"( Hitler giving speech in the distance )" "( crowd cheering )" "( speaking German )" "( crowd cheers )" "Before us lies Germany, within us marches Germany, and after us comes Germany!" "Hitler:" "At the extreme, one becomes a symbol." "Every man who desires adulation will recognize in me the pure manifestation of that dark part of himself." "I am the perfect reflection of every man with the lust to dominate, who has some bias or prejudice-- some unsatisfied craving." "Some will condemn me morally, but they cannot escape the power of my image." "Their self-righteousness will dissolve, as their hearts beat with the rhythm of my essence." "Even those poor souls who hate me will privately envy me, because I've fulfilled my dreams, whilst others repress their true desires." "Thus, have I guaranteed my immortality." "The essential Hitler has a hold over every human heart." "Does that sound clichéd?" "Anyway, let's end this on a poetic note." "Will to power." "Will to form." "Will to beauty." "Look at the men, Goebbels." "Geometry." "Classic lines." "Nothing is more important to me than the preservation of these images." "Power." "Order." "Solemnity." "You know what I like most?" "Your decision to break the formation here and here." "Not only does it serve the composition, but it gives the impression of the Cross." "Hmmm." "The Messiah theme." "Here it is." "Do you think I should have walked down the aisle alone?" "That's an interesting question." "My instinct was that a loner would be viewed" " as less trustworthy." " Goebbels:" "Hmmm." "Hitler:" "Better to be surrounded by faithful lieutenants." "Goebbels:" "Yes..." "I think so." "Those men, Goebbels, what are they thinking?" "A person wants to be a part of something beyond his... small self." "To escape." "To be lost in a historic moment." "I wonder if their feet hurt." "You organized the people on a whole new basis." "By invoking Aryan superiority, you enabled us to transcend regional and religious rivalries, even trivial issues of gender, age, class distinctions." "I created a great circulation of energy, self-replicating, self-reaffirming." "My God!" "In the First World War, the Jews and the Bolsheviks stabbed Germany in the back." "Even as German blood spilled in our just and noble cause, the enemy within sought to destroy us by treachery!" "The bad within must be extracted." "We must protect Germany!" "I must save the motherland from this defilement!" "( coughing )" "You could never understand a man of will." "The problem with you Jews is you think you know so much-- the inside of a man, this nonsense about the "id" and "superego."" "A man is the sum total of his acts." "Success justifies all." "So, what can we learn from your actions?" "That a man is his own creation, his own artwork." "To use only reason is to close the door to the power of an idea like blood and soil." "Freud:" "What of your inner world?" "I know myself completely, I know my personal myths." "That is enough." "With the answers to 1,000 questions, you and your kind could not begin to understand me." "Only a poet could touch the edge of the Führer mystery." "Where was I?" "Ah, I remember now." "One power alone makes a great leader-- imagination, divine vision." "I took those words from someone." "I can't remember whom." "It's good to be writing again." "Film is the magician's mirror... the first art form which allows the artist to project his dreams and fantasies, into the inner life of the viewer, to reshape and capture his soul, to create a perfect reality" "indelibly inscribed on the minds of billions." "My works of destruction and grandeur will live on." "I am the artist." "I am the artwork." "I was Homer." "I was Ulysses." "I was the Odyssey." "I enlisted powerful men, courageous men, to the task of fulfilling my artistic destiny." "Your fairness cleanses me." "To make love to you, is to make love to all of Germany." "Eva:" "My Führer." "( Hitler whispers ) My angel." "Eva:" "Wolfie?" "Eva:" "What?" "I represented the rejection of the modern." "What is it, Adolf?" "A return to the world of Homer, in which war isn't about massive destruction," "but remains first and foremost... an instrument-- ( coughs )" "to enhance a hero's personal glory." "Hitler:" "Modern art is the enfevered fantasies of an incurably sick people." "The fact that nine-tenths of artistic rubbish-- literary filth, theatrical idiocy-- can be traced to the account of one people," "of all the country's inhabitants can simply not be talked away." "It is the plain truth." "The Jewish-Christian creed, with its effeminate ethics undermines our vitality." "Morality is a decay, a blemish like the Hebrew circumcision." "The German people must learn to distrust reason, the dirty and degrading idea of conscience." "What number was the last footnote?" "28, mein Führer." "Footnote 29." "The Führer wrote these words for the first draft of Mein Kampf," "the morning of May 2, 1924, in Landsberg Prison." "In other countries, why do they keep the German title Mein Kampf, instead of translating it to..." "My struggle?" "Hitler:" "The sun... is uncontrollable... unforgiving." "With the sun, you can't... shape and sculpt reality." "I hate the sun." "There is magic in enormity, my doctor-- overwhelming, like a dominant father." "Yes, but... the art is in disguising the technique." "Brutality must be wrapped in velvet." "That is what distinguishes us from say... a thug like Stalin." "Hitler:" "Wagner made the exorbitant demand that the stage become an hypnotic instrument under the power of the artist." "I impose the same demand on Germany." "History is an error to be rewritten be the visionary playwright." "While Wagner brought the German myths to the operatic stage, I brought them to the world." "I am the superman, the Teutonic knight on the quest for the Holy Grail." "Compared to you," "Wagner was a minimalist." "Let's enter one more into the record." "This is from April, 1935." "A woman from Berlin." ""My fervently adored Führer, you have a birthday, and we know only two ardent wishes:" "that everything in our fatherland be, now and in the future, just as you want it to be, and may God provide that you be preserved for us forever." "Your loyal, E.E."" "Just a minute." "I thought you said our count was 5,700,000." "They're using the 6-million figure." "( Hitler mumbles ) Typical." "A clever exaggeration." "Well, all right, Goering, let's use those figures." "Suits us." "History likes round numbers." "Now, the war total was 55 million." "Out of that, the camps and death squads were responsible for only" "11 or 12 million." "Goering: 12." "Could we say that half of those were non-Jews?" "were Christians, atheists and pagans." "Hitler:" "Awkward language." "What term covers Gypsies, Polish intelligentsia," "Russian upper strata, prisoners of war," "French and Yugoslavian partisans, political opponents?" "Well, should we say "gentiles"?" "But if 12 million were liquidated and only six million were Jews-- or is it 5.7?" "Why can't I get accurate figures?" "!" "Where's Himmler?" "!" "I would stand behind this wording." "Almost half the dead were from the Christian world." "( Hitler mutters ) Yes." "And yet the Jews take their removal so personally." "( Goering laughs )" "What strikes me is that little notice is taken of the fact that the first biological cleansing eliminated German nationals-- the disabled, the retarded," " the mentally ill" " And the bedwetters." "The useless eaters." "Commenced the 1st of September, 1939." "Actually, mein Führer, it was October 1st." "You backdated the decree one month to correspond with the first day of the war." " Tidier." " Yes." " War for living space." " Yes." " War for race purification." " Yes." " All began on the same day." " Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "From Latvia to Lithuania, from Estonia to Slovakia," "from Russia, from Poland to the Ukraine-- wherever we found them." "250,000 blonde-haired, blue-eyed nuggets... harvested for the Third Reich." "Nordic nuggets, to lighten up the dark Bavarians." "They took children from their parents?" "They were misplaced Germans." "We brought them home." "( rhythmical resounding sound )" "Eva:" "Look at you, posing for my camera, as if you didn't know I was there." "Hitler:" "Do I look more mysterious in a hat?" "( Eva giggles )" "Eva:" "Why did you never wear an official army" " SA or SS uniform?" " Better to remain undefined." "Suggestive indefiniteness." "There are so few public pictures of you smiling." "There were none before I was chancellor-- nor any with children or small animals." "The holiday in Iceland was a joyous time for my sisters and me." "You should have come with us." "You were always inspired by the Viking sagas." "The only flaw in the trip was a delay before we departed from Hamburg." "I had no time for holiday trips." "The police came just before we were to leave." "A family was removed from the ship." " l'll never forget the cries" " Quiet!" "Never mention that again!" "( softly ) Look." "Did you like me better when I was blonde, with baby-fat?" "Or later when I was brunette and thin?" "I liked you when you were blonde and thin." "Hitler: ...fulfillment of a mysterious longing." "My need to control will fill others' need to be controlled." "That was my euphoric discovery:" "the union of my urges with the German people's desires!" "If you unite a powerful people, whose first duty is obedience," "you can do anything." "( whispers ) God... I love to order." "Every woman a potential source of solace, warmth, love." "Every man, a rival." "Hitler:" ""l am the German spirit." "Consider the incomparable magic of my works..."" "Did you write that?" ""...the incomparable magic of my works."" "It's Wagner." ""Man is a beast of prey, developing through constant progress." "The beast conquers, founds great realms by the subjugation of other subjugators, forms states and organizes civilizations, in order to enjoy his booty in peace." "Attack and defense, suffering and struggle, domination and servitude."" "Are those Wagner's words?" "We were both illusionists and showmen." "I made my life so different, so vibrant, so extreme." "That was how... I accumulated power." "I wrapped iron and blood in a cloud of mystic communion with the German Volk." "Whoever wants to understand Hitler, must first learn Wagner." "Write this!" "Fire." "Fire fascinates Hitler." "It consumes without accepting or rejecting." "Hitler:" "Read the last sentence back to me." "Typist: "We made the sound so overwhelming, the attitude so certain, the level of force so high, the spectacle so grand, that no one could see anything at the center but the symbolism."" "Yes." "Good." "The symbolism at the center." "Like the sun, nobody could look at me without the pain and punishment of blindness." "Number two!" "The receptivity of the masses is unlimited, yet their understanding is feeble." "They quickly forget." "Three!" "The masses tell each other small lies." "It could never come into their heads to create colossal tales." "Thus, bold myths work best." "Four." "Effective propaganda must be confined to stereotypes." "Always focus people's attention on a single foe." "To have multiple enemies confuses people." "My genius was the combining of two enemies" "Jews and Marxism-- into one." "Jewish Marxism... the synthesis that was the key to my success." "Weave this in:" "Crude simplifications endlessly repeated will influence the supple." "Goebbel's realm." "For the non-supple, the stubborn... terror is necessary" "Himmler's responsibility." "When I was a small boy in Linz, I frequently played alone." "I would walk to the top of the hill overlooking the city." "In dark solitude, I imagined I had absolute command of those heights and all the lands below." "Only the trees on the hillside heard my cry." "Heil Hitler!" "( under his breath ) Heil Hitler." "Those private moments stayed with me through the darkest days." "The tragedy of every charismatic leader is to be imprisoned by his fate." "His triumphs are finite, his needs... infinite." "( stringed instruments plays )" "( choir sings )" " ( choir fades ) - ( overlapping whispers )" "This was to have been built... for you." "Hitler:" "What will they think of us?" "History... those who study our lives?" "Will we be judged by what we say, by our deeds, by the monuments and images we leave behind... or... by something else?" "Something... we can't control?" "Eva:" "They adored you." "They were stupefied by the Führer cult... so hungry for me, as if I could fill their emptiness." "By feeding them hope, you stimulated their craving." "Yes... the desire to be the desired object." "Eva:" "For women, you were the ideal lover," " the perfect father." " Hitler:" "Fleeting." "The thrill quickly loses its impact." "You were the one thing... that brought me peace." "I told you to destroy that footage!" "Hitler:" "When I was homeless during a cold Vienna winter, a Jewish art dealer gave me an overcoat." "I even had a Jewish friend at the men's shelter with whom I spent many pleasant afternoons." "Maybe, there would have been an advantage in not exterminating the Jews." "Well, for a long time, we considered a territorial solution." "We would put them in reservations or ship them to..." "Madagascar." "In fact, we encouraged mass emigration." "Eichmann's assignment during the '30s was to find places to move them to." "But... few countries would take more than a handful." "Someone even proposed... a mass sterilization plan." "An ugly necessity." "In every society, there are pent up hatreds." "For example, in the United States it's against the blacks;" "in Russia, the successful." "A politician must mobilize these hatreds." "Reason must be trained to think in historical dimensions." "Get out!" "Get out!" "You'll get nothing from me!" "No mercy!" "Tell them Hitler has ice in his veins!" "Ice!" "I'm the greatest actor in Europe." "I am... the greatest actor in Europe." "Hitler:" "What a thrill to play the Führer-- for 12 years, the supreme Father figure." "On to surpass even Lord Grimm." "They made me "Man of the Year."" "They made you what?" "Time Magazine, they made me "Man of the Year."" "I was on the cover for six issues." "I conquered Poland, Norway, Denmark, France." "Americans love a winner." "Of course, it doesn't mean a thing." "They made Roosevelt" ""Man of the Year" three times!" "And he was a cripple." "Goebbels:" "Look at Himmler." "Hitler:" "You're not exactly Clark Gable yourself, my little doctor." "Himmler looks like a weasel." "Goebbels:" "Making our enemies look bad was often easier than making us" "Hitler:" "The perfect Aryan Superman." "A weak stomach in the presence of violence." "Woo!" "Heinrich Himmler." "Didn't anyone notice?" "He was ruthless, but not careless." "And Hitler-loyal." "Who better to run the SS?" "Art must be plausible." "If you wrote a script about Aryan superiority and cast Himmler, people would laugh, walk out of the theatre." "On the political stage, you can do anything." "Let's put up another reel." "Images to blur facts." "Hitler:" "In World War I, I was a messenger." "I never killed anyone." "I am a vegetarian." "I never eat dead animals." "I loathe big game hunters-- a gruesome bloodbath." "I would not allow smoking in my presence." "We discouraged tobacco consumption." "I insisted on the humane treatment of pets and farm animals." "I even issued a decree regulating the cooking of lobsters to minimize their suffering." "I reduced chemicals in fruits and vegetables." "The SS planted organic gardens." "I am not a brutal man by nature." "I am not a brutal man by nature." "I am not a brutal man by nature." "I'm not a brutal man by nature." "I am not a brutal man." "Hitler:" "Only a charismatic leader could heal the wounds of the great war inflicted on us by the November criminals." "Hitler's charisma was as much created by the German masses as it was imposed upon them." "In peacetime, stability and routine undermine charisma." "In wartime, the great threat is defeat." "It was the failure of the will of the German people that fatally undermined my charisma!" "You take... an ordinary man," "dress him in a uniform... and that man... will commit acts he never before... imagined." "You can turn a runny-nosed, bedwetter... into a ruthless warrior." "If I'd stopped with the conquest of France, I would have gone down in history as the greatest conqueror since Alexander The Great." "No!" "No, no." ""Greatest military genius in history."" "Wait-- what do you think?" "Well, no..." "Ah... here it is." ""Greatest empire since Caesar."" "That-- that's it." "Let's make it... lf l had stopped with the conquest of France, I would have built the greatest sustained empire since Caesar Augustus." "What I hated most about the war was fighting the English." "The fair Brits... our racial brothers, our natural allies" "Saxons." "Anglos." "The very word means angels, doesn't it?" "Eva:" "Mmm... lt's a tranquil image." "All the Germanic peoples coming together." "The traitor Churchill... never told his countrymen that I offered an alliance," "a union of racial brothers... and protection of the British Empire." "Eva:" "Wolfie?" "Wolfie?" "In a different era, parts of me that were compassionate and sensitive might have developed but, in my era, there were forces and attractions that led me to become the founder and perfect leader of the new religion." "Think of Volk and Reich!" "Our great nation!" "We prefer the spoken to the written word." "More so, symbols to any kind of words." "And above all, pageantry, spectacle, and music." "People thought I choreographed the Nuremberg Rally to make the film" ""Triumph of the Will."" "The critics lack the imagination to see that I orchestrated World War ll, for the same reasons... the invasion of countries." "Mobilization of millions of extras to produce the most magnificent and historic film footage, footage delivered nightly from the front by courier for my personal review." "So, my sons and daughters, take guidance from the arts... to write a bestseller or to stir a nation!" "Simplify." "Your hero must have no fears and you villain no need of affection." "The fair maiden must be blonde," "and the villain must wear dark clothing and a mustache." "Life is ambiguous." "None of us can stand ambiguity." "Me, least of all." "If you told the truth, both the teller and the listener would go insane." "Tell me." "For you, what redeems life?" "The purely artistic." "Read Nietzsche." "But what of the spiritual dimension?" "To be a creative artist, one inevitably walks the spiritual path." "In fact, they are the same path." "Hmm." "Good." "Good." "But, there is so much more to understand, Adolf." " So many died" " Stop!" "Conscience is the Jewish invention." "For us National Socialists, action follows thought as quickly as... thunder follows lightning." "Hitler:" "Let's finish this section." "Typist: "Enigma, carefully manipulated enhances one's power and fame."" "Hitler:" "Make that, "Fame, power and immortality."" "Obfuscation keeps people guessing-- the little feints, the ambiguities, contradictions... ln my first four years, as head of the Nazi party, I forbade photos to be taken of me." "To my surprise, the efforts to keep these things hidden created a cloak of enigma." "People want to know." "They talk." "They were kept on edge." "Yeah, better delete that last section." "Typist:" "You mean, starting with the line" " "obfuscations"?" " No, no." "From "There were things about me that I was not comfortable with."" "The horrors of the First World War, the turmoil of the post-war years." "By the 1930s," "Germany was an abused child." "From her wounds, grew..." "National Socialism," ""the great healer."" ""The great healer."" "I can remember the first time I spoke publicly." "In 1919." "Or was it 1920?" "Crowd of veterans... disheartened, broken men who'd spent four agonized years in the trenches, only to return unappreciated." "Civilians could never know." "They were moved by my words, my fervor." "I could speak." "I remember... one young man in a wheelchair who'd lost his legs-- there was an ecstasy on his face." "I knew joy." "I had the power to heal the sick." "As with Wagner's music, people could lose themselves in the totality of my voice." "One must be cautious, Adolf." "All people want to be gods." "Unfortunately, some do not recognize the impossibility of it." "You're wrong." "Every man has God within him." "Fortunately, most people don't recognize this." "There is no essence beneath appearance, only a series of appearances, each rising out of the one before and giving birth to the next." "I merely fulfilled the plans and programs of my original sponsors." "Cruelty is impressive." "Buildings as the very expression of tyranny." "Appearance verses reality is the central issue of all art." "Political uses of the account sciences." "Anxiety is institutionalized." "To downplay the internal differences, we focused on the external differences." "Those of us with German blood versus Jews, Slavs, Gypsies" "So, if a man from the lower middle class, born outside Germany, lacking noble ancestry, a high school dropout perhaps, he would henceforth feel included, not excluded?" "Exactly." "What about what we did to the German mentally ill, the retarded?" " They're German heritage." " And the homosexuals." "National Socialism was not a political party, but a-- a sacred crusade against all those inimicable to the pure Nordic super-race." "Holy duty for all those with Germanic blood in their veins." ""Nordic super-race."" "The movement was founded on the idea of an Arian super-race." "After you secured power, you narrowed the ideal." "You forbade SS men from marrying German women who weren't blonde." "How is this explained?" "Watch how I use my nervous energy to subdue and control the crowd." "Everything I do here is entirely calculated." "The crowd is a hesitant female." "Their bodies and souls await... penetration." "Two solid hours." "I grant it." "Goering despises me for it." "That I have this power also astonishes me." "Only twice in my life have I been afflicted by weakness:" "At the death of my mother, and at the betrayal of my motherland." "When I was growing up," "Germany was always referred to as the fatherland." "When you assume absolute rule, a beast climbs onto the throne with you." "Every philosopher, politician, poet, composer, general, each will be viewed in the light of my legacy." "They are precursors, threads woven into the tapestry of the Hitler hero." "For generations, all of German history will be viewed through the lens ground by the accomplishments of the era of Adolf Hitler." "( sighs )" "Crowd:" "Hitler!" "My tombstone should bear the inscription," ""He was the victim of his generals."" "Invincible Luftwaffe commanded by the great General Goering, humiliated by the British Air Force, a swarm of mosquitoes!" "What about Dunkirk?" "Their army was cornered, but you let them escape." "You may look Nordic, but you lack Nordic spirit." "It's a law of nature." "A man must put others down to feel good about himself." "Hmm." "Czechs, Croats, Slavs" "Austria was like a broken-down old man, an illegitimate marriage with Hungary, an empire rotten to the core." "Only the mating of Austria with Germany could save her." "So, you explain the world by using the symbolism of ethnic conflict?" "Well, race is everything." "Upon the ancient foundation of race, I forged religions, science, magic, and politics into a single world view." "is it possible your enemy lies not without, but within?" "You perpetuate a bourgeois existence which offers no salvation." "The aim of my work is to help people escape their inner prisons" "My mythology captured people's imagination." "And more profoundly, the roots of National Socialism are hidden in secret places." "They are beyond your grasp." "Hitler:" "According to the universal laws of nature, the soil belongs to those who conquer it." "We must purge our people of their softness and sentimental philistinism." "On this point, I am ice cold." "All life is paid for in blood." "I crush the skulls of my enemy." "I made the dead winds blow." "The soul and the mind migrate, just as the body returns to nature." "Freud:" "What do you mean when you say," ""erotic affinity with death"?" "Unspeakable desperation... anxiety." "A hungry wolf, out to kill, eat and survive." "But I could sit calmly at a party rally and then get up and speak." "That was the true triumph of my will." "Run along, my little golden Nordic nuggets." "( growls )" "When one's personal and political mythology is threatened, one must take steps to affirm it!" "Blood and race, the only true source of artistic inspiration." "Art is a sacred mission, which requires the artist to be a fanatic." "Hold still!" "Hold still!" "Hitler:" "Stripped of grandeur, exposed nerve endings-- a tender fetus poked unmercifully by a sharp metal rod." "Sometimes it feels as if my body has been partially cut out, never grown." "On unbearably hot days when I would sweat, the footage not only had to be edited out, but physically eradicated." "The original footage, the original reality," "the truth, is now lost to them forever." "The future führers must understand, no matter how carefully you plan or execute your production, you can never get it exactly right." "But with editing, a black magic... I have edited the imagination of people not yet born." "Flawless speeches, unflappable will, 100,000 cheering citizens, women in tears, and an assailable fall thundering from the tower." "In a way, the outtakes, the flaws, these were like the Jews." "I never thought of it like that." "A prophet." "A fighter." "The last hope of the masses." "The shining symbol of Germany's will to freedom." "All your propaganda!" "With utmost respect, mein Führer, you created the Führer role." "You were the director." "I only helped to stage it." "My God, Goebbels, it became a terrible strain." "Future generations, mein Führer, will pay exorbitant sums for your paintings, your letters, your pistol, if only to feel your presence in them." "I was a victim of Nazi propaganda." "The Invincible Führer." "No!" "No." "Historians will study your childhood, examine your relationships, the dark secrets." "It warped my judgment." "They will exaggerate your slightest scribbles into important, irrefutable clues." "You will be the source of endless fascination." "Perhaps." "I am seeing universities all over the world with their courses" ""Hitler, Architecture, and Politics."" ""Hitler." "Salvation and Human Evolution."" "What about "Hitler, Wagner and Voyeurism"?" "And then there will be artists, too, all striving for comprehension." "Careers devoured, trying to bridge the distance." "There's my 1,000-year Reich." "We gave them all much to brood over, didn't we, Joseph?" "Hitler:" "We were each islands of strength and will surrounded by great muttonherds of sheep-like followers." "Stalin, you little babushka, you were going to invade me, but I invaded you first." "We knew that liberty, equality, and democracy are the grandest nonsense." "But war is the most simple affirmation of life." "But I do not admire him." "Envy?" "Stalin?" "Paah!" "A footnote." "A footnote if he's fortunate." "Stalin killed millions of his own people, but he killed without grace." "He ruled by fear." "I ruled by passion, and ecstasy!" "Stalin had no sense of form." "Yes, he got people's attention, but with force and random brutality." "He's a barbarian of genius." "So what!" "He offered nothing to hypnotize or transform his people." "Where is the drama in slaughtering well-to-do farmers?" "Stalin misunderstood the principals of opera." "Disciplined spontaneity." "We stove for the most extreme intensification of possibilities." "We elevated passion above reason." "We rescued the German people from their drab, predictable lives." "We gave them a sense of heroic belonging, a vision of victorious triumph over evil." "A man will do anything, as long as you take him step by step." "Break a shop window." "Rough up a labor leader." "Turn a neighborhood into a ghetto." "Shoot a man." "Eliminate." "Erase." "If you asked a civilized people to take this last step first... it would be impossible." "No!" "Give me that." "Let's start again." "Only as each order was obeyed with absolute fidelity, did I recognize the possibilities." "My mind leapt ahead to the most extreme, fantastic scenarios." "But my advice is, go slow." "Take small steps." "A desire fulfilled must be followed by a somewhat larger request, a slightly greater brutality." "Let the momentum build." "To my astonishment, I found I could experience the sensation of absolute power." "The whole system functioned to obey my commands." "Each member of the armed forces swore obedience, unconditionally, to me." "The nation celebrated my birthday." "Every German schoolboy pledged:" ""l swear to devote all my energies, my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler." "I am ready and willing to lay down my life for him so help me God." "One Volk, one Reich, one Führer."" "A mere flicker of my imagination could be transformed into a giant deed." "Sketch a museum, it is built." "Envision new living space, a country is invaded." "When a hatred matures, this group or that group is eliminated." "For others it becomes," ""This is my job." "I will complete this on time." "I will perform with excellence." "I am in charge of this." "My aim in life is..."" "( mumbles ) Blah-- blah-- blah..." "No matter how harsh, extreme, or murderous... the resulting... reality." "One can write new commandments." ""Thou shalt kill."" "No, no. I've never killed a single person with my own hands." "My whole life was dedicated to fighting for schemas plotted to take over the world." "Hence the need to cleanse our nation!" "Germany had to be pure." "With our purified Germanic nation, why did we fare so poorly in World War ll?" "During the First World War, Germany was never invaded." "Yet, by the end of the Second, we were overrun by foreign armies." "We had the will to fight on." "We could have won!" "Our cities and towns were bombed into rubble." "Millions of German women were raped by invading Russian soldiers." "Over five million Germans had been killed." "The German officer corps turned out to be a pack of mutineers and cowards!" "( Hitler growls )" "I don't give a damn about troop strength!" "You are a general in the army of the Third Reich, a German officer, an instrument of conquest... invincible!" "If you even mention retreat, you're a traitor, a coward, a Jew!" "( coughing )" "( with strained voice ) Retreat is unacceptable!" "Losses can never be too heavy!" "Only vitality guarantees success!" "I am a man who knows only one thing!" "Strike!" "Strike!" "And strike again!" "The first time, mein Führer, I heard you speak, you looked at me." "Your blue eyes met my glance, like a flame." "This was a command." "At that moment, I was reborn." "I knew which road to take." "At last... an epic worth writing." "But only you, a failed playwright, to write it." "And you, a failed artist to act it." "The grander your grandiosity, the more brutal and grotesque." "The propaganda had to be the height of ruth!" "Because it doesn't matter if an idea is true or false, as long as it serves my purposes." "But members of your family suffered from mental illness." "Didn't you fear insanity?" "I wasn't put in a lunatic asylum." "I created a lunatic asylum." "The war would never have started if it wasn't for the Jews... and their puppet" "Churchill." "( mimics Churchill ) We will fight them on the landing strips." "We will fight them on the beaches." "We will fight them wherever the enemy invaded us." "I dealt with pain by causing pain." "No!" "Cross that out!" "It's a ridiculous notion, that personal pain causes one man to injure another." "To protect Germany, an act of self-defense." "To guarantee my singular place in history." "To punish the German nation for undermining my charisma." "To take their breath away." "The broad, sweeping historical gesture." "As the gleam of conquest faded, the SS needed a new mission to sustain vitality." "To brand the German people with this crime for all time." "My final enigmatic act, my postwar surprise to the world." "Freud's voice:" "What about your fear of being one quarter Jewish?" "Where does that fit in?" "( distorted scream )" "Hitler:" "What drives a leader beyond his destiny?" "Answer me." "Answer me!" "Germany needs free men who feel and know that Wotan is within them, in their own destiny, in their own blood." "One is either a German or a Christian." "We cannot be both!" "We will tear out Christianity root and branch, annihilate it." "Are you afraid the Christian way of life would lead to the dissolution" " of masculine vitality?" " Bolshevik hogwash!" "What are you looking at?" "Perhaps shame leads to concealment." "Freud's voice:" "Your search for perfection... the untainted." "Germany is not worthy of me!" "( Eva gasps )" "Russia..." "Russia was my abyss." "( sighs )" "The dark valley of that defeat in 1941 was unbearable." "Like Napoleon, death in the snow." "Since 1933, an unbroken chain of political, economic and military conquests-- waves of adulation-- l was unstoppable!" "But then..." "Russia-- invincibility undone, the circle of my perfection crushed under the boots of Slavs, no less." "Stalinites!" "The Führer Myth... shattered." "A quarter million of my young soldiers slaughtered in the snow." "My most humiliating experience." "I was naked before the German people... the world." "And then, I had to continue with my role to take the stage again." "Only my will allowed me to remain in character." "A childhood nightmare returned-- running home naked from school in the snow, hiding behind bushes, trying to avoid being seen, to avoid ridicule, exposure." "I pondered the many options." "Calling a world conference for peace." "I could be "The Great Peacemaker,"" "voluntarily withdrawing to our own borders." "We would keep only..." "Austria." "I considered retiring, going back to my painting." "I longed to paint, to create, to build." "I should have been an architect." "Has a great ruler ever simply disappeared from the public stage, changed his identity?" ""Let someone else play Hitler," l thought," ""Give someone else the role!"" "But the stain of defeat would not fade." "And then... it came to me." "Slowly at first, like a-- a blossom on tree in spring." "What I could do next." "( nervous breathing )" "An old image-- a primal hatred, crystallized." "The answer." "It obsessed me and lifted my spirits." "A new plan for these terrible times." "It was the one thought, the one idea, that brought me peace enough to sleep." "I could... systematically and completely destroy all the Jews." "If my role as great conqueror had ended, a new part beckoned" ""The Great Destroyer."" "I would be the architect of the greatest catastrophe of all time." "That's how I would be remembered, gain my immortality." "Destroy all" "Jews." "My God... this is powerful writing." "Like a blossom on a tree in spring." "Add this note." ""The seeds of this obsession were sowed long ago and now sprang forth from the black soil of war."" "( under his breath ) Or should I say," ""the black soil of defeat."" "Isn't defeat what you mean?" "Wait a minute." "Something's out of order." "Before the defeats-- l'm trying to remember..." "The SS death squads eliminated hundreds and thousands of Jews and communists in the course of the invasion of Russia." "Well, of course that was mostly a military security operation issue." "It was so long ago!" "So much has happened!" "I declared war on the United States on the 11th of December, one week after the first setbacks in Russia." "I was desperate to transcend the agony." "To appear strong!" "Maybe I need to say, uh..." ""Men may see my actions as atrocities of epic proportion, I saw them as a way to relieve tension."" "Or maybe we should say, um..." ""ln a mere fortnight, I sealed Germany's military and moral fate."" "Or..." "I..." "Let's just leave it the way it is." "I devoured past and future." "I devoured!" "I fused the symbolic with the real." "( screams ) I exuded spiritual terror!" "Ridicule." "Exposure." "The stain of defeat." "Burst!" "Tainted." "Hitler:" "We were stuck in a mutually reciprocal dream play-- figures twirling with no ground, images with no object." "A mass hallucination." "That a people would give all power, turn their lives and wills over to a single man... it's insane." "( projector clicks )" "My youth was an emptiness, a black mirror laced with panic." "As Führer, my mirror filled with my image... but the glow was brief." "And when the brightness fades at twilight, the brutality has begun." "Finally, when the beast is spent, the black night returns." "The only remedy is to lash out." "Ever so slightly the fog lifts." "It doesn't go away, but it is tolerable." "( insane cries )" "( screaming )" "No one questioned me." "Further and further down down the path, no one said stop." "The whole apparatus said," ""Yes." "Go on."" "Repeating cycles of affirmation." "Echo!" "( softly ) Echo." "It was all so abstract-- living space, the racial theories, aesthetics." "I never touched the suffering." "I kept it so distant." "( blasting effect )" "( screams )" "( screams )" "All this madness... the destruction... the human suffering... I, too, was trapped in the whirlwind we created" "an empty mirror filled with hate." "I expected God to reach down and stop me but He never did." "Please... please say something." "Please help me."