What can movies about 1930s Germany tell us about Trump's America?

(From 'The Conference')

Notwithstanding my disposition to nuance, which continues to be the core purpose of Beyond the Fault Lines, I see no opportunity for a nuanced view of Trump. Indeed I am surprised by so many commentators, who had always been implacably against Trump, now moderating their unease. Perhaps they are simply being more sensible than I, and are trying to accommodate to a new reality.

While many commentators caution against what they see as excessively alarmist and polarizing claims of parallels between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler, I continue to see many.

To date we can't properly assess Trump's promised policies, let alone those yet to emerge. We have still to see if any of them, even those that might not be entirely without merit, are sufficiently coherent, durable and able to be implemented, in the face of the unfathomable, volatile and unquenchable psychic insecurities that seem to determine Trump's decisions. Certainly some, such as the deportation of millions of the illegal migrants who are 'poisoning the nation's bloodstream', seem to be straight out of Hitler's playbook.

But the parallels I see are deeper and even more worrying than concern about policy. What distresses me so much is how discontent about the economy, wokeism, migrants, and the like, can lead so many people to surrender, or be oblivious, to the way Trump epitomizes the abandonment of every tenet of ethics and decency, personally and politically.

There are several German films, and one American, I have seen recently that each show aspects of what the rise of Hitler entailed. To a disturbing degree they have resonances with Trump's election, and foreshadow what it might bring.

 ‘Triumph of the Will’ (1935,YouTube) 

Leni Riefenstahl's legendary film immortalized the terrifying willingness of masses of ‘decent’ Germans to yield to ecstatic adulation of a leader who is clearly an inflammatory and amoral demagogue.

(Against this is the small glimmer of hope to be found in this remarkable photo of August Landmesser who refused, at one such rally, to salute because of his illegal relationship with a Jewish woman. He paid the price with imprisonment.)

The others films are less well-known:

‘Human Failure’ (2008, Tubi)

is a documentary filmed largely in my father’s hometown of Cologne. It tells the same story he would often recount to me: how readily neighbors, school friends and professional colleagues, literally overnight, on Hitlers election in 1933, rejected, abandoned, and worse, their Jewish citizens, and enthusiastically stood in line to take over their homes, furniture, jewelry and art work, in accordance with the exacting bureaucratic process the government devised for the purpose.

‘The Conference’ (2022, SBS)

is a chilling recreation of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, where the political and military leadership met in a elegant chateau at Lake Wannsee outside Berlin to finalize the details of the Final Solution. So orderly and agreeable was the conference that they might have been deciding on the construction of a new autobahn.

‘The Last Supper’ (2018, Tubi)

is a chamber piece recreation of a well-to-do, assimilated German/Jewish family, trying, at a family dinner on the day Hitler comes to power, to comprehend the enormity of what was occurring and how to respond.

 ‘Judgement at Nuremberg’ (1961, Amazon Prime)

is Stanley Kramer’s masterpiece courtroom drama, with its portrayal of how not only opportunistic craven sycophants, but also, more alarmingly, men of principle, could willingly accept, and enjoy the benefits of doing, the monstrous work of the Nazi regime.

'The Comedian Harmonists' (1997)

is a German feature film based on the hugely popular and charming German all-male comic music and cabaret ensemble of the 1930s (who, incidentally, toured Australia to great acclaim in 1937 and again 1939 - to the extent that the Australian government offered them citizenship, which, sadly, they declined). Their banning by the Nazis is a dramatic example of the potential reach of a malign government that enjoys uncritical mass support.

So in these movies we see

    •  masses of people ecstatically worshipping a leader who shamelessly and openly attacks, and promises their elimination as a problem, Jews, other minorities and finally anyone with whom he disagrees

    •   citizens who are opposed to, or victims of, Hitler paralyzed by their inability to use the proper processes of civil society to prevent an unfolding disaster, and to save themselves and others

    •  lawyers, judges, doctors, academics, teachers, artists and public servants seemingly willing to jettison all the codes of behavior and ethics that underwrite their vocation - and their humanity - in order to enact the most inhumane and evil policies imaginable.

    •    A popularly elected leader steadily dismantling the institutions and processes of proper government, installing people who will loyally serve him, and imprisoning or killing those unwilling to do his bidding.

Have these patterns not been inherent in Trump’s presentation of himself since 2016, in his successful re-election just now, and are we not seeing daily the growing possibility of them being enacted in what is to come?

Of course, there are great and heartening differences between 1930s Germany, and the USA. Unlike 1930s Germany, the USA has nearly 200 years of the ethos and institutions of a democratic civil society, and checks and balances in the free press, state governments, a free media, and the like. We can only hope these restraints will  curb President Trump's enthusiasm - but they certainly will have their work cut out for them in the next few years.'