A RARE LOOK INSIDE THE WORLD OF HITLER
Author: JACK THOMAS
Date: 05/07/1982
Nothing appeals to an audience like evil, and nothing appeals to Hollywood like an audience.
That is why, in the 36 years since the end of World War II, the film industry has been working nonstop, it seems, to produce movies about Hitler and Nazi Germany, which is the last time in history we knew for sure that evil was loose in the world and that we'd damn well better do something about it.
In the years right after World War II, Nazi generals were usually portrayed as monsters, and Hitler as a raving maniac who bore no resemblance whatever to a human being.
Lately, however, in television films like "The Bunker," an effort has been made to cast the leaders of the Third Reich as average men, a bit ambitious perhaps, whose thirst for power led them inexorably to evil and, in Hitler's case, to insanity.
Such films are dangerous, though, because they soften our memory of Hitler and the Nazis, and they trivialize the most horrible crime in history.
Now, however, television has captured Adolf Hilter and Nazi Germany on film as never before.
"Inside the Third Reich," a five-hour movie based on the memoirs of Nazi war criminal Albert Speer, is scheduled for Sunday (8 to 11 p.m.) and Monday(9 to 11p.m.) on Channel 5.
Don't miss it.
"Inside the Third Reich" is exemplary television, a video history lesson that will contribute more toward helping future generations understand Nazi Germany than any other cinematic work, whether drama or documentary.
This is film not about the atrocities of war, but rather about the pathologies of the men who direct it.
The violence is not physical, but psychological.
For example, at his trial at Nuremberg, Speer is asked about the decision to kill all the Jews.
"The Final Solution, as it was called, was kept very private, very secret," Speer said. "It was only after the war that I heard of it, and I have learned since that even in the SS, only a few people were aware of it - high administrators, concentration camp commandants."
His inquisitor challenges him.
"By the time they were carried to the concentration camps," says Speer," they were abstractions. I arranged my mind in such a way that they disappeared from my life as though they never existed."
Such explanations won no sympathy, however, from Germans like his teacher, Heinrich Tessenhow, who grew to detest Speer for his blind loyalty to Hitler.
"No matter what you tell yourself," Tessenow once told him, "you're a Nazi, a big, tall one with respectability."
"You're more dangerous than the bullies in the brown shirts, and more deadly. You're worse than any of them because you understand what he's doing, and you just don't have the courage to resist him."
Well, if anybody knew Hitler, it was Speer.
"You eat with him," Hermann Goering says. "You go to the movies with him. You talk to him. He talks to you. You are the nearest thing he's got to a friend. It's a pretty powerful position, being his pal."
Speer was an unemployed architect when he joined the Nazi Party in 1931 at age 25.
From designing banners at youth rallies, Speer rose to master builder of the Third Reich, then to minister of armaments and war production. By the time World War II ended, Speer was responsible for running the German economy, including munitions plants operated by 5 million slaves.
It was Speer's personal relationship with Hitler, however, that provided him - and now us and our children - with a rare study of Hitler and the Third Reich. In the end, Speer broke with Hitler. As the Allies marched on Berlin, Speer refused to carry out Hitler's order that Germany be left in ruins for the Allies.
At Nuremberg, Speer was sentenced to 20 years at Spandau prison, where he secretly wrote "Inside the Third Reich." After serving his full sentence, Speer was released in 1966. He died in 1981 at age 76.