THE MEANING OF HITLER

US, 2020, 90 MINUTES, Colour.

Directed by Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker.

This film is based on a book by German historian, Sebastien Hafner, published in 1978, in English in 1979. His original title was Notes on Hitler.

This documentary is something like a workshop, something like a Zoom conference with the audience observing how hide range of speakers, starting with novelist Martin Amis and ranging through a great number of academics, historians, social commentators, psychologists…

And, there is a lot of location photography, the visit to Berlin, to Vienna, to Hitler’s birthplace (and a reference to the Bethlehem of the Third Reich). This is quite an amount of material to observe and absorb in 90 minutes.

The film follows the chapters in Hafner’s book, acknowledging that it is very difficult to comprehend the complexity of Hitler himself, his origins, his attempted art, the chaos in postwar Germany, his entering into that chaos, finding that he was an orator, building on his successful propaganda, in many ways a retiring man, having no friends, strange relationship with Eva Brown, and speculation on his suicide, and a critique of documentary and feature films giving him a dignity and choosing his own death and timing unlike the many that he sentenced to the camps…

The film is interspersed with some sequences from Hitler movies and actors who played him including Anthony Hopkins, Alec Guinness, and sequences from The Producers, Inglourious Basterds, Downfall. But, there is a focus in many clips from Benny Riefenstahl’s idealisation of Hitler and the Reich, Triumph of the Will.

Psychologists speculate on his psychology with suggestions of bipolar, schizophrenia… There are quite a number of Jewish contributors, discussions about the status of the Jews, persecutions, the visit to the Treblinka camp.

The main impact of the film is not to do a considered study because there are so many contributions. Rather, it is an opportunity to look and listen, to note key ideas, of the points of view and store for further reflection.

The film came out in 2020 and there are some sequences from Donald Trump’s first presidency offering some parallels in his ideological policies and personal propaganda rising with Hitler. (Seeing the film during the second Trump presidency could well reinforce this impression.)