12:03am: Mr. Hilter, I Presume
I just saw this:
http://us.imdb.com/Details?0346293 over the weekend
When CBS first aired it, it was attacked for "humanizing" Hitler.
I think it is a dangerous perspective to think of Hitler as some kind of
inhuman monster. What makes Hitler so frightening is that he was a
human. People, not demons or machines, are the ones capable of
doing what he and his subordinates (all humans) did, and they are
capable of doing it even if they were not lifelong sociopaths. That is
what is so scary about so many of the stories from WWII.
In oppozing the "humanization" of Hitler in telling his story, people
who think they are well-meaning are really doing society a disservice
in that they are turning him into some kind of non-human creature.
By making him different from everyone else to such an extent, the
notion of "it can't happen again" is built into the Hitler mythos. Yet,
there is ample evidence from Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Cambodia,
Biafra, Armenia, etc. that what Hitler did had been done before, and
has been done since.
The real Hitler story is even more disturbing than what is portrayed
in this film (which is more accurate than most Hitler docudramas,
but still falls short in some areas). For example, Hitler is often
portrayed as a lifelong virulent anti-Semite, but it is actually known
that he had many Jewish friends while still in Austria and expressed
no anti-Semitism openly until later in life (around 1920, when he was
31). It is all the more disturbing to think that someone could, over
time, develop into a monster rather than having been dropped onto
the earth from the Evil Dimension as a fully-formed monster.
Missing entirely from the film is Himmler, who was crucial both in
designing the Final Solution, and in convincing Hitler to order the
execution of Ernst Roehm. Hitler's development from a boring
nobody into a murderous dictator was most certainly helped along
by Himmler, and the very downplayed Hermann Goering, Rudolf
Hess, and Josef Goebbels.
The human side of these monsters makes them all the scarier. If
people choose to ignore it, it makes it all too easy to believe that
you can easily recognize a monster by their hideous demeanor and
manaical looks. The frightening reality is that these people can
seem very normal, perhaps even virtuous, often until it is too late.
Perhaps, even, under different circumstances they would be normal
or even virtuious. Normal people can become monsters (read
Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners" for some documentary
evidence regarding this trend in the rank and file) in the kinds of
circumstances where monstrosity is rewarded as a virtue. By
ignoring these facts, it makes it all the easier for this kind of history
to repeat itself.
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