12-year old Alfred Czech receiving Iron Cross from Hitler in last days of the war. The Downfall describes the ten days leading up to Hitler's bunker suicide on April 30th, 1945. The tattered German Army surrendered a week later. It is the first significant film about Hitler made by a German film company. That Germans had to wait 60 years to confront their leader's demise is an indication of the enduring corrosiveness of the Hitler legend.

This is at least the third movie made of Trevor Roper’s 1947 book The Last Days of Hitler.[1], which started as a sensational British intelligence assessment of what happened to the Nazi leader. As soon as the Soviets captured Berlin, they quickly spirited away the bodies of the bunker suicide group. An extensive interrogation of all captured witnesses, captured dental records and an autopsy led to assurances that the Führer had not escaped.

The producers of The Downfall made a number of brilliant editorial decisions. The film explains nothing. It shows in historically accurate detail what happened. The viewer is witness to the many surreal vignettes played out in the charnel pit of Berlin in final days of WW-II. With this essentially neutral portrayal of a man who alternates between being a kindly uncle and a raving lunatic, the usual cadre of critics who feel they alone own Hitler (it is much more than a cottage industry) are left speechless.

To add further complexity, one of the quiet heroes of the film is an SS medical officer. This nuance will clash against the shibboleth that all SS men were only sadistic concentration camp guards instead of also the Swiss Guard of Hitler’s megalomaniacal rule. Heavily indoctrinated, they were also the best-trained and fiercest combat troops of the European war--and often the most cruel.

The supporting women are expertly cast, particularly Eva Braun–more of a party girl than one imagines (and with a subtle nod to her possible affair with General Fegelein)--as well as Magda Goebbels. Frau Goebbels is an icy beauty, as fascinating as the stare of a cobra. Her methodical poisoning of their six children is one of the most sickening moments in film.

One criticism that can be made against the film is that too many of Hitler’s generals are portrayed as reasonable men--professional soldiers, yet still honor-bound to a madman’s captivating aura. Yes, the German General Staff was comprised of classically educated men of a caliber that will never again lead a nation’s military, but surely they were not all so resolutely noble, regal and handsome. OK, there were two fatties–-Göring and Bormann--but they were mere window-dressing in this film and clearly as evil as they were corpulent. Also, the bunker is depicted as being larger than the cramped, smelly redoubt it actually was. Dynamited by the Soviets a few years after the war it is now flooded and buried without any plaque noting its location.

Watching this gruesome story unfold is like traveling back to the Hitler bunker in a time machine. It is shocking to witness the catastrophic violence of the death throes of Berlin. Death in the camps was a smoothly humming assembly line; death in Berlin was sudden and always capricious–a deafening cacophony of artillery shells, tank fire, collapsing buildings and the whistle and thud of bullets. Fresh body parts litter this urban moonscape.

In the end, The Downfall comes closer than any film or book in portraying convincingly the dissolution of Hitler, the genius psychopath who was able to lead a nation–and himself--down a path of utter destruction. Scenes of officer suicide in the face of Russian advances are realistically portrayed (and evoke echoes of Masada). And yet, still, Hitler’s hold on the psyche of a nation is not fully understandable. We see what happened; that his followers thought him truly a god. But how--really--did that happen? Could it happen to us? Extraordinary as the film is in depicting the dying days of a once brilliant madman expiring in his lair, yet something more is needed to make us understand the “why” of it. Perhaps, like all religious conversions, the reason for such a captivating thrall can never be understood. It can only be experienced. Lord save us from more of that.

[1]The last days of Hitler, H.R. Trevor Roper, Macmillan, 1947. Jochim Fest wrote a book of the same name in 1996. The Bunker, by James P. O’Donnell is a somewhat overheated 1978 update of Trevor Roper’s work. Berlin, the downfall 1945 by Antony Beever, 2002 describes the death throes of that city. Excellent books all. (There is a lot of Soviet propaganda about Hitler’s death that is strongly misleading. Stalin forced his autopsy teams to report that Hitler died by poisoning himself like a coward, rather than shooting himself like a man. He certainly shot himself in the right temple; he may also simultaneously have taken cyanide.) A recent photo supposedly of Hitler's skull with a bullet wound on top of the head are obvious fakes. (Just look at the smirk on the Russian's face holding it.)