Novelist Martin Amis says Hitler “resists understanding”; Israeli historian and professor Yehuda Bauer scoffs at the attempt to even do so (“You cannot put Hitler on a psychologist’s couch”); psychiatrist Dr. Peter Theiss-Abendroth warily lists all the diagnoses numerous people have, with no evidence, linked to Hitler as explanations for his actions. Historian and professor Saul Friedlander, whose parents were killed at Auschwitz, speaks of Hitler’s performative quality and warns of “propaganda ... repackaged as reality.” Novelist Francine Prose says of “Triumph of the Will,” “It makes your flesh curl,” and Berlin Story Bunker museum curator Enno Lenze, can’t hide the bewilderment in his voice when he says that many American visitors ask him during the tour, “But are you sure that he is dead?”
The tension between reality and “fake news” is omnipresent in “The Meaning of Hitler” not just because the documentary repeatedly compares Hitler with former President Donald J. Trump, but also because of the inclusion of various Holocaust deniers, from online social media stars and personalities like PewDiePie to disgraced English historian David Irving. One of the great joys of “The Meaning of Hitler” is Friedlander’s dismissive delivery of “David Irving, please,” when asked about him, while one of the documentary’s most curdling moments is Irving, caught on a hot mic outside of the Treblinka extermination camp, saying to a laughing audience: “Jews … they don’t like any kind of manual work. They just like writing receipts.”
Irving’s presence shifts “The Meaning of Hitler” from looking backward, which it does by touring formative locations for Hitler in Austria and Germany and relying on archival footage of his speeches and rallies, to looking around now and wondering if we can ever shake free of his grasp. In discussing nationalism, the filmmakers cut from a World Cup celebration in France to a far-right demonstration in Poland; when introducing the chapter “The Hitler Cult,” audio from one of Trump’s speeches plays. These connections help drive home the filmmakers’ central idea that we’re still living under the shadow of the kind of authoritarianism and hate that Hitler championed. However: What can we do about it? Documentaries don’t have to be directive, but “The Meaning of Hitler” ends on a feeling of incompletion. Perhaps that’s thematically purposeful. As Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld says, “History has no precise direction,” and maybe hoping that everyone would take the same lessons from the past is a fool’s errand. But “The Meaning of Hitler” never quite reconciles its central concern of whether continuing to talk about Hitler is an inherently compromised pursuit, and that uneasiness feels like an unintentional capitulation for an otherwise well-intentioned project.
Now available in theaters and available for digital rental.
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