Albert Speer on his way to Hollywood (IMDB)

Thereâs obviously something a little suspect about being interested in Nazis. I was one of those kids who went through a Nazi phase, though I guess I also went through a North Korea phase. Thereâs something cool about the esoterica of Nazi obsession, like youâre learning something scary and subterranean and thrilling about human existence; itâs as if, beyond the low-octane, meaningless insults of consumer society, thereâs some surreal tipoff into limitless violence.
They might be wearing Hugo Boss and driving Volkswagens, but Nazis donât really seem to live on the same planet as us; and thatâs why, maybe, Nazi content is sort of like True Crime or UFO stories. And, of course, thereâs the taboo part of it: most of the Holocaust freaks Iâve known are either Jewish or anti-Semitic, all of them fascinated by this primal bloodlust that itâs more polite to ignore.
But where does Albert Speer fit into this narrative? Hitlerâs Minister of Armaments and lead architect, known for his grandiose designs for the âThousand Year Reichâ, was one of the lucky Nazis. He was sent to prison for 20 years, but afterwards he was able to profit from his actions: in 1970, the man who had commanded an estimated 12 million slave labourers, about 2.5 million of whom died, wrote a best-selling memoir, Inside the Third Reich. He was later approached by Kubrick-protĂŠgĂŠ Andrew Birkin about a film adaptation, and, in conversations that Birkin recorded as they workshopped their screenplay in 1972, downplayed his relationship with Hitler and his knowledge of wartime atrocities. Fortunately, Paramount Pictures did not pick up the script, and it was not produced.
I couldnât help asking myself, while watching Vanessa Lapaâs Speer Goes to Hollywood, composed of dramatisations of those Birkin recordings and footage from the Nuremberg trials: what is the point of Nazi documentaries, and why am I watching one? I suppose the straightforward answer is Holocaust Remembrance, as with Yom HaShoah and public memorials and the Holocaust Studies lessons that are mandatory in sixteen US states.
But if Holocaust remembrance is really the point of Holocaust documentaries, Iâm not sure these films are up to the task. The most Holocaust-conscious people I know have tended to be, letâs say, âHolocaust-critical independent researchersâ, like the shaved-head kid with an Iron Cross ring that sat in the front of my college Holocaust Studies class and âasked a lot of questionsâ. I think he may have thought it was a workshop.
Iâve never met someone who doesnât know the phrase âsix millionâ, but Iâve known a number that would say âsix million sounds like a lotâ, and Iâm not sure Speer Goes to Hollywood is going to make much of a difference for them. If these films are simply preaching to the choir, thatâs fine; but does that mean Nazi films are just True Crime for boys?
That said, I suppose Nazi documentaries may still serve some salutary function in American society. In an era of increasing groupthink and hyperpoliticisation, we might consider that Nazi eugenicists were, actually, âfollowing the scienceâ, with the eager collaboration of leading American scientists funded by the Rockefellers. And with todayâs poorly educated often decried as âNazisâ, we might do well to reflect that the German profession that voted for the Nazi party in the highest numbers was physicians. Speer might fit in there: reminding us that Nazis can be charming, well-spoken, and professional.
Perhaps thereâs some value in Hannah Arendtâs idea of âthe banality of evilâ: that evildoers arenât scary, âperverted and sadisticâ monsters, but instead thoughtless, âterrifyingly normalâ joiners. Arendtâs thesis has since been criticised as more research shows that Adolf Eichmann did, actually, have some real ideological investment in the extermination of the Jews. However, as a general rule, thereâs some truth there: people tend to think theyâre doing the right thing, or at least not committing a crime against humanity â and they tend to do the easiest thing under the circumstances.
But how do you show banality in film, a medium designed to hypnotise the masses with spectacle and splendour? The most obvious answer can be found in Claude Lanzmannâs nine-hour-long Shoah (1985); a 355-minute torrent of interviews about the most revolting atrocities, described through minute, twist-of-the-knife probing, but with almost nothing to see. There arenât photographs; there arenât newsreels; there arenât, God forbid, animations. Thereâs mostly absence: the empty field of stones and grass where there was Treblinka, the grey pond, wide and boring, where thousands of Jewsâ ashes were dumped. And, sometimes, that absence extends to the interviews, showing how the Final Solution was executed by commonplace acts and with, even, commonplace feeling: in one chilling interview, a few residents of the village of Auschwitz calmly, undramatically, say theyâre happy the Jews are gone.
Speer Goes to Hollywood doesnât have the visual subtlety of Shoah; itâs more or less what youâd expect, built on familiar black-and-white archival images of rallies, camps and propaganda. But I suppose it, actually, implicitly denies the banality of an evil thesis. Speer mythologised himself in two ways: first, that he was a great architect, and second, that he wasnât interested in genocide, just in making some really impressive buildings. As he says, âI was just 29 and I would have sold my soul to Mephistoâ.
Yet his explanations, an exercise in cognitive dissonance, are sometimes inadvertently absurd in their coldness: for example, when talking about the Jews in Weimar Berlin, he says: âI canât really say [I had] an anti-Semitic feeling. It was a feeling of disgust when I saw it.â He later claims that though he knew Hitler was planning to annihilate the Jews, he had âno direct knowledgeâ of the camps since a friend had told him never to go to Auschwitz because âterrible things [were] happening thereâ.
But however hard he was trying to whitewash himself, he still comes across as narcissistic and deluded. When he emerges from prison, he cheerily says to excited journalists: âYou see that after 20 years Iâm still relatively good lookingâ. And when Birkin tells him that âParamount and the Jewish Brigade associated with themâ (wow!) have rejected the script, since only two out of its one-hundred-ten pages address the extermination of the Jews (wow!), Speer states, âThat is their problemâ (wow!).
Paramount didnât produce the film, but âthe Speer mythâ â this poor handsome man; he had no idea what they were doing at those funny places out East â did make him millions in book royalties. Still, Iâm not sure how many Holocaust-heads today truly believe that he didnât know about the camps, given that correspondence released in 2007 made it clear he was lying.
And yet he still commands a unique fascination. Perhaps Speer seemed less obscene; perhaps, 15 years after the end of the war, his âpoor-meâ memoirs made mankind seem kinder. I donât know. Speer was a weird figure. And he was neither a politician nor a military man; he was an architect and urbanist, a fairly influential pioneer of sustainable building and planning. He was also a moving writer, who wrote of Hitlerâs unhappiness and Eva Braunâs loneliness in ways that are genuinely absorbing. He was almost respectable.
Hereâs the thing, though: he was still an official in the Nazi Party, who, as his own book makes clear, was intimate with Hitler, Goebbels, and the whole gang. Itâs clear why Speer lied, and not all that surprising how he lied: the real question, which this latest film and countless before fail to ask, is why anyone believed him.
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