Customer Reviews

Hitler's Ss [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This movie views the rise of the Nazi regime from the perspective of two brothers, who are very ordinary people. At first each brother views the Nazis as just another political party. One brother becomes a full-time SS officer working for Heydrich, the other (who actually became a Nazi before his brother did) sees the evil of the Nazis sooner, and suffers for his outspokeness. The strength of the movie is its portrayal of ordinary Germans during this time period, and how they become caught up in the ugliness of the Nazi regime.
The acting is so-so, but not bad if your expectations are not high. Jose Ferrer plays only a modest role in this movie--he is not the star. Overall an entertaining movie that is worth a try. The quality of the DVD video is slightly below average.

I have viewed this title a few times. I think this is an excellent movie. Many movies from the World War II era commonly tell a small portion about the people's lives in NAZI Germany during the Third Reich. This movie collected all the bits and pieces and showed how different people from the start had their lives affected throughout this time. This is an excellent movie and I wish it received more publicity to exploit what it does best... inform people about life in the Third Reich. It also shows the innocence of the German people and how they were brainwashed and tricked by the NAZIS. Clearly documenting the civilians at this time.

It's an interesting persprctive, looking at the SS from the points of view of two brothers: one in the SS, and one who ran afoul of the SS. The actors playing Heydrich and Himmler did their roles excellently, and the depiction of SS reaction to certain events (Night of the Long Knives, Krystalnacht, and the July 20 Bomb plot) was also well done. The only thing obviusly inaccurate was the assasaination of Heydrich (he was assasinated in Prague, not in the countryside outside the city).

The movie is great....unless you get a DVD that cuts away the first 80 minutes of it! This DVD started at the scene just before the invasion of Poland, so needless to say...I feel a little short-changed.

If you're old enough to remember the days of 3-channel TV (well, 5 if you included your one local channel and PBS) then you also remember when TV movies were a big deal. I still remember when this one came out, and it was interesting to watch it again after exactly 20 years. It was actually even better than I remember.

"Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil" chronicles the experiences of two brothers, Karl and Helmut Hoffmann, during the rise, tenure, and collapse of the Nazi regime in Germany. The brothers are both intelligent and fundamentally decent people, protoges of a Jewish professor named Rosenberg (the great Jose Ferrer), but quickly gravitate to the dynamic Nazi Party during the early 1930s. Karl (John Shea) is a headstrong idealist who joins the storm troops; the shrewd and cynical Helmut (Bill Nighy) eventually opts for the SS. Karl is assigned to the staff of SA General Josef Biegler (Paul Brooke), while Helmut ends up working for the head of SS intelligence, Reinhard Heydrich (wonderful David Warner, showing the full range of his villainy).
When internal tensions lead to violence between the SS and SA, Karl ends up in Dachau, watching his former comrades get shot by firing squads. Helmut manages to get him released, but from that point on Karl is a bitter enemy of the regime and especially of the SS, in which Helmut is fast rising. Nevertheless, the brothers stick by each other, and Helmut manages to get Karl into the army before his hotheaded antics get him thrown back in Dachau.

The Hoffmans share a lover, a nightclub singer named Mitzi Templer (Lucy Gutteridge, who also appeared with Warner in the excellent George C. Scott version of "A Christmas Carol"). Templer works for a politically incorrect comedian named Putzi (played by none other than Tony Randall), who is part of the anti-Hitler resistance. Together they tour the front, where they meet up with Karl, who is growing ever more hostile to the regime and now plans to desert. Meanwhile, Helmut finds himself sucked deeper and deeper into the murderous schemes of his superiors, even as the tide of the war swings irrevocably against Germany.

"Hitler's SS" is loaded with history, and gives a surprisingly accurate portrait of life in the Hitler state, as well as the relationship between the SA and SS. The actors who play Himmler (John Normington) and Rohm (Michael Elphick) look almost exactly like the real men in question, and the scene where Hitler (Colon Jeavons) and his henchmen roust out Rohm and the SA leadership from bed at gunpoint, only to find most of them shacking up with young boys, is extremely well done(whether it actually happened or not is another matter).

The acting in this film is generally very good, which is no suprise considering the cast. I found Bill Nighy's performance to be superb (he was just in a play in D.C., as it happens). It would have been easy to play Helmut as a cynical weakling, and in fact that is what Helmut is, but Nighy manages to layer the character with decency and conflict (in one scene he buys back books confiscated from the dispossessed Rosenberg and then returns them to the professor) as well as opportunism and moral cowardice. The writers deserve credit for not succumbing to the tendency to make everyone in the black uniform a heel-clicking abomination.

There is "Hitler's SS" in a nutshell. Not only is it a must-have to anyone interested in the period in question, it's also a pretty damn good piece of entertainment.

[..]

when i ordered this DVD the disk was defective. the movie started in the middle. i havent contacted anyone yet but be careful when ordering this dvd

I remember this as a good movie when i saw it years ago, but do NOT buy this dvd. It is defective and as others stated, half of the movie is gone. Plus that, the menu would not even work on most dvd players I tried it on.

what I could see of the movie was very good, problem is only half the movie is on the DVD I am very disappointed and recommend legal steps against the distributor since this is not a single incident!!!

The premise of the film revolves around two young, average everyday Germans, and not Adolf Hitler himself, which makes the film even better. So if you're tired of watching the documentaries and reading the biographies regarding Hitler's personal life, and want to get an understanding of how the Nazi fascist movement transformed history, watch this movie; absolutely, without a doubt.

Karl Hoffman is an out of work mechanic who is in the SA, under the leadership of Ernst Rohm, who represents the left-wing of the Nazi Party, wanting to implement more socialist elements in Germany when the Nazis wont power. Karl's brother, Helmut, is in the University to become an Asst. Professor, "helping people look for jobs that don't exist", referring to the 6 million unemployed Germans.

Helmut meets Reinhard Heydrich, assistant to Heinrich Himmler, chief of Hitler's SS (top Nazi security and intelligence apparatus). Heydrich picks up on Helmut's intelligence and quickly offers him a job with the SS, making more money than he would at the University. Despite Helmut's belief that the Nazi philosophy is "primitive rubbish", he joins.

Heydrich points out that Hitler will get in power utilizing the finance of the German capitalist class, such as the Krupps, Kirkdorffs, the Theisens, IG Farben, among others. Mentioning this is what is paramount; the aspect that Nazi Germany "historians" fail to mention. Hermann Goring, before the Nazi's were in power, was holding a ceremony, playing host to a number of Germany's capitalists, where he promised "100 years of labor peace". Since the end of World War 1, German workers started to become "self aware", and demanded better hours (they won the 8-hour day in 1919), better wages and other concessions. In the 1920s, Germany was actually called "Red" Germany because they were on the brink of becoming the world's first industrial socialist state. It was Hitler's job to stop this from happening. As Reinhard Heydrich said to Helmut, Hitler would get the rich "plenty of profits, obedient workers", and the COMPLETE abolition of trade unions, socialist or not.

Hitler, Goebbels, Goring and Himmler called themselves "National Socialists" in order to hoodwink the German people into thinking the Nazi Party had the interests of the German worker at heart. Some top Nazi members even took the word "socialist" in "National Socialist" serious. Among them, Ernst Rohm, leader of the SA, Gregor Strasser, former number two man in the Party, General von Schleicher, along with about 150 others. These men were running an "army" of the SA which was bigger than the German Army. The leadership was arrested by Hitler himself (and 200 others) on June 30th, 1934. This was the Night of the Long Knives.

Karl Hoffman is arrested because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the SA leadership was arrested, but due to his brother's inside connections with the SS, he has Heydrich get him out. In 1938, Helmut and Heydrich discuss the deceptive plan to take Poland. 150 SS officers dressed in Polish Army uniforms will "attack" a Germany radio, so Germany will be justified in annexing Poland. In June, 1942, Heydrich is assassinated by two Czech patriots trained by the British. In response, according to Gestapo records, 1,131 were killed. This was in Lidice, Czechoslovakia, on June 10th, 1942.

In conclusion with this review, I have seen probably every movie taking place in Hitler's Germany, and this is my favorite. It exposes the truth about Hitler's connections with the owners of production in Germany, as well as other international bankers in England and the United States, and other international companies that made the Nazi's what they were: the protectors of the status quo. Fascism is when mercantilism (which some call "capitalism" within a statist framework, or "corporatism") has to be maintained through the barrel of a gun; through absolute dictatorship. It happened in Italy in the 20s, Germany and Spain in the 30s, El Salvador in the 70s, and can happen again. It is corporatism at its worse.

Anton Batey
[...]

do not buy the product, its suppose to be 2 hours long and what i got was berely 50 minutes, a complete disappoitment.