I don’t know what you mean by ‘appropriate’, but there are no scenes depicting atrocities during the Holocaust, if that’s what you mean. Nor does the film glorify the Nazis.

However, it is set during the Battle of Berlin and is therefore very harrowing. It’s not a film to watch for entertainment.

On the contrary Democracies produce even more true believers than totalitarianism has. The Democrats and the protection of free speech, allows the creation of ideologies, manifold in number, that holds many people in their thrall.

It just happens that the most powerful of ideologies acquire the most followers in a democracy.

Democracies focus on allowing people to believe what they want. Totalitarianism focuses on making people obey.

So it is quite untrue that Democracies have zilch use for true believers.

To those who have seen the film: family members of the person with whom I normally watch movies were killed in the Holocaust. That person didn’t know them, but does carry the weight of family history. How appropriate do you think the film would be?

It is my guess is that Hitler’s true believers never numbered over ten percent. Every totalitarian movement has its cynics who seek only power. The former, however, are the ones who will take care of the violence. They are less squeamish about torturing and murdering others. A Stalin, Mao, or Osama bin Ladin is powerless without the true believer segment of their respective organizations.

Democracies have zilch use for the true believer mentality. These political entities are all about improving life in the here and now. True believers gravitate solely toward movements that are highly nihilistic.

The true believer is “a guilt-ridden hitchhiker who thumbs a ride on every cause from Christianity to Communism. He’s a fanatic, needing a Stalin (or a Christ) to worship and die for.”

—Eric Hoffer

The True Believer

“Corinna Harfouch’s performance as Magda Goebbels in the movie Downfall (2004, now on DVD) is one of the most compelling I’ve ever seen”

I agree. It’s a superb movie.

Corinna Harfouch’s performance as Magda Goebbels in the movie Downfall (2004, now on DVD) is one of the most compelling I’ve ever seen. It’s a subtitled film, but I recommend it without hestitation.

Surely it wasn’t the philosophy. Even at its height, the Soviet Union’s ruling Communists were but a tiny minority of its citizens.

neo: I went through a phase where I read about WWII all the time. Magda was, and is, a minor character in the drama. But she was very important to Goebbels. Imagine the result had she realized – truly grasped – what a horror Nazism was and took the children and fled the country.