Springtime for Hitler

Christopher Jones reports: "Beginning in September, two films are being released in Germany that upset the conventional picture of Adolf Hitler as Chaplin's comical "Great Dictator" or the embodiment of evil banality, both cherished characterisations in phoney Hollywood.  Two top actors in German speaking Europe, Bruno Ganz and Tobias Moretti have taken on the role of the Führer and both admit to portraying the Nazi chieftain as "a person" and not "a monster."  In Bernd Eichinger's saga "The Downfall" (scheduled for September 16) about Hitler's last days in his bunker, Bruno Ganz, an excellent Swiss actor who is part of Vienna's Burgtheater ensemble portrays Hitler so well that a few nights ago at a preview, the guests confessed to a certain "pity" or "sadness" regarding Hitler.  Suddenly, God forbid, the Führer was a person.  Sometime in 2005, "The Devil's Architect" will be seen.  In Heinrich Breloer's film, Tobias Moretti plays the Führer in a biography of Albert Speer, the garrulous Nazi armaments minister who was also Hitler's chief architect.  Moretti who always plays heroes, listened to the famous Finnish tape recording of Hitler, where the Nazi dictator talks normally.  It is the only document we have where Hitler talks like you and me.  To study up for his part Moretti listened over and over to this tape and recently told the FAZ newspaper, "As paradoxical as it sounds, when I play Hitler, I must defend him."
 
The FAZ's Frank Schirrmacher wrote that these two films "are the most important historical projects in Germany in many years," while others openly fret that the portrayal of Hitler as a member of the human race could engender some sympathy for him.  So what?  The reason that this mild "revision" has occured is that almost every major figure of the Second World War is dead and Hitler like his Third Reich has passed on into history.  It is not a revision to rehabilitate, it is revision to be able to understand the phenomenon Adolf Hitler".

RH: Will there be a revision so that we can understand the phenomenon Joseph Stalin?