Oren's 'New Republic' downfall

Michael B. Oren’s recent New Republic article about the German-made Hitler film, Downfall, starts off with a good idea, but lets it drive him much further than it should. The film, which chronicles the final days of Hitler and a number of other top Nazi operatives in and around his Berlin bunker, has been met with both praise for sweeping scope and dramatically jacked-up performances and uncertainty for its willingness to humanize Nazi leadership, especially Hitler. But Oren doesn’t want to let anyone read the film as insight into the dictator’s psyche, for he suggests its entire purpose is to smooth over the German conscience.

Oren’s claim is that the film is a deceitful reimagining of the German people as fellow Nazi victims. He’s bothered by the distinctions made between good Germans (many citizens) and bad Germans (the top Nazis), but the counterclaim one inevitably ends up with – that all Germans were equally evil – is ludicrous. While Downfall might make the German people seem less enthusiastic than they were, Oren wants to make the case that the film should make no distinctions within the Germans. To him, they were all Nazis, and thus representations of Ultimate Evil who should be portrayed as nothing less.

Oren simply won’t accept that, despite widespread enthusiasm for Nazism, the citizenry was being abused by a megalomaniacal dictator. In his view, there is no division of blame, and the German people are Hitler’s co-conspirators.

Not only does this view make a sweeping, impossibly broad historical indictment, it misreads the film. Downfall doesn’t let the German people off the hook, but it does recognize that the actions of some (Hitler and his closest associates) were far worse than the actions of many, and that, though the Nazi party's actions as a whole was clearly evil, it was comprised of people – people that had the capacity to transcend that evil.

Did the German people deserve some blame for not rising up against Hitler’s atrocities? Certainly. Oren, though, doesn’t want to recognize that the people were in the grip of a violent sociopath who wouldn’t hesitate to kill them should they rebel. Nor does he accept that, within the Nazi party, individuals could have broken ranks with the party line.

Oren’s idea that the film is as much about the German people’s complicity as the men in the bunker is right, but it doesn’t let them off the hook. Instead, it simply reminds us not to judge the masses as a collective, singular entity. Downfall is about humanizing the Nazis, and when that happens, they can't remain the colelctive shorthand for unadulterated evil that they've become. Oren is understandably nervous about the film's altered perception, but he's allowed his nervousness to become a collective indictment without examining the individuals involved.