The Hitler mystery

Recently I had a most serendipitous viewing experience: I came across the films MAX and DOWNFALL in close succession.  The two films about Hitler, one about his early life as an aspiring artist and the other about his final days in a bunker in Berlin, led me to consider what an enigmatic figure Hitler is in the public consciousness.  He is like Satan in Milton’s PARADISE LOST: the ultimate symbol of evil and yet by far the character that the audience is most fascinated by.  Perhaps, though, we are even more intrigued by Hitler because he is one of us, a human being, whose impact on history there are still many alive to recall with the poignancy of first-hand experience.

Today, though, it is not enough for us to discuss Hitler, to portray him, or to merely see him recreated.  We yearn to understand him.  Thus we have become less interested in the figure of Hitler, the man atop the balcony proclaiming his will to all the German people, and more interested in the man Hitler: the young artist returning from the first World War with nothing, dejected and seeking approval; or the arthritic old man whose temperament shifts between tender and unhindered rage from moment to moment, depending on what dose of delusion or reality his henchmen present to him.  

But I wonder: can we as a society, now with the buffer of time, ever separate these two -  the monument and the man?  Indeed, when Noah Taylor introduces himself so casually as “Adolf Hitler,” little tingles shoot down our spines.  And when Bruno Ganz waves his hand (shaking with Parkinson's disease) over a map to move regiments that do not exist, the collapse is less that of a single man than the weight of history crushing down upon the Germans and – yes – the audience.  Both of these moments serve to make the films more powerful, transforming subtle moments into cosmic ones, but both moments simultaneously undermine our quest to understand Hitler as an individual.  These faults are not those of the filmmakers, quite the contrary, but are more emblematic of a cultural phenomenon I do not quite have the courage to define.

The two films (quite unintentionally) serve as splendid companion pieces.  They portray the two times in Hitler’s life that are most often overlooked and that offer unique insight into the making and undoing of one of History’s most elusive personas.  Together they help raise the questions: who was this man, how did he become who and what he was, and in our heart of hearts do we really want to know?

 Three faces of Hitler

Comments

[Brett]

There are two basic approaches to trying to understand or define Hitler: psychoanalytic and historical.

From the psychoanlytic perspective, you focus on Hitler as an individual - his motivations, his emotions, his reasons, his reactions. From the historical perspective, you focus on the impact he had on the world stage, and the figure that you create to embody that impact has to be one that is an uber-mensch Form of the 'Evil.' Both must be taken into account to try to 'understand' Hitler - simply thinking of him as some kind of superhuman statue and symbol ignores the fact that he was a human being, yet thinking of him as just another person with his flaws and his jealousies and bitternesses doesn't do justice to the incredible breadth of his influence and the power of his persona.

He is Both the monument And the man - to say that he felt and experienced life like the rest of us skirts the reality that he wielded a power and an influence that only a very few people in the history of the world ever have.

I do think that this would, if not fundamentally, then significantly, change the experience of being human in a way that rest of us could only relate to by conceiving of it in monumental terms.

And so Hitler's apparent insanity during his Downfall is something that we can't directly understand - he has lived a life wherein everything he Wants to happen Does happen, manifesting his will in a nearly God-like manner - and then that comes crumbling down when his will and reality, for the first time in a long time, are in discord.

I think any attempt to Separate the man from the monument is ill-conceived. He is both, and lived as both, and thus we must view him through both filters. At times, it may be helpful to investigate him from one perspective in order to delve as deeply into that viewpoint as possible. But when thinking of him as an entity entire, you must pull back and widen your lens. I don't even think that you necessarily have to Meld the two, either. They exist separately within the same larger totality.

[brian scofield]

You make some good points, Brett. I agree to a certain extent that it's fallacious to separate the "monument from the man" insofar as his power had a profound effect on his psyche. But I guess what I was getting at is that he is so larger than life, and what he represents is so powerful, that it makes it very difficult for us to present him as a human being without the added weight of the cultural and historical circumstances surrounding him. This is especially true for his representation in MAX, where it takes place long before his rise to power. We still watch every move he makes through a certain colored lens.

My observations weren't necessarily critical as much as observatory. The figure, and the man, will continue to fascinate our imaginations, and we'll constantly look for more angles to see him from (what was his childhood like, what was his love-life like, etc.) in order to try and comprehend what made him so influential AND so evil. We'll probably at some point even look to see if he was truly as evil as history has painted him. All of these "angles," when taken separately, prove inadequate, but can nevertheless contribute to our broader search for understanding.