If Hitler had won WW II (movie)

[Haltickling]

Just saw the movie "Fatherland" (with Rutger Hauer) on TV. It describes a fictitious "Germania" in 1964, after Hitler had won the war. The movie plot itself (a criminal investigation) is rather boring, but the scenario is utterly depressing, with many a parallel to nowaday's world.

"Greater Germania" on the map looks very much like a map of the EU; Albert Speer's design of a new Berlin (rather good trick effect in the movie) is built like in his historic model; the SS has become a regular police force, and the Gestapo takes the same role as the "Stasi" in the former GDR.

To create an impression of an absolutistic country in the sixties, the director made it look like the former GDR, with political propaganda, huge pseudo-modern monuments, and even Wartburg and Skoda cars.

Ironic: On accasion of a white-haired Hitler's 75th birthday, the US president "Joe Kennedy sr." is visiting Germany to end the Cold War. One of the journalists in his entourage uncovers the secrets of the "Wannsee-Conference", where the extinction of the Jews was decided. In the movie, the truth about the Holocaust was covered up by a victorious Germany...

All in all, the movie left me rather depressed, but strangely excited about its similarities with rather recent geopolitical developments. This movie is fiction, but not for entertainment; it's a metaphor.

 

[Deleted member 2452]

i saw it several years ago...

.. when it first came out. i thought it was extreemly well done.
good proformances ,good writing, good sets, etc.
on one hand it was scarry as hell, on the other it was a good movie.
made me glad the good guys won.

steve

 

[red indian]

Hitler........

....did not, and never would have, won WW2. The Brits (yes! they were involved in WW2, they held your coats for you while you won it by yourselfes remember?) had a plan to asassinate Hitler but decided he was so incompetant that it was better to leave him in charge to screw up.

Had it been left to the German high command, the outcome would have been very different.

 

[milagros317]

I haven't seen the movie, but I read the book "Fatherland" by Robert Harris, on which it is based. (The edition I read was printed in 1993, but I think the original hardcover edition came out a year earlier.)

Available from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0061006629/103-9143952-7033414?v=glance

One thing that I found to be entirely realistic in the book was that Joseph Kennedy, Sr., was ready and willing to make a deal with the Nazi regime. His sentiments in the 1930's make me wonder if he would have waited so long to do so.

 

[Knox The Hatter]

I read the book over ten years ago...it certainly was a depressing novel, that's for sure.

 

[natural tickler]

If Germany would have won, this world would have gone to hell. And the holocaust would probably still been going on, and Germany would have turned into another ancient Rome

 

[tommytikl]

Re: Hitler........

....did not, and never would have, won WW2. The Brits (yes! they were involved in WW2, they held your coats for you while you won it by yourselfes remember?) had a plan to asassinate Hitler but decided he was so incompetant that it was better to leave him in charge to screw up.

Had it been left to the German high command, the outcome would have been very different.

I completely agree with this point!!!
Everytime German forces were about to crush a foe, Hitler would move the forces somewhere else...

As an aside...Hal...I thought that anything regarding Hitler and WW2 were outlawed in Germany...How did you see the film?
Just wondering...

 

[Haltickling]

Re: Re: Hitler........

As an aside...Hal...I thought that anything regarding Hitler and WW2 were outlawed in Germany...How did you see the film?
Just wondering...

Not quite right, tommytkl: Only material which glorifies Hitler/Nazis/Third Reich, or denying/diminishing the horrors like the holocaust, is forbidden.

Documentaries or movies dealing with this topic in an appropriate way (as even this fictitious movie/book does) are not forbidden at all. German TV almost regularly shows very serious documentaries, depicting the horrors of the Nazi Regime, and IMO, this is a very good way of educating especially young people, in order to prevent any danger of repetition.

I remember discussions with a Neo-Nazi in a bar: He always regretted that Hitler didn't win the war. You know what I usually replied?

"You're lucky that he hasn't won. Otherwise, you'd be either in a forced labor camp, or somewhere in a ditch in Siberia, waiting for a counter-attack of the Chinese Army." Period. This usually made him shut up.

 

[tommytikl]

Thanks for clearing that up Hal!!!
That is a good thing actually that Documentaries are allowed and I am glad your government sees fit to educate its younger generations.

Good retort too!!