PBS and 'The Man Behind Hitler'

Tonight I watched 'The Man Behind Hitler', the PBS show consisting almost entirely of readings by Kenneth Branagh from the diaries of Joseph Goebbels. Hitler has become the modern West's exemplar of evil, in fact, he and his circle sometimes seem sufficient proof for the existance of real evil. Not Sunday school evil, not evil as a philosophical abstract, but the product of humans, just like you and I in most physiological aspects, working their twisted will on the flesh and souls of others.

The show was a startling depiction of 'a brilliant but toxic mind' as the NYT called him. It takes you into the inner workings of that mind. At some points, when you see him dragging his polio deformed foot and hear him mention the pain it caused him, or when he starts bubbling over with joy for falling in love with his future

wife, you begin to realize just how human he was. It is important never to forget that. When you then see how twisted, delusional, and genuinely vicious the man was and all the horrors he was responsible for, it is important to see that he was just another human, like you or I. And he and Hitler had the population and resources of a great Christian nation at their disposal.

If you know the story of World War II the show takes on a creepy, morally challenging aspect. See his cute, blond children playing musical instrument for daddy's birthday - you have already seen pictures of their six tiny bodies laid out by the Russians after Mommy and Daddy poisoned them. His wife Magda - you have already seen the films and pictures of her horrifically burnt body after she and her husband committed suicide. And those thousands of cheering party leaders screaming 'Ja! Ja!' when Goebbels demands to know if they accepted 'total war, no matter how extreme or radical'? Well, you know what happened to most of them. The Russians got there first, with what we can call, at the very least, 'total war.'

In some ways, studying the Nazis and their rise and fall is a religious experience. How can it not be with so many ideas of sin and retribution, the destruction of innocents, the escape of perpetrators, the moral confusion of it all. The scale of the suffering is almost beyond our grasp now, the depth of its subtle destruction on the mind and soul easy to miss.

But if you saw this show, you would at least know that something was there to contend with, and you can glimpse it all there in the mind of one man.