review of _Hitler: The Rise of Evil_ TV miniseries

[pynchonoid]

GR readers in particular may find this of interest;
attentive Vineland readers, too, given the way that
Pynchon links Nixon/Reagan/Bush with the Nazis in that
novel.  Enjoy!


_Hitler: The Rise of Evil_. Peter Sussman, Executive
Producer.
Christian Duguay, Director. John Pielmeier and John
Ryan, Producers.
Screenplay by John Pielmeier and G. Ross Parker.
Toronto: Alliance
Atlantis, 2002. Color. Television airdates: May 18 and
20, 2003,
CBS.

Reviewed for H-German by Andrew Stuart Bergerson
<bergersona at umkc.edu>, Department of History,
University of
Missouri, Kansas City

At first glance, it may seem inappropriate to
criticize this
mini-series from the perspective of Alltagsgeschichte.
After all,
its primary focus was the early life of Adolf Hitler:
architect and
archetype of the criminally extraordinary. Yet CBS
claimed to do far
more. As James Cross Giblin and Dr.  Karen Riley wrote
in the
on-line educational supplement, this mini-series
sought to dramatize
not only Adolf Hitler's life and the experiences that
shaped his
personality but also how "this deeply disturbed man"
rose "to
supreme power in such a civilized country as
Germany."[1] By
equating "The Rise of Evil" with "Hitler," they
reduced the
complicated question of the origins of the Nazi
revolution to the
mechanical process by which this one man seized power.
[...] Nor is the appeal of Hitler
biographies simply a matter of ratings or
publications.  Rather, its
appeal lies in the way that it, by truncating the
complexity of
scholarship on the Third Reich, reassures us of our
ability to
categorize, contain, and eradicate the original "Axis
of Evil."

The mini-series established its point of view in the
opening credits
with the rhythmic pulse of dictatorial terms like
"power,"
"intimidation," and "fear." Under Weimar conditions of
political and
economic uncertainty, we were shown, Hitler
manipulated the fears of
the German people and mastered "the politics of
hatred" (mostly
anti-Semitism). Through the eyes of both Hitler's
critics and
sympathizers, the mini-series encouraged us to
experience the morbid
and sometimes even erotic fascination with which
ordinary Germans
viewed Hitler. The camerawork aggrandized Hitler as a
public
speaker. The melodramatic images of psychotic crowds
certainly
correspond to what Nazi propaganda wished us to
believe about him
and his charisma. They also correspond closely to the
claims of
ordinary Germans to have been "hypnotized" by Hitler.
Helene
Hanfstaengl described the swastika flag in these
terms.
Melodramatically foreshadowing her attraction to the
Nazi movement,
her evening dress even reflected its colors. Then in
the 11:00
newscast after the program, a Hitler Jugend who
actually met Hitler
in the final months of the war bore "authentic" 
witness to the
power of Hitler's "clear blue eyes" to "mesmerize." 
Clearly, we do
need to try to determine the everyday dynamics at the
core of these
totalitarian modes of reciprocal perception, but it is
bad history
(and bad journalism) to take the claims of Herrschaft
at their word.

It is also relatively unenlightening to depict Nazis
as literally
psychotic through scenes of sadistic violence, manic
adoration, and
sexual depravity.  After the 1924 trial, the
journalist Fritz
Gerlach (representing "the voice of sanity") makes
sure that the
audience knows how to view Hitler properly:  as a man
who appears
human but is not in fact. Even his niece corrects one
of his loyal
followers that her uncle is "a monster." Nazi crimes
against
humanity were indeed monstrous, but Adolf Hitler, his
Nazis, and
other ordinary Germans were human beings. We do the
antifascist-antiracist cause a disservice to so
dehumanize our
enemies that we fail to understand how ordinary men
and women could
become Hitlers or chose to join their cause. In this
case, the
mini-series erred on the side of caution: they did not
want us to
identify with a more realistic depiction of Hitler.
Still, in order
to accurately demonstrate precisely how ordinary
Germans were
responsible for Nazi inhumanity, historians need to
understand
them--even those who were perpetrators. [...] 


_The Holocaust_ mini-series, Edgar Reitz's _Heimat_,
and the
Historikerstreit had raised the issue whether a
treatment of
everyday life during the Third Reich as if it had been
normal
necessarily normalizes a categorically abnormal regime
and effaces
its inhumane crimes. To be sure, we must never abandon
our
skepticism: the Third Reich was not really normal. 
Rather, the
problem for Alltagsgeschichte is that ordinary Germans
tried to
imagine their normalcy in spite of the Third Reich and
even the
Holocaust.  More to the point, the problem for
historians of
everyday life is to determine how normalcy is
constituted in modern
societies in general and with what particularly
inhumane
consequences in the case of the Third Reich.  In its
studied
avoidance of the everyday lives of ordinary Germans
(as well as
ordinary Poles, Frenchmen, and so on), the mini-series
made fascism
seem exogenous to their biographies, when the real
problem remains
how they made National Socialism into a normal part of
their lived
reality.

[...]  For the most part, however, the
mini-series got its Alltagsgeschichte wrong. In one of
the few
scenes directly addressing everyday life, the
mini-series depicted
the Jewish cabaret director and composer Friedrich
Hollander telling
his childhood friend, Ernst Hanfstaengl, that he was
no longer
welcome in his establishment because of his Nazi
affiliations. Such
incidents of direct, verbal confrontation between
friends, initiated
by the victims of Nazi hatred, did take place, but
this depiction
significantly misrepresents the dynamic of
nazification and
aryanization in everyday life. It almost seems like
Hanfstaengl was
the victim of his former friend's sensitivities. More
to the point:
there was no such thing as "a bystander" in the
process of
coordinating friendships and nazifying Germany.
National Socialism
required active implementation in everyday life by
"ordinary"
Germans.  Although it is particularly true under a
regime with
aspirations to totalitarianism, ordinary men and women
always
constitute a particular kind of self and a society in
every living
act. They play the small but decisive role in shaping
the larger
processes of history, criminal or otherwise. To defend
democracy,
television producers should help their viewers think
critically
about this often hidden process: how ordinary people,
not just
psychotic demagogues, shape world history. This
mini-series did not.

[...]  A. J. P. Taylor notwithstanding, defeating
fascism
requires far more than what we today call "regime
change." By
reducing a complicated history of state and society to
the handiwork
of a single demagogue, this mini-series encouraged its
audience to
indulge in a dangerous fantasy: if we only cut off the
head of the
hydra of fascism, it will die. But the Nazi
revolution, like many
other fascist revolutions, involved the proactive
labors of far more
than one psychotic leader. Defeating them today will
require
policies based on a much deeper understanding of how
fascism
functions in everyday life than this mini-series
provided.

[...] 

look for an online version here:
<http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/>


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