Movie: The Meaning of Hitler

German Cinema @ New Zealand Film Societies

2020
Director: Michael Tucker, Petra Eberlein

Based on Sebastian Haffner’s book Notes on Hitler, directors Petra Eberlein and Michael Tucker make a cinematic attempt to make Hitler concise, precise and sober. The Meaning of Hitler questions the fascination and permanence of the sometimes religious hype and hype that surrounds Hitler and National Socialism in popular culture and entertainment—especially against the backdrop of current anti-Semitism and the rage of exclusion and xenophobia.

Petra Eberlein and Michael Tucker have a number of first-rate “witnesses” and “evaluators” who seem to support their film’s argument, including writers Martin Amis (Area of ​​Interest) and Saul Friedländer (Nazi Germany and the Jews). Also working eloquently to draw out the continuing power of Nazi folklore are Klaus Theweleit (The Men’s Imagination), Sir Richard Evans (Hitler’s Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination), Deborah Lipstadt (Anti-Semitism: Here and Now), Professor Gavriel Rosenfeld (Hail Hitler! How the Nazi Past Is Normalized in Contemporary Culture) and Nazi hunters Pete and Serge Klarsfeld.

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