"Downfall," A Really Good Movie/Addendum

First published July 17, 2009; edited and updated November 30, 2014. The main article, "Downfall," A Really Good Movie, has also been updated.

I thought I’d add a few more things about "Downfall" ("Der Untergang"):

Director Oliver Hirschbiegel was born in the late 1950s, so well after Hitler’s death. He’s no apologist for Hitler or the Nazis, and in fact, he makes it clear in his “commentary,” he feels that Germans need to face this part of their history. He also says quite clearly that Hitler was not crazy, and knew what he was doing. He feels that the “crazy” argument is too convenient, but while I see where he’s coming from, I don’t completely agree with him, as Hitler was certainly “unstable,” and that’s putting it mildly, in my opinion, although I agree that he was cognizant of much of what he was doing. Hirschbiegel also feels that Hitler knew how to “act” in certain situations; that is, he knew how to perform; raging with anger one moment to intimidate others, then trying to get sympathy from these same people the next moment, with more subdued behavior. There may well be some truth to this, but still, the idea that Hitler was so rational is my biggest disagreement with Hirschbiegel, although perhaps our definitions are what really differ. Still, we have to remember that a highly cultured, educated nation of tens of millions followed Hitler to the gates of Hell, and committed terrible crimes for him.

Traudl Junge says in some of the interviews I’ve seen, that she and the other secretaries didn’t know about the military or political matters of Hitler, as they didn’t participate in typing such orders. She says they handled his correspondence in more personal matters. She also says they weren’t “stationed” in an office outside of Hitler’s, where they announced visitors to him, as he had military and Nazi Party personnel who handled that. She said they were basically free to do whatever they wanted, unless he had something scheduled for them, or if, of course, he sent for them. (See the main article about their lunch/dinner arrangements)

After the war, Hitler’s secretaries took criticism for some of their favorable remarks about him.* They mentioned how kind he was with them, how he protected them and how he gave them little gifts over the years. Perhaps out of naiveté they didn’t realize the “raw nerves” they rubbed with such comments, as millions had died or been traumatized by this SOB. Traudl Junge says she didn’t realize what a criminal Hitler was until after the war when she heard and saw things about what he had done. Her interviews show her to be highly remorseful and full of self blame for her own failure to recognize what he truly was. In one of the interviews, she does say that perhaps she was so close to him because he was like a father to her. She explains that her own father had died when she was a baby, but that her childhood friends always mentioned their fathers, and that she felt this gap in her life. When Hitler treated her so well and worried over her and the others, he became a father figure in her life.

I mentioned in my original article that what first caught my attention about the imminent release of this movie a few years ago, was about the actor who mastered Hitler’s south German accent, Bruno Ganz. At least 25 years ago, I met a lady who had been born during the war in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. She later came to Cleveland and became an American citizen. Now, some may know that Garmisch-Partenkirchen is famous for winter sports events, like skiing and sledding. It is in the Bavarian Alps, right near the border with Austria. Hitler was born in Braunau-am-Inn (Austria), right across the border from Bavaria (Germany), however, his family moved to Linz (Austria) where he actually grew up, and which he considered to be his home town. Later, he lived in Vienna for awhile, where he was rejected for art school, ** and then he crossed the border and lived in Munich, which is where he was, I believe, when what became World War One broke out, and he joined a Bavarian infantry regiment. All of these areas speak a broad south German dialect called “Bavarian,” which is based very much on “Upper German” ("Oberdeutsch"); that is, German from the “upper elevations.” There are variations in Bavarian depending upon where you are in Bavaria or Austria, just as we Americans talk about people having “a southern accent,” but not all Southerners speak exactly the same, as there are differences from state to state and even within the same state. As with many of us, some of our regional speech variances (accents, words and even expressions) can carry over to what could be considered the “standard” language; that is, what is taught in school, and in more modern times, what is frequently (but not always) spoken by announcers on radio or television. Anyway, the lady from Garmisch-Partenkirchen once told me that Hitler must have worked hard to overcome so much of his Bavarian accent for public speaking, as he did. (A word history is below)

* Hitler's cook, who was often with the secretaries, apparently died in Berlin (some survivors think perhaps by her own hand, as she had a cyanide capsule with her, or that she was killed during the last fighting in the city), as she, Traudl Junge and one other secretary remained with Hitler in his Berlin bunker until his death. If I remember right, Hitler's other two secretaries were at his villa above Berchtesgaden in Bavaria in the last weeks of the war.

** I recall some historians speculating that, if only he had made it into art school, the world may have been spared his later actions.

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

Word History:
It-This goes back to Indo European "ke/ko," which meant "this." This gave Old Germanic "khi(t)," which is also the source of "he." In Old English it was "hit"and was the neuter form of third person "he." (the Germanic languages all had grammatical gender back then, something English later dropped).^ The softly pronounced "h" sound later died out. Dutch retained the "h," and has "het," German has "es (what is called a sound shift made "t" into High German "s"), but Low German has "et," as the sound shift didn't affect Low German, nor did it affect Frisian, and West Frisian has "it." The possessive form in English, "its," didn't really develop until the late 1700s! Before that, English speakers used "his" as the possessive form.

^ English now uses "he, she, it," with only the latter being grammatically neutral and generally used to refer to non human or non gender specific things (after all, we do often refer to a ship, boat or car as "she"). German, however, which still uses grammatical gender, has "er, sie, es," which mean "he, she, it," BUT they all can also mean "it," depending upon the noun they refer to. For instance, "Wagen" means "car" (or "wagon"), and it is a grammatically masculine noun, so the pronoun used when referring to "Wagen" is "er;" as in, "Der Wagen, er ist rot" ("The car, it is red"). Also, "Flasche" means "bottle" (really the same word as English "flask"), but it is a grammatically feminine noun, so: "Die Flasche, sie ist voll" ("The bottle, it is full").