Product Description

Hitler A Career is Joachim Fest s controversial German documentary film about the inevitability of Hitler and Fascism within Germany. Narrated by Stephen Murray, it tells the story of Hitler s rise to power from a German perspective; and Hitler s uncanny ability to satisfy the German people s emotional and psychological needs. But how did this unknown Austrian boy seduce the German people into becoming a Nazi state? Why did Germany follow Hitler to the brink of destruction? Fest s documentary film answers these questions by tracing the roots of fascism to Germany s historical heritage. Using unseen footage from the German war archives, Hitler A Career presents a compelling picture of the rise and fall of Hitler and the Nazi empire. It was not Hitler who created Nazi Germany; but Germany itself that created Hitler.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15111 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-05-28
• Rating: Exempt
• Formats: Black & White, Colour, Dolby, Dubbed, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 140 minutes

Synopsis
This is the first release in the UK of this acclaimed German made documentary film. Hitler : A Career is Joachim Fest's controversial German documentary about the inevitability of Hitler and Fascism within Germany. Narrated by Stephen Murray, it tells the story of Hitler's rise to power from a German perspective; and Hitler's uncanny ability to satisfy the German people's emotional and psychological needs. But how did this unknown Austrian boy seduce the German people into becoming a Nazi state? Why did Germany follow Hitler to the brink of destruction? Fest's documentary film answers these questions by tracing the roots of fascism to Germany's historical heritage. Using unseen footage from the German war archives, Hitler : A Career presents a compelling picture of the rise and fall of Hitler and the Nazi empire. It was not Hitler who created Nazi Germany; but Germany itself that created Hitler.

Customer Reviews

A spellbinding documentary about the life of the worlds most notorious dictator,
Written by esteemed German scholar and historian Joachim C Fest, Hitler: A Career (Hitler - eine Karriere) is a mesmerizing look at the rise and fall of Adolph Hitler, as well as the complicity of the German people who catapulted him into power. Cleanly and thoughtfully constructed, Hitler: A Career relentlessly hammers home Fest's theory that Hitler gave the defeated, humiliated German nation exactly what they wanted in the early thirties, through a calculated shell game involving phony Germanic folklore and a soothing balm of violence and order to appease the middle classes fear of modernism. Fest's narration, read by Brit Stephen Murray, eschews a scholarly drone to appeal directly to the viewer's emotions. It's a spellbinding documentary, mainly in black and white but with some astonishing colour footage towards the beginning. I would highly, highly recommend Hitler: A Career.

Who was Hitler?
We are all familiar with documentaries exposing Hitler, the politician, the artist, the sexual fiend, the occultist, etc, etc. This documentary gives us an insight into Hitler, the Man. It traces Hitlers rise from a beer-hall activist to the absolute leader of a nation. But this exposition does not follow the usual commercial steps of explanation. No, it follows the man himself, tracing his changing attitudes, his manipulation of the German people and, indeed, his own party. This is not a political expose, but an attempt to understand the psychology of a man who allowed an absolute evil to be be committed in his name. The general opinion of the commentator is that Hitler, having achieved fame and fortune, grew lazy and let his minions run the nation. Watch this. You decide.

Hitler - A Career
The first few sentences of this 135min DVD both sum it up and pose a profound question for those of us who look back on these events some eighty years later. 'Deutschland Awake' was the rallying cry from a man who believed himself the chosen 'saviour of a world on the brink of disaster'. Germany certainly rose to Hitler's call; and the result was certainly disasterous, but was the end of the old Europe really as inevitable as this programme claims? The basic theme is that the German population felt threatened by the coming of the multi-racial capitalist future we now live in.

Like medieval Japan between the years 1638 and 1853, the German folk also wished to isolate themselves from a future which, with good reason; they believed menaced their existence. Firstly by strengthening their national/tribal identity; and also by recreating the old pre-industrial world of farm, village and craftsmen. Returning politically and socially to an older mythic world of tribal chiefs and warrior tribesmen, united by respect for blood and soil, honour, and duty. Under the old pre-war Government of Kaiser and Junker, this yearning for security might well have been satisfied in large measure; but the newly established 'democracy' of the Weimar Republic looked on such attitudes with distain; rapid modernization being regarded as the only way. When the economic slump of the 1930's arrived, it both discredited these socialist modernizers and left the hapless German voters with only one real option; Hitler! In January 1933 the Nazi's were duly elected. Throughout Europe, Governments faced similar problems, but these where compounded by bloody memories of WW1. With Hitler's election, fear of German armies marching once more gripped Europe's leaders; who immediately took steps to strengthen their own positions militarily.

The greatest problem facing them all however, was that Europe's landspace was too small to support one Empire let alone several. From food production, through national populations, to industrial capacity, to sources of raw materials; even a Europe united compared badly when measured against the USA, USSR or in the longer term China. In the short term, Europe's colonial possessions could be used to make up the deficit; but the confined living-space was already impacting on Europe's birthrate, which in turn reduced the number of workers that could be employed in the factories, the number of administrators, settlers and soldiers that could be deployed to run the colonies. In the longer term Europe must unite or lose her colonies and with them her power in the world.
Hitler's answer was 'Der Grossraum'. One Europe, united from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains which once fortified, would become 'Festung Europa'; a continental fortress with natural boundaries rather like those America or China enjoy today. From within this Fortress European/Aryan humanity could face the future with rather more confidence that she would not be overwhelmed by Asia's numbers.

It was not to be. Rather than unite, the once great nations of Europe turned their weapons on each other for one last suicidal civil war. By 1945 it was over, some 50,000,000 were dead, virtually every city from Coventry to Karkov had been devastated, and the military/political strength of all the European nations had been shattered, their empires were finished; as was three hundred years of European world mastery. In the East the mongol soldiery of Asia raped Europe's women at will; in the West American liberators settled into their barracks.

Sixty years on nothing could conclude this review better than the words of Patrick J Buchanan, senior adviser to three American presidents and twice runner for the Republican presidential nomination; I quote:- "All about us we can see clearly now that the West is passing away.....Not one European nation, save Muslim Albania, has a birthrate that will enable it to survive through the century. As a share of world population, people of European ancestry have been shrinking for three generations. The character of every Western nation is being irremediably altered as each undergoes an unresisted invasion from the third world. We are slowly disappearing from the Earth. Having lost the will to rule, Western man seems to be losing the will to live". Hitler - A Career [DVD]