A Message from Two German Films

I recently watched two very different German films, made even more interesting in juxtaposition, so that I couldn’t help seeing in them a kind of before-and-after relationship: they sort of book-end the war. Both, I think, qualify as classics. The first, Triumph of the Will, made in 1934 and directed by Leni Riefenstahl, is widely acknowledged as a classic, and may represent the invention of the documentary film. The other, a film adaptation of a diary or memoir published anonymously in 1959, was more or less banned in Gerrmany because it told some very unpleasant truths about World War II and its aftermath.

Leni Riefenstahl was a young woman who had made a number of what we would now think of as Grade-B movies in the late 1920s, and she was, understandably, eager to show what she could do in a major film. Her opportunity came when Adolph Hitler invited her to film the famous 1934 Nuremburg Nazi rally. The rally was in itself a spectacular production: It brought together some 200,000 party members and government officials, all playing carefully choreographed roles, marching in formation, to the beat of stirring patriotic music, furling huge flags and banners, to listen to tributes to Hitler by top Nazi leaders, and to several galvanizing speeches by Hitler. It was a demonstration to Germany and to the world of Hitler’s power and the rising power of the once-defeated Germany.

But it would be mostly forgotten, just a footnote in history books, if not for this magnificent film assembled by Leni Riefenstahl. Hitler gave her full freedom to film the multi-day rally and to edit the result into a documentary film. Looked at today, the film is a masterpiece of cinematography. It shows huge formations of supporters -- the military, unions, a workers’ organization similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps in this country (armed with shovels on their shoulders), Hitler Youth (sort of a politicized Boy Scouts), and others. The film shows overhead views (filmed from a plane or balloon or atop a cathedral -- it’s not clear) of phalanxes of supporters marching into town in a huge parade. Then it shows scenes from the window of a tri-motor plane bringing Hitler to the rally, and then his motorcade into town. The film never gets boring: it cuts from views of the crowds in formation, to the speaker, to individual listeners with rapt looks on their faces. At several points during the rally, Hitler is introduced by his top leaders, always in glowing terms expressing total loyalty and devotion and exhorting the listeners to be equally devoted. For those of us who have seen or read about modern dictators and seen what happens in dictatorships, this is all very disturbing -- as if we didn’t know how it would play out.

And then there are views of several speeches by Hitler. On the one hand, there is the idealistic message of peace, exhorting his listeners (particularly the Hitler Youth) to sacrifice and to work hard to rebuild Germany. All very positive. But then there are a few darker themes that slip in, easy (at that time) to ignore: We need to crush anyone who would hinder us. We will create One People not just by assimilating everyone, but by removing anyone that is not a part of us. And there are subtle hints of a Greater Germany, meaning a Germany that will include neighboring areas (in other countries) where Germans live. So if you watch and listen carefully, you see that the seeds for everything that would happen in the next eleven years is already there.

And of course we know how that played out.

Which brings me to the second film, A Woman in Berlin. The author, who had been a foreign journalist before the war, returned home and then was trapped when Russia and the West advanced into Germany from both sides. She kept a journal of her experiences as the Russians devastated Berlin in late 1944 and 1945. She published the book in 1959, but it met such a negative reaction that she withdrew it. But in recent years it has been made into a very grim but powerful movie.

Why was the book so despised? Because it presented, through the narrative of the author’s experiences and those of women around her, several realities that Germans were at that time not willing to confront. First was the fact that virtuous German women in Berlin, almost without exception, had been raped by Russian soldiers, most of them multiple times, and that many of these women figured out that the only way to avoid more rapes was to ally themselves with officers who could protect them from the predations of common soldiers. Better to sleep with one officer -- who might even have some manners and some human feelings -- than to be at the back and call of any brutal soldier who sees you on the street. So after the war, German men did not want to look at German women -- particularly those in Berlin but elsewhere too -- either as sullied by multiple rapes, or as more or less willing sexual partners of Russian officers. It’s much more comfortable to believe that, even though these things may have happened to some, all the women I know were virtuous and managed to hold themselves aloof from both these alternatives. Sorry, fellows: women who wanted to survive either yielded to any demand or paid for a price for protection. Better bed than dead.

But the movie -- and the book before it -- also contained another indigestible message. Before the Russians take Berlin, one German soldier, a family member, returns home from the eastern front, and drops a figurative bombshell. One of the women, knowing that the advancing Russians are almost certain to take Berlin, asks the soldier what is likely to happen. The soldier says, “If they treat you the way we treated their people, you’ll be lucky if anyone is left alive in Berlin.” Just in case this is not clear enough, the narrator, since she knows a little Russian from the days when she was a foreign correspondent in Moscow, is called to interpret in a confrontation between some Germans and some Russian soldiers. One of the Russians demands that she translate his words. He says, “In our village, the German soldiers killed all the children. They picked them up by the feet and they swung them. They smashed their heads against a wall.” She balks. “Translate this,” he orders. She asks, “Did you see this, or did you just hear about it?” She is obviously hoping that he will admit that this is just hearsay, so she can dismiss it. But no. “I was there,” he says. Obviously this goes a long way toward shattering her faith in her country, and she is going to have to mull over this for a while before she can accept it.

So it’s pretty clear why Germany had a hard time accepting what this book had to say.

But let’s face it: This is the way war is. And the larger moral is that if we abuse the enemy -- raping women or killing children or whatever -- then sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost. But can we be sure that if we treat enemy populations humanely, the enemy will treat our people equally humanely? No. But we can be sure that if we treat enemy populations like animals, they will treat our people badly when the tide turns.