“Berlin where Hitler had fought his last battles against marriage and the Red Army and, defeated by both Venus and Mars, blew out his troubled brains”. This is one of the most significant lines by my favorite writer Len Deighton which appears in the Bernard Samson series of spy thrillers. This post will show why.
A few years ago, when there were physical bookshops, I casually enquired about the latest best seller. The third on the shop list was “Mein Kampf” by Hitler. Hitler continues to fascinate, and we wonder how a sane, cultured nation like Germany descended into criminal madness.
This post is about three films that show Hitler’s “Last Ten Days”. These films provide a small window into why “ordinary” Germans couldn’t imagine a world without their Fuhrer and ended up committing suicide on hearing about his death.
Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)
In this film, Hitler’s last days have been pieced together from various accounts but mostly depend on one of the earliest books, The Last Days of Hitler (1947), by British historian (and intelligence officer) H.R. Trevor Roper.
The movie’s first shot shows a glum unsmiling Hitler with a pasty sallow skin listening to Dr Morrell, the “house doctor” known for various experimental drugs that would simply be passed off as “quackery”. The film then proceeds to show the multiple persons inside the Fuhrer bunker who all are bound by Hitler’s magnetic personality and his constant diatribes of being surrounded by traitors. Even though the Russians were less than 5 km from the Bunker, Hitler continued to give orders to phantom armies that existed only in his imagination. In the middle of this mess, he also marries his long-time mistress Eva Braun and blows his brain out just ten days after his birthday.
The first iteration of this “last ten days” has a strange James Bond connection. Hanna Reitsch, who flew into Berlin in the last days, is played by Diane Cilento, Sean Connery’s first wife from whom he had separated in the early 1970s. Adolfo Celi, Thunderball’s villain Largo, is General Hans Krebs. Gabrielle Ferzetti, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’s Draco, is Field Marshal Keitel. Julian Glover, the villain Kristatos, in For Your Eyes Only, is Fegelein, Eva Braun’s brother-in-law, who is shot for treason on Hitler’s orders. Very strange, isn’t it? Some dramatizations and events clearly didn’t happen, especially the Captain Hoffman character.
Alec Guinness comes up a bit short as Hitler in that the rasping screams are perfect complete with punches in the air and on tables. Still, the rest of the time, his “oh-so-British accent dominates. He is my favorite actor, but he is still Alec Guinness here and Hitler only at times. At 105 minutes, the action is reasonably concise, and all the other performances are up to the mark. Celi, Ferzetti, and Joss Ackland (almost no dialogues) look like they have wandered onto the wrong set in this British Italian coproduction shot entirely in Shepperton Studios, England.
The film is free on Youtube. Watch the credits. They show the German Empire expanding to its peak in 1943 and then by the time the director’s name appears, it is reduced to a small red dot – Berlin. Though the link says documentary, it is actually the full film
My rating: 3 out of 5
The Bunker (1981)
The Bunker (1981) is the second film dealing with Hitler’s last days, and this time, it’s (then) forty-four-year-old Anthony Hopkins as the fifty-six-year-old Hitler. Yes – you heard that right. The future Lecter is something to behold as Hitler. Those strange cold eyes are put to excellent use as he gives a “thousand-yard stare” as the world comes crumbling down around him.
There were 42 – yes, 42 – assassination plans or attempts on Hitler. The last one involved Albert Speer, the minister of armaments production, who wanted to spray poison gas into the air vents of the Bunker. Speer disobeyed Hitler’s order to destroy all German industries and civilian facilities so that the enemies would only have a wasteland and not Germany. What’s more, Hitler came to know about it and didn’t do anything to Speer and actually let him go while shooting or dismissing others for lesser crimes. This film uses Speer as the anchor point to look at the last ten days. Speer is given more weightage onscreen than all the other characters.
Hopkins gets the body language and the stare perfect, while Richard Jordan is his usual suave self as Albert Speer. Michael Lonsdale as Bormann is stiff and awkward. The rest of the cast is adequate though Piper Laurie stands out as the cold Magda Goebbels.
The Bunker is available for free on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpH9lXP0DW0
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Der Untergang (The Downfall)
Now we have THE ULTIMATE “LAST TEN DAYS” movie. The 2004 German film Der Untergang (The Downfall).
I visited Germany in 2005, and my local contacts were very uncomfortable talking about the film, saying, “it makes Hitler to be a human”. Once I got the DVD and watched it, I wrote back to them saying, “far from it. He is shown as the madman that he was – shooting people even at the last stage” – this being the execution of his own brother-in-law Fegelein.
This is easily THE version of the last ten days and doesn’t stray to any other viewpoint. Told through the eyes of Hitler’s personal secretary Traudl Junge (a peripheral character in both the above versions), Hitler is a considerate Boss to her, but even she can see that everything is lost as the news inside the Bunker is about one disaster after another.
She watches as slowly people start brazenly smoking – something expressly forbidden in the bunker. It is a symbol that no one can prevent the inevitable (this small act is also there in the 1973 film where all characters light cigarettes after Hitler’s death).
One of the most chilling scenes is Hitler’s last public appearance. To hand out medals to young boys of the Hitler Youth who have fought against Russians.
Since the film is in German, the language effect comes into play. The English subtitles don’t matter as we can see Adolf Hitler the deranged tyrant, living in his world of phantom armies, miracle weapons, and delusions of grandeur, and not Bruno Ganz the actor.
As in the 1973 version, the news of Goering’s ultimatum and Himmler’s peace feelers are the twin shocks that show that even the “most loyal” are ultimately pragmatists when it comes to saving their own skin. Junge is one of the few who broke out of the Bunker and lived to tell the tale. Years later, she said, “though he was a perfect and good boss, I never knew about the crimes that he had committed and have guilty feelings”. She is shown making this statement at the film’s end.
The uniforms, the equipment, and the surroundings of devastated Berlin are absolutely accurate, and there is no composite or fictional character. You know in your heart that “this is how it happened”.
Here’s a clip from the film that has been endlessly parodied
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBWmkwaTQ0k
The film is available on Amazon Prime US but unfortunately not on Amazon India.
Der Untergang should easily make it to ANY top 10 war film list. The film is gripping, absorbing, and historically accurate – a rare combination.
Rating: 5 out of 5
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