51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gripping account of 20 January 1942, July 26, 2002
This review is from: The Wannsee Conference [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Opening narration: "On Tuesday, 20 January 1942, at a house in the quiet Berlin suburb, Wannsee, a meeting was held. At the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Security Police and Secret Service, fourteen key representatives of the Nazi Party, of the SS, and the government bureaucracy attended. The meeting lasted just ninety minutes. There was only one item on the agenda."
That item was implementation of the Endlosung, or Final Solution. Heinrich Himmler's right-hand man Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann, and Heinrich Muller were there to tell the bureaucrats that they were taking charge of the Jewish problem in their spheres of authority, while at the same time making it look like they weren't encroaching on their authority but helping them with the problem of getting rid of their Jews.
Of the people in the film, only Eichmann, Heydrich, Muller, Lange, Freisler, and Schongarth are identified. For the benefit of those wanting to match faces to names, I have the following list. At the one head of the table is the stenographer. Going to her left, we have the representatives of the SS:
SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Adolf Eichmann, Reich Central Security Office, Dept. IV-B4
SS-Oberfuehrer Dr. Schongarth, General Government
SS-Gruppenfuehrer Heinrich Muller, RCSO, Dept. IV
Deputy Reichsprotector SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, RCSO
SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Hoffman, Central Office for Race and Resettlement)
SS-Oberfuehrer Klopfer, Party Chancellery
SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Lange, Commando Squad Latvia
At the opposite end of the table, we have Ministerialdirektor Kritzinger of the Reich Chancellery. Going around his left, we have the bureaucrats:
Staatsekretar Neumann, Office of the Four Year Plan
Staatsekretar Dr. Roland Freisler, Ministry of Justice
Staatsekretar Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart, Ministry of Interior
Gauleiter Dr. Meyer, East Ministry
Staatsekretar Dr. Josef Buhler, General Government
Unterstaatsekretar Luther, Foreign Office
Reichsamtleiter Dr. Leibrandt, East Ministry
This will be more apparent when watching the movie, but notice the people I listed first: all SS, on one side of the table, and then the bureaucrats on the other side. What better way for the SS to face and tell them they were taking charge? The first part of the movie has Heydrich declaring his final authority of the Endlosung to the astonished bureaucrats.
All the light humor involves Lange's dog. Of the dark humor: A disappointed Gauleiter Meyer says, "So the Eastern Provinces won't be the site of the Final Solution?" To which Heydrich replies, "Well, not everybody can reap the laurels, gentlemen."
The second part of the meeting involves the mischling (mixed race) question, in which Dr. Stuckart turns out to be more human. He is upset that the half-German/half-Jews are to be included in the Endlosung. There's also a personal side to it. "It's not news that I am called a Jew-lover in the Brown House. But repetition doesn't make it true," he says, referring to an ongoing feud between him and the rabid xenophobe Klopfer. Stuckart says that with every mischling killed, not only is the Jewish blood lost, so is the German blood. Leibrandt ridicules him, saying, "To a pessimist, the glass is half empty. To an optimist, the glass is half full. You are an optimist." Everyone then roars with laughter.
Stuckart correctly points out German's precarious situation: the Russian front, an undefeated England, American to come on the scene, and resistance movements springing up. In fact he's predicting Germany's defeat.
Forget the pitiful Conspiracy movie! Dietrich Mattausch portrays Reinhard Heydrich better than Kenneth Branagh, and Gerd Bockmann's Eichmann stands heads over Stanley Tucci. And Gunter Sporrle's Klopfer makes Ian McNiece's rendition pathetic. Equal praise goes to Peter Fitz as Stuckart and Harald Dietl as Meyer. Guess it shows how American remakes are inferior to the foreign original.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Horreur Véritée, or, My Dinner With Adolf, February 16, 2001
This review is from: The Wannsee Conference [VHS] (VHS Tape)
A gauleiter flirts with the stenographer. Reinhard Heydrich trips over Adolf Eichmann's briefcase. A Nazi chieftain has to keep going outside to shut up his barking dog. Little touches like those add to the creepiness of this reconstruction of the Final Solution conference. Of course, elimination of the Jews had been in full swing for some time before this conference--it seems mainly to have been held to get everyone to accept Heydrich's leadership of the project. But this conference is just about the only "paper trail" the Nazis left in the actual execution of their plans for the Holocaust.
The recreation of the conference is amazing. It isn't especially realistic--it's obvious that everyone is acting, because everyone is so crisp and "on". But the fine ensemble acting, taken for itself, is impressive. The pacing never drags, though you do have to pay attention. Everything is unnervingly ordinary--the applause for a toast to the soldiers on the Eastern Front, guffaws at someone's joke, Eichmann fussing over his papers of statistics. Even the sudden sound of a plucked piano string at the end is startling, as the viewer realizes the theretofore absence of a music track. A grim masterpiece of historical recovery.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhere Between a Documentary and a Docudrama Lies....?, August 18, 2002
This review is from: The Wannsee Conference [VHS] (VHS Tape)
If you're reading this review, you've possibly also seen and reviewed a vastly differt version of the same event, "Conspiracy" (HBO, with Kenneth Branagh and the ever threatening Stanley Tucci, with light brown hair!). My purpose is not to compare or contrast them--they are both good in their own right for a variety of reasons.
This version is essential to any student of the War, the Holocaust, German history, BECAUSE it was made in Germany just before the advent of Glasnost. My own study of German history suggests that the "Final Solution" (Endloesung) of the "Jewish Question" was really a sad, confusing, and irrational approach toward dealing with partisan warfare, counter-espionage, and the search for a "higher" reason for the war than finding more German "living space" (Lebensraum). These men were looking for some "accomplishment" to look to, even if the war were lost (it was January 20, 1942--AND there were two MORE "Final Solution" conferences to follow (see Richard Overy, "Interrogations"). Ridding Europe of Jewish, and therefore Bolshevik/Communist influences, seemed like a reasonable parallel "war."
The reason these movies differ, of course, is because there is no verbatim transcript. ONE version of the minutes survives, and can be read in its entirety in German or English with a simple web search. Upon this, a dramatic version emerges and is dependent up the interpretation of actual historical figures, some well known (Stuckart), some little known until recently (Heinrich Mueller, SS-Gruppenfuehrer for internal Reich Police matters [see any of Gregory Douglas' works on him]).
What especially succeeds here is that this production, in its context, emerged at a time of undoubted fears that the Soviets would eventually relase information about the Reich and its activities hertofore unknown outside the NKVD, MVD and ultimately KGB. Sadly, many of the early Bolsheviks were also Jews (by Halakah, not by German racial laws, which were quite convoluted), and the two-century of assimilation of Jews into German society had NOT taken place in Russia and the USSR (see Rigg's new "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" to understand the complex identity issues involved). Marxists and Communists happened to have Jewish ancestry (not all, of course), but enough to parallel the current question about our profiling or not profiling persons of obvious Middle Eastern descent or origin as possible security risks. To paraphrase the old saw, those who do not study and understand history are condemned to repeat it. The German version is more chilling, less burdened with poor costuming and fake snow. Also, the novelty of the German actors to Americans helps keep the focus on the issues, the humanity and lack thereof, and how any political system goes sour when politics is pursued "by other means." Be prepared to wonder where we may be headed, less than 60 years after the end of WWII (and with what appears to be the demise of assimilation here). Further, in light of VERY current events--can any such depiction (including the film "Hart's War") succeed while purged of the presence of the tobacco economy and bartering?
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