MovieChat Forums > The Nazis: A Warning from History (1998) Discussion > Difficult not to become angry

Difficult not to become angry

posted 7 years ago by Hillius
1 reply | jump to latest

This is perhaps one of the finest documentaries on the Nazi's in WWII. This series is one of the few that I have seen that provides details prior to WWII and Hitler which sheds light on the climate in Germany that led to his rise to power and helps answer why the Germanic people went along with it all. The show does paint a new picture of Hitler as being pretty lazy, and something of a big daydreamer. It is in either this show or in Nazi Mega Weapons that I am also watching currently that said during the Normandy invasion Hitler was asleep for most of it and when he woke up he didn't believe the invasion was serious. His second in command was celebrating his wife's birthday. Just amazing how incompetent the leadership really was to have caused so much death and destruction before being finally and thankfully eliminated.

Despite this in watching I find it difficult not to become quite angry during many of the interviews. The shopkeeper/businessman who says "its what life is like" to excuse his fleecing the Jews in the Ghetto. The "resettled" Baltic German who complains about the state of her new stolen Polish home and how her family stole a small Jewish restaurant because "all the better ones were taken." The next door neighbor who signed a document resulting in the death of a woman who was considered "different" possibly Lesbian and had Jewish friends. The Lithuanian executioner who shot women and children to get extra vodka and it goes on like this people making excuses, saying "I don't know" or I can't remember.

People are sheeple not to have tried to have helped stop the violence, stopped the killing or at least smuggled some food into the Ghetto. The show states something like over 600,000 Poles were removed/killed. If these people had banded together they would've been a force to reckon with. Instead they let themselves be shipped off to their deaths. If it was me and I knew I was going down anyway I would have tried to take as many of them with me as I darn well could. Good Grief.
Sorry for the rant.

“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”

[–] liscarkat (16469) 7 months ago

I, too, like to think I would have helped people escape from the Nazis, but it's easy to talk, eight decades later. None of us really knows how brave we would be until we are confronted with a deadly situation. Most people in the U.S. today follow government orders like mindless sheep, and condemn others who insist on thinking for themselves. The smart and courageous are always a minority; there's not a hell of a lot they can do.