The main reason that Hitler has become the face of evil is because he’s the most recent. Unlike Napoleon and Ghengis Khan, there’s videos, posters, picture, and films featuring Hitler. He was the first dictator to be elevated to such a status by propaganda, and his aggressive speeches, aided by an aggressive sounding language, just helped build that persona of evil.
When you read Napoleon’s own words, he comes across as quite honourable compared to Hitler, and even Stalin, bastard that he was, never had the impact on people with his speeches and rhetoric that Hitler did. You didn’t hear Stalin speak about the superiority of the Aryan race and the desire to exterminate an entire race of human beings, so he got off a bit lightly.
Without the access to speeches, videos, and pictures, Hitler wouldn’t be as universally recognised than he is. He just happened to come around at a time when the technological revolution really started to kick into gear so there’s a wealth of footage on the man.
I agree with everything you wrote, Jirin. It’s obviously a simple task to banalize the complexity of the human psyche and the variety of mental disorders by labeling someone as “evil”, and a rationally thinking person should avoid to choose this easy way out. A more realistic image of Hitler than the “personification of evil”-icon has been provided about three decades after the war by the filmmaker Syberberg with “Our Hitler – A Film from Germany”. I’ve read varios books on Hitler, but that film somehow gave me the best impression of Hitler’s ambivalent persona, and I think it should be a required viewing (just like Lanzmann’s “Shoah” in terms of the holocaust).
Except that Napoleon didn’t have the same genocidal propensity Hitler did. His ambitions while corrupt were only imperial. Napoleon was more greedy than evil whereas Hitler was outright evil.
There were surprisingly few anti-Nazi/Hitler films in the US in the early war, prior to Pearl Harbour, as there was a strong isolationist movement. Hitler was elected by the German people and was supported by newspapers elsewhere like the Daily Mail in the UK, which is still extremely judgmental and bigoted, prone to scapegoating “otherness”. I think it’s preferable not to set up Hitler as a single anti-Christ or embodiment of Evil (a word i don’t like much anyway) but for similarities in what he stood for with the views of those who admired and voted for him, and racist, bigoted, warmongering people today. Not so much what separates him from us but what we have in common
It seems strange nowadays to come across jokes about Concentration camps in To Be or Not to Be ( a film of comic genius), as the possibility of what was really happening inside them seems to have eluded even the allies and most of Germany’s enemies- despite very clear warnings of the level of hatred involved in the third Reich. I think Chaplin said that had he known of the camps he would never have made such a comic figure of Hitler in The Great Dictator. There was even doubt among the Allies about the veracity of escapers from a concentration camp, and their tale was not used for propaganda purposes as one might have expected during the war.
We could learn never to make assumptions as to what world leaders in the “civilised” modern world are (in)capable of doing, and also of the (in)ability of govts to hide their actions while “conspiracy theories” are ridiculed
.
“Here’s my theory for how this came to be. During the war, a lot of people were manipulated into anti-semitism by the Nazis.”
I really don’t think so. Somehow we have this revisionist idea that anti-semitism is a 20th century phenomenon. It’s not. Even more or less systematized, methodical operations for the execution of the Jewish people in particular has been seen for centuries. There is of course the Spanish Inquisition, but more pertinent to the question of Jews in Germania: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre (1349 AD).
Anyway, what does this have to do with film? I think you started talking about something interesting and then got very off track. In any case, it should come as no surprise that gross half-truths and whole lies are pretty common in wartime propaganda:
Probably Hitler’s reputation as the “most evil man in history” (whatever that means) has a lot to do with the effects of wartime propaganda and, by consequent, the fact that he is a widely recognised historical figure.
Goebbels, the minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany reached that position through film. In fact he considered film the strongest method of societal manipulation. If you ever wonder how Goebbels convinced that many people that the jewish population was a plague then watch all the films produced and released under him. Its really scary stuff. I had a class called Film and The Third Reich and we watched a lot of those films.
I have no idea why you said ‘nuff said’ to Time picking him as the Man of the Century.
^ Albert Einstein was Time magazine’s Person of the Century, Hitler was Time Man of the Year for 1938.
That’s true, Napoleon doesn’t belong in the same category as the others. But, he did intend to conquer all of Europe, and he is mostly considered for his skill as a general.
Genocide is something that wasn’t even considered a problem for much of human history. In Ancient Greece, they slaughtered the entire population of conquered cities by popular referendum. Nobody batted an eyelash at the Native American genocide or colonialism until the 20th century, or black slavery until the 19th. Domination was considered a natural consequence of military victory.
And, it is true anti-semitism was pretty strong in Europe prior to the war, but a lot of people who were generally against Jews still had sentimental connections to Jewish individuals and families they knew personally. Hitler manipulated away those sentimental feelings and amplified their anti-semitism.
The reason I said ‘Nuff said’ to that picture is that before the war, people were impressed by his accomplishments in Germany, and a lot of Americans were even on his side.
It’s true I got kind of off track. Maybe we should get this thread more directly about films that portray Hitler, contrasted between during the war and after the war.
For all the talk about Tarantino not being a serious director, I think Inglorious Basterds is really about exactly what I’m talking about. It’s about the way Nazis are portrayed in films, and the way Naziism has become the sole representation of all that is wrong with mankind.
Jirin
Watching films made about Hitler between 1939 and 1944 really brings up contrasts between the way they saw him while the war was going on and the way we see him now.
Prewar perceptions of Hitler?
Nuff said.
Films made about Hitler during the war tend to either focus on the ‘Conquerer’ aspect, presenting him as a man who requires absolute obedience from everyone, or they present him as a comic fool.
In Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator, he’s presented as a manboy with a libidinous need to conquer the world. The racial superiority aspect is discussed, but at one point ‘Henkyl’ states he’s using persecution of the Jews as a way to distract people from their economic problems. To Be Or Not To Be also focuses more on the free speech versus tyranny aspect.
These filmmakers probably believed they were using hyperbole to make their point. Ironically, nothing they’d imagined to use as propaganda against Hitler was half as bad as what was actually going on in the concentration camps. Hitler wasn’t using propaganda against Jews to distract people from their economic problems, it was only the first phase in his plan to gradually remove the empathy the people should have had when they were first moved to ghettos and then death camps. We didn’t have the tools in our collective imaginations to consider that Hitler’s end goal was an Earth populated by a single homogeneous race.
After the war, Hitler has become the symbol for all that is evil in human nature. Just the mention of Hitler in anything resembling a sympathetic context, even in jest, is enough to seriously damage your career. Hitler, obviously, is deserving of this reputation, but this singular status of ‘Most evil man of all time’ has been reserved specially for him and only him. This phenomenon I believe is well observed in Tarantino’s film Inglorious Basterds.
At the start of the film, a Nazi investigator explains the disdain for Jews. Paraphrased:
“Why do we hate a rat?”
“They spread disease.”
“Yes, but a squirrel is equally capable of spreading disease, but we would not consider one equally unwelcome in our homes. This special hatred is reserved for only rats.”
Take this same conversation, only make it about Nazis. Stalin is equally capable of mass murder as Hitler. Cortez is equally capable of genocide, and Napoleon and Genghis Khan are equally capable of conquering. But, if Lars Von Trier joked about having sympathy for one of them, he would not have been banned from Cannes. If a politician thinks taxes should be slightly higher than you think they should be, you don’t compare them to Stalin, you compare them to Hitler.
For thousands of years in human history, we’ve made excuses for our murderous dictators. We’ve elevated them to the state of heroes and gods, focusing more on their charisma and success as a conquerer than the millions they killed to achieve that success. Yet this one man, the one who committed such an act at the exact point technology was dragging the world closer together and making the consequences of war more scary, is the only one who captures our imaginations to such an extent to earn this level of automatic revulsion. Children learn that Cortez is an explorer, Napoleon is a general, and that Hitler committed genocide. Even his facial hair has become a signifier of racial hatred.
Here’s my theory for how this came to be. During the war, a lot of people were manipulated into anti-semitism by the Nazis. They came to hate Jews as much as Hitler wanted them to, and may have even participated in their persecution. Then, they learned of the death camps, and could not deal with the idea that they participated in this process. So, they all said “It wasn’t me, it was the Nazis!” and comforted themselves that none of it was their own fault, and they couldn’t have done anything, when in reality they had just done whatever they had to do to stay out of the camps themselves, not out of genuine hate but out of fear. This created the icon of Hitler as ‘Worst man to ever exist, even worse than the other genocidal dictators’, and now that icon has more cultural power than even Hitler himself.