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Beheading Hitler
By ripping off Hitler's waxy head, a patron of Madame Tussauds reignited the touchy issue of the murderous dictator's legacy.
David Denby of the New Yorker wrote, “We get the point: Hitler was not a supernatural being; he was common clay raised to power by the desire of his followers. But is this observation a sufficient response to what Hitler actually did?” Roger Ebert directly responded to Denby in his own four-star review of Downfall, writing, “I do not feel the film provides ‘a sufficient response to what Hitler actually did,’ because I feel no film can, and no response would be sufficient. All we can learn from a film like this is that millions of people can be led, and millions more killed, by madness leashed to racism and the barbaric instincts of tribalism.”
“There is still a powerful taboo against making him seem too much like one of us,” A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote. “We want to get close, but not too close.”
It’s crucial to remember, though, that evil people display human characteristics that make it possible to hoodwink the masses, draw in admirers, or get a slap on the wrist from the world’s powers that be. After all, Idi Amin threw cool parties. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sends out “Merry Christmas” messages. Pol Pot had a friendly smile — a killer smile, really, because a summary execution would likely follow the grin.
Undoubtedly, the film came under heavier scrutiny because it was made by Germans, and critics the world round would be watching to see if the filmmakers did their country’s own dark past justice. War wounds still run deep, as evidenced by the handful of Knesset members who boycotted the recent address of German Chancellor Angela Merkel — a committed foe of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hysteria.
Those who suffered under the Nazi regime would understandably have little interest in seeing such a film, as was the controversy when it was released in Israel. But the people who really needed to see a movie such as Downfall are those who never suffered under the hands of Hitler.
By not only remembering the past but striving to learn from it, we can hopefully have our eyes open enough to recognize and stop those who would continue along Hitler’s destructive route. We need to not only see how evil Hitler was; we need to recognize that human beings are capable of such evil, and Hitler wasn’t the last one. We need to see how a country bought into the Nazi philosophy and followed their charismatic leader without question.
We need to remember how easy it is for the global community — and its often hapless leaders — to lose its head and turn the other way when forced to confront utter evil.
Case in point: The man who ripped off Hitler’s head was an anti-war activist. How did he feel about the war to oust genocidal Saddam Hussein?
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Bridget Johnson is the online opinion editor, an opinion writer, and a blogger at the Rocky Mountain News.
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15 Comments
1. Bobby Mcgill:The second person through the door taking off his head. What are the chances of that? I wonder if the first guy is regretting his missed chance.
That Madame Tussauds would display Hitler in his most hapless moments is a stab at lessening any honor some might feel is bestowed upon him seems reasonable. Perhaps it might be better to show him suffering the agony he must have felt when the poison was kicking in, or for that matter, just showing him dead.
Bobby McGill
Jul 8, 2008 - 1:23 am 2. Tony:http://idlewordship.com
I was born 25 years after the end of World War II but I have read enough and seen enough to understand just who and what Adolf Hitler was.
It turns my stomach to hear people compare Bush to Hitler, not because I’m any particular fan of Bush the man, but because it proves just how little these morons understand about what real evil in a human being actually is.
I’d recommend Granada TV’s World at War series (1974) to anyone who wants to get some perspective on just how priviliaged our lives are today both in Europe and the US.
Jul 8, 2008 - 1:31 am 3. David Thomson:“The man who ripped off Hitler’s head was an anti-war activist. How did he feel about the war to oust genocidal Saddam Hussein?”
This action by the anti-war activist seems immature and reflects an unwillingness to truly grapple with Hitler’s evil. What is the sense of tearing off the head? Where do we draw the line? How about statutes of Stalin, Mao, or Castro? I think we can, alas, take for granted that he is against the liberation of Iraq. Moreover, I also suspect that this individual would have been against a preemptive military strike against the German Fuhrer in the mid 1930s! Never forget that pacifists unwittingly had much to do with encouraging Hitler’s aggression.
Jul 8, 2008 - 1:53 am 4. Alan:It absolutely infuriates me when people object to human portrayals of Hitler. These people seem to have no desire to actually understand evil, preferring to cling to the myth that evil people belong to a different species that can easily be identified by their horns and tails. People find this appealing because it leads to thought “well, I don’t have horns and I don’t breathe fire, so I must not be evil”. But when it comes to actually identifying evil in the real present world, unless the evil person wears a funny suit (Sadaam, Kim Jung Ill) they are often unable to recognize the fact that they are evil. Evil people are ordinary and often have a nice side to them. Every one of us is capable of evil. Yes, its scary.
Jul 8, 2008 - 4:37 am 5. cosmos:I think a more appropriate setting for a statue of this insect would be his death scene…and this is one which people could feel at least some tiny tinge of satisfaction…I feel rage when I see the photos of his statue..and my first inclination is to make deep marks into the waxy face…So perhaps a death scene would be more appropriate…the cowardly way he took his own life could be displayed…
Jul 8, 2008 - 8:55 am 6. Patterson:“It turns my stomach to hear people compare Bush to Hitler, not because I’m any particular fan of Bush the man, but because it proves just how little these morons understand about what real evil in a human being actually is.”
Amen.
Jul 8, 2008 - 11:23 am 7. newton:The best we all can do is to remember and say, “Never Again!”
As for Downfall, I highly recommend it.
Jul 8, 2008 - 12:27 pm 8. David:This is one of those strange, odd issues that convulses the historical community, and overlaps into the rest of the culture: what to say about Hitler and his lackeys, and what to think about them and teach our children? Everyone agrees that what he did was beyond monstrous (or everyone even slightly objective). The problem is that some people hate Hitler so much that they object to him being shown caring for his dog. A book by Ron Rosenbaum “Explaining Hitler” explored all of the facets of this phenomenon, including a controversy surrounding the release of his baby photo, which some objected to because it humanized him. My reaction has always been the same: he needs to be humanized.
Sure, he did monstrous things. He or those directed by him exterminated, or tried to exterminate, several ethnic, religious, or political groups, most notoriously the Jews, but also Gypsies, Communists, and various religious groups the Nazis found objectionable. All told he’s probably only second to Stalin in terms of the number of dead attributable to his regime. The difficulty occurs, as far as I’m concerned, when someone so demonizes him that they don’t want Hitler portrayed in any fashion that could even slightly be interpreted as positive. To my mind, the historical record doesn’t need to be tinkered with or altered: instead, *everything* should be told. Just because Hitler cared for his dog doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a mass murderer. Being nice to your secretaries doesn’t establish innocence in any larger fashion, regardless of how nice you are.
Hitler was dangerous, in my mind, not because he was so malevolent but because he was so nice. A vicious mass murderer, if he *doesn’t* care for his dog and give little gifts to his secretaries, is easy to spot and keep from becoming the ruler of a large country. Hitler wasn’t easy to spot. Those who compare him with Bush miss one glaring area where the two men are completely different: Hitler essentially had *no* domestic critics from his ascension to power until about the middle of World War II. Bush obviously has a large phalanx of critics who will accuse him of everything from beating puppies to wearing plaids with stripes, never mind mass murder. Albert Speer, the architect who became Hitler’s economic adviser and head of his industrial efforts by the end of the war, once commented that it was hard to recognize the devil when you’re shaking hands with him. Painting horns and a tail on him afterwards to make him more recognizable isn’t just vandalism: it’s also a disservice to us.
Jul 8, 2008 - 12:47 pm 9. Javelin:Hitler’s been dead over 63 years. What is the problem with people or cranks like the fool who took his wax head off? Hitler was human and at times could be a nice guy to work for. So what? Do people think that evil is some sort of B movie, cartoon condition where the bad guy is foaming at the mouth or torturing people all the time? I had to laugh when I heard that half wit Dennis Miller babbel about how McCain knows the face of evil from his imprisonment by the NVA. So evil has an oriental face? Such childish thinking. Look at Ted Bundy, Mr. Frat Boy personality!
Jul 8, 2008 - 4:24 pm 10. susan:Correct, Javelin. Always remember the banality of evil.
Jul 8, 2008 - 7:04 pm 11. Smarty:So some Jew has the guts to rip the head off of a wax Hitler. Maybe next one will have the guts to go after Mugabe?
Jul 8, 2008 - 11:30 pm 12. CaptDMO:Lest we forget indeed!
Adolph Hitler was one man.
The horror that history has assigned to him
could not have happened without the mass hysteria frenzy, sloth, and greed, of delusional “socialism”, it’s sympathizers, and it’s apologists.
I can understand the angst festering in the vandal, so ashamed that the human condition sows the seeds of such a pandemic species is syncronically blooming again.
Jul 9, 2008 - 4:44 am 13. ed:does everything here have to reference the fact that you think the iraq war was ‘A Good Thing’ ?
Jul 9, 2008 - 6:16 am 14. Don Meaker:We have to keep in mind that National Socialism killed 11 millions in the camps, and 50 million in war.
Communism, or international socialism killed hundreds of millions in many ways. By feeding “traitors” into a furnace feed first, while their friends and co workers looked on. By starvation in the Ukraine. By pistol in Katun Wood. By land mine, when punishment battalions were ordered to clear fields by marching across the land mines with arms interlocked. By disease, when people from cities were forced to the countryside to live in filth.
National Socialism is the lesser evil. Communism is the Greater Evil.
Jul 12, 2008 - 8:40 pm 15. Bugs:What David said!
We’re always looking for excuses and exceptions that will explain how men like Hitler could do what they did. But if we place Hitler, Stalin, Mao and others in an exclusive category of evil, we may forget that they were actually people like us. It’s important to remember that these men had only the best intentions, the most lofty goals for their people and for humanity. They show us what can happen when a leader and his people become so enchanted by a vision of Utopia that they’ll do literally anything to achieve it.
Jul 15, 2008 - 9:47 am