Hitler Without Cheers or Tears

A movie looks for the reasons why

Outside West Berlin's Zoo-Palast Cinema, near the bombed-out shell of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, as well as at scores of theaters in the rest of West Germany, long lines of Germans have been lining up to see a new hit. The central figure--his black hair combed flat across his forehead, his impassioned voice exhorting his followers to build a thousand-year Reich--is der Fuehrer himself. The 2 1/2-hour documentary movie about him, Hitler--A Career, is the smash of the summer, drawing thousands to the box offices and spurring a nationwide re-examination of the Nazi past.

The film marks the crest of the "Hitler wave," which began in the early 1970s with a flood of books on the Reichskanzler and his era. Producer Joachim Fest, co-publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and author of Hitler, a massive 1973 biography, drew on film clips of the 1920s, '30s and '40s. Using his book's conclusions as a base, Fest set out to make a movie that would explore how an obscure Austrian postcard artist could win power and put it to such evil purposes. As the newspaper Die Welt noted in its review of the movie, "The incapability of many parents, teachers and publishers to explain the phenomenon of Hitler has [often] been expressed only in general judgments or in total silence."

Critics complain that the film shows too much of Hitler's appeal, too little of its consequences. Jews in particular protest that it skims over the horrors of Nazism while dwelling mainly on Hitler as the hypnotic spellbinder who wooed millions of Germans into a criminal war. Says Werner Nachman, chairman of West Germany's Jewish Central Committee: "The younger generation is being shown a Hitler that does not tell them who he really was." Karl-Heinz Janssen, a member of the editorial board of the weekly Die Zeit, says flatly that "the film is dangerous," arguing that its "academic commentaries [criticizing Hitler] are over the heads of the masses."

Yet others suggest that Janssen may be selling the masses short. Fest's footage of Nazi atrocities and the wholesale destruction of German cities during the war never fails to stun audiences, even those Germans who have been immersed in an atmosphere of guilt for 30 years. Scenes of adulation by massive crowds, weeping women and adoring children often evoke nervous titters. But the film's emphasis on the manner of Hitler's rise to power is intended to explain just how he managed to lead Germans to such infamy.

To younger viewers the film is a revelation. The school system in West Germany after the war either disregarded the Hitler period altogether or raced through it. Said one youth after seeing the movie: "Now I can understand why something like that was possible. In school we studied history only up to World War I." In a recent poll conducted by the illustrated weekly Quick, a majority placed the blame for the war, the extermination of the Jews and the stifling of dissent during the Third Reich on Hitler, but only about 20% condemned his policies totally. Significantly, more than two-thirds wanted additional information about the man and his times. Says Michael Tummler, 24, a political science student at Munich University: "Interest in Hitler within my own generation has increased considerably lately. But this is not to be interpreted as a sudden infection with the ideas that our parents and grandparents once carried. For the majority of us, Hitler remains an enigmatic, almost ridiculous phenomenon. Though we have never understood it, there is no reason why we should not at least try to find out."

Among older viewers the reaction is often uneasiness. Says West Berliner Eva Becker, 76: "That was how Hitler was. He was black magic, and intoxicated people. We thought of him only as a dynamic leader who got the nation on its feet again and solved the awful unemployment problem." Fest aims to correct the ignorance that one generation has forced upon its successor, so that a second Hitler cannot rise to power--and for most viewers, he succeeds. Says he: "If you want to make a society a little more secure against someone like Hitler, then you must give people an understanding of the forces that were so appealing. There is a big need to know how it all could have happened."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.