MUST-FLEE TV: How (Not) to Study Hitler.
There are good reasons for students to learn about the madmen of history. The vices of such men contrast sharply with the heroes whose virtues we hope our citizens and statesmen might emulate; they serve as reminders of the cruelties that a flawed human nature can produce; and they can serve as warnings for where politics can occasionally descend should the better angels of our nature fail on a mass scale. Students today rightly study Adolf Hitler and the Nazis for all three reasons. This is as it should be. Indeed, conditions today are such that the need for the third reason is particularly heightened: antisemitism is growing at alarming rates; fringe fascist-sympathizers have a large following online; and the value of liberal democracy is being openly questioned all around. In such times, Hitler’s Germany can serve as a sobering reminder of just how badly things can go if we lose our heads.
To fulfill this mandate to educate, the creators of the Netflix documentary series, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, needed only to tell the story again, to let the narrative speak for itself. In certain respects, they do this, deploying a mix of real footage from the Nazi era, choreographed scenes with actors to fill in the gaps, and historical commentary that conveys the story of Hitler’s life and how one man directed a respectable country towards evil. But the series is handicapped by crucial flaws. Chief among these is its attempts to compare the Weimar Republic and its chief villain to contemporary American politics. Its loud dog whistles equating Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump betray a desperation of the creators that goes beyond the limits of acceptable bias in such a way as to undermine the aim of the entire project.
In some cases, the references are far too obvious to actually be considered dog whistles:
BENJAMIN CARTER HETT, Author, The Death of Democracy:
Outside of Berlin, large numbers of Germans are living in small communities, rural communities where the artistic experimentation, the innovation, the sexual experimentation of Weimar Berlin is utterly foreign to them. And indeed, they are somewhat hostile to it.
ANNE BERG, Professor, University of Pennsylvania:
It’s a group of people who feel shunned. So, if we want to make a contemporary analogy, we can see the sort of forgotten people in America, there is a sense that the system has dealt them a bad hand, and Hitler kind of taps into a fundamental disillusionment with the Weimar Republic. And this is the concept that he will return to repeatedly, even after he is in power.
As the New York Times noted:
Hitler’s project: “Making Germany great again.” The Nazis’ characterization of criticism from the media: “Fake news.” Hitler’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden: “It’s sort of like Hitler’s Mar-a-Lago, if you will.”
Donald Trump’s name is not mentioned in the six episodes of “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,” a new historical documentary series on Netflix. But it dances just beneath the surface, and occasionally, as in the examples above, the production’s cadre of scholars, popular historians and biographers can barely stop themselves from giving the game away.
Egged on by the documentary makers, of course.