
coming to terms with the Nazi past, and the evolution of its memory
in film. On the one hand, the docudrama and its reception exemplify
the ongoing struggle for interpretative dominance in the German pub-
lic sphere over the history of the Third Reich. For instance, a number
of journalists and historians criticized Breloer for failing to investigate
the role of Joachim Fest in shaping widespread notions about Speer &
Hitler.4 In fact, Fest ably assisted Speer in creating his public image as
an educated bourgeois and apolitical technocrat who was spellbound by
Hitler’s force of attraction, first as the editor of Speer’s autobiographical
text Erinnerungen and, 30 years later, as his biographer.5 In Speer & Hitler,
when Fest is confronted with the inconsistencies of this image, he
maintains that he felt betrayed by Speer. At this point in the docudrama,
214 Encountering Hitler
Breloer refrains from the aggressive questioning which he conducts in

some of his other interviews. Beginning with this apparent discrepancy,
I will try to determine the position which Breloer assumes in current
discourse about the Nazi past and its consequences for the image of
Hitler projected by his docudrama. On the other hand, Speer & Hitler
illustrates the growing importance of the filmic medium in promoting
popular histories of the Third Reich and portrayals of Hitler in particu-
lar. In this respect, too, Fest was highly influential as the author of the
controversial documentary Hitler – Eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career, 1977),
based on his successful Hitler biography and realized in co-operation
with Christian Herrendoerfer.6 Through a comparison of the ways in
which Fest and Breloer contextualize Nazi propaganda images, I shall
highlight the changes in historical interpretation and mediation which
their films represent. In his highly influential television documentaries
from the 1990s, Guido Knopp reiterated the psychopathological disposi-
tion, demagogic powers, and will to catastrophe which Fest had already
attributed to Hitler. By contrasting the mise-en-scène of Germania in
Knopp’s Hitlers Helfer (Hitler’s Helpers, 1996) with that of Breloer’s Speer &
Hitler, I shall discuss the directors’ different strategies in dealing with
problems of ideology in their filmic accounts of Nazism and the Führer.
Spaces of devotion, sites of destruction
Setting out to scrutinize the life and legacy of the architect who turned
the ideology of Nazism into megalomaniac sites, Speer & Hitler is con-
stantly concerned with spatiality. The docudrama narrates Speer’s career
during the Third Reich by showing his success in designing topogra-
phies entirely dedicated to the Führerkult. Although, or perhaps pre-
cisely because, many of Speer’s buildings were either never realized or
destroyed during the war, they appear to have retained a great force
of attraction as fantasies of power. Such fascination with these sites
is reflected not least by the enormous efforts made by the production
design team under the leadership of Götz Weidner to replicate certain
interior parts of the Neue Reichskanzlei as film sets. Particularly through
its depiction of Hitler’s enormous study, the docudrama not only repro-
duces Speer’s Nazi architecture, but also encourages the viewers to
indulge in its monumentalism. Moreover, the paradigmatic function of
space is suggested by the topographic arrangement of the docudrama’s
three episodes, which, as their titles suggest, are organized around
three highly symbolic cities in the history of the Third Reich and its
aftermath. The first part, Germania – Der Wahn (The Delusion), presents
Axel Bangert 215
Speer’s model of the Third Reich’s capital after its final victory as an alle-
gory for the delusions of grandeur nourished by both Speer & Hitler.
The second part, Nürnberg – Der Prozess (The Trial), contrasts the ideo-
logical spaces projected by Speer, above all the Reichsparteitagsgelände,
with the courtroom of the Military Tribunal as a venue of investigation
and judgment. It thereby creates links to traumatic sites like Dora-
Mittelbau in order to highlight Speer’s responsibility for the destruction
of humans through labor in the production of stones and weapons.
Finally, Spandau – Die Strafe (The Punishment) alternates between depict-
ing Speer’s confinement to his Spandau prison cell and memories of his
ascent during the Third Reich. It also addresses his attempts to adjust
to the different world developing outside his cell, successfully so in the
construction of his public image as a cultured and penitent bourgeois,
while failing in his private life, as is illustrated through his growing
alienation from his wife and children.
In all three parts of the docudrama, Hitler explicitly or implicitly
functions as the main driving force behind Speer’s actions. The stag-
ing of seductive encounters between Speer & Hitler, particularly in the
first part of the docudrama, is the most obvious example of this con-
figuration. Instead of being limited to a narcissistic mirror game, this
homoeroticism is designed to mediate Hitler’s seductive charisma as an
initially creative but ultimately destructive force. Its creative side finds
expression both in the architecture of devotion which Speer designs for
Hitler, those spaces which he literally projects around the charismatic
figure of the Führer at their center, and in Germania as the joint imagi-
nary creation of Speer & Hitler. By contrast, the destructive side of this
force is conveyed through sites of annihilation such as Dora-Mittelbau.
Their exposure in the historical and filmic tribunal of the second part
undermines the notion of Hitler’s seductive charisma and instead raises
questions of guilt and responsibility. It also re-negotiates the extent
to which Speer remained loyal to Hitler by recounting his opposition
to the ‘scorched earth’ policy and their reconciliatory farewell in the
bunker. Finally, the image of Hitler’s seductive charisma returns in the
depiction of Speer’s imprisonment in Spandau, during which their first
encounters are repeated as flashbacks, illustrating both Speer’s attempts
to come to terms with Hitler and his lasting attachment to him. Hence,
from the spaces of devotion that Speer creates for Hitler and the inquiry
into the sites of destruction under his command to the memories
from his prison cell, Hitler features as the central reference point in
Speer & Hitler. The docudrama is thus structured through the creation of
ideological spaces prompted by the seductive charisma of the Führer and
their subsequent disenchantment through their opposition with sites of

destruction.
History, memory, and filmic space
From an analytical point of view, the topographic configuration of

Speer & Hitler is comprehensible as a dense entanglement of historical
places, sites of memory, and filmic spaces. The multiperspectivity which
has often been associated with the genre of the docudrama could in
this sense quite adequately be termed a ‘multispatiality’.7 Apart from
the main historical sites already mentioned, the fictional parts of Speer &
Hitler evoke a number of other settings, such as the Reichsbauinspektion
in Berlin, the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, and the Führerbunker in
Berlin. In addition, there are certain private settings, such as Hitler’s
Munich apartment and the Berghof in Bavaria. By revisiting these histor-
ical locations in the present, Breloer turns them into sites of memory.8
At times, these inspections are undertaken in the presence of historians
for critical scrutiny, but much more frequently, Breloer is accompanied
by Speer’s children, aiming to trigger their memories and thoughts.
Breloer also conducts a considerable number of interviews offering
rather different views on the figure of Speer. The personal recollections
of the Speer children, and also those of Fest and the publisher Wolf
Jobst Siedler, thereby outweigh the factual accounts given by the histo-
rians. By setting most of these interviews inside domestic spaces, Breloer
intensifies their character as private testimonies.
The use of historical footage in Speer & Hitler ranges from the public
spectacle of the Führerkult in Leni Riefenstahl’s notorious propaganda
film Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935) to more intimate
views of Hitler and Speer in the films of Eva Braun, shot in the private
setting of the Berghof. Moreover, in its re-enactment of the Nuremberg
Trial, the docudrama reproduces the iconic footage of the liberated
concentration camps Dachau and Bergen-Belsen, highlighting it as a
historical record rather than an instance of filmic memory. In the case
of the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Breloer refrains from
using any visual material at all and instead displays a number of his-
torical documents, thus creating the impression of factual evidence. But
other film productions about the relation between Speer & Hitler, such
as the episode Speer – Der Architekt (Speer: The Architect) from Knopp’s
Hitler’s Helpers, also function as points of reference for the construction
of memory space in Speer & Hitler. In short, the docudrama combines
fictional recreations, revisitings of historical sites, and existing footage
Axel Bangert 217
into a topography of memory which places a strong emphasis on pri-

vate experiences, personalized views of the past, and its memory in the
present.
The complex network of memory spaces in Speer & Hitler corresponds
to an elaborate temporal structure. Generally, the fictional episodes
that narrate Speer’s life are organized through flashbacks which move
from his imprisonment in Nuremberg and Spandau to his career dur-
ing the Third Reich. This temporal arrangement is complicated by
flash-forwards to the numerous interviews set in the present. On the
one hand, the temporal structure of the film exhibits a form of strat-
ification, a layering of temporal levels which are both recreated and
uncovered through the film itself. On the other, this diachronic mode
has its synchronic counterpart in the organization of time according
to an idea of simultaneity. This mode is discernible, for instance, in
the portrayal of the difficult rapport between Speer and his children.
Here, Breloer intersperses interview situations in which the Speer chil-
dren describe their troubled relationship with their father with fictional
scenes visualizing these accounts. The latter function not only as flash-
backs, but also create the sense that the events depicted continue to
exert an almost traumatic impact upon the Speer children, thus bridging
the temporal gap between past and present. Moreover, by crosscutting
interviews and flashbacks, Breloer merges their different temporal lev-
els into a reflection about the identity problems experienced by the
children of Nazi perpetrators. Speer & Hitler therefore exhibits a con-
stant interplay between Ungleichzeitigkeit, where the fictional plot is
interrupted by documentary elements, and Gleichzeitigkeit, where the
two modes of representation coincide on the level of psychological
description.
In terms of both space and time, Speer & Hitler thus manifests a double
movement of reconstruction and deconstruction. While evoking Speer’s
megalomaniac architecture and its dedication to the Führerkult, the film
also undertakes an archaeology of its rootedness in the Nazi politics
of economic exploitation and racial extermination. Moreover, the por-
trayal of Speer as educated and remorseful is contrasted with a genealogy
of those figures – Fest, Siedler, and in particular Speer’s former assis-
tant, Rudolf Wolters – who, after 1945, aided Speer in constructing his
favorable public image.
Throughout Speer & Hitler, history, memory, and filmic space play a
crucial role in mediating the seductive charisma frequently attributed
to Hitler. As Keilbach points out, this charisma is conveyed primarily
through an eroticization of the rapport between Speer & Hitler,
discernable in the visual production of their bodies, their physical

behavior, and, above all, their exchange of gazes.9 To determine the
function of this narrative strategy within the topographic framework
of the docudrama, I will analyze how the seductive encounters between
Speer & Hitler are staged, paying particular attention to techniques of
mise-en-scène, camerawork, and editing. An analysis of these elements
sheds light on the way in which Breloer addresses the general difficul-
ties of representing Hitler, such as the mimicry of his persona or the
influence of existing portrayals, especially those disseminated by Nazi
propaganda. Last but not least, I shall consider the position of the view-
ers within these scenarios, discussing the mechanisms of identification
and alienation to which they are subjected.
Seductive encounters, subjective style
Even before the economy of gazes between the two male figures is set
in motion, Speer & Hitler introduces the dynamics of seduction in one
of its first fictional episodes.10 Based on an extract from Speer’s mem-
oirs Erinnerungen, it narrates how in December 1930, Speer attends a
Hitler speech in the Berlin beer hall Neue Welt, falls victim to his seduc-
tive charisma and is thus persuaded to become a member of the Nazi
party.11 What is immediately striking about Breloer’s adaptation of this
encounter is that he replaces the run-down pub described by Speer with
the imposing setting of a brightly lit hall.12 Its white, neo-classicist inte-
rior, along with the large swastika flags on both sides of the stage, creates
an almost ceremonial atmosphere. This impression is intensified by the
transfiguring light which bathes the hall from the right side of the frame.
Its effect can be regarded as programmatic for the scene as a whole:
firstly, it contributes to the evocation of Hitler’s seductive charisma
by underscoring his features; secondly, it highlights Speer within the
audience, thus directing the attention of the viewer towards his subjec-
tive perception of Hitler.13 In accordance with Speer’s memoirs, Breloer
depicts Hitler not so much as a hysteric or fanatic, but rather as a culti-
vated bourgeois, who, instead of his SA uniform, wears an elegant dark
suit and whose speech, vigorous but controlled, is capable of turning
his audience into a unanimous mass. Much as in the classic definition
by Max Weber, this mise-en-scène presents Hitler as a charismatic figure
possessing an exceptional quality, on the basis of which he is treated as a
leader.14 The episode suggests that this quality lies less in the content of
Hitler’s speech, in which he declares the necessary triumph of idealism
over materialism through the apotheosis of Volk und Vaterland, than in
Axel Bangert 219
his sheer demagogic force: ‘He’s strong’, as Speer explains his decision
to join the NSDAP in the next scene.
In addition to the dramaturgic use of light, Speer’s subjective percep-
tion is indicated by Gernot Roll’s elaborate cinematography. While the
camera is initially placed behind Speer, integrating the viewer into the
audience, it gradually approximates his individual perspective. Close-
ups of Hitler and Speer capturing their facial expressions alternate with
longer shots which convey Speer’s position within the audience as
well as his impression of Hitler. In a telling moment, Speer even turns
around twice as if to reassure himself that his enthusiasm for Hitler is
shared by the rest of the crowd (Figure 9.3). This mise-en-scène bears
a striking resemblance to the free indirect subjective style which Pier
Paolo Pasolini describes in his renowned essay ‘The Cinema of Poetry’.15
Although Pasolini is originally referring to a particular strand within
European art house cinema of the 1960s, his observations make an
important contribution to the semantics of film in general, and may also
be applied to a television docudrama like Speer & Hitler. Pasolini defines
the free indirect subjective style as a mode of filmic narration which
blurs the distinction between the subjective and the objective dimen-
sion of what is represented. The inner perspective of the character and
the outer description of the fictional world become intertwined, as in
the present scene, where Speer’s first encounter with Hitler’s seductive
Figure 9.3 Subjective fascination: at a Nazi rally, Speer (Sebastian Koch) first
succumbs to Hitler’s (Tobias Moretti) seductive charisma.
charisma is conveyed through a design of both setting and event accord-

ing to his subjective perception. This stylistic peculiarity illustrates the
general function exercised by numerous fictional episodes in Speer &
Hitler: portraying Hitler through the image of him which Speer him-
self fosters. Consequently, the reception of these episodes entails the
potential seduction of the viewers as they watch Speer being beguiled
by Hitler and are encouraged to identify with them. Or, to refer again to
the allegorical dimension of Breloer’s docudrama: its fictional episodes
essentially deal with ‘our’ vision of Hitler as mediated by the vision
of Speer.
Precisely this narrative mode provoked both emphatic acclaim and
vehement criticism of Speer & Hitler. Some commentators explicitly
praised the docudrama for allowing the viewer to partake momentarily
in Speer’s vision of Hitler’s seductive charisma and thus to compre-
hend the fascination of Nazism. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, for
instance, Frank Schirrmacher expressed his hope that the docudrama
might help its viewers to understand patterns of behavior which, in his
view, no history book could adequately explain to them.16 And, in Der
Spiegel, Nikolaus von Festenburg complimented Breloer and Königstein
on their courage in exposing the viewers to seductive illusions and thus
abandoning what he deems the protective attitude of television histori-
ans like Guido Knopp: ‘This is the greatness of the medium of television:
not to remain above things, but to go into their midst.’17 By contrast,
several critics pointed out that, due to the subjective style of its fic-
tional episodes, the docudrama lacked the necessary critical distance
from the compelling figure of the Führer. Established historians of the
Third Reich, such as Ulrich Herbert and Wolfgang Benz, emphasized that
attributing a seductive charisma to the figure of Hitler meant perpetuat-
ing a myth of fascination and betrayal which Speer himself had helped
to create in his memoirs. In an interview with the Netzeitung, Benz
accused Breloer of reiterating this grand delusion of post-war German
society and of reinstalling Speer as its ideal type.18 Thus, the attempt
to portray Hitler through the eyes of Speer immediately polarized the
reception of Breloer’s docudrama and came to be regarded as either
illustrative or deceptive. In Die Zeit, Jens Jessen assumed a more dis-
tanced perspective, arguing that Speer & Hitler indicates a broader shift
in remembrance of the Nazi past and suggesting that ‘a great empathy
with the perpetrators’ has seized the Germans. ‘We want to know how
we would have felt if we had participated’, is how Jessen formulates the
desire behind this recent trend, an assessment to which I will return in
my conclusion.
Axel Bangert 221
Since all of these judgments relate to the consequences of the subjec-

tive style of Speer & Hitler for spectatorship, it appears necessary to clarify
what kind of position the docudrama assigns to its viewers. In the scene
discussed above, for instance, as Hitler urges his audience to make their
political choices, the camera performs an exceptionally long zoom in on
towards Speer’s face, culminating in a close-up. The explicitness of this
camera device exemplifies a characteristic of the subjective style which
Pasolini, quoting the jargon of filmmakers, refers to as ‘allowing the
camera to be felt’.19 Moreover, the close view of Speer’s face created by
the zoom lens reveals a tremor of his eyelid, an elusive but conspicuous
sign of confusion which is repeated in several later scenes re-enacting
the Nuremberg Trial. Almost in the manner of a Verfremdungseffekt, this
facial expression disrupts the temporal continuum of the plot and sig-
nals the retrospective dimension of Hitler’s demand to ‘scrutinize the
times’. By reinforcing the status of the fictional episodes as flashbacks,
this effect of defamiliarization indicates that Speer’s vision comprises
both his early attraction to Hitler and his later scrutiny of their rela-
tionship. In sum, the given episode situates its viewers in a position of
conflict: while initially exposing them to the seductive charisma of the
Führer, it subsequently encourages them to question this appearance.
In a sense, the docudrama thus also prompts a more analytic viewpoint
from which Speer’s subjective vision of Hitler is reflected. Obviously, this
highly ambivalent mise-en-scène entails the risk that its self-reflexive
and defamiliarizing elements are disregarded by a significant number of
viewers.
Berghof: Sentimentality
Those episodes of Speer & Hitler which incorporate historical footage

also focus their portrayal of Hitler on the notion of his charisma and
the effect of encounters with him. The emphasis Breloer thereby places
on individual experiences is illustrated by his usage of the private films
of Eva Braun, showing Hitler among his closest confidants on the
Obersalzberg. In the first flashback of the docudrama, which takes the
viewer from the Allied prison in Nuremberg to the terrace of the Berghof,
this footage is merged with fictional scenes already suggesting a partic-
ularly close rapport between Speer & Hitler. In addition, the flashback
displays footage of Hitler treating the Speer children with affection,
illustrating the remark by Albert Speer Jr. that ‘he was an extremely
likeable person for us children’. These images are combined with inter-
views investigating the mechanisms of repression which prevent Arnold
and Margot Speer from remembering these scenes. By presenting these

memories as displaced and inaccessible, the interviews suggest that the
encounter with the charismatic figure of the Führer had a traumatiz-
ing effect on the Speer children. However, contrary to the established
definition of trauma, they imply that this displacement was not caused
by the vehemence of the encounter itself, but by the children’s later
realization of Hitler’s actual meaning. It is an effect of what psychoanal-
ysis would call Nachträglichkeit (belatedness), constructed retroactively
by subsequent experience. The consequences of the Speer children’s pri-
vate encounter with Hitler are thus related to the public catastrophe of
Nazism and the lasting attempts to come to terms with it.
At the same time, the docudrama employs a considerable amount of
sentimentality in its mise-en-scène of the Berghof. Such an atmosphere
is created, for example, through the idealized portrayal of the fictional
characters, the traditional costumes worn by Eva Braun and the Speer
children, and the majestic scenery of the Alps – a visual design alluding
to the German Heimatfilm of the 1950s (Figure 9.4). This impression is
reinforced by the accompanying orchestral soundtrack, whose harmo-
nious adagio and folk-like melodies unify the heterogeneous material
Figure 9.4 Speer becomes Hitler’s confidant and frequently accompanies him on
walks on the Obersalzberg.
Axel Bangert 223
assembled in this episode. In view of this aesthetic, one might feel

inclined to renew the criticism which Saul Friedländer, in his essay
Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death, directs against rep-
resentations of Hitler indulging in settings of petty bourgeois harmony,
such as the Berghof.20 Friedländer accuses those depictions which sat-
isfy the wish of seeing Hitler as a bourgeois ‘everyman’ of effectively
replicating a fascination with the Führer and Nazism in general. Speer &
Hitler certainly risks satisfying such dubious demands, especially in the
episode in question here. However, there at least appears to be a criti-
cal intention behind its superimposition of the sentimental idyll of the
Berghof upon the traumatic amnesia of the Speer children. Its montage
can therefore be understood as a psychosocial inquiry into the mech-
anisms of repression through which West German society after 1945
failed in, or avoided, coming to terms with Hitler. In this respect,
Breloer’s interviews with the Speer children are representative of a recent
tendency in German literature and film to investigate the memory of
Nazism in the families of perpetrators.21
Nürnberg: Nostalgia
Another kind of historical footage which Breloer reproduces in his por-

trayal of Hitler is Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, one of the most
influential pieces of visual art in shaping the myth of the Führer and
his seductive charisma. In the second flashback from the Allied prison
at Nuremberg, Speer remembers from his cell how, a decade earlier, he
and Hitler had majestically descended upon the city by plane for the
annual rally of the Nazi party. As Speer joins Hitler at his window for
an aerial view of the old town, Breloer merges the fictional scenes with
extracts from Triumph of the Will. Black-and-white takes which place the
viewer in the perspective of Hitler and Speer show Nuremberg emerg-
ing from beneath the clouds. The sequence is continued with glorifying
shots of the Führer being conveyed through the city’s historical centre,
saluting and being greeted by an enthusiastic crowd. Finally, these pro-
pagandist images are contrasted with documentary footage displaying a
landscape of ruins and an American soldier patrolling Nuremberg castle.
The dramaturgy of the sequence evidently aims at establishing a sense
of closeness between Speer & Hitler, and subsequently confronting that
intimacy with the fanaticism of the Führerkult and its disastrous con-
sequences. It thereby invites the obvious criticism that it polarizes the
divide between the Führer and the masses and opposes fascination with
devastation, thus radically simplifying the historical course of events.
In order to assess the implications which this recontextualization

of propagandistic imagery has upon the portrayal of Hitler in Speer &
Hitler, I will contrast the docudrama with Hitler: A Career by Fest and
Herrendoerfer, a documentary consisting entirely of historical footage.
Immediately after its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February
1977, its makers were fiercely criticized, by Wim Wenders among oth-
ers, for presenting propagandistic material as an authentic reflection of
the Third Reich’s historical reality and for perpetuating its demagogic
appeal.22 However, such objections could not prevent Hitler: A Career
from being rated ‘besonders wertvoll’ (particularly valuable) by the
Filmbewertungsstelle (National Board of Film Classification) in Wiesbaden
and screened with huge success in cinemas across the country. Despite
the prologue which Fest and Herrendoerfer added in response to their
critics, reassuring viewers that their documentary attempts to investigate
‘the relation of Adolf Hitler to the German people’, its iconography and
commentary are explicitly centered on the fascination with the Führer.
Hitler is thereby portrayed as an ambiguous figure, oscillating between
will to power and symptoms of pathology, driven on the one hand by
instrumental rationality and ruthless calculation, and plagued on the
other by an inferiority complex and irrational anxieties.
If Hitler: A Career addresses the relation between the dictator and the
population, then it does so mostly through propagandistic footage of
ideological ceremonies and mass events such as the Nuremberg Rallies.
At the beginning of the film, for instance, Fest and Herrendoerfer, like
Breloer, reproduce the opening sequence from Triumph of the Will, show-
ing Hitler’s godlike descent upon Nuremberg and his parade through its
historical centre. At the same time, the omniscient off-screen narrator
stresses the libidinal nature of the German people’s devotion to Hitler.
His description of ‘the need of millions to surrender’ is accompanied
by tracking shots of the hysterical masses lining the streets of city. The
dramaturgy established in this sequence, its combination of propagan-
distic imagery, authoritative commentary, and a dramatizing soundtrack
is maintained during the rest of the film. While the Wagnerian music,
in this case a variation on the Siegfried-theme from Die Meistersinger von
Nürnberg which oscillates between the triumphant and the tragic, helps
to reinforce the affective impact of the historical footage, the off-screen
narrator assumes a historicizing and apodictic tone. The epic register of
the narrative, drawing on that of the historiography of ‘great men’ dom-
inating the nineteenth century, enables Fest to evoke Hitler as the most
disastrous statesman of the twentieth century. To a significant degree,
this portrayal remains rooted in the monumentalising mise-en-scène of
Axel Bangert 225
the Nuremberg Rally in Riefenstahl’s film. It should be noted that the

documentary highlights, albeit briefly, the role of state propaganda in
producing such images. Showing historical footage of motorized camera
units following Hitler on his parade, it comments on their task to ‘stylize
his figure into a monument’. Yet, Hitler: A Career fails to entirely distance
itself from and in fact partially models itself on the filmic apotheosis of
Hitler in Triumph of the Will, thus perpetuating the aesthetics of Nazism.
In the episode from Speer & Hitler outlined above, however, the
extracts from Triumph of the Will form part of a flashback contrast-
ing the narrowness of Speer’s cell with the vastness of the aerial view
of Nuremberg. In reproducing the parade, the montage subsequently
utilizes takes which depict Hitler from the rear, thus implicitly plac-
ing the viewer in the position of a bystander, again alluding to Speer’s
subjective perception. The surrounding crowd thereby remains largely
anonymous, as the faces of the people are rendered unrecognizable
through swift tracking shots and extreme camera distance. While the
monumental architecture of the Parteitagsgelände is highlighted in a
later episode, at this point Breloer limits himself to extracts set in the
center of Nuremberg, thus privileging the idealized space of the his-
torical city. Through a sudden cut to a tracking shot of a destroyed
cityscape, the docudrama emphasizes the eventual violent destruction
of that space. As the sequence lacks the omniscient off-screen narrator
which characterizes Hitler: A Career, the soundtrack dominates its tone.
Shifting from a lyrical adagio in the woodwinds and brass to an elegiac
cello theme, the orchestral music suggests an atmosphere of anticipation
followed by mournful melancholia. These visual and acoustic devices
help to create an impression of nostalgia, reflecting not only the percep-
tion of Speer, but also, if his figure is understood as allegorical, a more
general nostalgia for a lost cultural heritage. The mode of epic historiog-
raphy dominating the portrayal of the Führer in Hitler: A Career is thus
replaced with that of nostalgic memory, presenting the destruction of
Nuremberg as a direct consequence of the Führerkult.
Germania: Homoeroticism
The homoerotic attraction between Speer & Hitler which provides an

allegory for the seductive charisma of the Führer and the enduring bond
this creates finds its culmination in their shared fantasy of the future
world capital Germania. To some extent, its architectonic model repre-
sents a gift which Speer bestows upon the Führer, as is illustrated by a
scene at the Berghof in which Hitler is flattered to realize that Speer
has included one of Hitler’s early sketches of a triumphal arch into

his designs. This scene alludes to the interpretation first proposed by
Alexander Mitscherlich that within the libidinal relation between archi-
tect and dictator, Speer, by giving birth to Hitler’s ideas, played the
female part.23 However, for Breloer, the fantasy of Germania predom-
inantly serves to illustrate the specular narcissism of the relationship
between Hitler and Speer. In it, the congenial dreams of absolute power
cherished by Hitler and Speer are united: on the one hand, that of a
political world power, as its expansion is planned to exceed that of
Rome, and on the other, that of architectonic grandeur, as its beauty
is intended to surpass that of Paris. With regard to the docudrama’s
set design, the model of Germania constitutes another example of
the endeavor to recreate imposing historical settings for the staging of
seductive encounters between Speer & Hitler.
The particular usage of the Germania model within the memory
spaces of Speer & Hitler is illustrated by a comparison with the episode
Speer: The Architect from Knopp’s documentary series Hitler’s Helpers.
In the prologue, Knopp uses historical footage originally produced
under the supervision of Speer, in which the model of Germania is
dramatized through camera movements and musical accompaniment.
Following a dramaturgy similar to that of Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the
Will, the sequence creates the illusion of a descent into the future world
capital. Then the camera tracks alongside what appear to be immense
buildings until it reaches the Führerpalast and highlights a fountain
which begins to sprinkle water. These movements are synchronized with
the main theme from Richard Wagner’s opera Rienzi, underlining the
monumental character of the sequence. In this manner, the prologue
participates in the illusion of reality created by the manipulative mise-
en-scène of the model and satisfies the desire to see Germania as it would
have been. Later in the film, a similar effect is achieved by means of a
computer animation culminating in a panoramic view from the dome of
the Volkshalle, again simultaneous with the Rienzi theme. However, in
replicating the fascination with the enormity of Germania, Knopp also
reproduces the controlled perspective of the historical footage, thereby
forcing the viewer into a position of awestruck contemplation.
Speer & Hitler also indulges in the megalomania of the model of
Germania, but at the same time it stresses the imaginary and artifi-
cial quality of this act. From the outset, Germania is presented as a
shared fantasy between Speer & Hitler, such as when they project the
Große Halle into the Berchtesgaden mountain scenery. When Speer
reveals his model to Hitler, using a spotlight to simulate how ‘the
Axel Bangert 227
sun rises in the new Berlin’, the scene focuses on the consummation
of their narcissist bond and the cultivation of their mutual delusion
through the Germania model. Writing in Die Zeit, the historian Heinrich
Schwendemann argues that the excess of such opulent images through-
out Speer & Hitler is disconcertingly reminiscent of Speer’s own aesthetics
of megalomania.24 If this tendency is indisputable, the docudrama
nonetheless develops a plurality of perspectives on the aesthetics and
the history of Germania. First, from his father’s former office on the
Pariser Platz, Albert Speer Jr. points out the blatant lack of propor-
tionality of the projected Volkshalle. Moreover, while the architectural
historian Werner Durth addresses Speer’s initiative to expropriate Jewish
homes, undefined footage, which apparently depicts these events, cre-
ates the general impression of a historical reality of suffering beneath
the deceptive exterior of the Germania model. Following this, the
docudrama returns to the present and briefly visits the Berlin Federal
Archive where the criminal activities of the Speer administration are
documented. Finally, in the following fictional episode, Breloer stages
the production of the propagandist images which Knopp, in Hitler’s
Helpers, uses without any attempt to contextualize them. However,
Schwendemann rightly states that throughout the docudrama, Speer
predominantly appears as the architect of megalomania, rather than as
the minister for armament production. Similarly, instead of portraying
him as a dictator and military commander, large parts of Speer & Hitler
present Hitler as an art lover and utopian.
On closer inspection, the grandiose imagery identified by
Schwendemann enables Breloer to portray the figure of Hitler through
the model of Germania by establishing a specular relation between
them. The scene showing Speer & Hitler marvelling at their vision of
future Berlin, for instance, relies on the interaction between two differ-
ent scales of proportion: on the one hand, there is the ‘human’ scale,
defined by the bodies of Speer & Hitler, which makes the model of
Germania seem like a giant toy; on the other, there is the monumen-
tal scale of the model itself as magnified through the filmic apparatus.
Instead of drawing on existing propaganda footage like Knopp in Hitler’s
Helpers, Breloer imitates this effect of aggrandizement, at the same
time exposing it through the juxtaposition with extremely close shots
of Hitler. For example, the scene cuts from a frontal shot of Hitler
peering through the Germania model to an impressive view of the
Volkshalle (Figure 9.5). Apart from highlighting the monumentalization
both of Germania and the Führer, this ‘specular’ switching of perspective
also comments on Hitler’s self-image, with long shots of Hitler among
Figure 9.5 Mirror of monumentalism: Hitler (Moretti) becomes immersed in

Speer’s model of Germania.
Speer’s model architecture revealing the disproportionality of both. This

constant play with proximity and distance results in an almost trans-
gressive intimacy with the figure of Hitler, not only in comparison
to the hesitant mimicry of the Führer in post-war films like Georg
W. Pabst’s Der letzte Akt (The Last Ten Days, 1955), but also to the morbid
voyeurism of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s more recent Der Untergang (Down-
fall, 2005). By contrasting the monumentalization of Speer’s buildings
and Hitler’s appearance through the camera lens, Speer & Hitler points to
the interrelation between architecture, film, and ideology in the Third
Reich. However, by staging this interrelation, the docudrama remains
attached, at least to a certain extent, to the aesthetics of Nazism, at times
appearing all too seduced by its own portrayal of Hitler.
Assessing the consequences which the staging of homoerotic encoun-
ters between Speer und Hitler has for the construction of memory of the
Third Reich in Speer & Hitler, Keilbach argues that the docudrama, by
drawing on ‘stereotypical representations of homosexual men’, derives
the attractive force of Nazism from the ‘allegedly perverted traits of
the regime’.25 She concludes that for the viewers, the linking of polit-
ical approval and sexual desire in the allegorical figure of Speer implies
a relief from historical responsibility. The endeavor to equate Nazism
with homosexuality, with the aim of externalizing it as a perversion,
has a long history, and was perhaps first addressed by Klaus Mann
in his essay ‘Homosexualität und Fascismus’ (1934–5).26 With regard
Axel Bangert 229
to the memory of fascism in post-war literature, Andrew Hewitt has

demonstrated how in Alberto Moravia’s classic novel Il Conformista
(1951), for instance, homosexual desire is portrayed as involving irre-
sponsibility and abuse, properties which are in turn linked to the
immorality of the fascist regime.27 The lasting influence of such notions
on broad strands of popular culture is illustrated through the medium
of film, in which the portrayal of both fascist and Nazi perpetrators as
homosexual and their exposure as perverted has repeatedly served to
portray the power relations operating in the two totalitarian regimes.
Italian cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s offers some notable
examples of this representational strategy, such as the decadent homo-
erotic cult of the SA in Luchino Visconti’s La caduta degli dei (The
Damned, 1969) or the excessive (homo-)sexual violence in Pier Paolo
Pasolini’s Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom,
1975).28
However, I would suggest that the mise-en-scène of homoeroticism in
Speer & Hitler is rather distinct from this tradition. On the one hand, the
homoerotic never becomes sexual by evolving from visual into physi-
cal contact, and on the other, it is never linked to abuse or violence.
Instead of marking it out as an anomaly, the fictional scenes utilize
homoeroticism to facilitate the identification of the viewer with both
Speer & Hitler. Serving to mediate the seductive charisma of the Führer,
the homoerotic is not externalized as a perversion, but, on the contrary,
it is acknowledged as a driving force and is potentially internalized by
viewers. In this sense, Jessen seems to be correct in his statement that
Speer & Hitler is indicative of a recent tendency in contemporary German
culture to portray Nazi perpetrators with a certain degree of ‘empathy’.
Breloer’s attempt to let the viewer partake in Speer’s subjective vision of
Hitler is thus reminiscent of a number of other films which, in the course
of the last decade or so, have tried to comprehend the perceptions and
motivations of those who shaped and supported the Third Reich. For
instance, Roland Suso Richter’s Nichts als die Wahrheit (After the Truth,
1999), which combines thriller and courtroom drama, creates the sce-
nario of an encounter between a young lawyer and Joseph Mengele.
Richters’s film plays on the notion of seduction by presenting Mengele
as an intriguing beast, reminiscent of a figure like Hannibal Lecter,
and by tempting the protagonist to believe that Mengele’s crimes were
merely the manifestation of the zeitgeist that surrounded him. While
After the Truth is narrated in the mode of an uncanny return, Dennis
Gansel’s more recent Napola: Elite für den Führer (Before the Fall, 2004)
resembles Speer & Hitler in staging the fascination of Nazism at that
time, as well as in its use of an iconography of homoeroticism to portray
the Third Reich. Based on the genre of the boarding school drama, the
film evokes the seductive appeal of Nazism through a romanticizing aes-
thetic and the story of a homoerotically charged friendship between
two adolescents. In contrast to the Holocaust films which dominated
the 1990s, these films appear to indicate a substantial change in the
construction of German historical identity, moving away from an ideal-
izing identification with the mostly Jewish victims towards a potentially
self-reconciliatory view of the role of Germans during the Third Reich.
Er und Speer
Speer & Hitler presents Hitler as a leader who, due to his charisma, is hal-
lowed beyond his personal identity, as the capitalized ‘Er’ in the German
title indicates. By placing Hitler at the center of Speer’s devotional archi-
tecture and portraying him through the subjective mode of homoerotic
attraction, Breloer effectively ‘re-enchants’ (to modify another Weberian
concept) the figure of the Führer. Given the primacy of Hitler and the
mere reflective function of Speer in this scenario, the German title of
the docudrama could be reversed into Er und Speer. The criticism which
ought to be directed against the overall form that this approach has
taken in Breloer’s docudrama is, firstly, that it ultimately fails to be suffi-
ciently consistent in counteracting the seductive charisma of the Führer
which it evokes. The fictional episodes in the first part, Germania –
Der Wahn, in particular, tend to reaffirm rather than contradict the
notion that Hitler’s charisma represents an irresistible force. In the third
part, Spandau – Die Strafe, episodes from Speer’s imprisonment are alter-
nated with flashbacks illustrating his lasting attachment to Hitler, again
conjuring up the seductive charisma of the latter. Through the use
of excerpts from Speer’s memoirs as off-screen commentary to these
flashbacks, his vision of Hitler is presented almost as a neutral descrip-
tion.29 While the accompanying documentary, Nachspiel – Die Täuschung
(Aftermath – The Delusion), deals much more critically with widespread
perceptions of both Hitler and Speer, it was not included in the trilogy.
Broadcast at night-time, it only reached a third of the trilogy’s viewers.
Secondly, Breloer’s film is problematic in that it presents the
homoerotic bond between Hitler and Speer as the essence of their actual
relationship. However, it is not only doubtful whether this bond actu-
ally existed and, if so, to what extent it motivated political action, it is
also marginal, as the homoerotic ultimately fails to shed critical light
upon the phenomenon of Hitler, and instead replaces one irrational
force of attraction with another. Moreover, due to its allegorical quality,
Breloer’s portrayal of Speer reiterates the apologetic notion that the
Axel Bangert 231
Germans were a seduced people, ‘ein verführtes Volk. While setting

out to expose Speer, Breloer reinstates him as the Germans’ ‘favorite
perpetrator’ – ‘Lieblingstäter der Deutschen’ – with whom they could
identify. Ultimately, his portrayal of Hitler sustains the myth of a
charismatic leader who in the end betrayed his people.
Notes
1. For a summary of the film’s reception and of the historical debates sur-
rounding it, see Anson Rabinbach, ‘Kein Engel aus der Hölle: Heinrich
Breloers Speer und Er. Hitlers Architekt und Rüstungsminister’, in Margrit Frölich,
Christian Schneider, and Karsten Visarius (eds), Das Böse im Blick: die
Gegenwart des Nationalsozialismus im Film (Munich, 2007), pp. 113–26.
2. It is estimated that over seven million German viewers at least saw one
episode. See N.N., ‘ARD zufrieden mit Speer-Quote’, Spiegel Online, 13 May
2005. Available online at: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,
356015,00.html.
3. Judith Keilbach, ‘ “Zwei Verliebte grüßen vom Obersalzberg”. Blicke und
Erinnerungen in Speer und Er (2005)’, in Inge Stephan and Alexandra
Tacke (eds), NachBilder des Holocaust (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2007),
pp. 219–34.
4. See, for instance, Volker Ullrich, ‘Speers Erfindung’, Die Zeit, 4 May 2005.
See also Jutta Brückner and Victor Raden, ‘In der Trauma-Schleife’, Freitag,
10 June 2005.
5. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1969); Joachim Fest, Speer: eine Biographie
(Berlin, 1999). See also Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth
(London, 1995). The mixed reception of Speer & Hitler is illustrated by the
fact that Sereny calls it a masterpiece, above all for its interviews with the
Speer children. At the same time, she contradicts Breloer’s portrayal of Speer
as the initiator of the deportation of Jews from Berlin: ‘Speer schlug zwar
in seinem amoralischen Ehrgeiz die “Entmietungen” in Berlin vor. Aber
mit dem schrecklichen Schicksal der 75 000 entmieteten Juden hatte Speer
wahrscheinlich nichts zu tun: Die grauenhafte und – man kann es glauben
oder nicht – auch vor Speer geheime Entwicklung der Judenpolitik war da
schon in vollem Gang.’ – Gitta Sereny, ‘Wie viel wusste Albert Speer?’, Der
Tagesspiegel, 9 May 2005. Available online at: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/
medien-news/Medien;art290,1994504.
6. Joachim Fest and Christian Herrendoerfer, Hitler – Eine Karriere (West
Germany, 1977); Joachim Fest, Hitler: eine Biographie (Frankfurt/M., 1973).
Moreover, Fest’s Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches; eine his-
torische Skizze (Berlin, 2002) provided the historiographical reference point
for Hirschbiegel’s homonymous bunker film which was produced around the
same time as Breloer’s docudrama.
7. Regarding the question of multiperspectivity in Speer & Hitler, see Judith
Keilbach, ‘Der Nationalsozialismus als Dokudrama: Zur programmierten
Ambivalenz in Heinrich Breloers Speer und Er’, in Frölich, Schneider, and
Visarius (eds), Das Böse im Blick: Die Gegenwart des Nationalsozialismus im
Film (Munich, 2007), pp. 127–41.
8. Pierre Nora (ed.), Les lieux de mémoire, Vols I–VII (Paris, 1984–92).
9. See Keilbach, ‘ “Zwei Verliebte grüßen vom Obersalzberg” ’, pp. 221–5.

10. Breloer’s choice of principal actors certainly facilitates the involvement
of the viewers in this process. Speer was played by Sebastian Koch,
whose popularity is not least based on his embodiment of the identifi-
catory figure Stauffenberg in Joe Baier’s television film of the same title
(Germany and Austria, 2004), and Hitler was played by Tobias Moretti,
widely known to television audiences as Richard Moser from the success-
ful series Kommissar Rex (Austria, 1994–2004), whose charismatic portrayal
of Hitler was enhanced by his Austrian accent.
11. See Speer, Erinnerungen, pp. 32–4.
12. ‘Schmutzige Wände, enge Aufgänge und ein verwahrlostes Inneres machten
einen ärmlichen Eindruck.’ – Ibid., p. 32.
13. The importance of light in Speer & Hitler is suggested in the opening scene
in the Allied prison at Nuremberg through the display of a reflection of light
on the camera lens. Its metaphorical usage ranges from the seductive appear-
ance of Nazism, to Speer’s blindness towards the Nazi crimes, as is illustrated
by his inability to read the indictment later in the same scene. – Cf. Peter
Reichel, Der schöne Schein des Nazismus: Faszination und Gewalt des Faschismus
(Munich, 1992).
14. ‘ “Charisma” soll eine als außeralltäglich . . . geltende Qualität einer
Persönlichkeit heißen, um derentwillen sie als mit übernatürlichen oder
übermenschlichen oder mindestens spezifisch außeralltäglichen, nicht
jedem andern zugänglichen Kräften oder Eigenschaften begabt oder als
gottgesandt oder als vorbildlich und deshalb als “Führer” gewertet wird.’ –
Max Weber, Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, III. Abteilung: Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft, 3rd edition (Tübingen, 1947), p. 140.
15. Pier Paolo Pasolini, ‘The Cinema of Poetry’, in Louise K. Barnett (ed.),
Heretical Empiricism, trans. Ben Lawton and Louise K. Barnett (Bloomington
and Indianapolis, IN, 1988), pp. 167–86, especially pp. 175–6.
16. ‘Wenn Kunst wirklich etwas Wahres zum Ausdruck bringt, dann könnte es
uns möglich sein, Verhaltensweisen und Interaktionen zu verstehen, die kein
positivistisches Geschichtsbuch uns erklären kann.’ – Frank Schirrmacher,
‘Filme, die Geschichte machen’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 June 2004.
17. ‘Breloer und Königstein . . . geben das Modell des Beschützer-Fernsehens
auf. Sie setzen [den Zuschauer, A. B.] den Verführungen des schönen
Scheins aus. . . . Kein dröhnender Guido-Knopp-Ton aus dem Off schlägt
mit der Moralpeitsche auf den Zuschauer ein, der gerade dabei ist, sich
am Zuckerbrot der Propagandabilder zu überfressen. . . . Dies ist die Größe
des Mediums Fernsehen: nicht über den Dingen zu bleiben, sondern mit-
ten hineinzugehen.’ – Nikolaus von Festenburg, ‘Wir schalten auf den
Obersalzberg’, in Der Spiegel, 2 May 2005.
18. Ulrich Herbert, ‘Speer war nur gebildeter’, Die Tageszeitung, 6 May 2005;
‘Diese Lebenslüge wird von Speer verkörpert, da ist er der Idealtypus. Eine
Fernsehdarbietung, die in dreimal anderthalb Stunden nur dieses Klischee
bedient, ist nicht wirklich aufklärend . . . .’ – Wolfgang Benz, ‘Das patriotische
Projekt des Duos Speer und Siedler’, Netzeitung, 27 May 2006. Available
online at: http://www.netzeitung.de/voiceofgermany/340621.html.
19. Pasolini, ‘The Cinema of Poetry’, p. 183.
Axel Bangert 233
20. Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death

(New York, 1984).
21. With regard to literature, see Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten
der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (Munich, 2006),
pp. 215–16. Examples of this trend in film are Malte Ludin, 2 oder 3
Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß (2 or 3 Things I Know about Him, 2005) and
Jens Schanze, Winterkinder: Die schweigende Generation (Winter’s Children: The
Silent Generation, 2005).
22. Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge,
MA, London, 1989), pp. 5–8.
23. ‘In dieser Verbrüderung fiel Speer offensichtlich die weibliche Rolle zu. Er
sollte “austragen”, was Hitler inspiriert, womit er ihn “befruchtet” hatte.’ –
Alexander Mitscherlich, ‘Hitler blieb ihm ein Rätsel – die Selbstblendung
Albert Speers’, in Adelbert Reif (ed.), Albert Speer: Kontroversen um ein deutsches
Phänomen (Munich, 1978), pp. 460–70, here p. 468.
24. ‘Das Übermaß an opulenten Bilder erinnert peinlich an Speers Ästhetik
des Größenwahns.’ – Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘Späte Enttarnung eines
Lügners’, Die Zeit, 4 May 2005.
25. Keilbach, ‘ “Zwei Verliebte grüßen vom Obersalzberg” ’, pp. 231, 234.
26. Klaus Mann, ‘Homosexualität und Fascismus’, in Martin Gregor-Dellin (ed.),
Heute und Morgen: Schriften zur Zeit (Munich, 1969), pp. 130–7.
27. Andrew Hewitt, Political Inversions: Homosexuality, Fascism, and the Modernist
Imaginary (Stanford, CA, 1996).
28. For a detailed study of this trend see Marcus Stiglegger, Sadiconazista:
Faschismus und Sexualität im Film (St. Augustin, 1999).
29. See Schwendemann, ‘Späte Enttarnung eines Lügners’.
Films cited
Baier, Jo, Stauffenberg (Germany and Austria, 2004).
Breloer, Heinrich, Die Manns: Ein Jahrhundertroman (Germany, Austria, and
Switzerland, 2001).
——, Speer und Er (Germany, 2005).
1977).
Gansel, Dennis, Napola: Elite für den Führer (Germany, 2004).
Hajek, Peter and Peter Moster, Kommissar Rex (Austria, 1994–2004).
Ludin, Malte, 2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß (Germany, 2005).
Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Italy and France, 1975).
Richter, Roland Suso, Nichts als die Wahrheit (Germany and USA, 1999).
Schanze, Jens, Winterkinder: Die schweigende Generation (Germany, 2005).
Visconti, Luchino, La caduta degli dei (Italy and West Germany, 1969).
10
Far Away So Close:
Loving to Hate Hitler
Johannes von Moltke
‘The fellow is a catastrophe.’1 Such was Thomas Mann’s pithy assess-

ment of Hitler in 1938. As a ‘miserable, if also portentous phenomenon’,
Mann asserts, Hitler should by all accounts draw hatred as ‘the only
right reaction from those to whom our civilization is anyhow dear’.
But Mann goes on to probe other ways of engaging with Hitler: more
distanced, if no less emotional, forms reacting to the phenomenon.
If the phrasing of the seemingly straightforward statement about Hitler
as a catastrophic fellow isn’t enough, the title of the article in which
it appears quickly reveals Mann’s layered, ironic approach. The essay
initially appeared in Esquire under the title ‘That man is my brother’;
the subsequent German version in the Paris-based Dutch émigré journal
Das neue Tage-Buch apostrophizes the dictator as ‘Bruder Hitler’.2 Both
versions consider Hitler’s manifestly catastrophic impact as the flipside
of his personality, which galvanizes not only hatred but also the ironic
attitude – or, in Mann’s terms, the ‘emotion’ (Affekt) – of interest. Deliber-
ately moving Hitler into uncomfortable intimacy through appellations
such as ‘brother’ (Bruder) and ‘fellow’ (Bursche), Mann fixes upon the
fascination that emanates from the ‘deplorable spectacle’ of the Führer.
Neither his frightful psychological effects on the masses nor the ‘ever-
widening circle of desolation’ around Hitler, he insists, provide a reason
‘why we should not find him interesting as a character and as an event’.
Psychoanalyzing Hitler and considering him as a genius – not just a
fellow, but a fellow artist, an ‘artist-phenomenon’ – , Mann ultimately
grants this phenomenon ‘the need of a certain shuddering admiration’.
To be sure, these ruminations require resolute historicization: they are
pre-war and, like Chaplin’s more famous, but also ironic, take on The
Great Dictator, pre-Holocaust.3 And yet, Mann’s brief essay puts in place
234
Johannes von Moltke 235
some of the central terms with which the post-war history of Hitler rep-
resentations has had to contend. Treating Hitler as an ‘aesthetic, not
an ethical phenomenon’, Mann probes the psychology of the dictator
as much as that of his spell-bound, global ‘audience’: from his con-
stituency in Germany to the European nations that would follow Austria
in falling to Hitler’s military and political advances to the exile com-
munity for which Mann speaks. Adopting a psychoanalytic approach,
Mann anticipates what would arguably be the predominant paradigm
underpinning the postwar project of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming
to terms with the past), from work on German guilt and the ‘author-
itarian personality’ to the seminal publication by the Mitscherlichs to
more recent treatments of trauma and memory.4 And by conceding his
shuddering admiration for the ‘historical humbug and soul-paralyzing
ideology’ unleashed by the one-time melancholic megalomaniac, Mann
adumbrates later discussions of fascism’s fascination and the successive
Hitler-Wellen (Hitler waves) this fascination has fuelled to date.5
In Mann’s account, that fascination is driven in turn by a central
tension between proximity and distance, whose continuing relevance
I wish to stress in light of the articles collected in this volume and of the
primarily audiovisual landscape to which they refer. ‘Bruder Hitler’ con-
structs the phenomenon within an unresolved dialectic of intimacy and
ironic remove. Investigating his own interest in Hitler ‘as a character and
as an event’, Mann places the Führer at an aesthetic distance that allows
the author to satisfy his ‘need for freedom, for objective contemplation,
in a word for the irony which I have long recognized as the native ele-
ment of all creative art’. It is precisely this distance, however, which
makes possible the recognition of proximity, however uncomfortable,
of Hitler as
a brother – a rather unpleasant and mortifying brother. He makes

me nervous, the relationship is painful to a degree. But I will not
disclaim it. For I repeat: better, more productive, more honest, more
constructive than hatred is recognition, acceptance, the readiness to
make oneself one with what is deserving of our hate, even though we
run the risk, morally speaking, of forgetting how to say no.
The Mannian affect of interest, in other words, combines a distanced
stance of ‘objective contemplation’ with a proximate stance of ‘iden-
tification’ (Mann’s term), a progressive passage from ‘recognition’ to
‘acceptance’, to ‘making oneself one’ with Hitler.6
This dialectic retains its relevance to this day, as even a cursory glance
at our changing media landscape will reveal. Following Aleida Assman,
236 Far Away So Close
we might place those changes in a broader historical trajectory that

has led from an early phase of silence, followed by a second phase
of moralizations, to the current phase of imagination, with its drive
toward understanding and (re)experiencing increasingly distant events.7
This historical narrative, and especially the description of the present
phase as one of imagination dedicated to understanding in the mode of
experience, would admittedly appear to be at odds with Sabine Hake’s
description of our newly historicist visual culture in her contribution
to this volume. I will return to Hake’s thought-provoking intervention
below, but would note here that the two seemingly opposing views of
the current wave of historical representation – as imaginative (Assman)
or as historicist (Hake) – are perhaps best seen as instances of the dialec-
tic I aim to highlight and whose poles they describe. Whether we view
the visual landscape in terms of historicsm’s putative objectivity or place
the emphasis on the subjectivity of imagination, recent productions
require us to keep both perspectives in play. For as our historical distance
from Hitler grows inexorably, so does the number of attempts to move
in closer on the historical figure, to decrease distance and increase inti-
macy.8 Ever more empathetic projects give us the Führer as embodied
by Bruno Ganz’s method acting, or the SS-Obersturmbannführer Aue,
our self-proclaimed ‘human brother’ and the first person narrator of
Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, replete with ‘an inner life, desires,
passions, just like any other man’.9 What is at stake in these and other
recent media events are less the ostensible taboos on the impersonation
of Hitler or on the turn to German victimhood, but rather the vexing
issue of how close is too close, of where to draw the line between imag-
ination and understanding, identification and reflection, or between
proximate affects such as sympathy and hatred.
On the other hand, we might replace the historical perspective with
a more structural distinction and restate the relationship between prox-
imity and distance generically: here, the representational turn towards
empathy, identification, and the ‘inner life’ of the perpetrator would
appear to be the province of historical drama (or the historical novel,
as the case may be), as opposed to the distancing effects of comedy and
satire in the tradition initiated by Chaplin and Lubitsch and reaching
through, most recently, Levy and Moers.10 A similar constellation comes
into view if we use Brecht’s distinction between Aristotelian poetics and
‘epic’ plays – and films – such as the playwright’s own Der aufhaltsame
Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, 1941), Christoph
Schlingensief’s 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler: Die letzte Stunde im Führerbunker
(100 Years of Adolf Hitler: The Last Hour in the Führerbunker, 1989),
Aleksandr Sokurov’s Molokh (1999), or Jutta Brückner’s Die Hitlerkantate

(Hitler Cantata, 2005).11 However we wish to formulate these distinc-
tions, the crucial point to be derived from Mann’s dialectical irony is
that empathy and distanciation are mutually enabling terms: a lesson
available to any careful reader of Brecht, as well. Rather than rigidly
opposed as mutually exclusive representational choices, (emotional)
proximity and (representational, historical) distance are the terms of a
dialectic that underpins all attempts to stage Hitler, from the most rei-
fied historical drama, whose pathos must contend with the tendency of
any Hitler image to revert to its status as popular icon or pastiche, to
the most reflexive essay-film, which is bound to fall flat if it does not
contend with the thorny issues of empathy and identification raised by
the audiovisual media’s sentimental culture of history.12
The contributions to this volume rehearse the dialectics of proximity
and distance in various registers, from the textual level of aesthetic form
to the socio-historical level of cultural discourse; and in an array of cul-
tural forms ranging from the museum (Hake) to cinema and television,
and from documentary formats (Stutterheim, Bangert) to the feature
film. Syberberg’s Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland, to take Elsaesser’s
example, would appear to borrow directly from Mann’s uncomfortably
‘intimate’ portrait; in this regard, the translation of the film’s title as
Our Hitler for English distribution, often mistaken for simply a national
possessive, should be read as a claim to proximity, an inability to dis-
claim our fascination, whether through the film’s own Brechtian devices
of distanciation or by resorting to the cloying ‘blame Hitler’ narratives
rehearsed by Hannes Heer and in Butter’s contribution. Accordingly, a
number of contributors make precisely this tension explicit and pro-
ductive, whether historically – as in Rentschler’s discussion of the play
on presence and absence in Hitler’s media image – or generically, as
in Richardson’s analysis of the play between comedy and tragedy in
Dany Levy’s Mein Führer. As Rentschler reminds us, the Nazis’ own,
mass-mediated image of Hitler was already structured around a double
promise of accessibility and everyday-ness on the one hand, and glori-
fication as remote and untouchable on the other. Like many a movie
star image, Hitler ‘commingled awe and identification’.13 Given the ubi-
quity of that image, both during the ‘Third Reich’ and in the intervening
decades, Rentschler is right to emphasize that Hitler appears in virtually
none of the over 1000 feature films produced between 1933 and 1945,
nor was any actor allowed to impersonate him, suggesting that Hitler’s
‘strategic absence was a crucial part of his captivating presence’. Repre-
sentations of Hitler continue to grapple with this dual perspective to this
day, and will arguably have to contend with it as long as Hitler and Nazi
Germany remain relevant as the prehistory of the present. Erich Maria
Remarque’s exasperated comment, noted by Töteberg, that Hitler was
still untouchable as ‘heiligstes Volksgut’ in the1950s neatly encapsulates
the simultaneous presence and unrepresentability that has defined the
Hitler image from the work of Hoffmann and Riefenstahl through the
1950s and 1960s to the present obsessive returns.
This co-presence of apparently opposed attributes also emerges from
Richardson’s re-evaluation of Levy’s much-maligned farce. Richardson
highlights precisely the interplay between different modes that are gen-
erally held to be irreconcilable: in this case, the modes of tragedy and
farce, or, in the terms suggested above, of historical drama and comedy.
In his circumspect reading of Mein Führer, in other words, Richardson
traces at the level of aesthetic form precisely the dynamic that I con-
sider indispensible for the elaboration of critical frameworks in which
to locate any representation of Hitler; a dynamic that keeps identifica-
tory projections and historical distance equally in play. Arguing that this
duality is precisely the film’s greatest strength, Richardson zooms in on
the productive confusion and the ‘unstable and contradictory emotional
response’ that Levy’s generic mixing generates for the viewer.
We might locate similar motifs in Bangert’s discussion of the free indi-
rect subjective mode that he identifies in Speer und Er (Speer & Hitler: The
Devil’s Architect, 2005), where the blurring between subjective and objec-
tive, between the perspective we attribute to the character’s interiority
and an exterior narrative point of view defines the image of the Führer;14
or in Butter’s review of how the ‘blame Hitler’ narratives would appear
to place the dictator at a comfortable distance that repeatedly erodes
in the process. Again, Butter traces this collective distancing all the way
down to the level of cinematic form, showing how Der Untergang (Down-
fall, 2004) uses editing and mise-en-scène to set Hitler apart from the
other characters, and, one surmises, from the viewer. Conversely, Mein
Führer, in Butter’s analysis, formally moves in much closer to Hitler but
‘invariably recreates the spatial and emotional distance between Hitler
and others’ that characterized Eichinger’s approach. And yet, as But-
ter reminds us, these distancing strategies are the flip side of discourses
of collective responsibility; the defensive stance implied by the blame-
Hitler narrative is indication enough, if any were needed, that one is not
thinkable without the other.
Mann’s analysis of Hitler as the artist’s ‘brother’ draws heavily on
Nietzsche, to be sure;15 but it is Freud who appears by name, and whose
conceptual apparatus subtends the diagnosis of Hitler’s various neuroses
and perversions. This turn to psychoanalytic vocabulary persisted well

into the postwar period. As Töteberg’s account of the production and
reception of Der letzte Akt (The Last Ten Days, 1955) shows, for example,
it was readily available to practitioners such as the producer Szokoll,
who opined that the film should ‘auf Freudsche Art eine Erlösung vom
Schuldkomplex bewirken’ (effect a redemption from the guilt complex
in a Freudian manner). At a more general, scholarly level, the psycho-
analytic frameworks also generated some of the paradigmatic accounts
of Hitler and of the Germans’ ‘inability to mourn’. This Freudian model
dichotomizes the avenues of melancholic attachment on the one hand,
and of mourning and successful working through on the other.16 For-
mulated by the Mitscherlichs as a thesis on ‘principles of collective
behavior’ in the 1960s, it continues to inform debates about the rep-
resentation of Hitler to this day, including many of those assembled in
this volume (e.g., Elm, Butter). Indeed, one might be inclined to spec-
ulate that this narrative is only now coming into its own. If film and
television today allow viewers to be seduced by, empathize, or somehow
identify with Hitler, wouldn’t we have to say that the media have finally
brought full circle the dominant narrative on Vergangenheitsbewältigung
in the Federal Republic? If, as the Mitscherlichs famously argued, the
Germans’ inability to mourn had its roots at least in part in their refusal
to own up to their collective emotional investment in the figure of the
Führer and to their grief at the loss of ‘our Hitler’, then producing such
investment through film could be read as the ex-post-facto therapeutic
gesture that this analysis called for. However, this (over)reading of the
present situation would have to contend not only with the persistence
of the blame-Hitler-narratives from the early post-war years to the excul-
patory industry launched by Guido Knopp and teamWorx on German
television, but also with the shifting historical ground for representing
Hitler. Here, the increasing generational remove, manifest in the grad-
ual disappearance of the perpetrator-, victim-, and witness-generation,
is undoubtedly crucial: the shift, in Jan Assman’s terms, from collec-
tive to communicative memory cannot help but affect the very fabric of
representation and social discourse itself.
This, I take it, is Sabine Hake’s central point. Her extensive argu-
ment about the shift from historiography to historicism offers a nuanced
engagement with what Ian Kershaw sees as ‘the continuing, gradual, but
inexorable process of seeing the Hitler era as history – even more impor-
tant, feeling it to be history’.17 Loosely in keeping with Assmann’s sec-
ond phase of ‘moralization’, Hake describes the era of historiography as
one that linked history to ideology, to responsibility, to critique; an era
in which historical understanding derived from an ‘acknowledgement

of history as a site of contestation and that invariably involves aware-
ness of its political uses and abuses’. The current phase of historicism, by
contrast, ushers in an era when ‘history can finally be experienced and
appreciated without guilt’. In the wake of productions such as Down-
fall, the central questions for historical representation shift, according
to Hake, from an emphasis on guilt to a politics of acceptance. As she
points out, the discursive strategies of Downfall stand ‘in conscious
opposition to the model of Vergangenheitsbewältigung’. They amount to
a transition, if not a rupture, heralding a new attitude towards the Nazi
past, one that she describes in terms of the nineteenth-century paradigm
of historicism.
This thought-provoking diagnosis clearly bears further discussion and
provides an eminently useful template for tracking future developments,
even if it remains to be seen whether these will confirm Hake’s read-
ing or whether the older historiographical and Freudian paradigms are
only temporarily receding, to emerge more forcefully again in some
future cultural constellations. For our present purposes, however, it bears
pointing out that even the historicist paradigm outlined by Hake, with
its apparent emphasis on increasing historical detachment, keeps in play
the dialectics of proximity and distance that I have been mapping. Sit-
uating the textual specificities of Downfall within the contexts of its
production and reception, Hake argues specifically that ‘the film pro-
vides a mechanism of detachment that, paradoxically, makes possible
the (self-)recognition of contemporary (German) audiences as victims
of their own history’. This emphasis on self-recognition is coupled, as
I have suggested above, to a renewed play on affect and to aesthetic
strategies centering on empathy in particular.18 What Hake describes as
a paradox, in other terms, I am inclined to see as a variation on the
dialectics of detachment and attachment that I have been outlining,
and which, I submit, plays into the project of historicization Hake so
astutely analyzes.
Critics, including those whose work appears in this volume, may
disagree on whether we are presently witnessing a decisive, paradig-
matic shift in the logic of historical representation (of Hitler):
toward historicism (Hake), toward imagination (Assman), or toward a
renewal of historical affect (what Martin Walser calls Geschichtsgefühl);
or whether the underlying continuities with the discourse of
Vergangenheitsbewältigung are more important, as Elm, Bangert, or But-
ter would appear to imply. But underlying these different evaluations of
the present lies a fundamental agreement about its prehistory, or about
the ‘afterlife’ of Bruder Hitler in audiovisual representation. Rehearsed

by some of the contributors and presumed by others, this history begins
with Chaplin and Hollywood’s anti-Nazi films; it includes the relatively
few early attempts of German cinema to come to grips with Hitler, as
in Pabst’s The Last Ten Days, starring Alec Guinness, as well as vari-
ous international productions based on the same materials, such as The
Bunker, starring Anthony Hopkins; it extends into the 1970s with the
first German ‘Hitlerwelle’ in the wake of Fest and Herrendoerfer’s Hitler –
Eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career, 1977) and Syberberg’s Our Hitler; and it
culminates in the most recent ‘Hitlerwelle’ that arguably includes not
only the films, books, television shows, and museum events discussed
in this volume, but also scholarly literature itself – from a new Hitler
Filmography to numerous anthologies, including the book you hold in
your hands.19
Given the familiarity of this narrative, the question of our specific
place within it becomes paramount. In one way or another, this ques-
tion of what is new about this moment and how it requires us to
position ourselves vis-à-vis the past motivates each intervention. The
answer, I venture, will always depend on how far we believe we have
traveled from Hitler, or how close we remain. Michael Töteberg quotes
the musings of Friedrich Torberg, an Austrian critic, who in 1955 notes
that the right moment for a Hitler film will come about when such a film
is no longer relevant, when ‘nothing any longer is at stake in so risky an
undertaking’. The apparent paradox that links the conditions of possi-
bility for adequately representing Hitler to the absence of any need for
such representations may be recast in terms of the dialectical relations
between presence and absence that I have been tracing in critical inter-
ventions from Mann’s up through the present volume. But however we
describe the situation, it would appear that the future promise of an ade-
quate Hitler film remains tethered to the constraints of the past until
such a ‘blissfully-distant time’ when ‘one will presumably have better
things to do than produce Hitler films’.20 Whatever shifts we may be
able to make out in the contemporary media landscape, the move away
from Hitler films is not among them.
Notes
1. Thomas Mann, ‘That Man Is My Brother’, Esquire 31 (March 1939), pp.132–3.
2. Thomas Mann, ‘Bruder Hitler’, Das neue Tage-Buch, 7.13 (March 1939),
pp. 306–9.
3. In retrospect, Chaplin asserted, he would not have been able to make The
Great Dictator had he known of the horrors of the concentration camps at the
time. See Margrit Frölich, ‘Tot oder lebendig: Hitler als Figur im Spielfilm’,
in Rainer Rother and Karin Herbst-Meßlinger (eds), Hitler darstellen: zur
Entwicklung und Bedeutung einer filmischen Figur (Munich, 2008), p. 22.
4. Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Daniel Levinson and Nevitt
Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York, 1950); Karl Jaspers, The
Question of German Guilt (Fordham, 2001); Alexander and Margarete
Mitscherlich, The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behavior
(New York, 1975); Eric Santner, Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory, and Film
in Postwar Germany (Ithaca, NY, 1990).
5. Cf. Susan Sontag, ‘Fascinating Fascism’, in Under the Sign of Saturn (New York,
1980), pp. 73–105; Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch
and Death (Minneapolis, MN, 1993).
6. Given our concern with the audiovisual representation of Hitler, it is worth
noting that Mann’s triad, elaborated with a view toward the historical figure
itself, reappears in slightly modified form in Murray Smith’s cognitivist
account of how spectators engage with fictional characters. Here, too, recog-
nition marks the first stage as a prerequisite for any possible ‘alignment’ with
a character; while Smith explicitly refutes the psychoanalytic terminology of
identification that resonates in Mann’s notion of melding and ‘making one-
self one’ with Hitler, Smith’s third term, allegiance, does assume a further
step ‘towards’ the character and serves to articulate the specifically moral
dimension of the overall ‘structure of sympathy’ that he outlines. See Murray
Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford, 1995).
7. Aleida Assmann, ‘Lichtstrahlen in die Black Box: Bernd Eichingers Der
Untergang’, in Margrit Frölich, Christian Schneider, and Karsten Visarius
(eds), Das Böse im Blick: Die Gegenwart des Nationalsozialismus im Film
(Munich, 2007), p. 47.
8. On the ‘privatization’ and ‘intimization’ (and the attendant feminization) at
work in a project like Downfall, see Assmann, ‘Lichtstrahlen in die Black Box’.
9. Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones, trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York, 2009),
p. 23.
10. See, for example, Margrit Frölich’s overview of Hitler films, which is orga-
nized around the distinction between the pathos of historical drama and the
demythologizing power of comedy and satire. Toward the end of her article,
Frölich interestingly adds horror and science fiction as a third generic term,
arguing that films like The Boys from Brazil (1978) harbor a largely untapped
potential to ‘destroy the auratic effect of Hitler’. Cf. Margrit Frölich, ‘Hitler
als Figur im Spielfilm’, p. 31.
11. On Schlingensief and Brückner, respectively, see Burkhardt Lindner,
‘Schlingensief’s Untergang’, and Georg Seeßlen, ‘Was geschah, als Ursula
durch einen Blick in des Führers Augen in Ohnmacht fiel? Hitlerkantate
von Jutta Brückner: ein Gegenentwurf zum cineastischen Mainstream-
Bild von Geschichte und Nationalsozialismus’, both in Margrit Frölich,
Christian Schneider, and Karsten Visarius (eds), Das Böse im Blick: Die
Gegenwart des Nationalsozialismus im Film (München, 2007), pp. 98–110 and
pp. 260–72.
12. I have elsewhere explored these issues with reference to German film
and television ranging from Downfall to the work of Alexander Kluge
to the recent spate of ‘historical event-television’ produced by the com-

pany teamWorx. See Johannes von Moltke, ‘Sympathy for the Devil: Film,
History, and the Politics of Emotion’, New German Critique 34.3 (Fall 2007),
pp. 17–44; Johannes von Moltke, ‘The Politics of Feeling: Alexander Kluge
on War, Film, and Emotion’, in Marc Silberman and Paul Cooke (eds),
Screening War: Perspectives on German Suffering (Rochester, 2010); Johannes
von Moltke, ‘ “Deutsche Jungs dürfen ruhig auch mal weinen”: Filmische
“Identifikation” in der sentimentalen Geschichtskultur’, in Claudia Breger
and Fritz Breithaupt (eds), Empathie und Erzählung (Freiburg, 2010).
13. Rentschler quotes Adorno, who describes Hitler as ‘a composite of King Kong
and the suburban barber’. For the characteristic play of ‘ordinariness’ and
extraordinary charisma in the cinematic star image, see Richard Dyer, Stars,
2nd edn. (London, 1988).
14. A version of this mode proved to be Philipp Jenninger’s stumbling block in
his infamous speech to parliament on 10 November 1988.
15. Cf. Hinrich Siefken, ‘Thomas Mann’s Essay Bruder Hitler’, German Life and
Letters, 35.2 (January 1982), pp. 165–81.
16. Cf. Santner, Stranded Objects.
17. Ian Kershaw, ‘The Human Hitler’, The Guardian, 17 September 2004.
18. I am unaware of any work that links nineteenth-century historicism to the
contemporaneous elaboration of an aesthetic of Einfühlung in the work of
Theodor Lipps, but given Hake’s turn to the late nineteenth century for its
historical paradigms, this parallel may be worth investigating in light of
current work on affect.
19. See Charles P. Mitchell, The Hitler Filmography (Jefferson, NC, 2002).
Anthologies include Willi Bischof (ed.), Filmri:ss. Studien über den Film Der
Untergang (Münster, 2005); Frölich et al. (eds), Das Böse im Blick; Rother and
Meßlinger, Hitler darstellen and Der Untergang? Nazis, Culture, and Cinema,
special issue of New German Critique 34.3 (Fall 2007), p. 102.
20. Friedrich Torberg, ‘Ist Adolf Hitler verfilmbar?’, Forum (May 1955), p. 189,
quoted in Michael Töteberg’s contribution to this volume.
Films cited
Breloer, Heinrich, Speer und Er (Germany, 2005).
Brückner, Jutta, Die Hitlerkantate (Germany, 2005).
1977).
2007).
Sokurov, Aleksandr N., Moloch (Russia and Germany, 1999).
Schaefer, George, The Bunker (France and USA, 1981).
Index
absence, 37, 68, 116, 203, 237, 241 Barta, Tony, 40

absolution, 151, 169–70, 187 Barthes, Roland, 78, 80
Adorno, Theodor W., 37 Benze, Susanne, 17
aesthetic Benz, Wolfgang, 17, 220
aesthetic distance, 17, 235 Berghof, 216, 221–3, 225
aestheticization, 38, 114 Berlin, 7, 17, 35, 42, 44, 45, 62, 66, 99,
affect, 1, 114, 119, 235, 239–40 101, 105, 107, 112, 116, 119, 141,
afterlife, 10, 35–52, 81, 241 143, 144, 147, 162, 171, 173, 175,
allegory, 11, 147, 211, 215, 225 182, 183, 196, 200, 207, 212, 216,
allure, 51 218, 224, 227
Anderson, Steve, 16 Berlin Republic, 7, 17, 101, 112, 116,
animation, 3, 226 119
antifascism, 114 Bertelsmann, 51
anti-Semitism, 136–7, 151, 156 biography, 1, 35, 41, 46, 48, 75, 121,
apologetic, 15, 169, 230 143, 163, 169, 199, 201, 207, 214
appeal, 35, 48, 51, 89, 118, 204–5, biopic, 4, 10, 17
224 blame, 68, 82, 108, 168–9, 177–8,
archive, 42, 45, 104, 116, 179, 195, 181–2, 185, 237–9
199–203, 206, 209, 227 Blondi, 134, 141, 162, 202
ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der
Blumenberg, Hans-Christoph, 113
öffentlich-rechtlichen
Boese, Carl, 82
Rundfunkanstalten der
Bohrer, Karl Heinz, 164
Bundesrepublik Deutschland), 16,
Bonn Republic, 4
121, 211
Bordwell, David, 194
Assmann, Jan, 7, 186, 239
audience, 4–6, 8, 10–11, 13, 35–6, Bormann, Martin, 41, 45, 62, 123, 176
44–5, 58, 62, 64–5, 88, 92, 103, box office, 4, 45, 56, 58, 171
108–9, 111, 112–14, 121–2, 124, Braun, Eva, 5, 36, 41, 42, 44, 46, 62,
127, 135, 137, 139–40, 142, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 118, 119,
146–7, 152, 154, 157, 162, 169, 154, 160, 171, 173, 179, 216, 221,
171, 182, 185, 193–5, 197, 201, 222
203, 205–6, 209, 219, 221, Brecht, Bertolt, 83, 179
235, 240 Breloer, Heinrich, 3, 8, 16–17, 113,
Aufarbeitung, 3 211–31
authenticity, 8, 13, 41, 49, 50–1, 64, Brenner, David, 138
100, 108, 111, 134–5, 137, 139, Broder, Henryk, 134, 143
143–4, 154, 156, 179, 194 Brooks, Mel, 8, 133
Axer, Oliver, 17 brother, 17, 235, 238
Brückner, Jutta, 236–7
Baier, Jo, 163 brutality, 104, 137, 141, 159, 161
banal, 80, 116 Bullock, Alan, 49
244
Index 245
bunker, 4, 8, 12, 41, 46, 50, 56, 58, destruction, 61, 92, 102–3, 138, 157,
61–2, 64–8, 75, 99, 103, 104, 107, 163, 171–2, 195, 204, 214–16, 225
109–10, 116–18, 121, 127, 144, didacticism, 10, 17, 116, 122, 193–209
155, 158, 171, 173, 175–6, 179, Diederichsen, Diedrich, 124
182, 215, 241 Dietl, Helmut, 10, 36, 44–6
Buttgereit, Jörg, 4–5 Disney, Walt, 99, 139
distance, 17, 48–9, 77, 86–7, 100,
camera 108–9, 134–5, 156, 173–5, 180,
camera movement, 226 200, 203, 220, 225, 228, 234–5,
camerawork, 104, 110–11, 176, 218 240
caricature, 65 docudrama, 3, 8, 16, 113–14, 160,
catharsis, 9, 146 211, 213–16, 218–22, 224–8, 230
Chaplin, Charles, 8, 46, 50, 73, 84, documentary, 4–5, 15–16, 45, 109,
133, 139, 146, 179, 234, 236, 241 121, 156, 158, 163, 170, 177,
charisma, 17, 37, 61, 64, 86, 182, 193–209, 214, 217, 223–6, 230,
211–31 237
childhood, 15, 82, 142, 161, 180–1
Douglas, Gordon, 8
Chomsky, Marvin, 9
drama
cinematography, 219
dramatization, 9, 16, 56, 180
close-up (shot), 141, 208
dramaturgy, 50, 223, 224, 226
collaboration, 62–3, 99, 110, 142, 206
comedy Duguay, Christian, 9
black comedy, 132, 137
comedian, 5, 12, 89, 112, 117, 119, editing, 6, 195, 205, 218, 238
147, 156–7, 179 Eichinger, Bernd, 3–4, 9, 15, 17, 93
complicity, 91, 147, 168–88 emotion, 75, 77, 101, 104, 108–9, 114,
conservative, 14, 92, 101, 115, 119, 122–4, 126–7, 134–5, 154, 156,
123, 164, 186 180, 195, 199–200, 234, 237–9
Corti, Axel, 4
empathy, 104, 115, 220, 229, 236–7,
counterfactual, 77
240
critic, 5, 8, 11, 47, 65, 74, 77, 91–2,
emplotment, 138
114, 120, 122, 132–4, 156–7, 176,
entertainment, 12, 90, 93, 101, 114,
185, 220, 223–4, 230, 240
124, 134, 204
Curtis, Dan, 8
epic, 12–13, 110, 114, 132–3, 159,
cynicism, 50, 104
224–5, 236
Davis, Natalie Zemon, 10 Evans, Richard, 164
death, 41, 44, 60, 62, 65, 68, 75, 85, event, 37, 48, 56–69, 100, 103, 112,
118, 136, 138, 147, 151, 161, 163, 115, 119, 121–22, 125–6, 162,
173, 175–6, 199, 223 208, 220, 234–5
De Concini, Ennio, 8 Eventkultur, 100
defeat, 62–3, 67, 90, 99, 105, 116, evil, 10, 13, 15, 17, 64, 68, 73, 75, 80,
151–2, 155, 208 90, 99, 123, 134, 142, 151, 153,
DeLillo, Don, 47, 50, 198 155–6, 164, 170, 177, 184–5, 187
democracy, 74, 83, 91, 124, 164, 177 experiment, 5, 67, 73, 110, 116, 144,
demon 155
de-demonization, 134 exploitation, 17, 74, 193–209, 217
demonization, 134, 143 eye-witness, 144, 199
demythification, 5 account, 144, 199
246 Index
face, 10, 12, 36, 58, 73, 76, 84, 88, German television, 4, 6, 113, 121,
105–6, 108–9, 139, 143, 164, 171, 133, 158, 169–70, 239
174, 199, 221 West Germany, 12, 72
Fackenheim, Emil, 10 globalization, 100
fact, 13, 38, 40, 58, 104, 133–5, 142, Goebbels, Joseph, 37, 61, 64, 72, 73,
155, 164, 173, 177 74, 77, 82, 86, 90, 106, 107, 111,
farce, 4, 11, 14, 117, 132–48, 238 119, 132, 134, 140, 141, 143, 155,
fascination, 12, 35, 38–9, 48, 52, 75–6, 170, 174, 176, 181
86, 90, 113–14, 120, 125, 169, Goebbels, Magda, 5, 118, 119, 176
185–6, 187, 197, 214, 219–20, goodness, 108, 144
223–4, 226, 229, 234–5, 237 Göring, Hermann, 5, 47, 183
fascism, 76, 102, 103, 105, 112, 114, grotesque, 3, 45, 74, 117, 136, 138,
116, 125, 185, 203, 208–9, 213, 158, 183, 205
228, 235 guilt, 8, 13, 63, 74, 81, 102, 108–9,
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 72 112, 117, 125, 168–88, 211, 215,
Fest, Joachim, 1, 3, 14, 17, 38, 48, 58, 235, 239–40
74, 91, 99, 108, 117, 121, 133, Guinness, Alec, 8–9, 133, 241
169–71, 196, 213–14, 216–17, Günsche, Otto, 12, 105
224, 241
fiction, 13, 38, 40, 45, 49, 51, 73, 75, Hansen, Rolf, 45
82, 104, 109, 112, 125, 127, 133, Harnack, Falk, 162
135, 143, 155, 170, 179–80, 194, Heer, Friedrich, 64
204–5, 213, 216–23, 227, 229 Heer, Hannes, 15, 168, 185, 237
follower(s), 6, 17, 41, 44, 104, 205 Heimat, 72
footage, 3, 5, 17, 37, 46, 50, 139, 156, Heimatfilm, 116, 222
163, 195, 198, 200, 203–4, 216, Heller, André, 73, 90, 108, 177
223–7 Herbert, Ulrich, 220
forgery, 46, 48, 51–2 heritage cinema, 101, 114–16
frame, 46, 67, 93, 146, 174, 177, 179, Herrendoerfer, Christian, 3, 196, 214,
181, 185, 187, 196, 199, 218 224, 241
Frei, Norbert, 6 Herz, Rudolf, 170
Hewitt, Andrew, 228
Friedländer, Saul, 10, 38–9, 223
Himmler, Heinrich, 72, 73, 82, 83, 88,
Führerbild(er), 25, 52–3
119, 170
Führerbunker, 4, 11, 117, 216
Hirschbiegel, Oliver, 3, 4, 12, 99, 101,
Führerkult, 214, 216–17, 223, 225
104, 108, 116, 132, 143–4, 147,
151, 153, 154, 157, 171–2, 175,
Gansel, Dennis, 229 177, 179, 228
Ganz, Bruno, 5, 8–9, 12, 58, 99, 105, Hissen, Alexandra, 4
111, 117–18, 123, 123, 144, 154, historicism, 13, 99–127, 239–40
157, 175, 179, 184, 236 Historikerstreit, 103, 186
Germany history
East Germany, 187 historian, 5–6, 14–15, 41–2, 58, 103,
German audience, 6, 8, 45, 65, 67, 112, 124, 132–3, 151, 153, 157,
103, 113, 124, 146, 171, 197, 164, 168–70, 186, 201, 209,
240 213, 216, 220, 227
German identity, 102, 127 historical fact, 38, 104, 108, 155,
German public, 1, 6, 59, 133, 194, 195, 201
213 historicized, 7, 39, 116
Index 247
Hitlerbild, 3, 7, 9, 10, 15 internet, 5, 35, 120, 125

Hitler diaries, 11, 40, 42–4, 48, 50, 52 intertextuality, 103, 112, 116–18, 127,
Hitlergruß, 139 179, 185
Hitler meme, 20, 130 irony, 74, 90–1, 116, 138, 184, 206,
Hitler myth, 7, 61, 175, 182 235, 237
Hitler wave, 1, 3, 15, 43–4, 75, 91, Ivory, James, 116
133, 169, 235
Hoffmann, Heinrich, 7, 36, 44, 46, Jäckel, Eberhard, 6, 169
152, 238 Jacobi, Derek, 8
Hollywood, 8, 13, 61, 74, 77, 81, 90, Jameson, Fredric, 88, 92
93–4, 104, 118, 162, 199, 241 Jessen, Jens, 109, 220, 229
Holocaust, 10, 38, 41, 91, 99, 103, Jew/Jewish, 9, 13–14, 73, 90, 92, 103,
112–13, 120, 133, 136–7, 142, 112–13, 118–19, 132, 135, 137–8,
147, 151, 164, 169, 177, 181, 140–1, 143, 146–8, 151–2, 173,
186–7, 230, 234 177–8, 180, 208, 227, 230
homoeroticism, 215, 225, 229 Junge, Traudl, 58, 60, 101, 105–6,
homosexuality, 146, 213, 228 108–10, 112, 121, 143–4, 154–6,
Hopkins, Anthony, 8–9, 133, 241 171, 175–8
Horkheimer, Max, 51, 93 Jung, Thomas, 184
Hübner, Christoph, 206, 208
Hugo, Richard, 40–1 Kansteiner, Wulf, 6
human, 1, 12, 17, 38, 40, 47, 88, 106, Karmakar, Romuald, 4
111, 123, 142, 144, 152–4, 161, Kasten, Ullrich, 17, 200, 202
171, 178, 227, 236, 243 Keilbach, Judith, 213, 217, 228
humanization, 132, 142 Kershaw, Ian, 7, 175, 239
humor, 8, 13, 133–4, 136–8, 140, 158, Kier, Udo, 5, 11
181 Kilb, Andreas, 65
Hutcheon, Linda, 186 King, Geoff, 135
Knopp, Guido, 3–6, 8–9, 15–16, 113,
icon, 2, 151–65, 170, 204, 216, 237 133, 158, 170, 179, 184–5, 197–8,
identification, 37, 45, 76–8, 81, 86, 200, 214, 220, 239
100, 103, 109, 127, 134, 138, 142, Koch-Hillebrecht, Manfred, 48
218, 229–30, 235–7 Koepnick, Lutz, 115
ideology, 3, 9, 80, 86–9, 92–3, 100, Köhler, Juliane, 107, 118–19, 154
102–3, 111–12, 114–17, 119–20, Kracauer, Siegfried, 7, 66, 83
127, 143, 155, 163, 169, 175–6, Kubrick, Stanley, 81
186, 187, 214–15, 224, 228, 235, Kuhlbrodt, Dietrich, 197
239
image, 2, 6–10, 13, 15, 36–41, 45–6, Lang, Fritz, 65, 73, 82, 86, 89
48–50, 61–2, 65–6, 72, 74, 77, 80, Lanzmann, Claude, 10, 142
89, 92, 101, 104, 110, 115, 119, laughter, 5, 66, 158
138, 151–65, 168, 170–1, 176–9, legend, 17, 62, 77, 89, 160, 211
181–2, 194–6, 200–1, 203–6, Leiser, Erwin, 6, 195–6
208–9, 213–15, 217, 220–1, lens, 99–100, 104, 112, 117, 174, 200,
223–5, 227, 237–8 228
impersonation, 5, 8–9, 138, 236 wide-angle lens, 174
infotainment, 16, 200 Levy, Dani, 3, 5, 8, 12–14, 117,
innocence, 108–9, 112, 121, 156, 169, 132–48, 152, 153, 156, 159, 178,
171, 177–8, 185, 187 180
248 Index
literature, 56, 87, 92, 100, 120, 223, mourning, 13, 102, 120, 239
228 ‘the inability to mourn,’ 68,
Littell, Jonathan, 236 239
Lommel, Ulli, 5 moustache, 5, 159, 182–3
Lubitsch, Ernst, 138, 146, 179, 236 Mueller-Stahl, Armin, 4, 117
Lucas, George, 81 Müllerschön, Nikolai, 14, 160–1
Munich, 39, 60, 67, 73, 89, 171, 178,
Mailer, Norman, 1 205, 216
mainstream, 4–5, 59, 104, 132, 135 Murnau, Friedrich Wilhelm, 82
Mann, Klaus, 228 music, 45, 65, 87, 199, 201, 203–5,
Mann, Thomas, 17, 74, 89, 234 224–6
Martenstein, Harald, 134 Mussolini, Benito, 41, 200–203
May, Karl, 78, 82, 92 myth, 7, 17, 37, 45, 61, 78–80, 92,
media, 1, 3, 6–7, 10, 12, 35–7, 42–4, 153, 161, 175, 182, 213, 220, 223,
47, 49, 51, 58, 83, 88, 92, 99–101, 231
103, 112–15, 119–24, 122–7, 133,
152, 157, 204, 235–7, 239, 241 narration, narrative, narrator, 10, 45,
melodrama, 90, 102, 198, 111, 48–9, 74, 78, 91, 101–3, 108, 110,
114–15, 199 112, 119–20, 124, 126, 138–9,
memoir, 7, 48, 58, 90, 171, 218, 220, 147, 152, 156, 160, 165, 168–9,
230 171, 177–8, 181–8, 195, 199–1,
memory 203, 217, 220, 224–5, 238–9, 241
collective memory, 7, 153, 155, National Socialism, 2, 6, 14–15, 35,
161–2 37–9, 63, 104–5, 109, 111,
communicative memory, 186, 239 117–19, 122, 158–9, 162, 164,
cultural memory, 7, 16, 56, 186 176, 177, 184, 205, 208
memorial culture, 10 Nazi aesthetic, 10
Mihăileanu, Radu, 13, 135, 137–9, 147 Nazi architecture, 214
military, 65, 103–4, 138, 151, 154–5, Nazi cinema, 3, 46, 241
160–1, 163–4, 174, 201, 206, 215, Nazi ideology, 86, 120
227, 235 143, 155
Miller, Alice, 15, 142, 157, 180 Nazi propaganda, 3, 14–15, 61, 139,
mirror, mirroring, 12, 89, 92, 106–7, 198, 204, 211, 214, 218
211, 215, 228 ‘Nazi retro film,’ 115
mise-en-scène, 100, 110–11, 117, 174, National Socialist German Workers’
175, 180, 213–14, 218–19, 222, Party (NSDAP), 35, 195, 202,
224, 229, 238 219
Mitchell, Charles, 8 national identity, 102
Mitscherlich, Alexander and Nero Decree, 65, 157
Margarete, 76, 226 New German Cinema, 12, 72, 91, 115,
modernity, 51, 78, 87, 158 118, 122
Moers, Walter, 3, 15, 30, 134, 170, newsreel, 6–7, 36–7, 46, 62, 74, 77,
178, 182–3 111, 152, 155, 158, 195, 197, 200,
Mohnke, Wilhelm, 144 205
monster, 13, 47, 83, 109, 153, 177 Nichols, Bill, 194, 196
morality, 66, 74–5, 115, 117 non-fictional, 170, 213
moralizing, 236, 239 Nora, Pierre, 7
Moretti, Tobias, 212, 219, 228 normalization, 4, 103, 117, 122
motif, 7, 17, 138, 238 nostalgia, 92, 100, 114–16, 223, 225
Index 249
Novick, Peter, 186 portrayal, 3, 8, 17, 58, 62, 67, 117,

Nuremberg, 37, 60, 86, 216–17, 221–5 119, 132–4, 144, 151–2, 154, 157,
Nuremberg Trials, 60 217, 221–5, 228, 231
post-modern, 38, 51, 100, 116, 138
Obersalzberg, 163, 207, 221, 222 post-national, 100–2, 114, 116, 125,
objectivity, 65, 100, 196, 236 127
obsession, 1, 10, 65, 69, 93, 105, 143 post-war, 7, 10, 17, 59, 62, 82, 151,
Odermatt, Urs, 4 153, 158, 168, 193–4, 211, 220,
‘ordinary Germans,’ 6, 14, 15, 73, 103, 228, 235, 239
114, 147, 156, 168, 178 present, 7–10, 35, 39, 44, 60, 64–5,
original, 2–3, 5, 15, 17, 48, 56–7, 59, 73–5, 80, 86, 92, 103, 108, 113,
172, 180, 195, 197–8, 209 117, 152, 156, 159, 161, 164, 172,
194, 196, 203, 205, 209, 214,
217–8, 219, 227, 236, 238–41
Pabst, Georg W., 4, 8, 11, 56–69 private, 6, 14, 41–2, 47–9, 61, 65, 75,
Padover, Saul K., 168 77, 93, 105, 106–7, 110, 112, 115,
parody, 3, 5, 170, 185 140, 144, 154–5, 157, 197–9, 202,
Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 219–21, 229 216–17, 222
pathology, 51, 114, 224 producer, production, produced, 3–5,
pathos, 13, 237 7–9, 11–12, 37, 44, 46, 56, 58–9,
pathetic, 61, 136, 142, 158 63–4, 68, 83, 93, 99, 102–3, 106,
performance, 8, 39–40, 50, 60, 63, 87, 110, 113–14, 118, 121–4, 126–7,
99–100, 102, 106, 111, 118, 123, 133, 151, 158, 163, 169–70, 182,
125, 138, 143 193, 194–5, 198, 206, 209,
perpetrator, 13, 111, 118, 120, 147, 215–16, 218, 226–7, 237, 239–40
164, 168, 188, 217, 220, 223, 229, propaganda, 3, 6, 12, 15, 37, 46, 51,
231, 236, 239 61, 63, 89, 93, 107, 119, 139, 153,
perspective, 15, 47, 64–5, 88, 90–1, 155, 158, 195, 197–8, 204, 211,
102, 105, 112, 117, 120, 124–5, 214, 216, 218, 223, 225, 227
160, 187, 193, 195–6, 200–1, 203, provocation, 63, 77, 90, 197
206, 219–20, 223, 226–7, 236–8 proximity, 17, 99, 228, 235–6, 240
Petersen, Wolfgang, 44, 117 psychoanalysis, 222
Peters, Harald, 134 psychology, 208, 235
photography, 7, 35–6, 41, 44, 48, 61,
111, 152 quotation, 176, 201
Picard, Max, 40
plot, 143, 160, 162, 177, 185, 217, 221 race, racism, 93, 163
politics, 3–7, 10, 37, 39–40, 45, 49, 59, rating(s), 4, 65
62–3, 66, 75, 81, 83, 86, 90, 92, realism, 8, 10, 91, 117, 134, 138, 156,
93, 99–102, 106, 109, 111–15, 157, 179
117–23, 125, 136, 152, 155, reception, 11, 76, 101–2, 113, 120,
159–61, 163–5, 193, 195, 217, 122, 125–6, 133, 156–7, 196, 213,
221, 226, 228, 230, 235, 240 220, 239–40
popular, 1, 5, 8, 10, 16, 37, 45, 85, 87, reconstruction, 3, 12–13, 104, 110,
92, 99, 102, 115, 132, 170–1, 182, 117, 119, 123–4, 154, 217
187, 204–5, 214, 229, 237 reenactment, 45–6, 102, 104, 116, 118
popular culture, 5, 9, 92, 170, 229 Reinhard, Gottfried, 193
pornography, 6, 38 Reitz, Edgar, 72
‘historical pornography,’ 6 representability, 4, 74, 109
250 Index
repression, 58, 68, 221–3 sound, 37, 51, 81, 174, 196, 204–6,
resistance, 59, 68, 103, 115, 118, 144, 213
161–2, 179 soundtrack, 6, 45, 201, 206, 222,
responsibility, 10, 108, 125, 151 224–5
reunification, 7, 160, 169–70 space, 45, 51, 67, 75–7, 81, 88, 100,
revisionism, 14–15, 112, 115, 120 103, 110, 116, 126, 174, 181, 199,
ridicule, ridiculous, 15, 134, 137, 158 213–14, 216–17, 225
Riefenstahl, Leni, 7, 17, 76, 238 spectator, 68, 77, 81, 108, 109, 154,
Rosenbaum, Ron, 38, 44, 49, 142 173, 196, 199, 203, 205
Rosenfeld, Alvin, 38–9 Speer, Albert, 38, 86, 109, 118–19,
Rosenstone, Robert, 101 144, 155, 171, 175, 211, 221, 227
Rotha, Paul, 195–6 Spielberg, Steven, 8, 81, 140
SS (Schutzstaffel), 5, 36, 41, 73, 119,
144, 186, 200, 236
Sanders-Brahms, Helma, 72, 120
stereotype, 137–8
Santner, Eric, 7
Stern, 11, 41–5, 47, 49, 51, 123
SA (Sturmabteilung), 200, 218, 229
Stern, J P., 49
satire, 5, 7–8, 10, 12, 45, 141, 183,
subjectivity, 77, 110, 174, 218–21,
185, 236
229, 238
Schaefer, George, 8, 9
subversive, 60, 92, 101, 116, 146,
Schenck, Ernst-Günther, 144, 155
179
Schirrmacher, Frank, 124, 220
suffering, 103, 114, 117, 120, 122,
Schlingensief, Christoph, 4–5, 11, 117,
153, 155, 173, 227
236
suicide, 12, 58, 104, 155, 176, 202
Schlöndorff, Volker, 113, 119, 122
Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen, 1, 11, 38, 40,
Schmidt, Harald, 5, 170, 178–86 72–93, 117, 133, 197, 237, 241
Schneider, Helge, 12, 14, 117, 134, symbol, 7, 80, 110, 206, 208
141, 145, 156, 175, 179–81 sympathy, 38, 62, 132, 142, 144, 173,
Scholl, Sophie, 156, 178 181, 236
Schubert, Heinz, 84 Szabó, István, 113
Schubert, Peter, 206
Schulze, Gerhard, 13, 126 taboo, 12, 62, 102, 116, 123, 132–3,
screen 153, 236
screen image, 7–8, 10 Tabori, Georg, 4, 135
screenplay, 59–60, 62–3, 121, 154, Tarantino, Quentin, 9
201, 203, 207 television
seduction, 86, 89, 113, 218–20, 229 plays, 113, 122, 169
sentimentality, 83, 92, 102, 114, 116, stations, 16, 169
155, 221–3, 237 TV drama, 8–9, 16, 102–4
sex, 11, 40, 74, 118, 141, 175 TV miniseries, 8
Siegel, Don, 193 Third Reich, 6–11, 13, 38–9, 41, 43,
simulation, 40, 46, 50, 100, 109, 48–9, 58–9, 75, 90, 99, 101–2,
124 110–18, 124, 126, 132, 143, 144,
Singer, Bryan, 161–4 152, 155, 158, 159, 168, 170,
Skoda, Albin, 58, 61, 67 173–4, 177, 178, 181, 182, 184,
slapstick, 13, 46, 134, 136, 141, 179 187, 193–8, 206–7, 213–15, 217,
Sloterdijk, Peter, 50 220, 224, 228–30, 237
soldier, 144, 160–1, 208, 223 Thompson, Kristin, 194
Sontag, Susan, 2, 76–7 topography, 213, 217
Index 251
totem, 4 visual effect, 6

tragedy, 13–14, 59, 62, 63, 74, 108, Volk, 87, 152, 153, 218
132–48, 161, 178, 185, 195, 224, Volksgemeinschaft, 87
237–8 von Stauffenberg, Claus Schenk Graf,
transgression, 5 61, 161–4
trauma, 15, 100, 102, 114, 120, 124,
142, 180, 181, 215, 217, 222–3, Watson, Robert (Bobby), 8
235 Weber, Max, 218
Wegener, Paul, 82
Ullrich, Volker, 17 Wehrmacht, 59, 67, 109, 162, 164, 208
unconscious, 7, 89, 143 Weimar Republic, 50, 59, 83
understanding, 80, 100–2, 104, 109, Weinberg, Gerhard, 7
117, 119, 123, 126, 135, 140, 143,
Welles, Orson, 46
146–7, 151, 156, 158, 170, 207,
Wenders, Wim, 48, 72, 111, 122, 124,
236, 240
153, 224
Wessel, Kai, 5, 14, 113, 160, 187
Valentin, Karl, 89
witness, 88, 121, 144, 155, 171, 194,
veracity, 5, 13, 16, 133, 144
199, 239
Vergangenheitsbewältigung, 1, 7, 10,
World War II, 3, 6–7, 13–15, 45, 76,
101–2, 120, 127, 168, 213, 235,
113, 115, 120–3, 152, 153, 183,
239–40
193, 208, 211
Versailles, 82, 152
victimhood, victimization, 108, 160,
187, 236 YouTube, 3
Vienna, 4, 60, 64
villain, 134, 152, 158, 181 Zadek, Peter, 124
Vilsmaier, Joseph, 116 ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), 6,
violence, 5–6, 38, 104, 141, 159, 165, 113, 158, 169–70, 198
180, 184, 204, 206, 229 Zipes, Jack, 137
Visconti, Luchino, 229 zoom, 238

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THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS CONTEXTS

HISTORY, CINEMA and POLITICS since 1945

Series Editors: Olaf Jensen, University of Leicester, UK, and Claus-Christian

Olaf Jensen and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann (editors)

The Holocaust and Its Contexts Series

List of Illustrations vii

Notes on Contributors xiii

Part I Totem and Taboo

2 ‘Hitler’s Shadow Still Looms over Us’: G. W. Pabst’s The

3 Our Hitler: A Film by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg 72

Part II Another Hitler

5 Tragedy and Farce: Dani Levy’s Mein Führer 132

6 Man, Demon, Icon: Hitler’s Image between Cinematic

7 Hitler Wars: Guilt and Complicity from Hirschbiegel to

Part III Approximations

9 Encountering Hitler: Seductive Charisma and Memory

10 Far Away So Close: Loving to Hate Hitler 234

i.1 Cover page of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s book Hitler – A

3.2 Hitler (Heinz Schubert) as ‘carpet eater’: scene from

6.5 Hitler (David Bamber) strokes the head of his German

Plate section (following page 96)

Hitler in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), top, and a

Charlie Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel, a thinly veiled caricature of Hitler,

Hitler (Ganz) opposite Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch), top, and a

Axel Bangert is a research fellow at Homerton College and a member of

Michael Butter is a research fellow in the School of Language & Litera-

Michael Elm studied sociology and educational theory at the Goethe

Thomas Elsaesser is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the

American universities, notably the University of California (Los Angeles,

Karolin Machtans is Assistant Professor of German Studies at

Johannes von Moltke is Associate Professor of German Studies and

Eric Rentschler is Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Germanic Lan-

Michael D. Richardson is Associate Professor of German and Chair of

Martin A. Ruehl is Lecturer in German Thought at the Faculty of Mod-

Kerstin Stutterheim is a ﬁlmmaker as well as a professor in media

Michael Töteberg is a ﬁlm critic and independent scholar as well

Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland (Hitler – A Film from Germany,

Figure i.2 ‘Voluptuous anguish and ravishing images’: Christian Herrendoerfer’s

exclusively or primarily with Hitler, including Armin Mueller-Stahl’s

Christoph Schlingensief’s 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler: Die letzte Stunde im

Figure i.3 Anthony Hopkins gives his Emmy Award-winning impersonation in

in particular –, it would be naïve to speak of speciﬁcally or purely

The essays in this volume, consequently, concentrate on a selection

the making (and the potential un-making) of Germany’s fascination

of Nazi Germany to the actions and intentions of its Führer. Taking

Figure i.8 In bed with Hitler: a controversial German anti-AIDS campaign of

Hitler’s Henchmen, for instance, aired in 1996/97, was seen by an aver-

Deutschen (Munich, 2005), and Wulf Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory:

ZDF, Germany’s state-run Channel 2, he has devised, supervised, or pro-

54. The emergence of more globalized Hitlerbilder in the wake of a more

im Zeitalter von Histotainment und Reality-TV’, in Rother and Herbst-

Benigni, Roberto, La vita è bella (Italy, 1997).

Riefenstahl, Leni, Triumph des Willens (Germany, 1935).

Despite the massive amount of information at our disposal, we still do

Hitler’s afterlife is a thorny province of discussion and debate, in Ron

Reﬂections on National Socialism, even serious and scholarly ones,

biographer, Konrad Heiden, lamented in 1936 that there existed no reli-

Scenes from a debacle

‘You could try ﬁnding out whether it’s authentic.’

‘I think I know the answer to that one. It may be more interesting

On 22 April 1983, a press release from the prominent West German

Hitler’s diaries: The ﬁlm

The Stern scandal of 1983 was dramatized almost a decade later by