as 'insects' - it would be equally wrong to portray Hitler as a madman, because that would excuse him of culpability: 'I think the biggest mistake is to have an image of Hitler as insane - that he was not a human being but a monster. But I am convinced that he was totally of sound mind until the very end, which is why leadership never slipped from his hands.' The film's director Oliver Hirschbiege says that, in the same way it was evil of Hitler to see Jews as less than human beings - i.e. Bernd Eichinger, the producer and scriptwriter of 'Downfall' emphasized, the greatest danger he saw in making a film about Hitler was the temptation to show him as a psychopath or madman: 'Hitler possessed an enormous criminal and destructive energy, and he was a barbarian in the most fundamental sense of the term. How dangerous Hitler was if he could induce such a blind devotion that could convince a mother of six to murder her children in cold blood. Did those who think that that the film 'humanized' Hitler forget the most chilling scene in the movie, the one that shows Frau Goebbels crush the ampoules with cyanide between her children's teeth, after they had been dosed with a sleeping draught? She did it not because she was scared of what would happen to them after the war, no, her reason was, 'The country without National Socialism and its party is not worth living in'. Showing Hitler as a human being (amazing performance by Bruno Ganz), a man who loved his dog, was a vegetarian and could display some moments of tenderness did not undermine the overall image of a lonely, domineering, conscienceless, and hateful man who believed that his people, his compatriots, women and children deserve to die because they are no longer deserve to live and because 'in a war as such there are no civilians'. I don't believe anything in the film suggests that its creators sympathize with the Nazi regime and those who had orchestrated it. Oliver Hirschbiegel's film has been criticized by some circles as presenting a 'too sympathetic' portrait of the Fuhrer. The film shows the last days of Hitler and those close to him through the eyes of his young secretary, Traudl Junge.

The first internationally released German production to feature Hitler as a central figure, 'Downfall' (2004) takes place in the dismal gloomy Berlin during April - May 1945 in anticipation of the inevitable German defeat.

Hitler my part in his downfall