A Film Review (of sorts) 

The other night I decided to watch a couple of opening scenes from a rented video, The Downfall – Hitler and the end of the Third Reich (2004) before dropping off to sleep.  Big mistake.  The movie gripped me from the first frame and wouldn’t let me stop watching until it had run its last credit.  I cannot imagine they actually, finally made a movie like that about Hitler. 

 I’m sure that it took all these years’ distance from the real events to allow the perspective that permitted the portrayal of these characters in all their humanity and not as the predictable cartoon cardboard cut out monsters we have been fed ad nauseum.  

Sixty years later we still have not come to terms with the fact that those who did such horrible things were not animals (what a defamation of our fellow creatures!) or demons, but men and women of flesh and blood.  It is because these were the horrific accomplishments of real people that their acts are so threatening to us and we must quickly draw the shroud over the unspeakable truth - that the face that rises to meet us in our reflection on these events is our own.  

For me the hardest part is to realize how impossible it is to actively seek this darkness and how everything in us works to prevent, to protect, us from this realization.  Because we cannot see our face in the face of Hitler (I suspect, with even more difficultly, in the face of George W. Bush) we demonize instead of really seeing, really understanding.

Eros and Thanatos flow within the human breast, contend for our allegiance and would carry us away on their conflicting currents.  These two drives manifest themselves in many remarkable ways within our psyches and our social institutions.  One current would lead us toward life and light, creativity, love and wholeness and a ripening of our pregnant natures. 

The other, equally forceful, equally human, current leads down to the darker regions.  In its institutionalized incarnation it can embody a deep form of unthinking, a shutting down of all connection with others, the world around us and life itself.  This is the current that finds manifestation in the three great plagues of our modern world: fundamentalism, fascism and reductionism.

In the film, The suicides of Eva Braun and Hitler are anticlimactic compared with the dramatic impact of Frau Goebbels’ murder of her six children.  In this act we see all the culmination and the horrible implications of an existence devoted so totally to certainty, fanatical loyalty and idealism that finally even life itself must be snuffed out before yielding to disloyalty or doubt.   

“It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false: tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality--this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.” 

The Ascent of Man (1973) Jacob Bronowski

Bronowski grasped the importance of that which we must avoid at all cost: the mind-deadening narcotic of thinking that we have an exclusive franchise on truth – truth of any kind.  

After reading the speech that Donald Rumsfeld gave to the American Legion Convention in Utah.  I pulled several choice quotes for my memory file as a reminder - and a warning.  The widely reputed controversial thrust of the speech was his comparison of those who, prior to WWII, sought to appease Hitler with our contemporaries who would negotiate with “terrorists.” 

These days the meaning behind our leaders’ words is always cloaked in idealistic rhetoric and euphemism.  What I found most chilling about Rumsfeld’s speech was not the patently false and misleading “lessons” drawn from pre WWII years’ diplomatic failures that would presume to inform our dealings with the problems of today’s world, but his chilling, reduction of everything, every attempt at moral equivalency or a small modicum of intellectual nuance and self-correction, to a high-contrast black-and-white, brutal simplicity.

“And that is important in any long struggle or long war, where any kind of moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong, can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.” 

“Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country.  America is not what’s wrong with the world.”

Address at the 88th Annual American Legion National Convention as delivered by Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld,  Salt Lake City, Tuesday, August 29, 2006

These quotes were extremely frightening, because they represented not just the flakey ideology of one morally and intellectually bankrupt zealot but that they articulated the official party line of all three branches of those who presume to rule us.  

Even though forbidden to do so by our president, the left is especially prone to compare the present regime to the Third Reich.  One needs to observe tendencies and attributes rather than exact surface similarities that of course can never exist.

If calling them Nazis is too unpalatable for you, let us just say that the Bush administration seems to evidence the nascent stages of a Nazi-syndrome disorder (NSD).  Many would-be oppressive regimes suffer from these Hitler-like symptoms:  they share a belief in the self-congratulatory verities of good versus evil, an unchallenged moral superiority, a heroic self image and a certainty of “Gott Mit Uns.” 

This syndrome does not permit the acceptance of any information that contradicts the official “facts” or the universally established worldview.  It requires also a diminution or actual denial of the humanity of certain segments of humankind based upon predetermined categories.  Of course it then becomes possible to apply inhumane treatment to individuals within these categories, such as rape, death, torture, deprivation and a callous disregard for the “collateral damage” occurring to whole classes, groups or countries. 

There is an obsessive lust for imperial, absolute power.  An unwavering devotion and unquestioning obedience is demanded of the ever-expanding cadre of true believers.  The leader must have a messianic vision for himself as the God-appointed savior of not only the homeland but as the bringer of light (democracy?) to the whole world. 

Along with this expansive self-image is a refusal to admit to oneself or others any fallibility or the possibility of error.  This infallibility must be maintained in the face of any facts to the contrary and all followers must support this delusion or be accused of disloyalty and possibly treason. 

A strong pro-administration press and an efficient propaganda machine must be in place to reinforce this ideology and assure the popularity of the regime with the electorate.  Sound familiar?  

I would suggest that precisely because we have never admitted Hitler’s humanity, we refuse to allow that these acts were committed and administered by a charismatic, flesh-and-blood, democratically elected politician.  Because we believed him to be a demon with fangs and claws it is almost impossible for us to detect similar symptoms when, once again, such a leader arises in our own period of history and in our own midst. 

Hitler was neither a god nor a demon.  Bush is neither a god nor a demon.  Such a leader can inspire the electorate to incredible flights of self-destructive stupidity as we have seen in the sad historical record of WWII as well as today’s headlines. 

I see in the words and actions of our present rulers and their apologists many disturbing tendencies toward a repetition of history’s dark past.  If we understood this past with greater clarity and perhaps a bit more objectivity we might be able to avoid the relearning of some of the harshest teachings.  I believe this is one of the lessons the producers of The Downfall are attempting to show us.

I swear, I do not think of these people as inhumane monsters who get up every morning, look into the bathroom mirror and say to themselves, “Well Donald, let’s see just how much evil we can do today!”  “Everybody has his reasons.” Jean Renoir

For me, the message of The Downfall is that the lesson of these horrific acts will be lost to us if we view them only as the actions of madmen - part of a mad race.  Rumsfeld is wrong to demonize the “other” he fears so by branding all opposition to Empire as “terrorism” and rallying us around the true cross.  So we are equally wrong to brand Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney and that whole crowd only as madmen and mere craven fools. 

By denying the “other” his humanity, we loose our ability to see him or even to counteract his violence and his destruction - even our ability to save ourselves from the harm his excesses will certainly visit upon us.

In Buddhism there is the Metta Sutta in which we say to ourselves, our loved ones - and finally even to our enemies: 

“May you be happy.  May you be free from suffering.  May you enjoy the fruits of your labors, duly acquired.  All have Karma as their own.”

This seemingly simple-minded golden rule of sorts elucidates a profound teaching.  It contains the only strategy I have ever encountered that can look into the great pit of blackness, gore and violence that fills the human skull and somehow love and transcend all that is contained there.  In fact I think that one cannot truly appreciate the Metta Sutta without fully drinking from the depths of that bloody chalice. To, in the end, stand on this knowledge of the fullness of both our genius and our atrocity with love and affirmation is, to my mind, the only way to fulfill our humanity. I hasten to add that this is a test that I fail with a disturbing regularity.

“It’s unbelievable that he (Hitler) could manipulate all those people.  He only succeeded because he was a human being, and that’s why we have to show this.  To show him as a human being.  Everything else would be fatal.  And it would be a historical mistake.”
- Director of The Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel

==============

Bob Boldt is a Political Cartoonist, and an associate editor at MWC News

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