Hitler's ghost

Bob Boldt, friend to this blog, sent me a piece a few days back. His ruminations on the legacy of fascism strike me as quite appropriate, and not just because the ABC/Disney outrage has a Goebbels-esque air to it. In recent days, the right has made a concerted effort to depict Democrats as "soft on fascism." This, despite the fact that it was primarily conservative politicians who called for American isolationism during World War II.

After the asterisks, the words belong to Boldt:

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The other night I decided to watch a couple of opening scenes from a rented video, The Downfall – Hitler and the end of the Third Reich (2004) before dropping off to sleep. Big mistake. The movie gripped me from the first frame and wouldn’t let me stop watching until it had run its last credit. I cannot imagine they actually, finally made a movie like that about Hitler. I’m sure that it took all these years’ distance from the real events to allow the perspective that permitted the portrayal of these characters in all their humanity and not as the predictable cartoon cardboard cut out monsters we have been fed ad nauseum. It took the Germans, of all people, to produce this breakthrough film. I cannot imagine anyone in this country, outside of perhaps HBO, even considering such a project. At the time of viewing I could not quite account for the unexpected power the film had over me. It was its approach to the humanity of the characters, as I said, that so disarmed me. I have heard that some accused the production of being pro-Hitler. I can understand how a few might say that though I could not disagree more.

Of course the specter of Nazism is regularly referenced by both the right and the left, like some closet bogyman, let out to scare little children and the opposition. Sixty years later we still have not come to terms with the fact that those who did such horrible things were not animals (what a defamation of our fellow creatures!) or demons, but men and women of flesh and blood. It is because these were the horrific accomplishments of real people that their acts are so threatening to us and we must quickly draw the shroud over the unspeakable truth - that the face that rises to meet us in our reflection on these events is our own.

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The only hope for us lies in our ability to somehow see the humanity in such seeming inhumanity. As the Roman playwright said, “Nothing human is alien.”[1] In Arthur Miller’s play, After The Fall, the character of Holga, a survivor of the horrors of WWII, says that at night she fitfully dreams of her life as a mentally retarded child that she must finally embrace in all its deformity in order to ultimately find peace. [2] So unless we not only see the dark within others but also are able to look for it, this horror, within our own souls, we cannot be fully human.

For me the hardest part is to realize how impossible it is to actively seek this darkness and how everything in us works to prevent, to protect, us from this realization. As Rilke said, social conventions of all imaginable invention have been erected to shield us from our true selves and from an authentic experiencing of the other- even in (or especially in) the act of love. [3] Because we cannot see our face in the face of Hitler (I suspect, with even more difficultly, in the face of George W. Bush) we demonize instead of really seeing, really understanding.

Eros and Thanatos flow within the human breast, contend for our allegiance and would carry us away on their conflicting currents. These two drives manifest themselves in many remarkable ways within our psyches and our social institutions. One current would lead us toward life and light, creativity, love and wholeness and a ripening of our pregnant natures. The other, equally forceful, equally human, current leads down to the darker regions. In its institutionalized incarnation it can embody a deep form of unthinking, a shutting down of all connection with others, the world around us and life itself. This is the current that finds manifestation in the three great plagues of our modern world: fundamentalism, fascism and reductionism. [4]

In the most horrible sequence of the film, the wife of Joseph Goebbels poisons her children because she will not see them in a future devoid of National Socialism. In a similar delusion Hitler cuts off any hope of survival for his children (the German people) after the fall of the Reich. On a deeply personal level, Magda Goebbels will not allow her ideology to conscience any future for her progeny apart from that Reich. In the scene where she poisons her six beautiful little ones, we come to grips with the consequences of a person so indoctrinated with an ideology that she cannot even save herself or her children from it when it turns toxoc.

For me this was the most difficult part of the movie. I must tell you that I could not watch most of the scene. At first she gives each child a sleeping potion to put them to sleep. The eldest girl senses that this is not “medicine” and has to be forced to take the draught. As if this scene is not enough, Magda then returns to complete her terrible work with a cyanide capsule for each. These scenes are made far more unbearable because this is not being done by a hypnotized zombie but by a mother presumably in conflict with whatever vestigial maternal imperatives would have her protect her offspring. Carefully she places a poison capsule between the teeth of each child and firmly but gently closes the jaw with an audible, crack, releasing the poison that instantly collapses its sleeping victim like a rag doll. After the first murder, I could not bear to watch further– something I don’t think I have ever done in a movie before. I could not watch. Of course this proved to be a deadly strategy for me, as now the sharp small snap of each of the remaining five capsules was even more powerful as an isolated audio experience. I actually had to shut off the film for a full five minutes until I was able to pull myself together.

“The Goebbels family values” is a microcosm in which the whole film reaches its full, dramatic unfolding. The suicides of Eva Braun and Hitler are anticlimactic compared with the dramatic impact of the termination of the Goebbels family. In it we see all the horrible implications of an existence devoted so totally to certainty, fanatical loyalty and idealism that finally even life itself must be snuffed out before yielding to disloyalty or doubt. Is the ultimate assessment of such devotion only to be measured by the success or failure of the object of such worship? Had Germany prevailed (and people who did not live through those dark days have no appreciation of the fact of just how problematic an Allied victory seemed at times) Frau Goebbels would have been an icon, worshipped as a model mother of the Reich. Instead she is thought to occupy a circle of Hell reserved for child killers the likes of David Koresh and Susan Smith. The difference between a William Wallace and an Osama bin Laden is often the verdict of a very arbitrary sense of history.

For me the only character that does not immerge as quite fully human is Joseph Goebbels himself. I suspect this is no oversight on the director’s part. We see here the ultimate triumph of the machine of fascism over man. They actually found an actor that looked more sinister than the original. In Goebbels we have the nearly complete translation of a human being into a cold-blooded ideologue. In a moving scene this façade cracks momentarily after he is ordered by Hitler to take his family and vacate the bunker. With tears that could only be equaled by Satan himself when he was cast out of Heaven for loving God too perfectly, Goebbels relates how his loyalty is so strong it is now able to let him disobey even the Fuhrer’s orders. Otherwise his mask is indestructible - or he has become wholly mask. This has nothing to do with his intelligence. He is probably the smartest guy in the room. It’s just that his identification to Der Fuhrer, right or wrong, is so all-consuming that there is no longer any there - there. Sound familiar?

In this one character we have a glimpse of the shape of what might have come to pass had the “Good War” gone bad. The ultimate goal of National Socialism was the final subjugation of all human wills under the One Will of the Fuhrer - the superman who would have become essentially the only will on the planet. All brains, all muscle, all intention and even human evolution itself would flow from this one dominant ego - the consummation of the master race. This was the “great vision” Hitler and fascism brought to the world. Sound familiar? Compare and contrast with our current vision of Amerikan Empire. Discuss among yourselves…

In his groundbreaking documentary, The Ascent of Man (1973) Jacob Bronowski details in Episode Ten entitled, Knowledge or Certainty, the possibilities and pitfalls of – how we know what we know - or as Donald Rumsfeld would say, how we know that we know what we know. In a moving climax to the production, Bronowski visits Auschwitz concentration camp where many members of his own family met with an untimely end. This camp was the most productive part of the extermination machine that sealed the fate of six million members of his tribe. At a certain point of the narration he deliberately steps into a pond, up to his ankles, (ruining a perfectly good pair of $200 oxfords – at 1973 prices) to make the following point:

It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false: tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality--this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.”[5]

So there you have it. I do have some issues with Bronowski and parts of his documentary may seem quaint today, but he grasped the importance of that which we must avoid at all cost: the mind-deadening narcotic of thinking that we have an exclusive franchise on truth – truth of any kind.

Yesterday I read a speech that Donald Rumsfeld gave to an American Legion Convention in Utah. I pulled several choice quotes for my memory file as a reminder - and a warning. The widely reputed controversial thrust of the speech was his comparison of those who, prior to WWII, sought to appease Hitler with our contemporaries who would negotiate with “terrorists.” These days the meaning behind our leaders’ words is always cloaked in idealistic rhetoric and euphemism. What I found most chilling about Rumsfeld’s speech was not the patently false and misleading “lessons” drawn from pre WWII years’ diplomatic failures that would presume to inform our dealings with the problems of today’s world, but his chilling, reduction of everything, every attempt at moral equivalency or a small modicum of intellectual nuance, to a high-contrast black-and-white brutal simplicity.

And that is important in any long struggle or long war, where any kind of moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong, can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere. [6]

These quotes were extremely frightening, because they represented not just the flakey ideology of one morally and intellectually bankrupt zealot but that they articulated the official party line of all three branches of those who presume to rule us.

As I mentioned before, there are a lot of Nazi analogies being slung about these days. Even though forbidden to do so by our president, the left especially is quite prone to compare the present regime to the Third Reich. I would be the first to admit that it would be ludicrous to try to make a one-to-one comparison of our present neocon-dominated administration to the Party leaders of the National Socialists of old. One needs to observe tendencies and attributes rather than exact surface similarities that of course can never exist. I use this equivocation of Bush with Hitler as a kind of shorthand to hopefully elucidate many of the tendencies and traits I feel they share in common. If calling them Nazis is too unpalatable for you, let us just say that the Bush administration seems to evidence the nascent stages of a Nazi-syndrome disorder (NSD). Many would-be oppressive regimes suffer from these Hitler-like symptoms: they share a belief in the self-congratulatory verities of good versus evil, a unchallenged moral superiority, a heroic self image and a certainty of “Gott Mit Uns.” This syndrome does not permit the acceptance of any information that contradicts the official “facts” or the universally established worldview. It requires also a diminution or actual denial of the humanity of certain segments of humankind based upon predetermined categories. Of course it then becomes possible to apply inhumane treatment to individuals within these categories, such as rape, death, torture, deprivation and a callous disregard for the “collateral damage” occurring to whole classes, groups or countries. There is an obsessive lust for imperial, absolute power. An unwavering devotion and unquestioning obedience is demanded of the ever-expanding cadre of true believers. The leader must have a messianic vision for himself as the God-appointed savior of not only the homeland but as the bringer of light (democracy?) to the whole world. Along with this expansive self-image is a refusal to admit to oneself or others any fallibility or the possibility of error. This infallibility must be maintained in the face of any facts to the contrary and all followers must support this delusion or be accused of disloyalty and possibly treason. A strong pro-administration press and an efficient propaganda machine must be in place to reinforce this ideology and assure the popularity of the regime with the electorate. Sound familiar?

I would suggest that precisely because we have never admitted Hitler’s humanity, we refuse to allow that these acts were committed and administered by a charismatic, flesh-and-blood, democratically elected politician. Because we believed him to be a demon with fangs and claws it is almost impossible for us to detect similar symptoms when, once again, such a leader arises in our own period of history and in our own midst. Hitler was neither a god nor a demon. Bush is neither a god nor a demon. Homo Sapiens are capable of immense self-delusion, and these benighted hairless apes seem to have an irresistible desire to allow themselves to be dominated at quite regular intervals by tyrants. Such a leader can inspire the electorate to incredible flights of self-destructive stupidity as we have seen in the sad historical record of WWII as well as today’s headlines. I see in the words of our present rulers and their apologists many disturbing tendencies toward a repetition of history’s dark past. If we understood this past with greater clarity and perhaps a bit more objectivity we might be able to avoid the relearning of some of the harshest teachings. I believe this is one of the lessons the producers of The Downfall are attempting to show us.

I swear, I do not think of these people as inhumane monsters who get up every morning, look into the bathroom mirror and say to themselves, “Well Donald, let’s see just how much evil we can do today!” “Everybody has his reasons.” [7]

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). So I am not one to lecture another on how to avoid the pitfalls of lust, greed, hatred and a thousand other deadly addictions or errors. Am I even certain that, subjected to the same influences and opportunities, I would turn out any different from our leaders? I would hope so – but who can be certain? I have had some surprising acts of personal moral and physical courage in the face of challenges that make me optimistic of a positive summing up of an otherwise untested life. What I am trying to say here is that we cannot cast anyone else in terms that deny his or her humanity. I think that this should be as true of our heroes and our golden ones as it is of those we despise and demonize. For me, the message of The Downfall is that the lesson of these horrific acts will be lost to us if we view them only as the actions of madmen - part of a mad race. Rumsfeld is wrong to demonize the “other” he fears so by branding all opposition to Empire as “terrorism” and rallying us around the true cross. So we are equally wrong to brand Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney and that whole crowd only as madmen and mere craven fools. By denying the “other” his humanity, we loose our ability to see him or even to counteract his violence and his destruction - even our ability to save ourselves from the harm his excesses will certainly visit upon us.

In Buddhism there is the Metta Sutta [8] in which we say to ourselves, our loved ones - and finally even to our enemies:

“May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you enjoy the fruits of your labors, duly acquired. All have Karma as their own.”

This seemingly simple-minded golden rule of sorts elucidates a profound teaching. It contains the only strategy I have ever encountered that can look into the great pit of blackness, gore and violence that fills the human skull and somehow love and transcend all that is contained there. In fact I think that one cannot truly appreciate the Metta Sutta without fully drinking from the depths of that bloody chalice. To, in the end, stand on this knowledge of the fullness of both our genius and our atrocity with love and affirmation is, to my mind, the only way to fulfill our humanity. I hasten to add that this is a test that I fail with a disturbing regularity.

Insofar as the filmmakers set out to create a work that contains such a cautionary and potentially redemptive tale, they are to be congratulated for their courage and honesty. Their unblinking look into this too often misunderstood moment in European history is a credit to the producers, cast and crew. This is filmmaking at its highest and its most morally responsible. It makes me proud to, in some small way, be included in the ranks of those artists who labor in this most modern, most influential medium.

“It’s unbelievable that he could manipulate all those people. He only succeeded because he was a human being, and that’s why we have to show this. To show him as a human being. Everything else would be fatal. And it would be a historical mistake.”
- Director of The Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel [9]


Bob Boldt
Independent Filmmaker

Notes:

[1] “Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.” I am a man, nothing human is alien to me.
Citation by the Latin comedy writer Terentius (he lived from about 190 to about 160 B.C.) In English he is often named "Terence".

[2] Holga: “I dreamed I had a child, and even in the dream I saw it was my life, and it was an idiot, and I ran away. But it always crept on to my lap again, clutched at my clothes. Until I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever in it is my own, perhaps I could sleep. And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible . . . but I kissed it. I think one must finally take one's life in one's arms.”
- Arthur Miller, After the Fall

[3] “Thus each loses himself for the sake of the other and loses the other and many others that wanted still to come. And loses the expanses and the possibilities, exchanges the approach and flight of gentle, divining things for an unfruitful perplexity out of which nothing can come any more, nothing save a little disgust, disillusionment and poverty, and rescue in one of the many conventions that have been put up in great number like public refuges along this most dangerous road. No realms of human experience is so well provided with conventions as this: life-preservers of most varied invention, boats and swimming-bladders are here; the social conception has managed to supply shelters of every sort, for, as it was disposed to take love as a pleasure, it had also to give it an easy form, cheap, safe and sure, as public pleasures are.” Rome, May 14th, 1904, from Letter 7, Letters to a Young Poet – Rainer Maria Rilke

[4] “… the interior landscape is a metaphorical representation of the exterior landscape, that the truth reveals itself most fully not in dogma but in the paradox, irony, and contradictions that distinguish compelling narratives - beyond this there are only failures of imagination: reductionism in science; fundamentalism in religion; fascism in politics.” Landscape and Narrative – Barry Lopez

[5] “The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science--or outside of it--we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses: First, in the engineering sense--science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance.

But second, I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge--all information between human beings--can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in any form of thought that aspires to dogma. It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance--and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair.

The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930s it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it, the ascent of man, against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false: tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality--this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge or error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we “can” know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to “touch people.””
--Jacob Bronowski, from "Knowledge or Certainty", an episode from the 1973 BBC series The Ascent of Man, transcribed by Evan Hunt

[6] More from the wit and wisdom of our Secretary of Defense:

“Can we really afford to return to the destructive view that America, not the enemy, but America, is the source of the world’s troubles?”

“Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country. America is not what’s wrong with the world.”

“The struggle we are in – the consequences are too severe – the struggle to important to have the luxury of returning to that old mentality of “Blame America First.””
Address at the 88th Annual American Legion National Convention as delivered by Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Salt Lake City, Tuesday, August 29, 2006

[7] “Everybody has his reasons,” Jean Renoir replied when asked why there were no villains in his films.

[8] “The Metta Sutta provides us with a very striking image of what form this love should take: 'Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, let him cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings'. This maternal image has particular resonance within the Tibetan tradition where it is said that in our previous lives we have all been another person's mother at some point. This makes the bond between ourselves and all other beings a very close one, despite what might seem like our current emotional distance.” http://buddhism.about.com/library/weekly/aa080602a.htm

[9] “At the end Hitler is always the incarnation of evil. That is him and you can’t make it up. You can quote between the lines. I quote Renoir, “Everybody has his reasons.” The most important thing was to make him real. That was the main task. I can’t imagine that anybody will like him. The fascinating thing is that they were humans. And Hitler too. This is the most frightening aspect. We show him as a human being. That’s how he got the people. If you look at their thoughts, it’s horrible. His looks are terrible – his hairstyle, like a pimp. It’s unbelievable that he could manipulate all those people. He only succeeded because he was a human being, and that’s why we have to show this. To show him as a human being. Everything else would be fatal. And it would be a historical mistake. I don’t see danger in doing that.”

Interview with director, Oliver Hirschbiegel from the DVD release, Sony Pictures.