20th Anniversary Retrospective: "Downfall" And The Historical Merit of Humanizing Hitler

It was a gamble making a man out of a monster, but a great movie happened because of it.

May 1, 2022

On April 30, 1945, Soviet forces closed in on Berlin. Over the prior two weeks, they had surrounded the German capital to the north, south, and east. The city’s last defenses were conscripted men and some Hitler Youth. Forced to accept defeat, Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, retreated to a room in his Führerbunker, a sprawling complex beneath the Reich Chancellery, and committed suicide.

Twelve years earlier, in the grounds above the bunker, he received a rousing ovation after getting appointed Chancellor of Germany. At that point, it had been 14 years since the Treaty of Versailles got signed in the Palace of the former French monarchy, where Germany accepted severe ramifications for their role in WWI. In signing, they had to demilitarise the Rhineland and shoulder financial responsibility for the conflict to the tune of $269 billion in current USD. The bitterest pill to swallow was Article 231, often referred to as the “War Guilt Clause.” It effectively stated that by signing the treaty, Germany accepted fault for the entire war, a conflict sparked by the assassination of an Austrian Archduke by a Serbian nationalist.

Despite their misgivings, the Germans signed, satisfying an Allied force seeking severe reparations. What nobody realized was that in ending one world war, they had helped begin another.

Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a town in northwest Austria-Hungary. His father, Alois, was middle-aged and had little interest in his family. He died when Hitler was 14. Four years later, Hitler left for Vienna to study fine art. Despite his passion for the craft, his applications to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna got rejected. His mother died of breast cancer later that year, and an orphaned Hitler lived in homeless shelters and sold watercolors to make money. In Vienna’s Mariahilf district, where he lived, German nationalism was popular. He regularly consumed anti-Semitic rhetoric that warned of a coming Jewish storm threatening European Christianity.

In 1914, WWI began. Despite living in Munich, the Austrian Hitler should have been returned to his native country but was permitted to fight in the Bavarian Army. While most of his wartime experience was behind the front lines, he got wounded at the Battle of the Somme, was nearly blinded in a gas attack, and received multiple awards and commendations for his bravery. Despite his true heritage, he developed a profound sense of German patriotism, and the nation’s surrender and subsequent signing of the Treaty of Versailles shook him to the core.

It is unsurprising that a man ignored by a disinterested father, orphaned by the death of his mother, struck by loss as he grew up in a sickly family, and rejected by his dreams, would find comfort in an unfamiliar land that embraced him as an equal. He had a purpose, a cause, and the praise all men of purposes and causes seek. Germany was home, and now that it needed saving, he would become its savior.

As an army employee, he got tasked with infiltrating the German Workers’ Party in 1919 but became enamored, due partly to its chairman’s anti-Semitism. After getting discharged in 1920, he became a full-time party employee, useful for his oratory skills. He was not handsome. He was not clean, crisp, or wise. He was a young man of great passion with a talent for manipulation and a voice to carry his rhetoric to the far reaches of the nation. As his reputation grew, so did his ability to exploit his psychological advantage over his listeners and appeal to their fury over Germany’s defeat and the terms of surrender that had plunged the country into chaos.

But it was not just fiery eyes and booming vocals that endeared Hitler to the people. Despite his heritage, he felt like one of them and possessed that reckless passion that often draws us towards political figures. He was a revolutionary, that fabled character of history whose desire for a new world inspires the masses to rise in revolt. He was not a coward. He embraced the possibility of ruin, even staging a coup with him at the forefront, risking death to begin the German state anew. Before and after his imprisonment, where he penned Mein Kampf, his famous memoir, he used Jews as scapegoats for Germany's problems, seeking to answer the long-standing “Jewish Question” by reducing the argument to its simplest form: kill them all.

It is a horrifying concept but comforting when developed, designed, and carried out by someone else. It is not so much the notion of mass killing, but the idea that a solution need not be complex, and a man is willing to speak on its simplicity with passion. It is human nature to find security in the simplest terms. If there is an easy out, we take it. The cure to our ailments is only a flick of the wrist away, but we must all agree to flick it. Few better inspirations exist than someone giving us a simple rationale and telling us what we wish to hear. Hitler knew what the German people wanted to hear; believing it himself was a bonus.

The image of the Third Reich is often one of polished shoes and tailored uniforms, masses of fanatics and well-kempt soldiers goose-stepping through the streets, carrying that imposing Nazi emblem on dozens of flags. It is organized, and thus more evil. It is difficult to impress the cruelty of Nazi Germany and explain how well-mechanized their murderous operations were if they seem at all disorganized.

Downfall thus adopts a rarely-seen perspective, that of a bombed and broken Nazi Germany drawing its last breaths. In the bowels of the Führerbunker, Hitler and many high-ranking Nazi Party members watch the nation crumble into dust, slowly breaking under the weight of its ambitions and the bloody reckoning its enemies seek to bring it.

In that way, the film feels true to its title. Every scene is bleak and gray but still a product of its setting. We get jarred by the darkness when we emerge into the city and see the sun shines above, no matter how polluted its light. Every conflict, controversy, and ultimate choice is completely shut off from the outside world until you feel it shake above your head and remember you are only there because the world has forced the issue. It is a visual approach that sets the proper tone, and allows the film to do more thematically than most movies of its ilk, but its ideals are what caused so much turmoil.

Downfall was controversial due to its depiction of Hitler. We felt uneasy humanizing a monster, lending emotional credence to a man responsible for the world’s most well-documented atrocity. It was a foolish critique. Hitler was human. He was not born into bloodshed. He did not inherit violence. He did not emerge from the womb spouting rhetoric or galvanizing into anti-Semitism. He was a man. He longed, dreamed, ached, lusted, loved, suffered, and died. He visualized a future for those he admired, fought for what he believed without consideration for sentiment, achieved personal greatness despite tremendous odds, and did what we often strive for more than anything else: run from who we are to become something else entirely.

The horror is not in a monster being monstrous; it is in a man being as we are, but somehow going so, so wrong.

In every moment where Hitler feels accessible, we get reminded of just how wrong he went. He is a man that inspires love and admiration in a way that feels just as honorific as individualized. His young secretary appreciates how amiable he is towards his friends and employees. Many of his followers are enthralled by his presence, marveling at his ambition and abandon in pursuing it. All is in service of the great German cause, and the glory they see waiting on the horizon is theirs by right. All they must do is wait for the dawn under the watchful eye of the Fuhrer.

After all, Fuhrer means "leader" or "guide." His use of the term dated back to his early years in the Nazi Party, when he demanded dictatorial authority in exchange for his return after a contentious departure. It was a notion of personal supremacy he would never relinquish. The Thousand-Year Reich was a German dream born in the mind of an Austrian, but it was no less his to realize. It would be done, by his will or not at all.

Downfall recognizes this contradiction and plays off it. Despite Hitler's outward concern and the blind idolatry of his many worshippers, he is a man whose cult of personality cannot overcome human nature. As the walls close in on a crippled Berlin, as the Red Army creeps closer to victory, no amount of adoration can save Hitler. If it was a German dream, it dies with Germany, and Germany is ablaze: few are willing to stay and burn with their Führer.

It is compelling to watch history from this perspective: a diversion from the typical accounting of Hitler’s final moments, where a tyrant slinks into his room, draws a revolver, and evades justice with a quick death. It is truthful, but labeling him a coward is reductive, and Downfall knows this. He was not a coward, simply a man who could not accept defeat. Even when he sees the writing on the wall, he turns to face the other. Regardless of reality, there is another battle to fight or offensive to plan. The war must still be won.

It is what makes this interpretation of Hitler more truthful than the others. We are not ones to surrender our dreams or neglect our ambitions. We often internalize without hope of realization, but once the course gets charted, return is unacceptable. For a man so convinced not just of German supremacy but the necessity of his dictatorial rule in securing it, his inability to let go is authentic.

It is not inhuman of us to see a broken man leaning over in the bunker as a procession of generals, secretaries, and physicians implore him to surrender. He has lost everything he knows and is: deep down, he knows it. He does not deny his circumstances until the end: he embraces them, but only momentarily. He is like us, letting a roadblock seem unconquerable before barreling through regardless of the wisdom in soldiering on.

As he clings to hope, those around him begin to see him for his true self. Few are willing to die for him, and those initially loyal to the Reich realize the depth of their disconnect. As Hitler sits with his advisors, he tells a troubling truth: there are no civilians in wartime. It is not a matter of morality or ethics, right or wrong. It is that no nation has ever chosen life over victory. If it need be done, it will be done, life be damned. But the passivity with which Hitler states it, a far cry from his usual roaring rhetoric, chills his followers. Just 15 miles away, they drew up the Final Solution, condemning 6 million Jews to death. Now that they and their people are on the line, life seems precious. The Führer’s disregard for it finally exposes him.

As the end draws nearer, every manner in which Downfall humanizes the man unravels, but deliberately. His care seemed sincere, and perception, as we often say, is reality. Downfall forces us to accept the truth in that idea because the actuality of history will not allow for anything different. The people of Germany were people. Dismissing their choice of leader and ideology on the premise that they were not like us undermines the horror. In the bunker, the collapse is palpable. Hitler cannot trust, and he knows it. No matter what he blames for that reality (usually the cowardice of his betrayers), it is reality nonetheless. Ensuring the effectiveness of the cyanide capsules means testing them on his dog, who struggles when its jaw gets pried open and cries as the poison takes effect. It was an animal of whom Hitler was very fond, but therein lies what Downfall asks: what does it mean to be liked by Hitler?

He is a human being. He breathes, eats, drinks, feels, and, as we see when his secretary surveys his room after his body gets removed, bleeds. But what good is a man drawing breath if each moment plunges the world deeper into darkness? What good is his meal when it nourishes the mind behind such cruelty? What good is his drink when it parches the thirst of a man who inspires hatred and death? What good are his feelings when every sentiment is laced with bigotry? What good is the blood when it courses through a man so intent on spilling it?

After all, even in “love,” there is reverence. As the Goebbels children, none of them yet in adolescence, sit on the stairs waiting to see the Führer, Junge encounters them. She asks what they are doing, to which they reply, “We want to see Aunt Eva and Uncle Hitler.” His wife is a casual figure, but even as a spiritual family member, a man who, in their innocence, they bear a deep affection, he gets referred to by last name. No one is immune to his lust for power, a different idea than authority.

The distinction makes Downfall adept at comprehending a vile figure. Authority is an idea of collection: gaining territories and thus expanding the empire to solidify your right to rule. Hitler wants authority, but Downfall envisions him as a man bent on true power. Authority is power, but it stems from ruler to subject, not the color on a map. Downfall understands that boy, orphaned by a neglectful father and sickly mother, rejected by everything he held dear before finding acceptance by the people who appreciated him for all he did for them.

It elicits empathy for every concept of his being, but none for how he unleashes them. We see a man intent on what we want: seeing our dreams realized, accomplishing our goals, gaining status and influence. But it reminds us how some evil is simply a perversion of concept. Wanting success is acceptable: building it on the ashes of dead Jews is not. With every step, it reminds us that the horror of Nazi Germany is not some thin imagining of psychopathy, but in how perverted their humanity became.

Once Hitler and Braun’s bodies are burned outside the bunker, the remaining Nazi party members, forced to face their dying world without the man who created it, learn he has left them defenseless. He abandoned them to whatever fate befalls them without naming a successor. Even in death, he could not relinquish authority. Nazi Germany was his child, and no one else could, or would, be its father.

Downfall smartly chooses to continue after Hitler‘s suicide, a solemn reminder that evil does not die with its architect. The remnants of his following do not evaporate with his death. For them, choices remain. Having seen them as people, ones stricken by fear as much as fanaticism, every choice they make becomes tough to watch. We tremble as Magda Goebbels forces her daughter’s mouth open to administer the morphine dose that will ease her death. We shake as we hear the crunch in each child’s mouth and the faint whimper that rings out as they register the pain. We cannot comprehend a man, spiritually bound by his allegiance to Hitler, feeling compelled to uphold his end of a one-sided suicide pact. We watch as the bunker becomes a graveyard of broken dreams but can never truly comprehend just how these dreams materialized even though that "how" is so familiar.

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In the end, it does not grant absolution, based as much on its beliefs as those of its protagonist. The real Traudl Junge’s words end the film. Her interview gets silenced immediately following her admission that youth is no excuse for ignorance, a far cry from Nazi party members who went to the grave insisting on their innocence. She would have discovered the truth if she had tried, regardless of her ability to act upon that discovery. It is a prescient conclusion as much as retrospectively wise. Despite our understanding of everything that led to Hitler’s rise, we continue to condemn the German people for electing a man of such barbarity. It was they who allowed this man’s ascent to power just as much as all the factors Hitler exploited to secure it.

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Despite Germany's repeated attempts at redemption and reconciliation, the reality is that we are no different. We allow politicians to galvanize us in the name of causes we barely understand. We elect people to make decisions based on our warped ideals and support them regardless of how severe their implementation becomes. We seek to wash our hands of them when the full breadth of their evil gets exposed, and we pretend like we could not foresee this and deny that, on some level, we intended to reach that end. We can, and likely will, confront this evil again.‍

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Downfall imparts this truth through a story that serves it well, but without resting on the laurels of that story. It understands that life gets reduced to a collection of choices no matter our past. Fogelein must measure life against loyalty, just as Grawitz must choose a path for his family when Hitler forbids him to leave Berlin. Every decision is one we can question, but we can never question the necessity of making them. We cannot ignore the road to this tragedy.

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It was a bold choice humanizing Hitler, but it was necessary. We cannot forget that monsters did not sprout from the ground, having ascended from the deepest circle of hell to inflict suffering on the world. We did this, and those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. It becomes more necessary to use that cliché as we confront Northern prom-goers who jokingly give the Hitler salute in photographs, realize that most millennials are unaware of what Auschwitz is, and learn that a quarter of them are unaware of the Holocaust altogether. As Gen-Z becomes America's most influential demographic with more topical social justice issues top of mind, inundating the world with TikTok trends and prank videos, this is likely to worsen. The number of Holocaust survivors is decreasing fast. If one was born in 1939, the year Germany invaded Poland, they would be turning 83 this year. The world is on the brink in many ways, but accidental Holocaust erasure is among them.

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If we are to remember the humanity in the Holocaust and that of the Nazi Party, we must accept them as humans in the first place. If not, we will never truly learn from everything that happened, and all of Downfall’s work will get wasted.