by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog
The main problem with the recent English movie The Death of Stalin (2017) is that it’s a comedy… but it’s just not funny.
And that’s really too bad, because its director, Armando Iannucci, was one of the driving forces behind the most hilarious satire of TV news ever, The Day Today (1994). Those six 30-minute send-ups of journalism have never been topped. The anchorman’s repeated grillings of hapless correspondent Peter O’Hanraha-hanrahan are the stuff of my hilarious nightmares as a PressTV correspondent. The show also gave us sports reporter Alan Partridge, who went on to huge fame in the UK yet remains criminally-underappreciated in the US. One can never give editorial cartoonists any respect after seeing how incredibly facile their cartoons really are, once they have been re-enacted by Brant, the Physical Cartoonist.
So Iannucci is clearly a genius of political satire, and – socialist that I am – I was fully prepared to bust a gut laughing in the theater. Unfortunately The Death of Stalin is far more of a letdown than Iannucci’s pretty-good – and Oscar-nominated – political satire In the Loop (2009).
In Stalin the running joke is that the USSR’s leaders were all awkwardly bumbling Englishmen with posh accents – apparently the Politburo was composed of Hugh Grant-clones. The movie has almost zero audible laughs, and truly provokes just a few amused smiles.
On a subconscious / propaganda level: the average postwar Soviet citizen has never been exposed to piped water, while the only minister with a non-posh accent is – predictably – the Minister of Labor. On the overt political level, Stalin is absolutely & unequivocally a murdering, domineering, power-hungry tyrant – case closed.
This letdown of a movie is not anywhere as interesting as the Soviet film The Fall of Berlin (1950), but it at least serves as an interesting bookend and point of comparison for cinematic depictions of Stalin. The Fall of Berlin is widely remembered solely for being the apex of the cult of Stalin, according to many thinkers and intellectuals, including Slavoj Žižek.
I agree, the movie certainly is over-the-top in promoting Stalin. He is so omnipresent that it reminded me of a famous episode on The Simpsons: Homer has been chosen to voice a new character on the ultra-violent cat-and-mouse centered “The Itchy and Scratchy Show”. Homer’s new character, Poochie the Dog, is not a hit…and Homer’s low-IQ ideas to boost Poochie’s popularity are rather Stalinist: “Whenever Poochie’s not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking, ‘Where’s Poochie?’” The writers of The Fall of Berlin apparently had a similar idea in mind.
But it is unfortunate that an analysis dominated by anti-Stalinism is the best-known legacy of The Fall of Berlin because the movie has tremendous historical importance: It was the first cinematic depiction of the fall of Berlin and, crucially, it was the first portrayal of the final days in Hitler’s bunker. It preceded by 5 years Germany’s The Last Ten Days, which I will also discuss here.
So even though the pro-Stalin propaganda is of a Homer Simpson-like heavy-handedness, it is balanced by the fact that whenever Stalin is not onscreen, Hitler usually is. Therefore, the movie is not really about Stalin, but about the very real strategic duel between the two primary protagonists of World War II.
Is that not a rather fascinating and vital topic to see on the big screen, especially in 1950? Analysing and comparing the two yields much more cultural understanding than just reproaching the cult of Stalin.
Such an analysis is further enriched by adding in the 2004 German box office smash Downfall (2004) which also covers the last days in Hitler’s bunker. The problem there is that Downfall truly portrays Hitler as a sweet and tender person…as outrageous and historically-nihilist as that sounds! However, Downfall does make an interesting capstone to these four movies which discussed the deaths of the primary leaders in World War II.
I wish I had more to say about The Death of Stalin, but it was a total comedic misfire – and I clearly enjoy seeing my own side lampooned.
Soviet-produced ‘The Battle of Berlin’ – now THAT was how we imagined Hitler
Of course Stalin is depicted positively in this Soviet-era film – he did lead the more ethical and winning side, no?
Maybe in real-life he was not as avuncular and calm as in this movie, but there’s no doubt that Hitler is accurately portrayed for what he was: a raging, racist, methamphetamine addict who was the last Western imperialist monarch.
It is the most honest portrayal of Hitler in cinema, and that virtue far outweighs the flaws of the pro-Stalin propaganda. There are few scenes more gratifying seeing his return at the start of Part II: Hitler cringing and shrinking in the light, in disbelief.
Everything bad, yet true, about Hitler and his political ideology is on full display: his anti-Slav racism (which is never discussed in the West, as all that cultural space is taken up by his anti-Jewish racism (forget about the Roma, of course)), his personal doctor who knows he has been reduced to a drug pusher, his hysterical & messianic tirades about freeing the world from communism (and thus democracy), his demand for “your unflinching fanaticism”, his obsession with displays of physical “vigour”, and much else.
Considering that the USSR won and saved the world from the Germans…surely we can give the Soviets a bit of leeway in favor of Stalin’s positive depiction. But Hitler? No: He must be shown for what he was – not a monster (as that implies he was not a human), but a right-wing, racist, anti-socialist, egocentric fanatic. And The Fall of Berlin gives us this necessary historical reality and artistic condemnation by showing the true Hitler: the gangster and gambler, high & raging then crashing & quaking, the bully and coward, finally fleeing the judgment of the world.
The movie pulls no political punches elsewhere: it has characters revealing the collusion of the Vatican and Sweden; the luxury-loving (and luxury-stealing) German capitalist invaders; Churchill is presented as what he was – a repugnant, cynical, untrustworthy, monarchy-worshipper.
The sole real propaganda complaint I have is at the end of Part 1, when FDR amazingly raises a toast to Stalin’s close ally Kalinin, the classic empty bureaucratic suit. I highly doubt that happened. Although maybe the writers were trying to show the true soulless nature of the American bureaucracy? But while that interpretation works now, I highly doubt they were trying to sneak that past Stalin back then….
While the average Soviet soldier is presented as very loyal to Stalin, the German army is fairly and properly presented as fanatically devoted to Hitler, which is what those drug addicts were. Indeed, it is astounding that it took until 2015 for a book to come out which unveiled this fact, which was the root of the alleged “military genius” of the Germans: methamphetamine. Their rampant drug use is something which has been amazingly covered up by the German people and their historians, even though it cannot be discussed enough because it so completely punctures their ego regarding their alleged superior capacities. But this article will show just how much trouble the Germans obviously have when it comes to being honest with themselves. The multiethnic Soviets have no such issues diagnosing Germany’s flaws: The German army is shown for its embedded racism, its role in the concentration camps and it’s refusal to stand up to Hitler time after time after time.
It’s undeniable that cinema patrons in 1950 deserved to be treated to a rendering of the world’s most insane shotgun wedding – between Hitler and Eva Braun. Indeed, it took the entire Red Army to finally make an honest man out of Hitler….
On a social level capitalism is, perhaps more than anything else, a cult of the individual. Despite the unnecessary pro-Stalin scenes, it is vital for modern socialists to reject the notion that socialism must inevitably lead to a cult of the individual because this flaw is clearly far more present in the “great man” worshipping West. Even if cults of Stalin, Korea’s Kim and Libya’s Ghadaffi existed, they do not in other socialist-inspired countries like Algeria, Iran and elsewhere. Fidel Castro certainly understood this perfectly, as his final request was that there be no statutes or monuments of him in Cuba: socialism has learned a lot since 1950 – capitalism (and Germany) has not, however, and this fact must be broadcast widely.
‘The Last Ten Days’ – who did Germany blame, and promote, 10 years after the war?
The best thing about this 1955 mini mea-culpa movie is that it ends how everybody everywhere wanted it to end: Hitler’s corpse in a pit and on fire, clearly a metaphor that he is burning in hell.
Nobody can begrudge the Germans for wanting to leave the theatre with that image in their minds, no matter how supportive of the Nazis they had been (whether under the influence of meth or not).
But what was amazing was the choice to then superimpose the face of the movie’s protagonist – a Nazi officer – over Hitler’s funeral pyre, and to repeat his dying words. The credits roll just after his image, surrounded by Hitler’s crematory flames, repeats: “Be alert. Never say ‘jawohl’ again.”
“Jawohl” is a German military phrase signifying that an order from a superior will be immediately obeyed. What was not included from the character’s original death scene was what he said after this injunction against more jawohl-ing: “This is how this whole mess started.”
So, to 1955 Germany, the problem was unthinking militarism…and not capitalism, racism, imperialism or elitism. Indeed, their apparent diagnosis is that the lack of sufficient individualism within the military was the core problem. Well, that’s one issue…but there are certainly other, larger structural and societal issues which caused the rise and success of the German war machine.
It’s significant for German viewers that the hero and moral centre of this movie was an officer and not a regular-class soldier. Of course, this was not the case in the socialist The Fall of Berlin, where the only main character besides Stalin and Hitler is a broad-faced steelworker-turned-soldier. This decision means that instead of dealing with the guilt of their alleged elites, the movie actually exonerates and elevates the officer class – the so-called “talented 10%” or neo-aristocracy.
This is not Stalinist “great leader” propaganda, but it certainly is propaganda of a different sort: German moviegoers were subtly encouraged to remain an essentially aristocratic society even as the last German imperial monarch was roasting. The average German (who was not a Nazi officer) is subtly told – via this propaganda / intellectual choice of the class of the protagonist – to support the elites currently in charge in 1955: they must have been chosen to lead postwar Germany because they were the few “good officers” who stood up for right, right? The problems with encouraging such a view in 1955 Germany should be obvious to all.
(Of course, Germany has not changed much: In Downfall the moral center is yet another officer – this time a doctor. Technocratic modern Germany is often said to worship PhDs – they are the “most qualified” to lead, no? LOL, no.)
Whereas the Soviet production showed Hitler fanatics in all the ranks of German society, the only such radicals in this film were bald, hateful old men and Hitler himself. It is as if Hitler made it to the top – and stayed there – solely by bullying. If this movie is to be believed, the Nazis arose only because old women spoke up too late.
There is no shortage of Western criticism of The Fall of Berlin, but where is the same massive attention and condemnation for Germany’s far less honest and far less democratic portrayal? Of course, there is no “pro-Russian lobby” in the West, so no such attention can be given.
The Last Ten Days is far braver, more critical and more honest than its German counterpart 49 years later, but that movie set an absurdly low bar….
Germany’s ‘Downfall’ – Who knew Hitler was such a great guy?
Amazingly, this was the first German movie to star Hitler since…The Last Ten Days. Why were no German actors and movie-people willing to stage a movie about Hitler for so very, very long? There is something hugely wrong about that – clearly, Germany has not come to proper terms with Hitler and their fascist era…and there is abundant proof of that in this movie.
The 21st century ridiculing of Stalin is one thing, but the humanisation of Hitler? Now that is hugely staggering, and politically it is extremely dangerous. I am not out on a limb here – Hitler’s humanisation was a common criticism when the movie came out. From The Guardian:
“The scenes in Downfall which have caused most outrage – those which show Hitler being nice to his dog and his secretaries or complimenting the cook on a plate of vegetarian ravioli – are all straight from the historical record. In only a couple of places does Eichinger (the director) fictionalise the story and stray towards Hollywood convention.”
All 3 movies about Germany discussed here depict Hitler’s love for his dog “Blondie”. (Indeed, anytime a vegetarian tries to act high-and-mighty we meat-eaters can just point to their greatest example – the animal-loving Hitler.) Despite this awareness that showing Hitler’s humanity was a problem, it seems that no professional movie reviewer found it cause enough for a negative review – the notices for Downfall were universally glowing.
The common trope was: it’s good to see Hitler as a normal person, because that shows how easy evil can arise, and this makes evil seem even more evil. Well, that’s one point of view…but Hitler sure was more terrifying and reprehensible in The Fall of Berlin, at least to me. However, my problem was not that there was just one example of Hitler showing humanity, but example after example after example after example!
Who wrote this movie – Hitler’s grandson?! There are so many tiny scenes which unambiguously show:
Hitler the grateful dinner guest; Hitler the tender smoocher of Eva, even though he surely was among the least concerned with romance in the history of humanity; Hitler the gentleman, respectful of the “lady from Munich”; Hitler the forgiving boss, who mildly responds to poor secretarial work with “I suggest we try it again”; Hitler the hard-working World War I volunteer who admirably worked his way up; Hitler the patient boss who, far from indulging in angry rages, calmly says, “I think I have been very clear”; Hitler the modern Everyman who is “fed up with politics”, like most everyone else is; Hitler the great military planner who was merely not told of losses of by his generals; Hitler the anti-bureaucratic / anti-elitist Everyman who “hates party bosses” (labor bosses?); Hitler who resembles a “lama priest” (in a movie by the absurdly feudal-Tibet-loving West), despite clearly not being possibly worthy of such a description; Hitler as a victimised cog in a machine; Hitler the one who is deserted; humble Hitler who says, “I made many mistakes,”; Hitler the proud local citizen who can’t leave his “beloved” Berlin; Hitler the one who is betrayed; grandfatherly Hitler, who has gray hair and a gray moustache in this movie; Alzheimer Hitler with the one shaky hand, making it impossible for a viewer to not empathise with him; over and over, it’s Hitler the victim.
Hitler was clearly a great guy! Too bad we can’t hang out with him and introduce him to our sisters.
But does any of that sound like Hitler to you?
How can there be so many scenes which even imply that Hitler is kind, patient, democratic, romantic, victimised, etc.? There are surely too many of these to be “accidents” or “misinterpretations” on my part.
The reality is that NONE of these scenes which show Hitler’s positives – even if they are “historically accurate”, as the director claimed – should be in any movie…unless you are making a pro-Nazi production. Hitler CANNOT be portrayed as a victim – only as a victimizer. A movie such as this is a reason why many socialist countries have censorship: Downfall is politically dangerous, reactionary, revisionist and radical. Maybe Downfall is more “entertaining” by creating conflicting sympathies, but only the 1% benefits from promoting art which is based around a cult of entertainment.
And this film was from Germany’s best-known international director. The film was even nominated for an Oscar in the United States for Best Foreign Film…because it showed the humanity of Hitler?!
A key problem is that acting in 1950 USSR and acting in the 21st century West is quite different: the actor playing Hitler in Downfall is doing what modern actors are told to do – not judge their character…even when that character is Hitler. In 1950 USSR the actor took a back seat – and had fewer close-ups – to the plot, the viewer’s experience, and the moral. The 21st century actor cares more about showing off his own acting technique, heart & soul, empathy & humanity – and thus Hitler’s heart & soul – rather than Hitler’s evil character and deeds. This is a textbook example of why actors simply cannot be lionised as artists – they simply do not care about anyone but themselves and will do anything to remain on camera – and yet no group is more respected and admired in the West today.
Another issue is the claim, as was relayed by The Guardian, that “historical accuracy” – technical merit – trumps ideological quality. The result is the clear inability to make “good propaganda” (which is not an oxymoron), and which also results in – at best – “unwitting propaganda” like this film. The director is supposed to know better – he did not. Or he just knew what puts people in the seats in Germany & the West and what does not – this movie unsurprisingly put his production company back into the red. (Similarly, The Death of Stalin was critically acclaimed, despite being a comedy which lacks laughs: it demonised Stalin, therefore it was good (good Western propaganda, that is).)
But beyond the appallingly positive depiction of Hitler is how the rest of Germany is let off the hook as well. There were many more reprehensible figures in The Last Ten Days, but Goebbels is the only ugly, scary, reprehensible character here. Hitler remains the only adult character who is a bigot, an atheist, or a believer in racial biological determinism. There are German kids defending Berlin in the final days who are fanatics, yes, but they get a pass from the viewer because they can’t be expected to know any better. There is barely a mention of Jews and of course none of Slav hatred. Hitler says he “takes all responsibility” for the infamous Nazi medical experiments – case closed on that one, apparently. Himmler is the only addict, as there is not even a mention of Hitler’s drug addiction – the viewer may leave thinking Hitler’s shaking hand was due simply to old age.
Downfall, despite appearing long after the Western ban on graphic violence, cannot even show Hitler’s suicide. If there was anybody the world wanted to see suffer, it would be Hitler; if we’re going to morbidly disgust ourselves, let’s do so for Hitler, right? Or let’s not, rather: this desire was satiated in Quentin Tarantino’s boring and intellectually vapid Inglorious Basterds, where Hitler’s face is literally machine-gunned to a pulp…it is quite disgusting. (Everything after Pulp Fiction suffers from these same flaws: disappointingly, it has been proven that Tarantino actually has nothing to say, intellectually, and his main innovation is his “ability” to show gore and violence to a 1970s soul music soundtrack.)
In Downfall Hitler’s last words are “Tomorrow I’ll be hated by millions”: finally, we have a mea culpa. Yes you will be Adolf, and it’s also implied that he was currently being loved by millions of Germans, which was certainly the case.
But it’s too bad that, just as in The Last Ten Days, the German director includes something which totally ruins this morally and politically correct message. Hitler surprisingly adds: “But that’s how it is.”
This changes the meaning dramatically: it is now as if his downfall was just “politics as usual”; it’s just part of humankind’s sinning nature that we must endure politics, which simply repeats itself from one horror to the next.
No, the German war machine was not just “how it is” – this is a case of German nihilism. Humanity has evolved beyond the Mongol war machine of the 13th century. I believe this because: I am not a nihilist. I also have no Nazi sympathies, nor the desire to humanise an imperialist war machine. This nihilism is clearly on the part of the director and screenwriter, because Hitler was undoubtedly a highly-motivated idealist – it’s too bad he was so fanatically devoted to such terrible political and social ideals.
Journalists say: “If you want to read the truth about your country, read the foreign press.” That’s a bit much, perhaps, but maybe it is true for cinema, because Germany keeps proving unable to tell the truth about their past?
Ultimately, Downfall definitely presents Hitler as only rarely raging, only rarely racist & even less rarely egoistical – he’s mostly just sad that his plans didn’t work out…and who can’t identify with that?
This humanisation of Hitler is far, far more dangerous propaganda than the idea that Stalin was the main reason the Soviets defeated the Nazi empire, no?
And yet can we imagine a movie “humanising” Stalin getting an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film? Please….
Almost hilariously, it gets worse: The only person in the bunker nicer than Hitler was Eva Braun!
Did we need to rehabilitate Eva too? Only if we are making Hollywood trash to sell tickets
It’s the same thing as her hubby Adolf: time after time after time, there’s Eva doing something relatable and admirable:
Eva on the phone and worried for a friend; Eva giving her luxury coat away because she “likes fashionable ladies”, showing that she is a secure woman and not a jealous one; Eva generously giving away her emerald jewelry; Eva the good family member, looking out for her sister’s well-being; poor silly Eva who thinks it’s all a dream; unwittingly enabling Eva, who sees Adolf as merely playing the role of “when he is leader”; Eva the craftswoman and woman of taste, who treasures the furniture; easily-contented Eva, who is “happy here” in the bunker (where she is the queen); Eva who knows right from wrong and who begs the film’s younger female protagonist (Hitler’s secretary) to “promise” she’ll escape the evil bunker.
I didn’t know who I’m supposed to like more – Adolf or Eva? What a great couple! Let’s have them over for dinner soon.
In a truly insane subplot which I highly doubt was “historically accurate” and which reveals the trashy nature of this important, well-regarded film: Near-middle aged Eva is still unbelievably desired by the most handsome character in the film – a careerist Obergruppenfuhrer. I have read of no condemnation for this lack of historical accuracy – would you try to make time with Hitler’s woman…in Hitler’s bunker?! Obergruppenfuhrer’s evilness is ultimately not his two-faced careerism, but his cinematic death becomes a certainty once he fails to faithfully wait for the “heroine” Eva and cheats on her with a younger woman. Obergruppenfuhrer failed to realize that Eva, like all 40-something women in the West, are no more than 26 years old in terms of romantic desirability. Therefore, an intelligent viewer realises there could be no better candidate for “character most likely to die an unrepentant Nazi”, and the older female filmgoers will not be disappointed when he dies yelling “Heil Hitler!” Heil Hitler…but I wanna steal your woman, LOL.
Why on earth the humanisation of Eva Braun was needed deserves analysis: does the director and actors think a modern German woman should admire and emulate Eva Braun? The options are: this movie wants to be soap-opera trash; or it is too politically-stupid to have a formal ideology / philosophy to promote; or it is trying to promote a backwards, immoral, reactionary ideology and they think that we are too stupid to see that.
A scene confirming this last option is when Eva and Hitler’s secretary – the film’s protagonist (although maybe that moniker should go to Hitler) – are taking a break outside the bunker and find themselves smoking in front of a pantheistic statue of a goddess (bare-chested, of course), which they admiringly gaze upon. The message seems to be that they are wistfully recalling an idealised past when Germany had retained its pantheistic, goddess-worshiping roots. Maybe Christianity is the problem, as the Nazis claimed to be devout Christians? The two main female characters smoke and ponder this link (perhaps), with no males around to screw things up for them.
But the absurd, unnecessary character of Eva Braun – and I write “character”, because how could Hitler’s girlfriend be as fine a woman as Braun is portrayed to be – also shows that it is simply verboten to criticise women in the 21st century West. Even when the subject is Eva Braun, they should be deified like pantheistic goddesses (domestic goddesses, at least?). Perhaps this is because Anglo-Saxon society is essentially matriarchal, and has been ever since men went off on 3-year ship voyages, leaving women in charge. Though the sailing has stopped, matriarchy surely must exist strongly today: how could it be otherwise, given the explosion in single motherhood in the Anglo-Saxon world?
I’m all for more positive portrays of women in art, but they must be deserved. It is sure that women have been too often ignored or marginalised in history (and this film is primarily serving as “history”, I think we’ll all agree), and that is unacceptable. Eva Braun’s character in The Fall of Berlin was almost totally ignored, but at least the Soviets had the virtue of portraying her negatively when she got some screen time.
The modern refusal to criticise Eva Braun reminded me of the similar inability to criticise Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s wife, in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 propaganda epic Lincoln.
Indeed, the only difference between the “100% pro-leader” propaganda of Lincoln and The Fall of Berlin is that Spielberg’s script is much more deft and cinematically modern in pushing its own great leader: the final scene – with Lincoln giving a religious-patriotic speech as a candle burns in the foreground, symbolising his eternal, pure & true flame …would such symbols have been out of place if used for Stalin in 1950? Of course not. Yet for Lincoln that is not considered propaganda…mainly because the West considers themselves “too smart” or “incapable” of propaganda (unlike non-Western nations).
But what was surprising was the totally historically inaccurate rehabilitation of Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. In reality (though this is likely influenced by Confederate propaganda), she had been mostly remembered for her mental imbalance, excessive spending, public outbursts and for having actually being committed to a mental asylum. And yet in Spielberg’s rendering Mary Todd Lincoln is repeatedly one step ahead of everyone else throughout the film? She truly has her finger on the political and moral pulse of things – she’s a political boss, but confined to stay behind the scenes.
That is historical nonsense. The reality is that portraying Mary Todd Lincoln a shrill, crazy “First Lady” is just not possible – that would defy the unwritten propaganda rules of the United States. It also goes against the “no more Lucille Ball-type women, ever” mentality of the West today. Therefore, for reasons of both class and gender, Mary Todd Lincoln simply had to be elevated to a stature, predominance, ability and agency no matter how overblown it was…just like Stalin was in The Fall of Berlin, and for which that movie is fairly criticized.
Mary Todd Lincoln is not as important as the legacy of Stalin, so it’s no big deal. She probably deserves some sympathy, given that her husband was martyred, the likely Confederate exaggerations of her, and the fact that there’s a lot of rather curious evidence that her husband was gay.
But humanising the literal Hitler-lover Eva Braun? For one thing – that is not feminism at all. It is no more pro-feminist than this week’s absurd article from The New York Times: Was This Powerful Chinese Empress a Feminist Trailblazer? No, Empress Cixi (reign 1861-1908) was not. At all. Empress Cixi was a disaster for China during her 50-year rule. Drugs, foot-binding, colonial domination (for which she was the willing puppet), social disarray – all were rampant under her reign.
Not every woman in power is a feminist, nor good to nor good for women…but this is simply not the view of the West in 2018.
Following the loss of Hillary Clinton, the male-female divide has become the most forcefully exploited divide in Western-style identity politics – everyone from Eva Braun to Empress Cixi has something akin to “hidden virtues” which we men are universally guilty of covering up, misunderstanding, under-appreciating or exploiting.
No: Eva Braun and Empress Cixi (and Hillary) should not be reimagined as “good” people or as “feminists”. Thankfully, such a possibility cannot exist with a socialist (and thus a truly pro-woman) ideology, because they are terrible people for a host of other issues besides their lack of true feminism. But that’s what Downfall did….
Downfall is not even truly all about Hitler, because the final fifth is dedicated to his 20-something, pretty, marginally-conflicted (yet obviously rabidly Nazi-supporting, because she’s in the bunker, LOL) secretary.
Hitler dies (off-screen), and it’s the Russians who violate the subsequent cease fire. Yet the plucky Frau Secretary “has to try to be free” and avoid becoming a prisoner of war, unlike her exhausted, less pretty female friend, whom she leaves behind (Frau Secretary still had some meth left, perhaps?). Frau Secretary is saved from possibly looming rape or death by drunken, partying Russians thanks to a guileless pre-pubescent boy.
The movie ends not with the death of KGB boss Beria (as in The Death of Stalin) nor the death of Hitler, but with this young boy puling a bicycle out from the river and from under a collapsed bridge. He sits on the handlebars as the morally-fine Frau, pedaling and in charge, leads them both safely away. The final scene is such a fine poetic metaphor…too bad it’s a totally inappropriate time for poetry.
But that’s what modern cinema is, and that is what Hollywoodization has truly come to mean: not merely an improbably happy ending, but a totally intellectually and politically vapid ending.
It is easy to to see that Downfall’s main problem is also that of most modern cinema: It cares much more for these poetic metaphors, which are the easy currency of actors, instead of grappling with questions of morality-politics-ideology-history-society. Such metaphors, after a certain familiarity is reached, become completely boring, repetitive, intellectually unsatisfying, and unoriginal to those who can move beyond facile, tabloid, self-centered, television-level drama.
Over and over Downfall shows that it ultimately cares for poetry and not for politics…and yet it was one of just 2 German movies to handle a supremely important political issue in the space of 49 years? That is extremely significant, and much more important than the heavy-handed pro-Stalin propaganda in The Fall of Berlin.
The biggest mistake of Downfall is forgetting that: Hitler is not deserving of poetry.
Poking fun at Stalin is fine, yet it still remains to have been achieved on the big screen. It seemed silly of Russia to ban it…but Iannucci explains why that was actually the right thing to do – there was an election campaign going on in Russia: the Communist Party remains a political force in Russia (it finished second), and this foreign movie could have rather unfairly influenced voters against them, no? Perhaps if the movie was must-be-seen-immediately hilarious that would have trumped political concerns, but that was not a factor….
Rehabilitating and humanising Hitler and Eva Braun has been achieved on the big screen, sadly, and to the delight of Nazis everywhere. In a more weighty issue: Germany still cannot come to grips with its destructive capitalist-imperialism – modern Germany is waging neo-imperialism on the weaker countries of the European Union in 2018, of course.
As Castro’s last wish emphatically demonstrates – socialists have learned from our mistakes, but the capitalists have not: We just don’t get the big production budgets, that’s all.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
If the West were to talk about the methamphetamine use of the German military, that might lead to a discussion of methamphetamine use by the American military. And that is clearly verboten. None of this can be discussed in the land of the free.
Good read, but rather long.
Sure, the modern movies are sublime propaganda.
But Mr Mazaheri misses few important questions:
Hitler & Naziism are being rehabilitated, no question about it.
But why is it done, and to what purpose?
and who is doing it?
Answer these correct, and you can be able to predict the future.
Gordon Duff wrote a pretty good article (see New Eastern Outlook) about the banksters and their mafia/cult which runs the West and are the organizers of ‘Nazism’, ‘ISIS’, the Fed, 9/11, and so on, and so forth, even of all these movies (including to a certain extent the Soviet ones) mentioned in this article.
Stalin was convinced, and there’s not a shadow of a doubt that he was right, that the bankster thug Hitler and Eva Braun were evacuated to Argentina. Then why does “The Fall of Berlin” say otherwise?
Stalin/Beria and the likes (Stalinists) were the good guys and were increasingly getting a good grip on the also – they run the West entirely – partly by the Jewish mafia infiltrated Soviet Union. No wonder they were murdered by the latter (Khrushchev coup d’état) and were and are unbelievably demonized. They would’ve told the truth about all these monstrous scams (still absolute taboos, although – like 9/11 – as plain as day).
Laika, the propagandizing of Hitler’s death was meant to close the WWII chapter. What the propaganda fails to say is that his or Eva’s bodies were never found. Even in the old Soviet movies, they showed Hitler and Eva committing suicide, but failed to show their dead bodies. Perhaps, Goering’s and his family’s bodies were identified, and I am saying perhaps, because I do not remember.
I really think he died in the bunker. But it wouldn’t matter much. Without all that power he’d be just another dweeb, and he’d be dead by now anyway.
I’m afraid you are right about Hitler and Nazism being rehabbed/resurrected, and the possible answers to your questions why-what-who may go something like this:
Anonymous, writing about eight entries following this, is “on” to it.
Nazism never died, but kind of went behind the scenes for a while, and the curtain has been torn away to reveal its latest incarnation, anti-Christ Zionism. By the time the Zionists achieve their awful “greater Israel project” there will not be a Christian left standing in the Middle East. There’s part of the why and what. When I see the photos of the ruined cities in Syria and Iraq, I see what looks to me to be a Post Armageddon society. People have been wrecked right along with the cities. Some of the cities here in the US look almost as bad.
The prime purpose of the counterfeit “state of Israel” is to prepare the way for the counterfeit Messiah. This is going to get weird real fast. The Jews still await their messiah, whereas the Christians believe that Jesus is the messiah, and that He is due to return. Some will say He is here, others will say He is there. Tell me, who is the author of confusion? I am afraid that both the Christians And the Jews are in for a major betrayal, not just a minor let-down.
The ISIS crazies were fed a diet of Captogen to make them fearless, so nothing has changed.
Tibet was a theocracy (‘oppressive feudal Tibet’ is Chinese propaganda. If it was so bad how come 100% of Tibetans want to return to this type of government?).
I’ve talked with an acquaintance who knew Adolf Hitler quite well and he apparently had exceptional personal magnetism and charisma such that when he entered a large ballroom full of people everyone stopped and turned to stare, despite the fact that he was physically unimpressive. I’ve never seen this portrayed in history books or films.
The Nazis were sometimes Christians, but officially they had their own bizarre neo-pagan religion, so it is not a stretch to portray Nazis showing reverence for pagan idols.
Lastly, your denigration of the German Army shows a poor understanding of the facts. There were many reasons for the power of the German war machine and amphetamines are not even in the top hundred. Militarily the Germans have always been formidable (except for the anomaly of the present day).
Jahwohl, mein wannabe Fuhrer! 100% of Tibetans want to return to theocracy (and serfdom that went with it.)? Garbage. On stilts.
“….exceptional personal magnetism and charisma such that when he entered a large ballroom full of people everyone stopped and turned to stare, despite the fact that he was physically unimpressive. I’ve never seen this portrayed in history books or films.”
Writer historian David Irving has portrayed this clearly in some of his well-researched books and his writings even got him imprisoned (including solitary confinement) and several authorities and governments have tried to destroy him since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cAFpi4tHMM
He’s alive and still kicking and offers several of his books as a free read. Have a look here: http://www.fpp.co.uk/
Unz Review offers a download of Irving’s ‘Hitler’s War’.
I guess RM’s unstated premise is that any film about Hitler is be definition a propaganda film.
Hitler may not appear as a character in any other genre.
What does he think if “Springtime for Hitler” I wonder. I guess the actual name is The Producers.
Katherine
The thing about any film about a historical figure (“Springtime for Hitler” isn’t really about Nazism at all, it’s satirizing show business) is the same as the thing about news: There’s too much to fit, so there are inevitably selection issues. No matter what you select, you are choosing some kind of editorial line.
So with Hitler: Do you include the scene where he authorizes killing millions of Jews, or the romantic scene with Eva Braun? Do you include the scene where he has political opponents done in or disappeared, or the scene where he pats a dog? Enough “pats the dog” choices and you have propaganda, no matter how true it is that Hitler occasionally patted dogs.
Completely leave out the person’s human dimension and you arguably have another kind of propaganda, but when it comes to historical figures I think it’s fair to argue that their political acts, the things that caused them to have an impact on the world, are more important than their personal story. To the extent you show their personal story, it seems reasonable that it should be stuff that illuminates their political choices. Hitler patting dogs or smooching girls or complimenting chefs fails this test as well–it is unlikely that Hitler became a tyrant, started massive wars, and masterminded the greatest mass murder/s of history because of any of these aspects of his personal history.
Hi Katherine,
I am a huge Mel Brooks fan but have never seen The Producers!
I would say that Brooks’ 100%-pure satire/comedies are not propaganda, but movies like Ten Days After and Downfall are propaganda – they certainly were not funny and thus were designed with dramatic and intellectual points to make.
ALL Hitler films being propaganda appears rather fundamentalist to me…I would assume Brooks’ went beyond propaganda and into hilarity.
Minor nit: profit is “black,” debt/liabilities are “red.” Thanks for the fascinating article, Mr. Mazaheri.
About himself Woody Guthrie said: “…Not exactly a Communist, but I been the the Red all my life.”
The self-styled Free World led by America has been collaborating with Nazism since before World War 2 and after World War 2 through such programs like the USA’s Operation Paper Clip and Gehlen Network, where it provided aid, succor, and support to Nazi war criminals.
Today, the mask is being slowly dropped as the Underground Reich (and Fascism in general) are reasserting their malign presence.
Exposing the Underground Reich Part I
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/exposing-the-underground-reich-part-i/
Exposing the Underground Reich Part II
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/exposing-the-underground-reich-part-ii/
Exposing the Underground Reich Part III
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2017/09/06/exposing-the-underground-reich-part-iii/
‘America’s Nazi Scientists Fulfilling Dream of Ruling the World’
https://jamahiriyanews.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/americas-nazi-scientists-fulfilling-dream-of-ruling-the-world/
The question if Stalin was more ethical than Hitler remains an open one to me.
Is question with zero meaning, similar to which is true, Euclidean or non Euclidean geometry?
This was addressed by Poincare. The conclusion is that it is simply a matter of what one sees as convenient.
Pirsig discuses this in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
It’s undeniable that Ramin Mazaheri is a writer:
“It’s undeniable that cinema patrons in 1950 deserved to be treated to a rendering of the world’s most insane shotgun wedding – between Hitler and Eva Braun. Indeed, it took the entire Red Army to finally make an honest man out of Hitler….”
“And yet can we imagine a movie “humanising” Stalin getting an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film? Please….
Almost hilariously, it gets worse: The only person in the bunker nicer than Hitler was Eva Braun! It’s the same thing as her hubby Adolf: time after time after time, there’s Eva doing something admirable:
Eva worried for a friend; Eva giving her luxury coat away; Eva generously giving away her emerald jewelry; Eva the good family member, looking out for her sister’s well-being; poor silly Eva who thinks it’s all a dream; Eva, who sees Adolf as merely playing the role of “when he is leader”; Eva the craftswoman and woman of taste, who treasures the furniture; easily-contented Eva, who is “happy here” in the bunker (where she is the queen); Eva who knows right from wrong and who begs Hitler’s young secretary to “promise” she’ll escape the evil bunker.
I didn’t know who I’m supposed to like more – Adolf or Eva? What a great couple! Let’s have them over for dinner soon.
Only if you’re making Hollywood trash to sell tickets”
Thanks for a very compelling article, Ramin.
For a German director willing to depict postwar Germany in a critical light, the go to is probably R. W. Fassbinder. Though he never made a film about Hitler, Fassbinder’s works explore (and satirize) the persistence of “everyday fanaticism” in the postwar period. I’ve never seen H.-J. Syberberg’s Hitler: A Film from Germany, in part owing to its 440+ minute(!) running time, but another film about Hitler worthy of discussion would be Alexander Sokurov’s Moloch. However, these two films are both quite experimental, often surreal, and might not meet your criteria of “good propaganda”.
Another Soviet era movie series titled
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeen_Moments_of_Spring
was offering its viewers some truth about the behind the curtain dealings of the US ruling class. Few in the West would have seen it and even if they did they would have had a hard time understanding what was being offered, “It’s all Soviet propaganda. Give me a break”. By chance I saw the series and was impressed by the cinematography and acting. However the historical background seemed to me to be fiction. That was to change.
From this book I found out what those scenes in Switzerland with Dulles represented,
“The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot “
Thanks much for those links!
They were all actors on a stage; the banksters were and are still the producers. This is also why you still get people pushing Nazism and Marxism, both spook projects to destroy and upend society for the benefit of our betters.
Great read, though on the lengthily side, but never boring and always amusing and revealing new secrets. How else could Ramin show off his literary gifts as well as his acute perception of social and historical reality?
Yet, and understanding the author could not address in depth every other issue raised in the article, maybe the so called “personality cult’ attributed to Stalin may deserve some discussion because I have come across instances where Stalin was often embarrassed and even offended by sycophantic pronouncements about his alleged greatness and, on some official occasions, he would rudely interrupt the speakers and tell them “to cut the crap”.
Every art form in the USSR exalted the achievements of the common man as an artist, a worker, a soldier, a scientist or a family man – that is, the artistic, the productive and social dimension of man – and, immediately after the Great Patriotic War, there was an enormous outpouring of self-congratulatory pride for the great feat socialist man achieved by destroying the greatest war machine representing the power of capitalism. Obviously Stalin was glorified as being the leader and representative of the common socialist man – the son of a cobbler – not only for guiding the war effort, but also for his steadfastness in creating the conditions that led to the final victory. So, the accolades in the “Battle for Berlin” are fairly deserved.
The power of the German soldier was not based on drugs, this is hilarious and ridicule. Couple of years ago we talked about that, mostly about the negative consequences for the soldiers on the front line. I try to explain it again : it is true, when a soldier was given one such tablet, he could remain sleepless two or three days, but after that, he got so exhausted that he become useless, thus the after effects have been more counterproductive. They have been used at the beginning of the conflict but then they were quickly stopped. Therefore, they emerged with a strategy of replacement of their soldiers after a limited time, according on the situation of the unit in the actual stage of a battle. The Germans always put a great emphasis on the strength of a unit and managed to move them out and in the battle zones on a large scale. But where from comes the fighting spirit and the “Jawohl” ? Not from the Nazis primarily, the Prussian Military concept had a long stage on the German military well beyond the Nazis came to power. In WW1 the same order executing was there and the German soldier kept the fight. The “new” discovery though were the Waffen SS units, but most people forget that even they were subordinated to the OKW (German Army Supreme Command) The so called “Slavic hatred” disappeared in the war, where many units from various Slavic countries (including USSR) were fighting on the side of Germany, many of them among the Waffen SS units. I don’t know, isn’t there the internet for everyone to take a look at the facts ?
Does somebody here know that soldiers on all sides developed a self strategy to be able to sleep while walking ? I’m not joking, it was real. For a soldier, an hour of sleep makes wonder. Well, for those who never heard such real stories told by those who were live there, seems improbable and taken from wind.
@ Ioan
You are right to quibble the assertion that the “German military genius” was a by-product of amphetamines. On the other hand, most militaries used (probably still use, or similar drugs) to enhance wakefulness and performance, especially in stressful situations, and the Germans made liberal use of it in WWII. And you are right too to find the source of the German soldier’s martial competence in the Prussian military culture of efficient organization and training and strict discipline. But you could go back further in time and find out that that was the same military culture that made the Roman Empire.
Yet, you could allow Ramin some “poetic licence” for his faux pas. After all, the reader would not notice the reference to the wide use of stimulants by armies if he merely mentioned en passant such use! By making an outlandish claim, it becomes a memorable fact!
Arminius had some Roman military training but the defeat of Rome in the Teutoburg Forest in 9CE was really down to the strength and militarism of the Ancient Germans (there were also more than a dozen Roman legions recruited from German tribes). Nothing good ever came from Rome.
@Parfois
I’m glad to see you here again ! I had to tell this about the German soldiers and Wehrmacht in general because accepting the wrongly asserted idea of a drugged and weak German Army, would diminish the heroic fight fought by the Soviets against them. The German Army of WW2 was the most formidable army at his time, defeating the French and Brit armies in a short time in 1940 while the French was superior in numbers and technique. The Soviet Army had to face this formidable German Army in its full force in 1941-1945 almost alone, with terrible sacrifices, turning the tide of the war victoriously.
Willi Heinrich describes in Cross of Iron how exhausted German soldiers would march 4 or 5 abreast, arms interlinked, hands in pockets for unconscious stability. The men on the outside would stay awake, guiding the group while the men inside could sleep while walking.
Here’s a scene from Peckinpah’s adaption of Heinrich’s novel: Russian infantry attack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MqqOW9QM_0
I think the effects of drugs are being drastically underestimated here. Crystal meth keeps people up for days and gives them crazy strength and energy throughout.
From the book I linked: “In less than 100 hours the Germans gained more territory than they had in over four years in the First World War.” Winston Churchill, he records, was “dumbfounded.”
That sounds like soldiers tweaking, to me.
I am far more inclined to attribute German blitzkrieg success to drugs rather than German military genius, which certainly appeared rather to evaporate.
I have to say that this time I profoundly disagree with my friend Ramin. On at least two levels. First, I think that Downfall was a superb movie which very much deserves the praise it got, but even more importantly, I do profoundly believe that Hitler was a human being with his flaws and qualities. Just like Stalin. Or any other person in history.
In Russia, Nikolai Starikov wrote an entire book about personal recollections of Stalin (entitled “Stalin – remembering together”) and all of these recollections show a decent, thoughtful, even kind Stalin and I am quite sure that those who shared these memories were truthful to their perception of the man. Furthermore, there was a very interesting movie recently made in Russia about Trotsky, also showing the humanity of one of the most evil men in history (at least in my opinion). And we could find testimonies like this about Beria, Himmler, Iagoda or even George Bush Sr. And that is the problem: arch villains and genocidal mass murderers are not “monsters” they are very much like the rest of us and even when they preside over the butchering of millions of people they retain their humanity towards their friends, relatives and colleagues. Some (many) even sincerely believe that they are defending the interests of others. I don’t think that anybody will seriously argue that Lenin, Hitler, Himmler or Trotsky were pursuing petty personal interests! These were all sincere idealists and that is precisely what makes them so frightening: they are not “monsters” – they are sincere idealists!
It is, I believe, a fundamental mistake to create an “us” vs “them” dichotomy between those whom history presents as “monsters” and the rest of us. If only because history is written by victors and is filled with propaganda and lies. Take, for example, Ivan “The Terrible”. If you compare his murderous actions with those of his contemporaries in, say, France or Britain (Cromwell) he was a gentle humanist! Yes, Ivan IV did kill several thousand people, but compared with this western counterparts he was a total amateur. And then we have our so called “heroes”. How is it that Churchill is universally acclaimed as a war hero and a courageous “bulldog” when he killed many more people than Hitler ever did?! As for US political leaders, they ought to be placed in a category of its own: people who presided over the genocide not of a single ethnicity, but ALL the ethnicities of an ENTIRE CONTINENT! And I won’t even go into the slavery issue…
No, I think that Downfall showed a true Hitler, a sincere human being and an idealist. I hope that all the bloody dictators and genocidal mass murderers in history get a similar treatment in future movies, even Pol Pot or Lyndon B. Johnson.
I think that Hannah Arendt was spot on with her “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil” – human can commit abominable atrocities without being “perverted nor sadistic’ and while remaining ‘terrifyingly normal’.
That point of view is, of course, much more disturbing, and even distressing, but this point of view is much closer to reality than the notion that all the genocidal maniacs are “monsters” who don’t deserve poetry. Modern psychology has shed some light on this topic (Milgram, Asch), but as long as our society will continue to entertain the secular delusion which denies that our nature is fallen, we will continue to want to represent evil a some kind of bizarre external pathology and not as a manifestation of a spiritual dysfunctions such as self-will, pride, self-worship, unchecked passions, etc.
My 2cts :-)
The Saker
In Russia, Nikolai Starikov wrote an entire book about personal recollections of Stalin (entitled “Stalin – remembering together”)….
Is it that book available in English or another language that is not Russian?
Thanks in advance.
no, not as far as I know. but, to be honest, the book in unconvincing. Starikov makes the case that Stalin was a nice and even decent guy, as indeed I am sure he was, but that in no way proves that he was a good leader or disproves the thesis that he was not a monster.
that is the problem with this entire notion of “monsters” – most such monsters are not “monsters” at all.
Kind regards,
The Saker
@ The Saker
Thoughtful comment, re “evil resides in all of us”. If we all are capable of evil, how come most of us have the capacity of resisting evilism? You answer this question yourself when alluding to Milgram’s and Asch’s experiments: we tend to act the role and assume the function expected of us. In a nutshell, situationism at a personal level and structuralism at a social level. Of course the whole picture is much more complex and ideology (one’s world view) also plays a role by shaping our understanding of reality.
But I will take issue with your claim that Trotsky – who you lumped together with Lenin, Hitler and Himmler (perhaps most brainwashed people would add Stalin) – acted only in pursuit of an ideal. That man revealed himself a psychopath from the very beginning, apart from being an opportunistic charlatan impersonating a communist man and a boastful egomaniac. His suppression of the Kronstadt mutiny was a look into his soul. There was no sincere idealism there, just blood lust.
I disagree. Read Trotsky, especially his articles on White Terror versus Red Terror and look how logical they are, how directly in line they are with dialectical materialism. Yes, Trotsky was a genocidal maniac and one of the most evil men in history, but he was ALSO an sincere and honest idealist. That makes him and the likes of him even more dangerous and seductive.
My 2cts.
The Saker
oh and Hitler was most definitely an idealist who gave his life to his ideals. I am less sure about Himmler, but I suspect that he too was a true believer and a “otherwise decent and honest chap”. that is precisely what is so frightening about the horrors of the 20th century, they were perpetrated by men intoxicated by ideologies, for sure, but men who were idealists.
There were also cynical thugs, with no belief whatsoever, of course. that is the explosive cocktail from which revolutions are made: brilliant and sincere intellectuals and terrorist thugs. I would place folks like Stalin and Ezhov and Ernst Röhm in that 2nd category, by the way. This latter group has much more in common with Mafia bosses (like Pablo Escobar) than with ideological “true believers”. I personally find the first group far more dangerous than the second, but it’s the combo of both which is really the most dangerous of all.
Again, my 2cts.
The Saker
Hello Saker!
I agree that the idea that Hitler was a “monster” is totally dangerous, extremely misleading, and egotistically flattering to our notions of what our humanity is (unfortunately) capable of. I never call any such leader a “monster” for these reasons. We must never imagine they are not humans like us.
But I really did see Downfall’s portrayal of Hitler as way too often sympathetic. Certainly they spent a lot of time rehabilitating Eva Braun! Must we be forced to remember that “girlfriends of monsters” are people too, LOL? To me that rather clinched the “too Nazi-sympathising” criticism of this movie.
But I really did see Downfall’s portrayal of Hitler as way too often sympathetic.
But what is Hitler was a “nice guy” to those around him?
Since I mentioned Hannah Arendt, I am re-reading her “Eichmann in Jerusalem” while on the road (when I don’t drive of course!) and she describes Eichmann as a “nice guy”, at least most of the time, to most people who met him. And Starikov makes a great case of describing Stalin as a very nice guy. I Reagan was SUPER nice guy by all accounts. Even Dubya seemed to be nice. And the list goes on and on. I think that Downfall showing a very nice and decent Hitler makes the Nazi regime look even more scary and horrible than it was: all these very nice and “decent” people plunged the world into the worst bloodbath in history, all while being very nice and decent. Is that not more scary?
Kindest regards and “see” you upon my return (20th-22nd).
Cheers,
The Saker
RM
Found this article to be a rather refreshing take on cinema politics. Enjoyed reading it. Modern western film is very much still a propaganda organ for the lowest of the low.
Your take on actors is definitely accurate for most of them, since most of them are me me me right-wingers who care little about things beyond their own “rise to stardom and riches”. The myth of actors being leftwing or radical is just that. The vast majority are right wing.
On the other hand, one area I disagreed with was when you said ideology should take precedence over historical accuracy. No way. Accurate historical portrayal empowers people, propaganda empowers psywar manipulators and actually disempoweres people.
I have not seen any of the films you discussed, but the modern one rehabilitating hitler and co., from your description, is propaganda, not historical accuracy. Playing up the positive side of hitler, while minimising the negative is propaganda.
Regarding hitler, he was actually quite a charmer when he wanted to be. That should be known, and juxtaposed with his less than charming episodes, his fanaticism, his war crimes and all the rest. The psychopaths among us often have a lot of personal magnetism and are not obvious dangers. This ability to “make friends and influence people” is how they get to power. They are not the hyperventilating loonies often depicted, that nobody could like or reason with, and it is important that people see that in order to see through the con.
Ramin, excellent article. I just want to add, that I can’t stand the pretend Russian’s in the Hollywood, who are Scots with their heavy accent and can’t even be bothered to learn how Real Russians speak English. Not to mention their butchered pretend Russian lingo. I guess, the assumption is, that English speaking audience just do not know any better. Unfortunately those movies are not intended for the audience that knows more than one language and knows better.
I must admit though, that at least lately they (Hollywood) started to use Israeli actors who actually do speak Russian.
“I must admit though, that at least lately they (Hollywood) started to use Israeli actors who actually do speak Russian.”
The zionazi-gays running hollywood have been using Sephardic israelis to represent Arab Muslims in their Islamophobic propaganda for decades, it’s expected they would use ex-Russians, ie: rejects, to lend credence to their Russophobia. It’s their standard mo.
Bravo, Ramin!!!
Many excellent points raised by this article, but also a number that I find… well… worrisome.
It seems that Mr. Mazaheri argues for a cinema of “good (i.e., socialist) propaganda”. Directors and actors should not be granted autonomy as artists — since, on this account, they cannot be trusted to “know better” or “care about anyone but themselves”. Instead, they should be subordinated to the decisions of a regime of censors. This means, by extension, that decisions regarding the financing of films should probably also be determined by censors.
Regarding the content of the films themselves, historical accuracy is important, but it should be subordinated to the values of socialism. In particular, this means: class enemies must receive a specific treatment. They should not be shown as monsters, for that would imply they are not human, but neither should they be shown to display too many normal Christian virtues, for that would “humanize” them too much. On screen, their villainy should be unmistakeable, unambiguous, even if this contradicts some historical record.
On this argument, then, cinema should be viewed like propaganda, not really art, and as propaganda it should convey a “politically correct message” via a regime of censorship and control, if necessary.
The difficulty I have with this way of thinking about cinema is that it assumes the audience has very weak critical powers and needs to be protected from reactionary or revisionist films – i.e., socialist “wrongthink” — ideally by a censorship regime.
Although Mr. Mazaheri doesn’t elaborate it, the opposition being set out in this article sounds something like Hollywood vs. what used to be called Socialist realism. While I agree with Mazaheri that many Hollywood productions are shallow, in their own way propagandistic, and that we should be worried about this, fortunately, there have been many films produced outside the Hollywood system (and even a few inside) that follow neither approach, that take politics seriously and invite their audiences to think.
Stalin managed to start process which finally collapsed colossal failure called Soviet Union.
Stalin was incredibly incompetent military leader causing disaster after another and so horrific losses that there are indeed some good reasons to talk about Pyrrhic Victory. Hitler was no way better. They really were men of the past both.
One thing has always surprised me: how the heck Soviet oil production collapsed so much that in 1944 they still couldn’t produce more than 18.2 million tons (33 million in 1941, 18 million in 1943). Germans have left Maikop (smallest oil field) 18 months earlier.
Great Patriotic War wasn’t great at all. It was disaster for Soviet Union. Much of that caused by Stalin himself with his foolish co-operation with Hitler in 1939-41. That post war Soviet block made Eastern Europeans hate and despise Russia even more. Legacy of WW2 is terrible for Russia and thing not to be proud of. But generally speaking – most of wars have always been disasters for Russian people. It’s true that military victories might be in long run more dangerous for empires than educating smaller defeats. Glamourizing Great Patriotic War as some kind of new religious cult in the eve of 2020’s can be estimated grotesque try to build “brotherhood” in society very far from Stalinist Soviet. How long will this cult sell well?
Russia has lost Ukraine for at least next 30 years and if Serbia will follow the path the defeat is zipped.
The price of victory was too high and too terrible. As we saw later Americans cleaned the clocks of both Britons and Russians. Only real winners in long run were Americans, Chinese and perhaps Indians.The war was final nail to European coffin. Roosevelt had industrial capacity and quality, Churchill his loved Empire and Stalin peasants and workers to be slaughtered and rather crap T-34s to broke during road marches. Quality minimized military losses. Poor quality caused horrific losses. Simple but true. Zhukov atleast admitted in 1960’s that lend-lease and especially its better quality helped Russians a lot. “Without it we won’t have been able to create our strategic reserves…and continued the war”. Honest man. Rare in Russia?
My humble opinion about Bolsheviks is that they were scoundrels of utopia with no idea of economic facts. Nazis were low level dreamers of some foolish racial theories run by shell shock WW1 regimental corporal dispatch runner. No wonder they both caused so horrendous military losses to their people. Hitler and Stalin see warfare with eyes of 1914-18. They got what they wanted. According study (2008) made by Russian Military Academy Soviet military losses have been in 1941-45 staggering: 14,241,000 deaths. And they estimated the final number down on butcher’s bill is likely about 14,500,000.
Now there’s interesting study made in Germany and by St. Andrew professor O’Brien suggesting than unlike mainstrean historians are thinking German war production didn’t target so much land warfare. In fact German munitions share was: 55-58% air war, 12% sea war and only 30-33% land war. Great majority of that bulk -air-sea production was targeting Western Allied while great majority of land war production Eastern Front. In total only about 40% of German war production went to war against Stalin’s Russia (called Soviet Union).
Eastern Front warfare was technologically least advanced compared to that in west, south and Pacific. It was near to that 1914-18 backward slaughter. The idea that land war is much more backward than that on air and sea humiliates ego of Russians who think that T-34 represented “modern warfare” (bullshit, there was no high tech in ww2 AFVs like T-34). List is long but there’s no need to waste time on it. Eastern Front warfare was primitive, relatively cheap but man costly. It was the theater were cannon fodder was sacrificied, mostly men whose battle value (education)or value for production (labor market value) was irrelevant.
Most of advanced warfare was in west and south. Most of German aircraft losses were caused by Western Allied (75%) just like Navy losses (90%). Tank warfare was less advanced (35% German losses in south/west) and down on bottom were bulk infantry losses (80% in east).
So Russia as less advanced country had to face that backward warfare and took heaviest losses. The role of Western Allied was to pull as much German war production to higher technology battle as possible and pull air cover from east to west/south/Reich. Hitler abandoned his bulk infantry on its own in east when Western Allied gang raped Luftwaffe. That’s the background of Soviet victory. Luftwaffe loss rate per combat sortie in 1944 is revealing: 0.7% in east while staggering 5.37%. It was 8 times more dangerous for Luftwaffe pilots to fly against RAF/USAAF than rather poor level Soviet air forces (VVS). In reality that gap has been wider when Luftwaffe used lots of obsolete crap (like Stuka, night harassement and Heinkel) in east while not in west.
Perhaps these rather embarrassing facts help to understand why Soviet military losses were so terrible. Low quality and boneheaded commanders increase losses.
While I agree with many of the author’s sentiments, his own personal brainwashing is exposed by his words.
The historical record shows Hitler was indeed kind to animals, caring for his lover, etc, yet the author simply states, “How can this be so? This is Hitler we are talking about!”, clearly demonstrating his own prejudices programmed into him by his personal environment/social programming.
The author, like many after the war, has been conditioned to see the world in black and white, as good v evil, without the basic human understanding that the world and every human on it is made up of greys… people who are the end result of thier life experiences, thier ‘environment’.
Control of mankind’s perceptions of history is fought for by all political sides, convincing the target market to judge a man (Stalin, Hitler, Gaddafi, Putin) but ‘thier’ word.
I have watched neither film. Many decades of lies and programming have passed since those momentous years. Was Hitler a hero saving his people from the grip of the Central Banksters (like Putin, Gaddafi, and reportedly by some, Stalin himself attempted)?
Or was he a demon, a spawn of hell itself?
We can only go by the historical record, not what movies have claimed.
In my studies the former appears to be closer to the truth, but who am I to judge, demon or hero, Hitler was simply another human undergoing the human experience on this material world. I do not judge him, for I cannot, having never walked in his shoes, and the author demonstrates what happens when we do judge others… his words expose his own failings.
Hi Struth,
As I noted, Fall of Berlin noted Hitler’s love of dogs, too. What they did not do was add scene after scene after scene to make Hitler more relatable – they set a clear limit for that.
And they did not make similar strenuous efforts to rehabilitate Eva Braun.
It’s not the one scene in Downfall – it’s all the scenes added up: the ledger becomes woefully in favor of Hitler. That makes it a pro-Nazi, pro-fascist movie and that should be unacceptable.
The West simply does not believe that they are affected by what they see and live – they are “too smart” to be influenced by propaganda. Socialism doesn’t take that view. Nobody I met in Cuba has ever seen “Scarface” (nor do they sound like Al Pacino) and I hardly think they are worse for it. If anything they are far better than the many Western young men who idolise Scarface and have Pacino’s picture up in their house.
War production figures and how it was little it was targeting land armies and land warfare is interesting:
1) Germany 30-33% (it taking all huge developing costs of aircraft, V-2 etc even less)
2) UK: 20-22%
3) USA: 24-25% ( a lot of this army production for Allies)
4) Japan: average 17% ( in 1944 only 15%)
Only exception was Soviet U using more than half for army (some estimates even over 60%)
So most blood was there on land battlefields while most of investments went to air-sea battle. Our history of WW2 is totally too much land battle centric with its relatively cheap material easy and fast to replaced if lost.In priority lists rifle man was down on the bottom, real proletar example.
@Travis
Most of advanced warfare was in west and south. Most of German aircraft losses were caused by Western Allied (75%) just like Navy losses (90%). Tank warfare was less advanced (35% German losses in south/west) and down on bottom were bulk infantry losses (80% in east).
– The war in Europe was won by infantry and armour, and that was where German losses on the Eastern Front were by far the greatest.. Navy losses were of no consequence for the outcome of the war on the Eastern Front. Infantry wins wars (the boots on the ground).
Hitler abandoned his bulk infantry on its own in east when Western Allied gang raped Luftwaffe
– Now this is a most interesting expression…RAPED Luftwaffe? Specify the date, please. RAF losses in night bombing were often prohibitive, and very high to the end of the war. Night bombing campaign brought very little towards Allied victory, it was mostly aimed at large cities, and there was really nothing in it looking like ‘rape’ of Luftwaffe right to the VE day. USAF long range escort fighters saved the day for USAF, otherwise the day offensive would have to be stopped
Low quality and boneheaded commanders increase losses.
– I concur. Those that come first to my mind are Mark Clark, Douglas MacArthur ( in WWII and Korea) and British generals in North Africa before Montgomery, gen Percival (Singapore) and of course gen Weygand (France 1940)
humiliates ego of Russians who think that T-34 represented “modern warfare” (bullshit, there was no high tech in ww2 AFVs like T-34)
– T-34 was not ‘high tech’ (what do you mean by ‘high tech’ regarding tank warfare in WWII ?), but it was the most advanced tank in the world at the time (1941), combining mobility, protection (sloped armour) and dual purpose gun of large calibre, better than any contemporary British or German tank gun or any other country
Eastern Front warfare was technologically least advanced compared to that in west, south and Pacific
– Simonov AKS self loading rifle was the first such weapon (introduced in 1936) accepted in any army, 65800 by 1940, with Tokarev SVT following in 1940; Il-2 Shturmovik the most advanced attack airplane of WWII;T-34 the best medium tank of WWII; ZiS-3 the best divisional gun of WWII; and of course the legendary Katyusha rocket launcher, with NOTHING comparable in the West (at the time)…not bad for ‘a less advanced country’, not bad at all
The role of Western Allied was to pull as much German war production to higher technology battle as possible and pull air cover from east to west/south/Reich.
– But note that ‘Operation Bagration’ (the destruction of German Army Group Center) was launched on June 22nd , 1944, to relieve the pressure on Normandy bridgeheads (amongst other goals)
You repeatedly refer to ‘high technology’ in your text. Please note that Barrett Tillman, well known American naval and aviation writer, has written in his book ‘On Yankee Station’ (I’m quoting from memory): ‘We Americans are often prone to put technology before human factor, but periodically, we rediscover the truth’. I could not agree more.
@ Travis
The following excerpts from an article add substance to my previous text, about ‘Operation Bagration’ presumably saving the day for D-day landings
How the USSR aided D-Day
June 06 2014
John Naughton
specially for RIR
While no Soviet forces took part in the amphibious operation itself, the USSR played an enormous part in the success of Operation Overlord.
The air supremacy enjoyed by the Allies on D-Day and crucial to its successful outcome owed much to events on the Eastern Front.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, in charge of the German defenses of Northern France, desperately wanted Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber units to defend the Atlantic Wall, but was denied them by Hitler who insisted they remain on the Eastern Front.
Two-thirds of the Nazis’ available manpower was tied up fighting on the Eastern Front. Given the huge resistance encountered, particularly by U.S. troops on Omaha beach and the fierce fighting which followed, notably in Falaise, it’s clear that had the D-Day landing force encountered anything like the full strength of the Wehrmacht, the outcome of the battle could have been very different.
Perhaps inevitably, given the rapid post-War cooling of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the West, the Red Army’s role both in the success of the D-Day landing and the outcome of the war itself was drastically underplayed.
Once Germany was forced to repeat its experience of World War I and fight a campaign on two fronts, the outcome of the war was all but inevitable. Indeed, just two weeks after D-Day – with Hitler forced to commit 168 divisions to counter the threat from the West – the Red Army launched Operation Bagration, the biggest Soviet offensive of the war, to take out the German Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front.
Although immeasurably less well-known in the West than D-Day, the scale of Operation Bagration dwarfs the Normandy landings with the Red Army mustering 10 times the number of men who fought for the combined Allied forces in Normandy.
It was a stunning success, with Russian forces taking their German foes by surprise and rapidly recapturing all of the land lost in 1941 and even moving into Poland and East Prussia with the resulting annihilation of Hitler’s Fourth Army, Third Panzer Army and Ninth Army.
The effort that Germany put into anti-air-raid construction effort is sometimes overlooked in the histories of the war. The Anglo-Americsn air offensive from.1942 onwards became a major preoccupation on Organization Todt (OT), the largest construction department in the German gocernment and builder of everything from the Westwall to fortifications on the east, to airports and protected factories for the V-2. TO documents captured after the war suggested that by 1944 there were 1,495,623 workers on their different projects.
The cost of these constructions was enormous. Xavier Dorsch the head of OT 1943-45 claimed that just in 1943, 4-4.5 billion RM were spent on construction – 80% on it focusing Allied strategic airwar. Only 10% share was targeting war in east. The value of projects just in 1943 was bigger that Germans used for building combat armor, vehicles and half-tracks.
V-2 project has been also much bigger and more expensive than unit cost average figures are telling. It took some atleast 2.5 bn RM and likely near 3 bn.
German AA-artillery industry ( wespons, ammo, vehicles) took also bigger slice (8%) than AFV production ( average 7%). Since fall 1943 until end of the war only 12-14% of AA-firepower was in east.
German Luftwaffe fighter deployment switch from east to south, west and home defense started as early as in late 1941. In 10 Dec 43 only 17.1% of fighter aircraft were in Eastern Front and later reached 20%. In fact it went down to 15%, which tells most of the story how German warfare abandoned Heer in east and proritized strategic air war against Western Allied.
There are lots of reasons to suggest that in reality Germany used hardly more than 30% of munitions to land war. In fact it aimed to use even less. Destruction of German fuel production in spring 1944 made low priority German army just a pray and Ploesti capture in August 1944 didn’t change that big picture. Romanian oil share had steadily decreased much before it (20% of all fuel production in March 1944).
BTW. In 1941-42 land war took only 24-26% of German munition production and less 4% was combat armor production. It’s pretty clear that land war was not even near as vital thing for German war production than mainstream historians are thinking.
This is what marshal Zhukov mentioned in 1960’s:
“Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can’t be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn’t have been able to form our reserves and continue the war,”
and continued…
“We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with.”
———————————————
“WE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FORM OUR RESERVES AND CONTINUE THE WAR.”
I know what will happen now. The normal Soviet style pseudo reality game playing of ” 4% influence” of lend-lease. That denial. That everlasting denial. Military history is full of examples where “4%” is critical because without that the rest – “96%” could be just bulk crap quality or at best mediocre.
The war material Germans were using in Kursk, July 1943 was less than 1/10 of that Americans were using in Battle of Marianas year later. Kursk wasn’t decisive battle at all unlike myth makers have claimed. On the other hand Marianas was real devastation blow for Japanese when Americans could after their victory cut all ties between Japanese raw material in Dutch East India, China and Japanese war industry in main islands.
During Operation Citadel German losses were 326 AFVs and 199 aircraft – so small share of their annual production and even taking all other army material losses Citadel caused hardly even 1% loss of production. And if taking whole Eastern Front durin July-August those material losses of aircraft, AFV, vehicles, half-tracks and weapons were 3% at maximum of 1943 production.
The lesson? Material losses of even most extensive land battles were surprisingly moderate for both German and Soviet production (Soviet AFV losses in Citadel were 1 956 while aircraft losses less than one thousand). The everyday normal attrition caused much more losses to armies than these over hyped and extremely underlined “crucial” land battles.
In order to understand the war between Hitler and Stalin, it’s necessary first to understand Stalinist pseudo-reality.The existing narratives of the war are part of that Bolshevik universe. The world according to Stalin is world in which not only does the “improbable” become sober truth, but in which virtually every fact is often in some way backward.
In the 1st decade after the end of the WW2, the slogan “Socialism Triumphant over Nature” appeared inside the USSR and its satellites. The phrase was not simply intended as a rherotical flourish. In Hungary, e.g it meant that state decided that properly socialist farms could grow oranges, despite what one mught think were obvious difficulties, and this bizarre experiment was attempted. But in context of the USSR, there was nothing bizarre about it. On the contrary, the notion had a respectable scientific pedigree.
Katyn Woods was more than a horrible atrocity in a war rife with atrocities. Just like Lysenkoism illustrates the extent to which a pseudo-reality prevailed, Katyn Woods helps us to understand both why it prevailed and why we should care. Stalin essentially destroyed the leadership that Poland needed as a nation if it was to survive the war with any semblance of independence.
Stalin ensured that his version of history would prove a sturdy construct because he made the evidence support him. He eliminated most of the witnessed to the contrary and in various ways he incriminated the survivors, pulling them into his own peculiar universe so that they knew what the truth was. In so doing, Stalin raised grave difficulties for future historians, who understandably prefer documentary evidence to hersay, archieves to stray anecdotes, and statistics to eyewitnesses whose testimonies are largely unverifiable. Unfortunately, one of the few givens in the history of the Soviet state is the unreliability of those traditionally important sources.
On the Soviet side even such a basic figure as the number of war dead proves to be slippery. In the decades after 1945 Soviet calculations of losses underwent substantial revision, the result being raise the numbers considerably. Soviet writers were reluctant to state any hard numbers as to their losses. The number, however improbable, was duly confirmed.
Thanks, Ramin, for this interesting review.
I don’t think it has yet been translated from German, but I recommend the autobiography of Rochus Misch, the ‘Forrest Gump of the Third Reich’. Misch spent 5 years close to Hitler, from May 1940 until the end. The German title is ‘Der letzte Zeuge’ (The last witness), with subtitle ‘I was Hitler’s telephonist, courier and bodyguard’. It was Misch who formally identified Hitler’s corpse. He claims to have been the last German soldier to leave the famous bunker, from where, after disconnecting the phone lines and changing out of his SS uniform he walked across the front line via the U-bahn into Soviet captivity, where he spent the next 8 years.
The autobiography was not ghosted but dictated to an amanuensis and published in 2008. Having been badly wounded during the initial invasion of Poland in September 1939, Misch’s absolute priority was to avoid being sent back to the front line. His detailed and factual account of how he succeeded in this aim makes fascinating reading. He died in 2013.