The Defeat of the Will: an analysis on the film "Downfall"

This article was published on Majority Rights website: Thanks to John Ray

A week ago I went to a mall to watch the film "Downfall”("Der Untergang"), a skillful reconstitution of the last days of the nazist regime and its creator - Adolf Hitler in Berlin, 1945. With an outstanding performance from Swiss actor Bruno Ganz as the Führer (and the rest of the cast too) the film is superb.

I wanted to have written about it before, but this film excited a series of thoughts in me - I must say "perceptions" - that they had to be quarantined for a while until I could framed them more accurately. These perceptions simply struck my thoughts as unconscious hyperlinks that I had to follow. I took time to know why my mind lead me to them, but I finally found out. The perceptions I perceived was a set of signals, metaphors and “insights” that unfolded the subtle meaning of nazist regime to me. Let me explain that I don´t intend to explain the efficient or material causes of the national-socialism. Simply I dare to write, what it was, at least what it seemed to me.

The great revelation of this film for me was the perception that if all socialist-communist-facist-totalitarian regimes were in some degree a substitution of the natural religion for a “state religion”, nazism was the substitution of the judaism, transformed into a kind of "state judaism". But this "state judaism" would have in common with the original one as much as a black mass would have to do with catholic mass: equal values with a minus signal. A satanic counterfeit of the former, in fact.

This imitation – an “ersatz” as the robotic Maria from “Metropolis” - wanted to assume the cultural and religious identity of the original model for good, even if the complete destruction of its model was necessary.

Germany after WWI was in need of the same strenght that made Israel to stand tall before her captors in Egypt and Babylon, that defeated Hitites and other ancient nations in middle east; The same kind of power source that made Israel, her people, culture and tradition lasted for centuries.

It was the objective nazism was trying to achieve, with a capital difference: while Israel had the Yaveh´s favor to remain herself together, the god of the Third Reich was the national-socialism.But this god was also was a monoteistic god, therefore it would not permit no other belief or faith unless itself. This is the key to understand nazism.

Another parallel nazism/judaism was on the subject of "race": Jews are usually known by the gentiles as a breed apart, another kind of race. If Jews was gave the God´s favor, only to another “race” would be given a similar favor. That´s why the concept of Arian race was so important under nazism.

In national-socialist “new order”, Hitler would be the "Führer" (leader). He would be the incarnation of the "Prince" from Macchiavelli, because he managed to eliminate his inspirers - in the case the Jews- exactly as Macchiavelli had predicted. But this "prince" also added a new feature, he would be a Darwinist version of Macchiavelli´s Prince. And this link – Darwinism – is the most recurrent link.

The firm belief in the Social-Darwinism values inside the body of of nazism is cleared by the film. It is repeated over and over again during the screening, confirming that communism and nazism wer a kind of siamese brothers. In the movie for example, Goebbels condemns the German people to their own luck (that meant the death of hundreds of civilians), therefore the German people had shown weak to hinder the allied invasion, and was too weak to deserve the glory of the national-socialism. If you remember that old darwinist absurd tautology that prayed for the "survival of the fittest” but “only the fittest survive”, you are right. And there are dozens of phrases like this on film. Believing in such tautologies, destination of nazism (and the nazis) could not be different. By their own rules they failed to prove themselves as “fittest” for the mission they had started.

Also the fact Hitler had finish his days in a bunker, underneath the surface of earth, far from the light of the sun was a sign too. The truth is national-socialism always lived inside of a bunker, isolated from the light and fresh air. The perfect (and the only) culture broth to nazism to raise. There were moments that this ideological “bunker” had the size of the Europe, but it was not more a reality. In his decaying empire, Hitler asked , facing the alternative of leaving Berlin, "what the Führer would do hidden in a village?". He knew the answer: “Führer” would not exists in a natural environment, without all the imperial apparatus that surrounding him. The ideological bunker had become real. And there was no escape from it .

It can be seen in the most significant scene from the film - and the one that has more resemblances with Judeo universe. It was the scene related to the fate of Goebbels´ family.If on the book of Genesis, God order Abraham to not take Isaac in sacrifice on the very last moment, to the National-Socialism god, there was no mercy. There was no way out but the “final solution”.

But all the tragedy didn´t serve to pulled out the roots of national-socialism from the surface of the earth: they continued to grow, deeper and deeper, and their tree is ready to give “new” fruits.

"I decided the only explanation is that God and the Devil are very attentive to people at the summit (...) do you expect God or the Devil left Lenin and Hitler and Churchill alone? No. They bid for favors and exact revenge. That's why men with power sometimes act so silly."' (Norman Mailer - from An American Dream, 1965)