What drew people to Adolf Hitler? What still draws them to similarly horrible men? That is the central question that propels Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker’s new documentary, The Meaning of Hitler. Using the 1978 book of the same name by Raimund Pretzel as a starting point, the filmmakers explore why Hitler still carries with him a fascination more than 75 years after his suicide in his Berlin bunker. “Why does Hollywood grant Hitler the kind of honorable death that is never given to his victims?” the film asks. Good question. Unfortunately, we never truly find out why.
Using clips from archival footage, as well as fictional films made about Hitler over the years, The Meaning of Hitler lays down its intent right at the beginning. Why is Hitler still a celebrity? Why are so many documentaries and books devoted to the man and what drove him to exterminate six million Jews? The filmmakers even question this culpability about their own film. It also doesn’t take long for interviewees such as author Martin Amis (who claims that “Hitler resists understanding”) to draw parallels from Hitler to Donald Trump. Compare that footage of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville to one of Hitler’s rallies and you will see some startling similarities.
Epperlein and Tucker, after making a provocative start, soon begin to lose their focus and The Meaning of Hitler suffers. It is interesting to learn more about the persona Hitler crafted, including a story about how he would only take hikes downhill and then demand a ride back up to his mountain chalet, despite being filmed as a rugged outdoorsman. We also learn that Hitler often surrounded himself with others but would only talk about himself and never ask about the people around him. But The Meaning of Hitler morphs into something else. Rather than a deep dive into the lies that surround Hitler and his legacy, the movie then shifts and attempts to examine bigger questions, pulling further and further apart until it begins to feel like a very, very watered-down version of Shoah.
Epperlein and Tucker divide the film into segments, using Pretzel’s chapter titles to delineate each section. This approach sets up a somewhat chronological expectation for how the film will unspool. And we do see the place Hitler was born in Austria and many of the other locales made famous by all the Hitler movies and shows and books we’ve consumed over the years. A good portion of the film is given over to historians and museum curators who attempt to analyze the unanalyzable. There is even a section given over to ridiculing Hitler’s artistic attempts.
The area of the film that could have been better explored is the myriad of Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans that have found a voice using the internet. British historian and Holocaust denier David Irving is featured but only in fleeting moments where he feebly attempts to justify his viewpoints or stumbles around Treblinka making Jew jokes. More frightening are the few social media influencers included in the film who continue to espouse its subject’s hatred. There is much to recommend about The Meaning of Hitler, especially for the Americans who visit the Berlin Story Bunker Museum and openly wonder if Hitler is still alive. But the scattershot approach makes the film stuck in a place where it’s too abstract for those with a limited understanding of history and too unfocused for those of us yearning for a more focused, deeper meditation on why men like Hitler and Trump can convince their followers to do terrible things.
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