2003 Year in Review

The Real Hitler

Arthur Spiegelman, writing for Reuters, considers the CBS mini-series Hitler: the Rise of Evil…clearly a portrait of a monster.” “[Robert] Carlyle’s creepy, charisma-free performance of Hitler as a rigid fanatic with eyes as hared as black rubber is not calculated to win converts.” This is the problem with the mini-series; it demonizes Hitler to the point of caricature, and thus adds nothing to the understanding of the man or to the study of any other dictator. One might as well watch Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) for an understanding of the nature of Hitler as watch this equally one-dimensional portrait.

Hitler comes across as a nervous, insecure, and unapproachable man possessed by demons of which he is incapable of exorcising. Is it nature or environment that determines Hitler’s character? We are given only brief glances into Hitler’s formative years, a tidy glimpse of his overbearing, unloving father, and an apparent fixation on his mother which carries over into his adult life in his relationships with other women.

Carlyle is not the actor to portray Adolph Hitler. The role calls for someone with greater physical stature. Hitler was not a small man, but in this photoplay he is dwarfed by the actors who play Roehm and Ludendorff. In the scene of the march to the Burgerbauer Kellar, Hitler is not only overshadowed by his taller lieutenants, but swallowed up in an oversized trench coat. Whether this was intentional or not, it further adds to the overt belittling of the future dictator, an injustice to Hitler and to the audience.

Although a sickly child, Hitler did not suffer incapacitating illnesses as an adult. There is no indication that he suffered any long term disability from the mustard gas attack he survived during the waning days of World War I.

Actually, Hitler was an accomplished speaker, having practiced and used the same basic speech for years. He was not a comedian, waving his arms, and gesticulating in feigned indignation. Nor did he rant and rave throughout his speech. Softly, almost inaudible, he would begin his speech – the audience straining to hear his every word – as he proceeded, his voice would gradually rise – until he would finish in a great flourish, gesturing and posing and convincing. He spoke with calculation and conviction, and he held his audience in rapt attention. Even those who despised the man and his message gave him credit for his way with an audience. (Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous propaganda film of the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, Germany, Der Triumph des Willens - The Triumph of the Will - gives a far better audio-visual testimony to Hitler’s speaking abilities.)

Adolph Hitler came to power legitimately through a democratic process, voted into office by an educated public, and supported by many men and women of intellect who were attracted as much to Hitler the man as to his philosophy. He was affable to those he cared for, charismatic to those who are prone to worship power, and cajoling to those who might be recalcitrant. Foreigners found him believable and worthy of trust. England’s Chamberlain and France’s Daladier, two notable examples, fell victim to his charm and persuasive powers in the hours before World War II. To depict him as other than a capable head of state – despicable and evil as he was – is an injustice in itself. For viewers to see Hitler in such a grotesque manner is to leave themselves blind to the nature of evil in their leaders.

The rise of Hitler to power is only one of many such stories, for the history of the twentieth century is punctuated with notorious national leaders. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist. Paranoid and bitter, he instituted pogroms that decimated his inner circle in the twenties and thirties then purged his army general staff just prior to World War II. During the war, he undertook murderous campaigns against several minority groups, among them the Jews and the Ukrainians. Other rulers of note include Mussolini (Italy), Tojo (Japan), Mao (China), Pol Pot (Cambodia), Idi Amin (Uganda), Mbuto (Nigeria), Milosevic (Serbia).

There are Hitlers today - living, breathing, walking, talking, maniacal Hitlers. We have among us the likes of Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Kabila (Congo), Saddam (Iraq), and Castro (Cuba), to name a few. Yet, as in Hitler’s day, we refuse to confront them – we refuse to recognize them for what they are.

In the 1930’s, the League of Nations did nothing when Italy invaded Ethiopia and Japan attacked Mongolia and then China. It did nothing when Germany occupied the Rhineland. Mussolini, Tojo, and Hitler were the leaders of this infamous “axis of evil” who later joined hands to throw the world into turmoil. Today the United Nations cannot – or will not – unite to thwart the designs of present-day Hitlers.

Why? Part of the reason is because the people around these leaders see them, not as monsters, but as human beings of great stature. Indeed, the media spend hour upon hour, page upon page, to show the human side of these dictatorial leaders. Yet, they are cut from the same cloth as Adolph Hitler. They are not a breed apart from the rest of us. Only when they are dead and gone, do the caricatures come to dominate our perceptions of these men and women.

CBS held off its showing of the mini-series for fear that some groups and individuals might be offended by a presentation that ‘humanized’ Hitler. Our sensibilities and history would be better served if the very human nature of Adolph Hitler were shown instead of this factual fantasy.

by William Driver, Guest Columnist
May 23, 2003