Customer Reviews

The Architecture of Doom [VHS]

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a superb documentary. Bold and controversial thesis. Evidence marshalled effectively. Great use of archival footage. Generally gripping and with very good pacing (occasionally there is a digression which, while important to the general line of argument, is not introduced in a way that makes the relevance immediately clear). Plus, don't you really want to know what projects seemed closest to Hitler's heart when the war was getting bogged down on the Eastern Front? Hint: They weren't military ones.

Cohen argues that the Nazi project was that of producing a better and more beautiful human being and race, a project that integrated art and the science of the day. The Nazi aesthetic was not just propaganda to get people to become committed Nazis, but was a goal in and of itself, from the earlier optimism of producing a better humanity (or at least Aryan race) to Hitler's eventual--but not unmotivated by earlier commitments--desire for an ending befiting classical tragedy.

The beginning is marvellously done. The portrayal of Nazism is so sympathetic that one is drawn in, and may even wonder if the film maker does not have Nazi sympathies. Any such wonder disappears within twenty minutes, but the film maker's ability to see what was so attractive about the Nazi project is crucial to the success of the film. In the end, one realizes that the Nazi project was evil in a way simultaneously subtler and yet deeper than one may have thought at the outset.

The film maker never draws parallels with our time. Still, the film should make one reflect on how the desires for perfect human beings and for the elimination of the imperfect are manifested now.

I've seen a lot of documentaries about Nazi Germany, and this one is as good as it gets. By the end, I definitely had a deeper understanding of that ultimate question: "How could the Holocaust possibly have happened?" This film really shows you how beautiful and exciting the Third Reich was, how easy it must have been to get caught up in its inertia. ... Usually, documentaries such as this show only tiny little clips from Nazi propaganda, but "Architecture of Doom" shows more footage, enough for one to be able to grasp how racism could be encouraged and reinforced via public service announcements about health and hygiene.

This film also opened my eyes to how intelligent and talented Adolf Hitler was. In spite of a critical narrative that described his paintings and the design of the Berghof, you can see from his work that he was not the simple "wallpaper hanger" of popular myth. To understand how the German people could have followed him so loyally into total destruction, I think it is important to be able to see him in this light.

Several key points underpin Hitler's "mission" for the German people in this documentary directed by Peter Cohen: the need to make Germany racially clean, the need to make the ethnically Aryan people realise that they were always meant to be the dominant race in the world, and the need to make the German state the greatest in the world. Hitler's campaign in this respect was, so the film alleges, essentially civilian, but under a military guise.

The two-hour film opens with an aerial view of what is purported to be a German village, yet the background story concerns questions about what Hitler's racial theories and policies actually meant in practice. The Holocaust, in which six million Jews were exterminated during World War II, was merely the latest episode in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing", which had actually started back in the 1930s after Hitler had come to power. The focus was initially on the mentally ill and the deformed, but it later widened to include the Jews as "the microbe" which was allegedly responsible for "infecting" Europe, not just with their genes, but with their own ideas about art.

Propaganda films, which feature heavily in this film, essentially proselytize the German people into believing that the mentally ill, the retarded and the Jews were infestations that had to be eradicated. To this end, hideous methods were devised to "euthanise" the targets, whose families were lied to about the true nature of their deaths.

The death camps were the ultimate expression of Hitler's eugenics programme, yet the term could well be applied to the artistic depiction of the "perfect" Aryan, particularly through sculpture at the hands of people like Arno Breker. Through art exhibitions held every year, he wanted the German people to see what direction they should be taking, as he believed that art, his own former profession at which he ultimately failed, was one of the most significant props to his political regime. In order to emphasize the gulf between "pure" German art and those of "undesirables", he deliberately had works by the mentally ill displayed in so-called "Degenerate Art" exhibitions, albeit in separate locations.

As stated in the title, the term, "architecture", is prominent, though it appears that it is not as prominent in the purest sense of the word. His unbelievably ambitious plans for Berlin and the Austrian city of Linz are highlighted, including the relative absurdity of his receiving the final plans for a regenerated Linz, which would have included a gigantic museum of the arts, just three months before the end of the war in Europe. In this movie, we see Hitler's fleeting visit to Paris (then just conquered) very early on a June morning in 1940, where his mission was to look at the city's art treasures, including the Opera. It is even claimed that Hitler was so familiar with the plans of the building that he even noticed that an ante-chamber was actually missing; apparently, it had been eliminated during a renovation programme. The German conquest of Greece in June 1941 is also shown; Hitler envisioned a state that would be a hybrid of ancient Greece, ancient Rome and Sparta. Indeed, he considered Sparta to be the most ethnically pure state in ancient history.

The attack on the USSR later in June 1941 and the onset of the coming Russian winter in November allegedly turned the tide of the war against Germany, and even this received artistic expression when pictures drawn from the front highlighted the hardships of the German army fighting in the USSR. The overall war situations are given scant coverage, given the subject matter of the film, yet they are nevertheless put into their proper context. Hitler knew that defeat was inevitable, yet he actually looked forward to Germany's fiery defeat, reminiscent of what had happened to Carthage during the Punic Wars. The film claims that Hitler's war strategy may have been blighted by his apparent obsession with antiquity: he was allegedly fighting a modern war with ancient war objectives, which included enslavement of conquered peoples. Even if Germany was going to be destroyed militarily, he still ordered the continuation of the "Final Solution" as he believed that a defeated Germany would therefore be left with only with the weak, since the good would have died fighting for the Reich.

Anti-Semitism was, so Hitler claimed, justified on the grounds that he saw Jews as constituting an ethnic power bloc against the Aryan race. He therefore viewed his campaign to cleanse Europe of non-Aryans as a primary reason for conducting the war, and he used films, such as "The Eternal Jew" (shot in the squalor of Polish ghettos in 1940), in his propaganda campaign. He likened the destruction of the Jews to the destruction of rats and other pests; indeed, a pest control film (made in 1938) is shown as part of the propaganda where gas is used to kill pests; that same gas ("Zyklon-B") would be used in the death camps.

Overall, since it is a documentary, the film exists to inform rather than to entertain, but it does delve deep into Hitler's psyche in order to portray a failed artist (who made architectural sketches of planned buildings well into the war) obsessed with the "mission" to make Germany a mighty state primarily through racial purity and artistic expression - and, ultimately, violence of the vilest kind imaginable.

Taking full advantage of what the DVD format has to offer, The Architecture Of Doom is a superbly produced, critically acclaimed, landmark documentary surveying the inner working of the Nazi Third Reich in terms of art, architecture and popular culture. Hitler sought to emulate the classical art and monumental architecture of antiquity as this riveting film shows how the Nazis tried to make his amateurish design ideas into a lasting memorial to his vision of a "New German Art" of idealized Aryan images. This DVD version is enhanced with an English narration by Sam Gray, interactive menus and scene access. Highly recommended for academic and community video collections.

Not only did Hitler's motives and means suddenly become clear, but, for the first time they actually fit together logically. Within the artistic, historical and philosophical context of this film, the mystery of Hitler's methodical mania actually makes a sort of "sense" inasmuch as he finally at least becomes "predictable" based on some sort of rationale. Very unique and utterly fascinating! More important, however, is the argument this movie implies for the true power of art ... for better or worse. Hitler clearly understood this power and made its manipulation top priority. It makes me doubt the wisdom in having government sponsored art at all. Indeed, for what purposes might the National Endowment for the Arts be one day used? Very thought provoking on a subtle yet grand scale... suggesting that our study of Nazi Germany has been missing the point all along. Indeed, perhaps so.

Google lists nearly 200 films about Adolf Hitler, most of them documentaries such as Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will and Fuhrer: Rise of a Madman.

The Architecture of Doom was perhaps the first to propose the notion that Hitler embraced the art of politics after failing as a painter, suggesting that Nazism was a reflection of the dictator's perverse aesthetic tastes. In its deconstruction of the Nazi movement, the movie is novel and shows an interesting, perhaps true, perspective.

But what minor grouse I have is with the narrative, which is just shy of 2 hours or so and sports a frequent monotone of showing Nazi art. Yet, thankfully, it doesn't detract substantially from the intriguing perspective that Hitler's whole pet project was perhaps more of a dogged pursuit of an aesthetic.

This documentary is definitely worth a watch if you are interested in the Third Reich in any way.

This would be the ideal "package" for anyone who is interested in what Hitler's motives were. A totalitarian who used glorious nostalgia to express his ideas to the people of Germany in the 1940's.

This movie is the best documentary on the Third Reich. The director does not take a biased view but rather takes a blatant approach to describing Hitlers frightening plans to create a fantasy like German nation.

The movie is perfect for college courses.

You get a pretty good insight in this fascinating documentary on what made Hitler tick. Hitler appeared to only know other races basically through what he had read & heard. He didn't see that as a problem though. The film points out that his favourite author was Karl May who wrote childrens adventure books which were set in exotic places, and Karl May had never met the races he wrote about either. Hitler used the example of May to justify his view that you could form opinions on entire groups of people without ever having met them. Perhaps if he'd actually met some Jewish people in his life, he would not have been so full of hate against them and realized that they were just normal folk.

Hitler truly was a disgraceful piece of work. The documentary illustrates how Hitler believed he was the expert in every field, especially art and architecture. No wonder he had no real buddies (with maybe Albert Speer an exception). After Germany won the war, Hitler was planning on living in a new gigantic palace the size of which would put all other previously built palaces to shame. So much for the Socialism in National Socialism. The word 'humble' does not spring to mind.

Anyway, I recommend this DVD to everyone as it contains a great deal of insight and rare footage not seen before. It is both disturbing and enlightening.

This documentary offers an excellent look at the influence of the arts, and medicine and eugenics on the minds of the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Combined with rare footage, and learned commentary, the film shows the influence of the architecture and style of classical antiquity, and the yearning to create a perfect 'man' in the Greek sense of the word. One of the memorable quotes I remember from the movie is how Hitler wanted his cyclopian buildings and stadiums to stand the test of time, and even when in ruins and covered in ivy, would reflect the greatness of a former civilization. Now that's thinking ahead!

Unfortunately, the second half of the documentary takes a left turn into holocaust propaganda territory, leaving the viewer wondering if two different people wrote the first and second hour, as it has little to do with the overall subject matter, and lacks the objectivity and factual care of the first half.

At first I was a little bored with this video because it was a little slow, the narrator was not as good as ones that host History Channel documentaries and the narration script was below average. But the footage is very rare and the video gets very in-depth with regard to Hitler's obsession with art and his plan to create a new art culture for Germany. I didn't know he was this enthralled with architecting a new society to the point of deciding which art was good for the country and which was bad and what art should be destroyed. Goes into good detail about how the history and mechanisms for extermination of Jews were slowly developing. I learned a great deal. Well worth the time and money.