[gvataler]

lol - but that movie scene gives me goosebumps. For many reasons: a) For what he is saying, b) how passionate he is about it, c) the atmosphere of the situation (like imagine the generals thoughts - is he gonna shoot us all now, or will he surrender at last?), d) the stunning, out-standing performance of Bruno Ganz as an actor. I mean if i get really mad, i sound pretty much like that, but to do that, without meaning what you say, just acting, and to do it that believable - wow. The movie is a must-see btw. One of the very few cases, where tension couples with historic accuracy at a very high level.

EDIT: I just wanna add a couple of lines to that. Hitler, in his last days, had become a mentally sick man without doubt (before you could claim it, but doubt would remain). Since dec 1941 things didnt go quite as he wanted them to go and by D-day at the latest, it became apparent even to the most optimistic, that the war was lost for him. From then on, he (or rather: the germans) did merely fight to prolong his life. His drive for existence coupled with his ineptivity to admit mistakes lead him to (seemingly truely) believe, that the war could not be lost for germany because of his own mistakes, but only because of the german people proving itself to be unworthy. Thus, in the scene above, he blames the whole military leadership to put treason on him, just because an obviously un-executable command had not been carried out (basicly: an attack by an army, that did only exist on paper). This scene only shows the climax of a pattern that evolved in Hitler during the years before. This man was simply not able to admit defeat and thus fled into a virtual world so to say. That made him sick. Physically. He could hardly eat in the end and in the scene above you can see his hand shaking has he takes the glasses off (another thing about him - he would only very rarely wear them, since he was ashamed of them, and rather have his newspaper reprinted in enlarged letters) - often he held his right arm with the left, to avoid it shaking like crazy.

How Bruno Ganz manages to act out this complicated character with its unique experience and mighty flaws, without coming off as totally rediculous and laughable i find absolutely astonishing. I mean we have all seen a Hitler-impersonation somewhere. Be it some friend imitating him at a party for joke or even a neo-nazi who obviously wants to be just like him giving a speech. They are all rediculous - you laugh when you see them. Or it´s the typical villian kind of movie-hitler, where he is constantly in the shodows, giving harsh, inhumand commands from out of the dark. The myterious, almost super-human, evil being. But Ganz achieved to show us Hitler as a person. Something that is very interesting to Germans, cause we never quite grasped, how we (or they - another generation) fell for him in the first place and how he could hold on to authority for so long, when everybody knew already, that he would lead Germany into the abyss.