For a relatively young, post-war Boomer like myself, this spellbinding movie poses a question which is more fascinating than Hitler himself ever was. Out here in ultra-liberal California, why do we still pay any attention to this guy? He died in the Bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945, five years before I was even born.
Over the years, I've seen multiple object lessons on the benefits of tolerance and the sheer self-destructiveness of intolerance. I've seen everything improve from my love-life to my job prospects, as I have become more tolerant, more "easy-going" over the years.
Maybe it's because World War Two is one of the cases in which good really did vanquish evil.
On the other hand, maybe there is something mesmerizing about mental pathology, or at least the type that this neurotic SOB had. This guy was no BS-ing Spiro Agnew, no sobbing Jimmy Swaggart, he was the "real deal", a man who truly did the devil's work. And yet, who coolly maintained a distance between his person and the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem". An animal-loving, sentimental vegetarian who loved bloody war. A raging maniac who revelled in his own anger, but who never himself killed anyone in civilian life. An adherent of "physical culture" who was sallow-skinned and infected with syphilis. A charismatic figure who spent his private life in an odd sort of solitude. A man who lived for a "glorious" past, but whose operatives created jet airplanes, robot bombs and the first ballistic missile, majorly contributing to the Twentieth Century which he so detested.
Yeah, sometimes pathological men are entertaining. And this movie tells us something about him and a great more about ourselves. Research on the Third Reich itself can become a form of conquest.
