Underneath I was really gentle

On a completely different Germanic theme, I watched the excellent Downfall last night – a reconstruction of the last days in the Fuhrerbunker as the world crumbled around them. The world can be allowed, indeed should be encouraged, to forget Trio; but this – never.

Downfall is one of those films, like Schindler’s List, that should be shown to every generation, preferably often, just to make sure no one forgets. Not so long ago – still in reasonably fresh living memory for many people (ask anyone who lived through the war, even as a child) – there was a time when our European cousins were wearing silly comic opera uniforms, wiping out populations, bringing Gotterdammerung down upon themselves, and, as the noose tightened around Berlin, making life so much easier for the advancing Red Army by shooting, hanging or poisoning everyone within their own ranks who showed a bit of courage, integrity and intelligence.

Unlike Schindler’s List, this one was made by the Germans. Good on them.

Apparently it caused some controversy in Germany by portraying Hitler as ‘normal’. Which is precisely what makes it so chilling. At one point Frau Junge, the young secretary who wrote a memoir on which much of the film is based, turns up late for work because she overslept. She stammers out an apology to the Fuhrer, who gives a knowing, avuncular smile. “Had a little lie down, did you?” he asks genially, and gets on with his dictation. (Of words, not countries.) And you think, ah, what a nice old bloke. And then you scream at yourself, WHAT DID I JUST THINK??

But it did make you think: in the event of there ever being a Channel 4 programme on “The Top 100 Most Evil Nazis”, exactly who was worst?

• Adolf – instinct makes you want to put him at the top, because certainly the whole caboodle could not have happened without him. Whatever the Irvings of the world might say, he knew and approved of the Final Solution all the way. Couldn’t have done any of it, though, if others had said ‘no’.
• Goering – a basic waste of space. Might have ended up as a retired Oberst Blimp, huffing and puffing about his days in the airforce, long since left behind by the technical advances in aerospatial engineering.
• Himmler – may have risen to a highly unpleasant petty little official – a burgomeister somewhere in Bavaria, maybe. Would probably have ended his days a chicken farmer with unusual ideas about polygamy.
• Goebbels ... ah, Goebbels. None of the above would have got anywhere without the mighty machinery of the Nazi party to boost them along. And who created that machinery? Whose propaganda poisoned the climate of an entire nation, letting this vile thing grow to the monstrous proportions it later assumed? Step forward Doctor of Philosophy & Literature Paul Joseph Goebbels, the poison dwarf, a bitter little creature who let his wife drug and poison their six children rather than let them face a future without National Socialism. I think we have our most evil Nazi.
  

A question I bet you very rarely heard in post-war Germany: so, what does your dad do?