Hitler
By Michael Moriarty
web posted February 24, 2020
The price of an utterly unrestrained megalomaniac.
Here: Hitler – A Career, available on Netflix.
Astounding really! How could it have happened?! The history of a madman’s rise to power?!?!
Seemingly unbelievable yet true!
Of all the many cinematic looks at The Fuhrer?!
This documentary, Hitler – A Career, is, unquestionably, the most breathtaking!
Why? No film so captures the speed and unexpected power of one man steadily tyrannizing an entire continent, as does Hitler – A Career.
“The sexual overtones are obvious!” declares the narrator as the women weep over having merely touched The Fuhrer’s hand.
“Distance turned belief into religious fervor!” The delirium it inspired in Hitler drove him to invading an unquestionably foreign territory: Prague!
“I saw my enemies at Munich!” declared the Fuhrer. “They were little worms!!”
“Hitler’s talent for the theatrical!”
Infinite!!!!!!!!
With Richard Wagner as Hitler’s inspiration?! Without Richard Wagner?! There would have been no Adolf Hitler!
The corporal rode in on Wagner’s insanely popular anti-Semitism!
The most powerful “artist” was not Hitler himself. It was Wagner and the anti-Semitic threats he delivered in his operas.
Hitler’s 50 birthday celebration?! In retrospect? Terrifying!
A display of military might and intent clearly created to invade all of Europe and all of the Soviet Union.
The Obersalzberg. A mountainside retreat situated above the market town of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, Germany. Amidst its peace and quiet, the madman planned war!
August, 1939? Europe had enjoyed a long, peaceful summer!
In September, Poland had already been invaded by the time Hitler announced the invasion! Eight days into the war, Nazi troops reached Warsaw. Within two weeks, Poland surrendered.
Then, at the beginning of April, 1940, Hitler swept into Denmark and Norway! A month later, Hitler was urging his generals to march against Hitler’s mortal enemy: France! Vengeance for the Treaty of Versailles!
Six weeks after the invasion of France, France sued Hitler for a peace! For the signing of the Armistice, Hitler had the Treaty of Versailles’ very 1918 railroad car provided for the signing.
Hitler returned to Berlin amidst a flood of respect and adulation! Germany incorrectly assumed that victory would mean peace.
Hitler?! He only thought of war!
Once again, in his celebrations of victory, Death was glamorized! The spectacle was both colorful and awe-inspiring.
After the fall of France, there came a period of uncertainty. What to do with Germany’s declared enemy: Britain?! Hitler first decided to “soften England up” for negotiations.
He wanted Britain out of the way so he could concentrate on his eternal enemy: Communist Russia. However, all his attacks on England only provoked further resistance! Utterly unlike the swift capitulations of both Poland and France?! In Winston Churchill, Hitler had met his first real challenge!
So the Fuhrer turned East and secretly set up an invading force of the Nazi military to attack Russia! They did so without any formal declaration of war! Hitler planned to enter Moscow within three months! This was the war he had always longed for. His ideological opposite: Nazi vs. Communist!
A Nazi officer eventually declared that he and his unit had executed 90,000 men, women and children.
In the Autumn, the German lines ground to a halt. The Autumn rains set in. All operations became bogged down in the mud.
The Nazi advance guard was already in sight of Moscow when Winter arrived! It was at this point when Hitler first said, “The war is lost!” He pushed his forces forward in the Spring but 1942 was the turning point.
In North Africa the British Forces overran the position of the Axis powers. Rommel’s North African, Nazi troops were forced to retreat. Within a few weeks, the German African Corps was shattered!
With America’s entry into the war, the Allies achieved supremacy in the air. The Third Reich’s U Boats were faring no better.
The populations of conquered nations in the East of Europe who were ferociously anti-Bolshevik joined forces with Hitler against Russia. Scandinavians and Frenchmen enlisted in the Nazi Army. The Nazi defeat at Stalingrad.
Film of Frenchmen striking captured American pilots can be seen.
Stalingrad was the turning point of the war. Field Marshall Paulus signed the first German capitulation to the Russians -- 91,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner by the Russians. Only 5,000 would ever return home.
Hitler himself? Increasingly broken, defeated and under the influence of increasing drug-use!
Defeat and death were staring Hitler in the face.
Hitler’s dreams of a “New Man”?! The New Man would eventually rule the world.
He would be submissive yet constantly aware of his own superiority! Yet an intimate connection with the irrational!!
The contradictions of National Socialism: the old rule versus the cold, inhuman world of the SS!
The solemn insanity that lay at the heart of the Nazi Regime! The “Aryan Superman” -- selective breeding. And all mongrel races will submit to their superiors!
“We shall make Russia our Garden of Eden,” said Hitler.
Meanwhile, the Fuhrer incessantly demanded the total extermination of the Jews. The Holocaust had begun and was cold-bloodedly destroying millions!
“The sole aim of the SS?! The destruction of others!”
Hitler’s ultimate dream?! A New Man! A New Berlin! Infinite Aryan Supremacy over everything!
“An ever-bleeding boundary that exists between Aryan Superiority and everything else that is either to be destroyed or enslaved!”
“Germany had declared total war on the world. Now total war was being waged upon Germany!”
All the German people could do was try to escape. The Third Reich was ending as it had begun, churning out propaganda.
But in the ruins of its own evil. 
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty.