This post related to the 2004 German film Downfall and the recent BBC2 drama, Margaret - mild spoilers ahead.

I watched the rather wonderful German film Downfall earlier this week; it is set in the final days of the Third Reich, as the Russians encircle Berlin, Hitler, played brilliantly by Bruno Ganz, spends the last days of the war in the strange alternative reality of the Fuhrerbunker.

The film was based on a combination of contemporary sources, including the memoirs of Traudl Junge, one of Hitler's secretaries, who decided to stay in the bunker until the bitter end. Junge is played in the film by the rather eye catching Romanian actress Alexandra Maria Lara.





Enough shallowness, for now at least, and on with a few more reflections on the movie. I did find it interesting as a piece of history, although I have done no research into its historical authenticity, what is striking is even though Berlin is almost in enemy hands and the German armies finished, Hitler is stuck in delusion that the situation can still be retrieved. He slips from raging against those that have failed him to ridiculous flights of fantasy, prodding a map and ordering his generals to mobilise armies that only exist in his head. Even then, right at the end, his generals who already knew the game was up, had difficulty saying anything to the volatile Fuhrer. I wondered if this was where the phrase silo mentality came from.

Added to that there is the strange almost manic, smiling hyper Eva Braun. There is a moment where she organises a party and there is dancing whilst shells fall, until it is cut short by a shell landing too close.

The end is chilling as the Russians close around the centre of Berlin, Hitler dictates his last political testimony and finally the realisation that it is over sinks in. Then slowly arrangements are made for the suicides; a doctor arrives to talk Hitler through administering the poison and how long he will have to pull the trigger once he takes the poison; you see his beloved dog put down and then the closing of the door and a gunshot rings out.

Even more chilling are the deaths of the six children of Joseph Goebbels (Propaganda Minister), who were given a sedative and then whilst they slept were administered cyanide by their mother, Magda Goebbels. It is all the more sad considering that Magda had an offer to get her and her children out of Berlin, but concluded that with no Third Reich there would be no point in her or her children living.

This evening I watched Margaret, the BBC2 drama broadcast last week about the events that led to the fall of Margaret Thatcher in 1990. I certainly have no love for Maggie, but she was portrayed in such a way by actress Lindsay Duncan, that you did have a certain amount of sympathy with her at the end when the thing that gave purpose to her life is taken from her.



What struck me though, and at the risk of invoking some for of Godwin's Law here, were the broad similarities between these two downfalls. I am talking about similarities in the thought processes here, obviously the circumstances of Hitler's final downfall were more dramatic, and no matter what you might think of Thatcher, she is thankfully a million miles away from the evil that embodied Hitler. I did start to wonder whether similar traits do settle as the end looms inevitably into view, is their a similar pathology of collapse, similar to the collapse of civilisations for example? If so, what are the common threads and should we expect to see any in Gordon Brown's government?

Well judging by the two downfall examples above, I would say the common threads would be:

A leader that believes they are some misunderstood saviour. Check!
A leader that is completely out of touch with reality, who believes things can still come good, if only we believe and fight hard enough. Check!
An embattled leader surrounded by traitors, some imagined, but some certainly real. Check!
A leader that will eventually be forced to face reality, a brutal and sudden realisation at the last minute that the end has arrived. Check!

Brown's done; he just does not realise it yet.


As a final parting gift, a small amount of humour; one of the things that Downfall has become famous for is the YouTube spoofs. The majority of them are of the key scenes where Hitler completely loses it with his generals, with the subtitles removed and replaced with peoples more humourous text substituted in. Here is one that I found where Hitler let's loose about Twitter.