"Downfall," A Really Good Movie

First published July 15, 2009; slightly edited and updated November 30, 2014. There is also a separate "Addendum" to this article, which I've also updated. The Word History updated, 2-4-16.

A few years ago, it must have been in 2003, I read an article or news story about the upcoming release of another historical movie dealing with Hitler’s end in Berlin in 1945. Two things caught my attention; one was that the movie was a German produced film. Now that may not sound too spectacular, but movies about Hitler almost always seem to be American or British produced, and most of the characters are played by American or British actors. This movie would have German-speaking actors portraying the characters who participated in this terrible era of German (and World) history. The second thing had to do with the German language, and, with my love affair with language, this was what REALLY caught my attention. The article made mention that the actor playing Hitler, Bruno Ganz, a man of whom I’d never heard, was credited with having mastered Hitler’s mannerisms so well, that he even got Hitler’s voice and south German accent down pat.* Well, I thought that was interesting, and while I can’t say what I did back in 2003, it is likely that within fifteen seconds of having finished reading the article, my mind had wandered onto something else, and I never went to see the movie when it was released.

Then in the spring of 2009 I came across a reference to this same movie when I was reading something about German dialects. I recalled the article I’d read prior to the film’s release, and I checked out the availability of the movie on DVD, and I found a very reasonably priced edition, complete with English subtitles, interviews with some of the actors, and an additional version with commentary from the director, Oliver Hirschbiegel. I also found that the picture had received several awards, and that it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. I was a bit perplexed, since if you have seen one movie about Hitler’s end, you have seen them all, because the ending is always the same; he kills himself (better late than never). I bought the movie, and I’m sure glad I did! What a movie!!! It spurred me to do some further research, and I also checked out a couple of other movies, actually I guess what you’d call documentaries, both with interviews of actual participants from Hitler’s bunker.

What impressed me about the movie, called “Downfall” in English, or “Der Untergang” in the original German (see the “word histories” at the end), was that it wasn’t just a war movie, or another movie about Hitler blowing his brains out. This movie had military action, including some gruesome scenes (so beware), but it delved into something that Germans have been reluctant to do since the war ended, and that is, why they followed Hitler. This same question has been asked by many, many historians, and to be quite honest, there isn’t any one answer. People followed Hitler to varying degrees, and for various reasons. The picture tries to deal with some of this, and I’d actually say, it gives an answer in part, that there wasn’t always clear logic involved in why so many individuals followed Hitler, especially in the last days of the war. If you’re interested in the movie, I won’t spoil everything for you, but I’ll give you an idea of what it covers, some general, some more specific, along with some further explanations that I derived from the other interviews I saw, and from the director’s commentary, which was REALLY great.

First, some criticism was leveled at the producers and director of the film for showing Hitler to be “human” in a couple of scenes: in one scene he hugs his dog and gives her a kiss on the head; then in one of the opening scenes, he treats the female secretarial applicants with respect and courtesy. I find this criticism to be faulty, because Hitler’s personality was part of what attracted people to him. Yes, he was a son-of-a-bitch (all due respect to his mother), and hopefully we all understand that, but like it or not, he was one of US, a human being, and try though we might, we can’t always completely disown evil people like Hitler, Stalin, or Saddam, no matter how uncomfortable their being humans makes us feel. Further, some criticism was given to the positive portrayal of other another participant, namely one doctor, who, after the war, was accused of having conducted experiments on concentration camp inmates, but the director, in his commentary, says that he could not find credible evidence to support the charge. In fact, at the very end of the “commentary version,” the director gives his opinions on each of the main historical participants, with a blunt, negative assessment of many.

This film, like the movie “Patton,” is based on real events (“Patton” being mainly from General Patton’s own writings and also those by General Omar Bradley), although some events are combined into one scene to keep the length and cost of the film within reason. Many sources by actual participants from those times were used in the script of "Downfall." After the war, many German military and political leaders who were actual witnesses to those last days in Berlin wrote about those events, and interestingly, one of his secretaries did not write a book about her time with Hitler until not long before she died from cancer, when she was in her 80s (see below). Almost all of the scenes are based upon fact, even at times with the same words that were spoken by the real historical figures included, and the director says that he only “created” one main character for the movie, a young boy, about 12, in the Hitler Youth, to represent the kids used by the Nazis to actively engage in the street fighting against the Russians in Berlin. I’ll take the director at his word, but the boy’s parents have brief scenes in the movie, and perhaps they were actually based upon real participants, and he just gave them this boy as their son. Further, just so you know, the entire movie is in German, there is even some Berlin dialect spoken, but the English subtitles are excellent, with very accurate translation.

The movie opens with a short clip of one of Hitler’s real secretaries in an interview given not long before she died, and shortly before the movie began filming. Her name was Traudl Junge. The movie covers a good deal about her experience in Berlin during the last ten days or so of the battle, and it is taken from her memoirs, compiled not long before she died (she died in 2002).** She also has an excellent clip at the end of the picture about her failure to try to find out about Hitler and the regime. She started working as one of Hitler’s personal secretaries when she was only 22 years old. He had four such secretaries, and in one of the other documentaries I saw, Traudl Junge mentions that when they were all with Hitler in his military headquarters, he would have lunch with two of his secretaries every day, and then dinner with the other two later in the evening. The secretaries were advised NOT to talk about military or political matters with Hitler, as he wanted to spend time away from those subjects, and in fact, the secretaries provided female companionship for Hitler at lunch, dinner and tea.

With the exception of the scene about Hitler’s meeting the secretarial applicants in late 1942, and his hiring of Traudl Junge at that time, the entire movie is set in war torn Berlin in April 1945, much of it in Hitler’s underground bunker, which was recreated in great detail for the movie (although above ground). Much of the movie was shot in Munich and, interestingly, St. Petersburg, Russia. I say “interestingly,” because the Germans were fighting the Russians in Berlin in 1945. The director says they chose St. Petersburg because parts of the city had been designed by German architects, and these areas are still quite similar to the Berlin of the Hitler era.

I mentioned the “fictional” boy fighting the Russians in the streets of Berlin, well, in one scene his father comes to the boy and his friends (including a girl of maybe 15) who are awaiting the Russian advance. The father, who has lost an arm in the war, tries desperately to convince the kids to go home, as the war is lost, and he doesn’t want them to be killed in such a hopeless cause, but they all stay.

There are several scenes of Hitler and his military personnel in conferences, and Hitler’s “delusional orders” to have them organize large scale attacks against the Russians in order to save Berlin. The generals know it is a bunch of nonsense, but while they complain, mainly behind Hitler’s back, they can’t bring themselves to do anything to stop the carnage. When one officer tries to convince them to act, they turn on him with angry words. When some try to get Hitler to evacuate civilians, he turns down the requests with statements like, “In a war like this, there are no civilians” ("In einem Krieg wie diesem gibt es keine Zivilisten"), and in another scene, when his orders for the destruction of Germany’s infrastructure are challenged for their likelihood of putting Germany back into the Middle Ages, he says something like, “I can't give consideration to the German people, they deserve to live like in the Middle Ages, as they’ve proven to be the weaker people” ... because they didn’t win the war. Talk about "survival of the fittest!" Further still, Nazi “execution squads” roam the streets of Berlin shooting or hanging people, even elderly men, whom they deem to be “deserters” (this is definitely based upon fact). The director says in his commentary that there was no real opportunity to deal with the concentration camp issue, so he “created” a scene where there is a pile of naked bodies to remind people of that horrendous tragedy. Further, and I’m repeating this, but the director says that most of the scenes are recreations of actual events that were written about by others present in Berlin and around Hitler, but that in a case or two, people met with Hitler in private, one-on-one, and that the only account is that of the “survivor,” who may not have accurately reported what was really said, but that they chose to use these accounts anyway.

This is a “deep” movie, as it is about many people trapped by their loyalty to a man who had seriously deteriorated, both physically and mentally. Even his irrationality can’t seem to shake them loose from him. In one scene, Hitler tells people gathered around, that he will not leave Berlin, thus bringing the reply from his long time mistress, Eva Braun, and also from Traudl Junge, that they will stay too. One of the other secretaries asks Traudl Junge later why she had said that, and she replies, “I don’t know why…honestly.” A sniffling Joseph Goebbels, the infamous Nazi propaganda minister, tells Junge that Hitler wants him to take his wife and family (six children) and leave Berlin, but that he won’t obey the Führer’s order.

Overall, this is a gloomy kind of movie, and the director says he put in a “created” ending, because “people need some hope” after watching this macabre part of history. You’ll have to watch the movie to learn of that ending. This is a movie well worth seeing. The performance by Swiss German actor Bruno Ganz as Hitler is just absolutely remarkable. No need to worry that you might like Hitler because he hugs his dog and treats his secretaries well, his actions throughout the movie, based on historical fact, will keep you hating him, perhaps even more so, as well you should. Anyone who likes Hitler because of his dog or his secretaries, already liked him in the first place, and there are probably a few more of them than we would like to believe exist. FIGHT FASCISM!

* I read that Ganz studied a recording of Hitler in a meeting with the President of Finland in 1942, where Hitler spoke calmly and in his every day voice. Ganz studied it for many days to perfect his impersonation of Hitler’s normal speaking voice, rather than the sound of his shrieking voice so often heard in many of his public speeches.

** Traudl Junge had made extensive notes about her time as one of Hitler's secretaries a couple of years after the war ended, while her memory of events was still pretty good. It was these notes that were used for the book she agreed to have published. The notes were illegible in a few places, and the book shows that. Her recollections were also off on some details, especially the chronology of events, but that was to be expected. Just imagine writing about a part of your life and trying to get every incident into proper sequence. The book left all of the errors intact, but then noted the correct information. In at least one of her interviews, she also made a couple of errors on names, referring to General Stülpnagel in France by a mangled version of his name, and also mispronouncing Field Marshal Schörner's name, but neither mistake was exactly earth shattering.

Photo is from the 2005 DVD release by Constantin Film and Sony Home Entertainment

Word Histories:
Under-This common word goes back to Indo European "ndhero," which meant "lower; thus also, below, under." The Old Germanic offshoot was "unther" or "under," with the same meaning, but also, "among." This gave the other Germanic languages forms of the word: Dutch “onder,” German “unter,” Low German Saxon "ünner," Frisian, Swedish, Danish & Norwegian “under,” and Icelandic "undir." The spelling has remained unchanged in English, as even in Old English it was "under."

Gang- This word seems to go back to Indo European "ghengh," which meant "to step, walk." The Old Germanic offshoot was "gangaz," which meant "go." Old English had the noun "gang," which meant a "passage, path, course;" that is, "a place where people 'go.' " Later in English, in the 1600s, it also took on the meaning "a group who goes together,” usually in reference to workmen, but then later still, this developed into “a group that goes together for purposes none too good;” thus our modern meaning "gang," as in members of a gang. Of course, "gangway," is a place where people go, walk. And "gang plank," is a place you don't want to go, if you're captured by pirates. German uses the word in many compounds, for example, "Eingang," literally "in passage, path;" that is, "an entrance," and "Ausgang," meaning literally "out passage, path;" that is "exit."