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Review:
Michaelangelo Signorile
authored a piece “Outing Time for Hitler. Was he? Or wasn’t he? Yes, it does
matter” in The New York Press, Vol. 17, Issue 15, at http://www.nypress.com/17/15/news&columns/signorile.cfm
Signorile mentions that Cinemax Reel Life airs (April 20, 2004) a documentary: The Hidden Führer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality,
by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato with Gabriel
Rotello (Signorile
appears himself in the film). Signorile discusses Machtan’s
book, and adds that Machtan is not gay. He also
mentions speculations, very inconclusive, about secret homosexuality of 9/11
hijacker Mohammed Atta and other cell members, although this would violate
Islam, even more radical Islam. The basis of the rumor, that Atta as a boy
was rather a sissy himself. This had all followed a National Enquirer
story of FBI investigations, and supermarket tabloids are hardly reliable
sources of news.
I’ve already seen listserver comments that this
film would constitute the gay equivalent of “blood libel” for Jews
(attributed to The
Passion of the Christ).
The film starts right out with the question, “Could Hitler have been gay?”
It recounts the many associations of Hitler in his early years that seem to
suggest homosexual coincidence (Hans Mend, Hans Schmidt), sometimes presented
with the background of the stirring aesthetics of Wagner’s music (like the
end of Gotterdamerung). Hitler’s homosexuality, if real, would have
been an aesthetic, artistic attitude about male perfection, an idea that seems
disturbing and idolatrous, and contemptuous of those who do not fit one’s
fantasies. It also comported with the homosocial
environment in the military, as when he fought in World War I (and was never
promoted). His relationships with women, even Eva Braun, seem to have been
casual and distant. Machtan often appears in the
film, with opposing historical arguments from others presented. Rohm, of
course, was openly gay, but once Hitler came to power he seemed to distance
himself from any expression of sexuality. Machtan
explores the possibility of blackmail, but in any case the Nazi persecution
of homosexuals started, such as with the Night of Long Knives as portrayed by
Visconti’s film The Damned. It would lead to the concentration camps,
and homosexuals would not be recognized by the German government as victims
until 2002. (In 1999 I made a visit to the Connection disco in Berlin and
visited a reenactment of the camps set up as a kind of museum downstairs.)
Some claim that Hitler’s life was a public, artistic paradigm that denied any
continuation of sexuality. Hitler, however, made odd films of his own
military, somewhat homoerotic, showing men shaving (their faces). On balance, the argument that Hitler may
have been a closeted “aesthetic” homosexual seems quite plausible by mounting
circumstantial evidence, as Machtan is usually able
to answer his critics, although, if so, Hitler’s coverup
led to the greatest antigay persecution in history.
It would seem that Hitler probably was not particularly proud of his own
personal genes, and found an alternate purpose in hero-worship of or upward
affiliation with his “folk.” But it that is so, why did it make sense for him
to be in power? Wouldn’t that self-hatred contradict his beliefs?
A more traditional view of Hitler’s duplicitous
treatment of homosexuality appears in the documentary film Paragraph 175 (2000,
New Yorker, dir.Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman,
narrated by Rupert Everett, 75 min, sug PG-13),
about the original Prussian sodomy law, which would carry through the Third
Reich and then be applied to concentration camp survivors in both East and
West Germany until about 1969. The law applied only to males, as lesbianism
was considered trivial. Hitler would protect Roehm,
even claiming that he had a right to a “private life”; nevertheless most gay
establishments in Berlin were
closed down within 30 days of Hitler’s ascension to power on Jan 30, 1933. Gays (pink triangles)
typically were shipped to different concentration camps like Mauthausen, while the Nazi government opened a department
to deal specifically with homosexuality and abortion, which were seen as
denying Germany
the new children it needed. There is something of a paradox here: Hitler set
up an ideology that appeared to glorify the superior individual (Aryan) but
then implementation of his idea required collectivist values (national
socialism) and the severest possible discipline of the common people to
eliminate all but the strongest. This sounds like a warning about how hyperindividualism can go wrong. Young historian Klaus
Muller interviews about eight gay survivors of the Nazi holocaust. One of
them points out that arrests of homosexuals nearly
always explicitly referred to Paragraph 175 (and sometimes referred only to
the legal violation, not to homosexuality itself). Some of this material was
covered by Frank Rector’s famous 1981 book The Nazi Extermination of
Homosexuals (Stein and Day).
The Consequence (“Die Konsequenz”,
1977, Libra/Water Bearer, dir. Wolfgang Petersen, Germany, prob. R) is a
grainy black-and-white film that conveys the idea that homophobia was rampant
in Germany
and much of Eruope for some time after the war. Martin Kurath
(Jurgen Prochnow), an
actor, has been put in prison for homosexuality. Nevertheless, the teenage
son Thomas Manzoni of the warden (Ernst Hannawald)
sneaks into the jail and starts a love relationship with him. Martin gets
caught and his prison term is extended, but afterward they try to have a
relationship. Then Thomas gets caught and is sent to a reformatory (in
Switzerland), where he learns that he must learn a trade but will never go to
school again. The boys try to force him to have heterosexual sex. Kurtath
tries to get him out, and another older man goes after Thomas. Swiss law
section 91 is mentioned, and apparently (like similar laws in Germay) it was
in effect for a long time. In fact, when the concentration camps were found,
the homosexuals were kept in prison. A small, relatively obscure film from a
director who would eventually make epics (like “Troy”).
The Einstein of Sex (“Der
Einstein des Sex,” 2000, TLA, dir. Rosa von Praunheim,100 min, Germany,
prob NC-17) is docudrama and biography of Dr.
Magnus Hirschfeld (Friedel
von Wangenheim), a German Jew who came of age in
the late 19th Century and demanded a rational, scientific approach
to sex, that would eventually reflect the philosophy of Kinsey. A homosexual,
he fought the usual “irrational” prejudices of people who wanted to preserve
a system of socialization that protected their psychological investment in
conventional heterosexual marriage, whatever their own situation and talents
as individuals. In one early scene, his own parents caution him that his
career can bring disrepute and harm to the whole family. He and his friends
would establish the First Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin
in 1920. The film goes over many of the conventional theories explaining
“inversion” of the day, as they would continue until the late 20th
Century. There are many nude scenes, and one scene
where a penectomy is performed on a transgendered
person. Paragraph 175 is often discussed, as is the succeeding paragraph 297.
Intimate scenes of his personal life with his lover are shown. Then the Third
Reich, with its ideology, would put them away, as an example of coddled
“Jewish intellectualism”; in the brief conclusion, the collectivism of the reich’s value system comes across. The movie often looks like a filmed play.
At places, some viewers may find it hard to take.
A good comparison to this film (“Downfall”, further down
on this file) is The
Last Days (1998, October, dir. James Moll, Executive Producer
Steven Spielberg, with the Shoah Foundation) which
documents the experiences of five Hungarian Jews through their transport to Auschwitz.
The incredible cruelty (pulling apart babies, for example) is retold, and
documented as learned behavior on the part of persons in the Nazi state. The
crimp and restriction of the Jews in eastern European countries came about
gradually, with the expectation that it would “blow over.” The film has a
smaller aspect ratio than usual in order to show the original bw photos of the concentration camps. I visited
Auschwitz-Birkenau myself in May 1999, after riding
the night train East from Berlin
to Cracow, Poland.
Dor films and
Sony Pictures Classics released Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary (2002), a documentary consisting of interviews and monologues with
Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge,
giving her testimonials at age 81 just before dying of lung cancer. The
entire film consists of her talking (sometimes with questions from Andre
Heller and Othmar Schmiderer).
It is well-lighted and shot, but there is nothing else to look at than her
sitting in her small apartment. (This reminds me of my own video of my speech
on DADT at Hamline
University, as if that could be a whole movie! A film like this normally belongs as a
special television presentation on PBS (like Frontline or Point-of-View) or
the History Channel, but a theater release does draw
attention and add to controversy.) But the stories she tells, of how she fell
into the job, of her perspective of Hitler as a “man,” and of the last days
in the bunker at the fall of Berlin in 1945, are fascinating. What is relevant
here is that she saw Hitler as essentially a disembodied head (almost like Zardoz); she claims that he had almost no truly erotic
urges at all. Women (Eva Braun) could be a source of light affection and
power, and a kind of symbolic possession, and that was it. Homosexuality is
never mentioned in the film. It was almost as if Hitler were some kind of
evil alien spirit, perhaps self-created out of psychological self-indulgence
and unwillingness to meet the world on its own terms. He seemed unable to
live or do a real job in a “normal” sense. He allowed no really human tenderness
or vulnerability to blunt his aestheticism, which in retrospect seems
surprisingly collective, needing to deny or repeal the individual to enforce
its ideals of beauty. Discussions of “aesthetic realism” elsewhere at this
site seem relevant here. At the end, even Hitler admitted that national
socialism was dead.
Paper Clips (2004, Miramax/The Johnson Group, 80 min,
PG, digital video, dir. Elliot Berlin, Joe Fab) is
a documentary about a project of the Whitwell, TN Middle School near
Chattanooga to collect 6 million paper clips representing the Jewish victims
of the World War II Holocaust. Actually, they collected 29 million clips, and
according to the film, there were 5 million other Holocaust victims in other
groups (homosexuals, gypsies, etc.) They also procured an original box car
from Germany, which arrived at the Port of Baltimore on Sept. 9, 2001 and was on a CSX train piggyback pallet on Sept. 11, 2001.
The box car was placed on the Middle School grounds. I traveled in this area
in late June 2004 (to visit Dayton, site of the Scopes trial and of a vehement
anti-gay drive) and did not know about Whitwell at the time. In 1999, I
visited the Connection Disco in Berlin (near the gate) and that bar actually had a
fake Holocaust exhibit downstairs. A few days later I took the night train
East to Kracow, Poland and visited Auschwitz myself. The Miramax site for this film is http://www.miramax.com/paperclips/index.html The Weinstein brothers who control much of
Miramax were active in producing the film.
Some of the kids looked more like high school students than middle
school students. This is certainly a great way to teach social studies and
world history.
Adolf Hitler: His Life and Atrocities (2006 / 1961? / 1945?,
Red Envelope / Delta / Crystal Pictures, dir. Ralph Porter?) is a DVD offered by Netflix comprising two newsreel
life films in black and white and all live historical footage. One film is
called simply “Adolf Hitler” and
runs 52 minutes, and quickly summarizes his youth and seizure of power.
Later, a mistress or wife of another SS officer is quoted as saying that
Hitler was a “normal man” and had various mistresses, contradicting other
theories on this page (however, the fact that she would say than even in the
early 1940s suggests that there could have been homosexual rumors about
Hitler even then). The other film is “After
Mein Kampf: The Story of Adolf Hitler” (Welwyn Pictures?) and spends a little more time on
Hitler’s self-indulgent youth, his military service, and Beer Hall Putsch and
imprisonment, leading to writing his book. It’s hard to explain how such an
obscure man, developing his horrific ideas, rose to power, but the severe
economic depression (Weimar inflation reduced the value of the currency by a factor of 4
billion!), and the lack of free flow of information (unlike the case today)
created its own kind of asymmetry, allowing someone skilled in oration and
propaganda to manipulate others and establish some power leverage quickly.
Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003, Koch Lorber
/ CBS / Paramount / Alliance Atlantis, dir. Christian Duguay,
split into 2 films I & II, total 186 minutes, Germany, but in
English) is a dramatic biography of
the life of Adolf Hitler up to the time of his seizure of power. Scottish
actor Robert Carlyle plays Hitler (except very early). Stockard
Channing appears as Klara, Live Schreiber is
conspicuous as Ernst Halfstaengl. Part I ends
shortly after the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, with Hitler’s pleading “guilty” in
a suspenseful moment, and getting a very light sentence that allowed him to
write his “manifesto” in prison. The comment is made that Hitler is not
human, but knows how to manipulate human emotions that he does not experience
or empathize with himself. It’s interesting that one of his early speeches,
when he gained local favor after his erratic military service, starts out by
mentioning that the Treaty ending WWI prohibits Germany the right to conscript (which had
developed during the Prussian adventures in the 1870s). In the second half,
the suspension of the constitution with the Enabling Act, the formation of
the police state and the ending of the right to personal privacy (telephone
conversations are mentioned) is presented as a chilling warning in comparison
to today’s war on Terror. In fact, Hitler refers to the Reds and Jews as
“terrorists.”
One wonders how someone who did
not fit in and was not even good at what he “wanted,” as an artist, could
have taken over a country. In the film, the process is insidious. He captures
the attention of sympathizers, by appealing to nationalism and a sense of
victimization. (Osama bin Laden does the same thing.) His book does not sell
well at first, but there is the interesting concept that its message will get
around by word of mouth, given social conditions. Hitler was not even a citizen of Germany for a long time. He was actually
illegitimate and had the name Schicklgruber.
Hitler’s Family (2007, History Channel, 1 hr), traces the
history of Adolf Hitler’s family members, including one who was in an asylum
where many were murdered as “unworthy to live.” Hitler was seen as a
“dreamer” and at first his military service was seen as progress. A nephew escaped to the US and tried to expose him during the war,
but went into hiding after WWII.
Hitler’s descendents in the US lived anonymously, and some did not what
to have children.
Nazi America: A Secret History (2007, History Channel, 2 hr) traces Nazism
in America back to the 1930s, when some elements tried to set up youth camps
in the United States to promote Nazi values. During World War II, German
aliens were interred, but in camps that were more comfortable than
corresponding camps for Japanese descendants. Some people may have been
converted to Nazi ideology at these camps. After WWII, neo-Nazi elements were
first able to focus on Communism, but in time hardened. Normal Rockwell set up
a notorious center in Arlington
VA (on “hatred hill”) in the 50s. The novel “The
Turner Diaries” by William Luther Pierce (aka Andrew MacDonald) provided an imaginary,
if fictitious, blueprint for overthrow of the United States government and seemed to inspire White Supremacist
groups like “The Order.” Incidents at Ruby Ridge (1992) and Waco (1993) tended to inflame the extreme right.
Timothy McVeigh was apparently present at Waco, and his attack on Oklahoma City in 1995 was said to resemble actions in the
novel, which would enjoy the protections of the First Amendment. The film concludes
with coverage of the supposed “church” near Coeur d’Alene Idaho.
Downfall (Der Untergang) (2004, NewMarketFilms/Constantin,
German, dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel, 156 min, R),
starts out with the hiringof Traudl
Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) by Adolf Hitler (Bruno
Ganz) who takes a liking to her and gives her a
second chance on the typing test. Quickly the film shifts to 1945, during the
last days in Hitler’s bunker in Berlin, as the Russians approach from the East.
You see a whole cast of puppet-like characters living in a claustrophobic
world of blues and grays—whenever you go on the outside, you can get hit (you
can get bombed in the bunker, too). The film shows some Civil War style
hacksaw limb amputations on camera, no anesthesia or antiseptics. In the end,
there is a total lack of likeable characters (even Traudl).
We watch the poison pill suicides and murder of Goebbel’s
kids by Madga (Corinna Harfouch) – she puts the pills in their sleeping mouths
and locks the jaws shut. I’ve wondered if a film that shows what it would
have been like for a Gentile living in the 1930s might have been like, a
likeable person who somehow gets seduced by Nazi aesthetic and meritocratic
“virtues” as an abstraction, apart from the real people involved. These
characters, however, look already beyond redemption. Yet, some of them live
through the surrender and will start over. The scene of surrender by ordinary
soldiers to the Russians in a bombed out courtyard bears a surreal reality-tv simplicity.
Curiously, the NewMarketFilms
logo did not appear when I saw this movie at a Landmark theater. Another
thing: I wish subtitle translators would spell “all right” correctly (not as
“alright”).
Everything Is Illuminated (2005, Warner Independent Pictures, dir.
Live Schreiber, 104 min, PG-13), based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer) is a road picture
that is part ethic comedy and part dead serious stuff about the early days of
the Holocaust. A studious young American Jew Jonathan (Elijah Wood) travels
to the Ukraine to track down the woman who may have saved
his grandfather during a slaughter in 1942. One interesting observation was
that Ukrainian society may have been anti-Semitic before WWII, and that early
on some people there expected the Germans to make it better! Now Jonathan is
always dressed in shirt and tie, even when he sleeps in the open, and he
carries around a leather case filled with evidence (little knickknacks) that he collects
in plastic zipper bags. He is a bit detached and aloof, almost as if he had
mild Asperger Syndrome. He is not a writer, but a “collector” – that is just
something to do. He is driven around by a lanky young Ukranian
Alex (Eugene Hutz) or, more correctly, by his
grandfather (Stephen Samudovsky), who is usually
behind the wheel in a blue Russian microsedan. The
grandfather had once been a break dancer and admirer of Michael Jackson and
talked about Sammy Davis Jr. as a black Jew.
The on-location photography is
spectacular (I wish they had used CinemaScope), and
at one place they appear to be near Chernobyl. There is a shot of a divided dirt
highway, indeed an oddity that belongs in dreams. The ruins (and boxy
apartment buildings) of the Soviet days still abound. The scenes of irony (as when Jonathan is
served a bouncing potato as the only meatless food around) provide a physical
comedy that reminds one of Hulot. And Jonathan’s
way of speaking remains humorously matter-of-fact throughout. At one point,
he comments that Alex’s undershirt is inside-out, and starts describing what
that means in terms of skin contact, and then says, “Forget it!”
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One must bear in mind the other
side of all of this. The Holocaust Memorial Museum has a traveling exhibition Nazi
Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945, and this small exhbit
makes many points. Homosexuals were regarded as threatening to form
self-serving sub-societies (which Machtan says
really happened) and blamed for reducing the Aryan birth rate. These are
arguments that are surfacing again today (and the “sub-society” argument was
used in McCarthyism-era purges of gays from the federal government.)
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