Hitler - a career

Movie
Original title	Hitler - a career
Country of production	Federal Republic of Germany
original language	German
Publishing year	1977
length	150 minutes
Age rating	FSK 12
Rod
Director	Joachim Fest , Christian Herrendoerfer
script	Joachim Fest
production	Werner Rieb
music	Hans Posegga
cut	Karin Haban , Elisabeth Imholte , Fritz Schwaiger

Hitler - Eine Karriere is a documentary film about the rise and the end of Adolf Hitler and its content is based on the Hitler biography of Joachim Fest . Only original recordings were used as film material, mostly newsreel material.

construction

Adolf Hitler

All of the film's sequences are compiled from historical recordings and largely arranged chronologically. Apart from the very few private recordings, all of the material is in black and white. Excerpts without the original sound are always provided with explanatory comments and are occasionally accompanied by mood music. Commentary is less frequent with sound recordings and there is almost no personal music. Marches with marching music are given a lot of space, ceremonies and again and again Hitler as a sometimes quiet, sometimes loud speaker and demagogue . Even Joseph Goebbels hardly has a say, others hardly at all. It is noticeable that the commentary hardly interrupts Hitler, often even providing the cue for Hitler's speeches. In general, a lot of space is given to the original sound. The direct counter-speech of the commentary, if at all, is always very cautious. With a few exceptions, the pictures remain within the framework of the newsreel aesthetic. Hitler's anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are hardly discussed in the film.

procedure

This article or section needs to be revised: Here it must be clarified by whom z. For example, the comments in brackets, such as “what can be strongly doubted” etc. come from
Please help to improve it and then remove this marking.

The representation reproduces the film. For details on Hitler's life path that may be missing at this point, see Adolf Hitler and further references from there .

introduction

The "new" Germany is presented, the destruction of the new and already old order of the Weimar Republic . Hitler is on his way to erecting his own memorial by changing history. His rhetoric is put in the foreground.

The childhood and youth of the later " Führer " are almost completely left out. There are no film documents from this period, and very few pictures. Whether a lack of material or a lack of interest is the reason for this omission cannot be decided at this point.

Hitler's worldview

Hitler's basic idea is supposed to have been to save the world. He was shaped by Vienna at the turn of the century, the political unrest that already existed at that time, bloodthirsty images of horror and racist fears. Together with Wagnerian power fantasies, a monstrous view of the world is formed.

This representation is in contrast to the current opinion, which assumes that Hitler's radical political worldview only began to take shape some time after the war. (see Adolf Hitler # Political Rise (1918–1933) )

First World War and the immediate post-war period

Hitler is regarded by his comrades as an eccentric and is not promoted to sergeant due to poor leadership qualities ("hysterics") despite several medals. The war, like so many other soldiers, leaves him uprooted. The political upheavals are exacerbating the uncertainties. Hitler fails in civil life, remains a soldier at heart and seeks refuge, community in the then insignificant DAP, which later called itself the NSDAP. There he quickly found approval as a speaker and demagogue and found more and more supporters. “Maternal ladies” provide financial help and pave the way to a “better society”. The "affair" with his niece Geli Raubal is mentioned, her subsequent suicide is not.

Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch and the Great Depression

The first attempt to seize power fails (although Ludendorff's role is hardly mentioned), but Hitler learns from it. While in custody, he begins to invent his own legend ( Mein Kampf ). After the release, the failed coup is celebrated as a special act every year. Outwardly, Hitler is changing from radical to bourgeois.

The NSDAP is gradually getting bigger, but only the Great Depression gives the party and Hitler the longed-for chance. Triumphal parades , marches, KdF idyls organized by the party (to be more precise, their precursors), cheering people and great poses line up. The Weimar Republic cannot solve the problems in the eyes of the population. An uninterrupted propaganda campaign with pithy images consolidates the opinion that a strong man is needed. The seizure of power succeeded after the film was shown, because the democratic forces were tired of the ongoing conflicts and Hitler simply had to take the opportunity offered.

Seizure of power and elimination of the opposition

Hitler immediately begins to use the new means to consolidate power. Despite the huge torchlight procession and the propaganda surrounding the fire in the Reichstag , the next election does not lead to an absolute majority in the NSDAP, but the bourgeois parties let Hitler continue to rule. Then democracy is over. All opposition is removed or brought into line . Attacks against Jews, book burnings and Goebbels' incendiary speeches can be seen for the first time . But triumphs, popular amusement ( KdF ), aid organizations for the needy, sport and culture immediately follow . The construction of highways reduces unemployment. It is mentioned that the motorways were planned long before Hitler's government. However, the general recovery of the world economy is left out, as is the financing of job creation measures through loans, and so the tone of the newsreel that Hitler had stimulated the German economy prevails.

The calm before the storm

After looking back at the expansion of autocracy ( Röhm Putsch , Hindenburg's death, the Wehrmacht's oath of allegiance to the Fiihrer), the pictures are once again devoted to civil life. Hitler enjoys his free time with his " paladins ". The people, especially the youth, seem to be happy in their new role, that the community is everything, the individual is nothing. The 1936 Olympics demonstrated to the world the triumph of will in all areas of public life. Occasionally Hitler is referred to as tired, but then he pulls himself off to new gigantic projects, for example the future world capital Germania .

Expansion without war

Austria is connected and the people shown cheer. The fat men of the regime visit an art exhibition. The Sudetenland is taken over and the Munich conference seems like a meaningless marginal phenomenon. The Czechoslovakia is "connected apparently just" like Austria. Everyone is cheering, only England has woken up and is arming itself: gas masks, weapons, threats of war. The Führer’s 50th birthday (a one-time public holiday) once again shows the well-known ceremonial splendor. The regime seems invincible.

The first color photos show the idyll on his mountain farm . Hitler with Eva Braun , Goebbels , Ribbentrop and Speer in an almost private circle. Eva Braun did not appear in public. Basically, it is one of the staff he kept on the Obersalzberg. Hitler is said to have ruled little during this time and spent a lot of time in diversion.

The second World War

The Second World War begins at this point, apparently without transition, it is suddenly there and is being fought out. Only later - during the attack on Russia - is it established:

This was the war he had always wanted.

Victories in the west

Poland, Denmark, Norway and France are overrun. The legend of the Blitzkrieg emerges. Triumph follows triumph. The " shame of Versailles " is erased. The air war against England fails because of the "determination" of the defenders.

Here Fest takes up the theme often used in the speeches of Hitler and Goebbels, that sufficient determination and fanaticism are sufficient to defeat materially far superior forces.

The attack on the Soviet Union

In truth, their continued successes had made them unable to comprehend setbacks. They needed success now.

This was the war he had always wanted, the ideological confrontation with the main enemy, communism.

After things got stuck in the west, the armed forces are now attacking in the east and are fighting their way from victory to victory. For the first time there are pictures of atrocities of war, mass shootings. Jews are rounded up. Hitler visits the sites of his triumphs in Russia:

What drove him was the delusional idea of ​​saving the world.

But winter comes too early. The front wavers before Moscow.

Only Hitler's dogged perseverance held them together.

The turn of the war

In 1942 the Africa Corps was "broken up in a few weeks". The " desert fox ", which was already legendary among the Allies at the time , does not have a say. The Allied aircraft gain control of the air . The submarine war is lost. Hitler declares the "crusade against Bolshevism" and has troops recruited abroad. But the response is low. Then comes the defeat in Stalingrad , which Hitler "draws" and turns the beaming winner into a broken man. After Stalingrad he made only three major speeches.

He seemed to have reached old age without transition.

Hitler is almost only seen at state funerals and is said to have longed for death.

Nothing was staged here anymore. (which can be strongly doubted)

Unreal dreams

The film returns once more to the theme of the mastermind . Arno Breker creates sculptures of the Aryan superman according to Hitler's taste. National Socialism is therefore like a mixture of the Middle Ages and the Revolution.

He was a revolutionary, even where he thought in the old Franconian way.

Russia is to be depopulated and repopulated, a new Garden of Eden. People are rounded up and loaded into wagons. The SS is the new elite of the Führer, who is promoting architectural visions of the world capital Germania in the middle of the war .

The collapse

The German cities are being bombed and destroyed. The Fiihrer's birthday in 1943 is celebrated on a remote stretch of the motorway. People are fleeing the cities.

The slogan of total war now came back to Germany as total war.

He had developed the ability to perceive only that which strengthened his hope for the great turning point.

In 1944, Normandy was invaded . Hitler orders the retreating troops to use the " scorched earth " tactic .

However, the pictures shown were taken in the Soviet Union.

The assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 reinforced Hitler's madness.

From the failure of the attack, he concluded that Providence would lead the war to a victorious end.

The People's Court under Roland Freisler passes one death sentence after the other, and the conduct of the negotiations is reminiscent of a smear theater: Defendant Ulrich von Schwanenfeld (very quietly): "I thought of the many murders."
Judge Freisler (apparently beside himself): "Morrrde ?? ? You are a shabby scoundrel! "

While the newsreels promote miracle weapons and Hitler inspects the front in the east, Germany is falling to rubble. The Sports Palace speech is intended to mobilize all of the Germans' strengths again.

The speech is historically incorrectly classified at this point, because it was given in 1943.

At the beginning of 1945 all fronts collapse. Children and the elderly are trained on the bazooka while refugee treks move west. The Volkssturm is mobilized as the last reserve. Berlin is now a front-line city. Hitler once again honors Hitler Youth. He allegedly made the decision to commit suicide when the Russians invaded the government district. The last photo of the living Reich Chancellor was taken on April 20, 1945.

Then the fight is over. Survivors crawl out of the rubble. Many people have killed themselves out of fear. Russian soldiers find the pit in which Hitler's body lay. There are petrol cans next to it.

The other allies also march into Berlin. The NS symbols are burned, dismantled or otherwise destroyed.

Nothing remains. (A bold claim)

The last shot shows how the imperial eagle is blown up on the main stand of the Nazi party rally grounds.

reception

Heinz Höhne wrote a contemporary review in Spiegel in 1977 :

The audience will quickly notice that this film offers them more than just a new variation on the old Hitler theme. For the first time, German filmmakers free the leader, who has degenerated into a celluloid monster, from the thought patterns of anti-fascist educational films and create a credible, historiographically reliable picture of Hitler and his epoch.

At filmportal.de it says:

Much discussed and controversial film adaptation of Joachim Fest's Hitler biography. The film, which is largely based on documentary material, looks at the emergence and development of National Socialism largely from the perspective of the later dictator.

Prisma TV Guide (prisma-online) wrote:

This detailed illustration of Hitler's life (with historical sound and image material) from his childhood to the rise in the NSDAP to the German dictator and the catastrophic end in megalomania skilfully balances between fascination and horror. An informative film (also about the seductibility of a whole people) that should be a subject of instruction in every school.

Tim Darmstädter criticized the use of the documentary material:

The film documents from the Nazi era in particular are mainly material that was produced for propaganda purposes. Incorporated unbroken in a documentary report, what was specially staged for the camera appears as evidence of the reality of the time. Of course, what is staged is also real, but only as something staged. In this case, it cannot be seen from the material itself whether it reproduces a reality that also existed independently of the camera, or one that was presented in front of the camera.

The film Hitler - A Career by the former FAZ publisher and Hitler biographer Joachim C. Fest and Christian Herrendörfers, which saw itself as an educational film about the relationship between Hitler and his supporters, turned this dilemma into a scandal. Although he emphasized from the start that the National Socialists staged themselves, he did not break the staging, but reinforced it because the film itself was highly staged and based on the same principles that he allegedly criticized. He indulges in propaganda scenes, confirms the hierarchy between the leader and the people in the shot-reverse shot montage and amplifies optical effects through acoustic post-synchronization. This makes the theatrical effect greater than any fiction could achieve.

The director Wim Wenders accused the film of a lack of distance:

This film is so fascinated by its object, of its importance, in which it participates, that this object takes over the film again and again, becomes its secret narrator. There someone, haughty and in wicked recklessness, tried his language in a bestseller, considered the language of demagogic images to be superior, believed that he could put everything in his place with a superior comment, like God, from heaven.

Walter Kempowski wrote about the film in 1987:

Now Adolf has gone to heaven. The film by Joachim Fest. The TV people will have wet eyes. I got wet eyes too. Somehow I thought of the fateful. This chain of fateful consequences, historically documented, pointed to a vacuum out of which Hitler grew. He was there and he smashed everything. Many people he met were no better than him either.

The film should have been longer, besides long, effective takes, there was always a hurry.

A piece of home is always there, father house, as one could say, father house 1937, Warnemünde.

With an aviator's cap - verbumfeit, but then (in color!) At the Berghof stately. Those ugly pants.

Awards

• June 14, 1977 - FBW predicate: Particularly valuable

Further data

• 29 June 1977, Berlin - World premiere, Berlin International Film Festival 1977 - special screening
• July 8, 1977, Film-Casino Munich - Cinema release (DE), around 1 million viewers
• Jan. 04, 1987 - ARD: First TV broadcast

Web links

• Hitler - A career in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Wim Wenders: Thats Entertainment - A polemic against Joachim C. Fest's film "Hitler - a career" . Online in Die Zeit August 12, 1977 [1] .
• Hitler - A career at Filmportal.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The last photo of Hitler
2. ↑ HITLER-FILM: Fascination of the demagogue. In: www.spiegel.de. June 27, 1977. Retrieved May 13, 2016 . 
3. ↑ filmportal.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ Prisma TV Guide: Hitler - A Career .
5. ↑ Tim Darmstädter: The transformation of barbarism into culture. On the reconstruction of the National Socialist crimes in historical memory, in: Michael Werz (Ed.): Antisemitismus und Gesellschaft. On the discussion about Auschwitz, the culture industry and violence , Frankfurt a. M. 1995, pages 115-140, quoted here from an online version on martinblumentritt.de
6. ^ Die Zeit , August 12, 1977. Online article under web links.
7. ^ Walter Kempowski: Culpa - Notes on the echo sounder , btb-Verlag