The situation displayed in the movie, although impossible to occur in a week, is absolutely possible in any other period of time, maybe even not much longer than that. The movie is an excellent portait of fascism and domination-through-ignorance.

When one of these films The Downfall abut Hitler’s last days in the bunker came out there was outrage because the film was said to ‘humanize’ him and other high ranking Nazis.

Well humanize him it did. In the sense of presenting him as a human being. He wasn’t, however ‘a nice guy’. His charms were displayed, so was his murderous obstinence, his refusal to surrender even tho’ thousands of German kids were being cut down by Soviet soldiers for no reason not to mention his bizarre tantrums.

Still what is represented is a human being not some mythical monstrosity and that is what people objected to. Like the fury of Jewish people at Hannah Arendt for presenting Eichmann as a mere bureaucratic functionary (in addition to her less than complimentary and ironically intra-Jewish racialist observations on the Israeli courts) what was desired – nay demanded – was that Eichmann, Hitler and the rest were not human. Outside of humanity.

But this tendency to dehumanize the enemy, to rid oneself of the uneasy truth that we are all to a certain extent monsters is idiosyncratically human and observable in every war. Indeed the masters of it were the Nazis.

I think the Manichean illusion that ‘we’ are not capable of monstrosity ironically condemns us to bear witness to monsters in the future. Unfortunately it’s so morally convenient to simply rest smug on our conceptions of our own virtues that it’s very difficult to make people face the abyss. Moreover he vast majority of us simply haven’t the courage.

‘obedience to authority’ is one of those awful mixed blessings we humans just have to manage. There’s nothing uniquely German about it, even though it would be easier for many people if that were the case.

It’s part of being a primate in fact. Carl Sagan had wonderful phrasing for this referring to scientists who irrationally capitulate to authority. There are few people capable of resisting authority when needed, mostly misfits. Literary characters usually come to mind: Berenger in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros being one.

We’re hard wired to accept authoritarian dictates as ‘moral’ even when they’re obviously not. Fortunately we’re also inherently paradoxical and strive in the opposite direction as well. I think to do so successfully necessitates acknowledging unpleasant facts. Many rational hedonists were completely baffled by the spectacle of Nazi Germany. They simply didn’t understand the utter Unreason. Orwell who did pointed out that it was what he called ‘half-fascists’ like Winston Churchill (his example) who recognized Hitler for what he was before anyone else.