I teetered back and forth between Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan for the focus of today's post, ultimately settling on the HBO miniseries for its sheer magnitude and undeniable role in propelling me to pursue a graduate degree in history (and despite my general estimation of Steven Spielberg's 1998 World War 2 magnum opus as one of the greatest films ever made).
I knew about the critically acclaimed Band of Brothers miniseries well before I ever saw it, largely thanks to Entertainment Weekly. The magazine's coverage and reviews intensified my overall interest, already piqued by the comparisons made to Saving Private Ryan. Without access to HBO, though, I waited to watch Band of Brothers until I found a deal for the boxset I couldn't pass up. DVDs in hand, I binged my way through all ten episodes in a matter of days, and to say the series surpassed my expectations would be an understatement. In fact, Band of Brothers made such an impression that when I rewatched the series again a year or so later, it motivated me to finally start the process of obtaining my Masters degree in History, something I had been stewing over for years. Based on the work of historian Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers depicts World War 2 from boot camp to war's end through the eyes of the US Army 101st Airborne's Easy Company. Throughout the series, viewers witness the company's involvement in such momentous events as D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and the liberation of a concentration camp. In fact, the image above comes from episode nine, "Why We Fight," which deals with Easy Company's discovery and subsequent liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp and represents one of the most heart-wrenching hours of programming ever to air on television. Not surprisingly, a strong bond of brotherhood develops between company members based on the intensity of their shared experiences over the course of the war, not unlike the kind identified by the character of Upham in Saving Private Ryan. And while Spielberg's war film certainly introduces the idea, the miniseries format allows Band of Brothers to expand on the groundwork laid by Ryan, flesh out a broader cast of characters, and incorporate recollections from surviving Easy Company veterans. Brothers therefore provides audiences with a much more intimate glimpse of what the war was like for soldiers fighting in Europe. If you've been keeping up with my Countdown to 40 blog, my fascination with World War 2 does not come as a surprise, and I can think of two specific reasons why the it interests me so much. First, as I recounted in my post about Schindler's List, the Holocaust and its socio-political repercussions in Germany raised several historical questions for me, ones I eventually explored in grad school using films like Downfall. The second reason, one I have not yet shared, relates to my grandfather. Like many people my age and around the world, my grandparents lived through the war. And like many men of his generation, my mother's father fought in the war. I was not yet fifteen when my grandfather passed away, and I often regret not learning more about his wartime experiences. That's not to say I am completely without knowledge of his time in the Navy. When putting together a video memorial of my grandfather's life shortly after his death, my older sister and I came across a set of letters he and my grandmother exchanged during that time. Based on what my relatives told me, I also learned that Grandpa returned from the war a changed man, one who no longer believed in the existence of God. Taken as a whole, that pretty much sums up what I know about my grandfather's wartime perspective. Of course, given the intense nature of such experiences, perhaps he wouldn't have wanted to talk about them with me. Nevertheless, I still wish I would have asked him, and I think things like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan offer a way for me to imagine the war through Grandpa's eyes. And maybe, just maybe, my desire to know the world and time of my grandparents better was the real impetus behind initiating my graduate studies.
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Downfall first hit theaters in the United States during 2005, following its release abroad in 2004. Advertisements and previews touted the film as the first German-made film starring German actors to depict the final days of the Nazi regime from within Adolf Hitler's Berlin bunker. (A claim I later discovered ignores certain historical facts.) Largely based on the memoirs of one of Hitler's personal secretaries, Traudl Junge, and a book written by historian Joachim Fest, Downfall also promised to provide a rather intimate portrait of Hitler, dangerously bordering on sympathetic. My predilection for films dealing with World War 2 and Nazi Germany practically dictated I would see it. What I did not realize at the time was how influential Oliver Hirschbiegel's motion picture would become in just a few short years.
Watching Downfall for the first time, I immediately started questioning its presentation of Hitler as a man rather than a monster. Like you, I knew what history says about the author of Mein Kampf and man behind the Final Solution--he was a xenophobic demagogue who exploited fears, employed powerful propaganda, and utilized an armed paramilitary to coerce ordinary citizens to commit extraordinary crimes. So it should not surprise you that scenes hinting at Hitler's softer side made me rather uncomfortable, whether through his love for his dog, his romance with Eva Braun, his gentleness towards Junge, or his sadness at being abandoned by Albert Speer. Why? Because those scenes challenge the image of Hitler solely as a monster, and I wondered how someone responsible for the systematic extermination of so many millions of people could also possibly be the guy next door. When finding myself sympathizing with the character of Hitler on screen, even if only for a scene or two, I wondered if that meant I connected to Hitler on some level. And what does that mean? Could I be Hitler? Perhaps the filmmakers intended Downfall to pose such questions to audiences, a strong statement to be sure. Still, the exercise proved not all that pleasant and therefore resulted in an unsettled feeling, at least for a while. In the following months and years as the film's subject matter sank in more deeply, my perspective changed a little, and the thing that stood out to me most about Hirschbiegel's Downfall was not its presentation of Hitler as the man but rather its portrayal of Germans as victims of National Socialism. This theme of victimhood appeared perhaps most provocatively in one of the most disturbing scenes of the film. Frau Goebbels enters her children’s sleeping quarters, where they are reading a nighttime story. With the help of a doctor, she administers a sleeping draft to her six children, telling them it’s to help them stay healthy in the dampness of the bunker. Having successfully drugged all six children, Frau Goebbels then wishes them a good night’s sleep and leaves them in the darkness of their cement room. She returns to the sleeping children a short time later, and one by one Frau Goebbels inserts a cyanide pill into each child’s mouth, killing her own children because she cannot fathom they live in a world without National Socialism. I made several important observations because of this scene. By denying her children the chance to live in a Germany free of Hitler and the Nazi Party, Frau Goebbels chose ideology over life. The children, in a way, symbolized the German conscience, unable to combat the oppressive influence of the Nazi party, and the murder of the children therefore represented the killing of German innocence, in which fanatical Nazi leaders misled the German public. Narratives like this one piqued my interest and inspired a certain degree of historical inquiry. I wanted to know, how could Germans now claim victimization, especially considering those specifically persecuted by the regime? How accurately does the film portray the German wartime experience? What are the implications of placing German civilians among Hitler's victims? How do Downfall and several other post-2000 German films that depict Germans as victims fit into German society's larger, over-arching process of coming to terms with their Nazi past (ie. A Woman in Berlin and Sophie Scholl: The Final Days)? These questions about victimization in the postwar period eventually formed the base of my thesis research, which centers on the confluence of history and popular film as purveyors of cultural memory. And while I certainly recognized the problems posed by Downfall when I left the theater that day in 2005, I had no idea it would help lead me to graduate school and a Masters of Arts in History. |
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