Downfall is a German film about the final days of Adolf Hitler. Thanks to 60 years worth of historical study, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the revelations of the participants, the exact details of the events are well understood. This particular version of the story is as accurate as it will ever be.

A German writing about the end of Nazi Germany is conflicted. On the one hand is the tragedy of the events in Berlin. Thousands of Germans died defending Adolf Hitler’s bunker. And in the movie it is abundantly clear that is what they are defending. Not Germany, not the Nazi party but Hitler. On the other hand, this was Nazi Germany. As a Greek who has visited memorials throughout Greece to massacres perpetrated by Nazi Germans, who is initimately familiar with the Genocide practiced on the Jews thanks to his own personal study of the topic, I find it hard to feel sorry for the Berliners. Like Goebbels says: They claim innocence but no one forced them to go east. There is satisfaction in seeing Berlin destroyed in 1945, and then there is horror in understanding that you feel satisfaction.

This is a profoundly disturbing film. And that is it’s power.

The film is shot from the perspective of Trauld Junge Adolf Hitler’s young secretary. Traudl Junge, in an interview at the beginning of the film admits that she thought joining the Nazi’s would be a great adventure. At the end of the film in the conclusion of the interview reminds the German audience and ourselves, that not knowing is not an excuse when such horrors are taking place. And that’s what the movie does. It shows how people chose not to know. How they chose to believe. How they desperately clung to the power of the Fuhrer. Trauld repeatedly is given an oppurtunity to flee the Fuhrer, to escape. And yet she doesn’t. Is it because she is loyal to the Fuhrer or because she does not believe it could end?

And that’s the part that frightens. How so many of the Germans who surrounded Hitler were convinced that without their Fuhrer, life was not worth living. Hitler was some kind of God who personified their entire aspirations, and his death destroyed all hope. Goebbel’s wife kills her children because she believes that life without Adolf is not a life worth living. The various SS officers upon learing of Hitler’s death blow their brains out rather than continue living.
There are three attributes that make the film particularly powerful.

The first is the performance of the actors who capture the insanity of the participants.

The second is the bunker as a symbol of death. The film is shot almost entirely in the bunker. We, the audience, escape the bunker only momentarily during the film to see Berlin being destroyed. The bunker transforms itself during the movie from a place of refuge to a final resting place. A place to flee from if you want to live, like Himmler, and come to if you want to die, like Goebbel’s wife. The bunker becomes the sepulcher of Nazi Germany. Only when Hitler is finally dead is the audience and Germany allowed to exit from the bunker. It’s only then that we begin to feel safe, that there is finally hope.
Finally he story itself. This is the final days of a powerful evil force. Watching it die is like watching the end of a horrible disease. There is something immensely satisfying and horrifying about this end.

Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler puts on a masterful performance.

A fantastic film. Definitely worth watching.