The Early Days Of Evil

By James Poniewozik

When TV provokes a philosophical argument about evil, the subject matter isn't usually more profound than Rob's treachery on Survivor. But CBS tapped deeper passions when it announced its flagship mini-series for the May sweeps: a biography of the young Adolf Hitler from adolescence through his rise to power. Jewish leaders charged that the mini-series might make Hitler sympathetic, by showing him out of the context of the Holocaust, or blame his evil on an unhappy youth. In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd suggested that the network was using the project to court young viewers. Says CBS president Leslie Moonves: "You would have thought we were going to have a handsome young guy dancing in the streets of Munich."

The controversy is really an extension of a long-standing debate: Does explaining Hitler's evil mean excusing it? In fact, Hitler: The Rise of Evil (May 18 and 20, 9 p.m. E.T.) is far from a glowing portrait. "People said, 'Don't you run the risk of humanizing Hitler?''' says executive producer Peter Sussman. "I don't think that's a risk. We're showing that he walked and lived among us." Sussman did take pains to be sensitive, ordering that all the Nazi uniforms and props be burned after shooting, so none would end up on eBay. In one case, the powers behind Hitler were too sensitive. In an interview with TV Guide, executive producer Ed Gernon said the U.S. before the war in Iraq was, like Germany during Hitler's rise, a place where people were afraid to go against the prevailing current. Hitler's production company, Alliance Atlantis, immediately fired him--inadvertently proving his point.

Still, the scrutiny may have helped Hitler avoid a pitfall of TV biopics: focusing on psychology--bad childhoods, thwarted ambitions--to the exclusion of history and society. Why a child becomes a man who would conceive of genocide is significant, but more crucial is how a civilized nation could let him do it. Hitler asks the latter question, admirably and intelligently.

The temptation for an actor fearful of glamorizing Hitler is to play him as either a buffoon or an obvious monster. The first choice trivializes his crimes; the second lets viewers smugly conclude they could never make the same mistake as those evil, stupid Germans. Star Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty) avoids both traps. His Hitler is a humorless paranoid whose anti-Jewish rants are laughed off by his comrades in the trenches of WW I. But after the war, he discovers his gift for rabble-rousing. He is an artist of grievance, and in bitter, between-the-wars Germany, that is enough to gain power--that, plus luck and savvy p.r. (which includes trimming his mustache so that his look will be memorable, as Lenin's was).

And though Hitler cemented his power through deceit and thuggery, his gains also came through the ballot box. Without excusing its subject, Hitler shows why Germans followed him--some out of fear or opportunism, yes, but some because, for all his hate mongering, he and his Nazis were a party of optimism and vitality in a beaten-down, cynical nation. When he voices his twisted but near religious belief in Germanic exceptionalism--"Do you think there are any Jews in Valhalla?"--one can despise him while understanding the source of his power. He is the personification of Yeats' line: the worst, but full of passionate intensity.

The finished mini-series has swayed many critics. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, says it "reminds us how fragile democracy is." That's not to say that Hitler solves every mystery--it's cagey, for instance, on whether most Germans shared or simply tolerated Hitler's anti-Semitism--or that no viewer might draw the wrong lessons from it. When people say it's risky to try to understand evil, they're right. But it is far more dangerous not to try to understand it at all.