In Downfall, the inevitability of grandiosity of a nation, and the megalomania of its relentless hell-bent leader, has a lengthy treatment in the observation of an unending belief in the righteousness of German people per se. 

The film appropriately lets the viewer into what is only imagined in the constant learning to the downfall of Adolf Hitler and his captivation of German people, and the pride in keeping oaths. The pride of man knowing order. The vanity of not wavering, where it is more noble for the self to consume cyanide and go down with the ship, than to be tried and hanged for war crimes.

Because to the National Socialist, this is manifest destiny.

The film appropriately views the last fighting in Berlin against the Russian storm as convinced in the true goodness of German Fatherland. That the spirit of asserting dominance of a physically purer people causes resistance until Hitler capitulates himself to the cause.

And it is here where accolades need to be given to the actor Bruno Ganz, who portrays a manic hothead under the duress of the faultiness of his own stratagem. Where, while the blind follow the blind leader unto death, there is that internal socializing which is undeterred in extending belief as far as it can. Until the Russians burst the bubble of what amounted to two decades of relentless drive or will by the German and his histrionic – albeit seductive – rhetorical power in, as historians will remind, saving the volk from miserable economic depression.

That the film does not indicate any sort of conflict with The Führer, and his ultimate direction with their fates is quintessentially German. Blind obedience to order in a world constantly shaken into disorder is staged with that much conviction, it is a terrifying power. Which, no doubt, Germans lionize with their aptitudes to be so internally coordinated in expanding their presence on the Earth’s stage. 

Yet justly?

No doubt The Treaty of Versailles – not mentioned in the film – was a mistakenly unfair treatment of German loss in World War I. Yet to summon a fantasy of worldwide dominance, as a healthy goal, of establishing a superior cosmopolity – absent of the Jew – collides with the reality of a warmachine that is not seeking, by necessity, peace; only constant struggle for more dominance over others.

And, astonishingly, the common German does not mind. So long as he can feed himself. 

The hunger games which prestages the arrival of the German people as everlasting embarrassments for such haughtiness – when true merit of genetic potential is found in autonomy; unto the ability to impose self-discipline without a Führer; to act independently without the dependence of others agreements of one’s choices – moves the hypnosis artfully depicted in the film onto a moral plane. Where, again, might does not make right.

So, for so many Germans to continue to live, in the wake of their political votes, under the recognition of Hitler as a saviour to their hunger, is to demonstrate man to be capable of extending physical will independent of the moral treatment of others, when one is starving and desperate. Like a dog.

To this end, there are countless subterranean nostalgic families remembering the glory years, and a future hope of the resurgence of the Third Reich.

Because the typical family, let alone German, is lacking good taste. They rely upon superiors and their values to adopt.

To obey. 

It is the rightmindedness of superiors who move without hunger pangs unto sculpting mankind more friendly, less dogmatically hostile, which makes the Children of Israel that much of a stark contrast to the netherbred Germanic and their incestuous dopiness percolated from tree-worshipping avarice primitivism. Where Paul of Damascus would realize his own people as initiating that domestic tranquility on Planet Earth in a way which the unfit lacked in perceiving beforehand.

A psalm of Asaph.

 

God stands in the divine assembly;

among the divine beings He pronounces judgment.

 

How long will you judge perversely,

showing favor to the wicked? Selah.

 

Judge the wretched and the orphan,

vindicate the lowly and the poor,

 

rescue the wretched and the needy;

save them from the hand of the wicked.

 

They neither know nor understand,

they go about in darkness;

all the foundations of the earth totter.

 

I had taken you for divine beings,

sons of the Most High, all of you;

 

but you shall die as men do,

fall like any prince.

 

Arise, O God, judge the earth,

for all the nations are Your possession.

 

Psalm 82, Sefaria Translation

Grade: A