Exhausting documentary

I don’t usually watch war documentaries. I don’t like seeing the horrors of war, the atrocities and the like. I was extremely moved by the film “Platoon”, and was also affected by it. What more documentaries that show the real events! But one afternoon, I was riveted at a particular documentary on the History Channel. It was the story of the Third Reich, or Hitler’s master plan of creating a master race and society, no matter what the costs! A little research informed me that “Reich” loosely meant kingdom. Indeed, Hitler would see himself as the king in a kingdom of true Aryans, the master race. Such a concept in the 1940s was unheard of.

What kept me watching, as I said I don’t like watching these things, was how almost an entire nation was charmed by the fiery speeches of Adolf Hitler! How they were convinced to come back home from whatever country they were in, and serve the Fatherland. Little by little, Hitler’s Reich comes to form, with those already in Germany stoked by what was going on. Nationalism on a nationwide scale! After losing the First World War, this was the pep talk that they were waiting for.

And how can one talk about the Third Reich and not talk about the nationwide racism that it spawned. Jews were being rounded up like cattle. The sorting, the trains, the concentration camps, the piles of bodies! All these images I would rather not have stored in my mind, but I guess they are there for a good reason. The show’s title was actually the fall of Hitler’s Reich, but you first had to show its rise. And that was hard to watch. I couldn’t imagine living in a Europe that was being consumed by Hitler’s hate and delusions. This would go on for at least seven years.

Just when I was already so affected by what I was watching, the documentary’s tone starts to shift to the title’s meaning. Hitler’s army was being pushed back from countries occupied, back to Germany. Here I saw what it was to be a German civilian, cowering in fear of the advancing Allied armies. And as the end arrived for Hitler’s Reich and Hitler himself, the German people were left to the atrocities now being committed by the Allies! Such is the way of war. As a final chapter to this exhausting documentary, the Germans who lived near the horrific concentration camps were shown Hitler’s handiwork, and were asked to clean them up. Some claimed they did not know what was going on, some say they were lied to by Hitler, some claim they were against the perceived Anti-Christ form the start. Yeah right! Asking them to witness and then clean up was just. Every German in wartime Europe should have been shown these camps, especially to those who up to this day, claim that then holocaust never existed! Include one lawyer who has the hots for Hitler!

It will be a while before I watch something like that again. As I mentioned, I was exhausted after two hours, emotionally exhausted. I suppose there will never be man like Hitler ever again. After all, we already have Lithium, right?