Last night, while making stuff and looking for something to listen to as I did, I found a documentary on Netflix, called Final Account. I hadn’t heard of it before, but from the synopsis I could see that it was interviews with Germans who lived in Germany at the time of the Third Reich. I thought that sounded interesting. Little did I know I would be absorbed by one of the most fascinating documentaries I’ve ever seen. I’m so haunted by it that I watched it again today.
I’ve made a study of World War II since I was in elementary school. I’ve read countless books about many aspects of the conflict: the underground resistance movements in Nazi occupied countries, fleet actions in the Pacific and Atlantic, Rommel and his tanks in Africa, the Blitzkrieg and miraculously timely leadership of Churchill, many accounts of the survivors of the Holocaust and their experiences. Some of it I’ve read from a strategic interest as someone who has always studied wars and how they have been one or lost; some of it I’ve read from a point of terrified fascination regarding how regular people can allow their country to do something so terrible in “modern” times. This documentary afforded me a new perspective, that I truly didn’t expect to get under my skin as much as it did.
Beginning in 2008, the filmmaker of Final Accounts decided he was going to go and interview German people who had lived within Germany during the rise of Hitler, and through World War II. He interviews individuals, usually one at a time, in their homes, and asks them questions in a largely chronological way. Many of them were children when Hitler came into power, and they recount their recollections of being part of the mandatory Hitler Youth organizations, beginning at age 10, for males and females. We see the warmth of the recollections of camaraderie and youthful excitement, and hear some of the trepidation in a few accounts regarding the discomfort as relatives perhaps questioned what was happening in Germany.
In those sections, I saw what I largely expected. There was discussion of how Jews were starting to be treated poorly in the earlier 1930s, and shame at some of that. Honestly, without examining my own perspective too much, I thought we would see some warm fuzzies at the lost activities of youth, but widespread condemnation of what the Nazis did after their full rise to power. And we do see that in part. But as the documentary progressed, and the recollections became those of no longer children but now active German adults in Nazi Germany, a lot more human nature showed itself on display.
Where the self accountability really began to diverge is when the subjects began discussing their recollections around Kristallnacht, November 9-10 1938. For those who may not be aware, that is the night that Hitler gave a fiery speech against Jews, and all across Germany a systematic attack against the Jewish people began. Many were murdered, more than 1400 synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish homes and businesses were burned and looted (the term Kristallnacht, or “crystal night”, itself comes from the smatterings of broken glass across the streets of the Jewish neighborhoods), and more than 30,000 Jewish people were arrested. And what was fascinating, is while the documentary subjects had been forthcoming about seeing Nazi material and what they did in the Hitler Youth organizations, suddenly some of them were…mysteriously unaware. They claimed they saw smoke, but had no idea what it was from. They were taken to the neighborhoods to view the aftermath, but oddly didn’t know why they were taken there. Most shocking, was a man who when asked if he considered the burning of the synagogues a crime, candidly said, “No. No I don’t consider it a crime. I didn’t feel bad for the Jews.” Then we see him reflect further, and say, “Well I suppose technically it must be a crime. It was someone’s property, so I suppose technically according to the law it was. But I didn’t consider it to be.”
This cognitive dissonance is fascinating and unnerving, and it was just the beginning. What I realized as I watched, is that we were seeing the aftermath of decades of guilt, whether realized or not, and the coping mechanisms these people had created over the course of the ensuing 70 years. They could recall the exact marching songs for hiking in the woods as Nazi children, but couldn’t remember Kristallnacht. And this is the sort of refrain that would become increasingly common as we moved through the timeline of World War II.
When asked about concentration camps that were in the towns some of the subjects lived in, we see many claim to have had “no idea” what was happening. Meanwhile, their contemporary subjects are saying they saw plumes of smoke from 2 kilometers away from the ovens, they could see starving prisoners over the gates, they saw trains of people coming in and never trains of people leaving. They saw people being beaten and hanged. And to see these two very different types of recollection, was chilling and fascinating. Clearly there were many who chose to stick with the “company line” of ignorance, EVEN IN THE CASE OF SOME WHO WERE WORKING AT THE CAMPS.
Most the men interviewed were SS, and yet some of them claimed that the SS had nothing at all to do with the camps; that they were soldiers of honor who only fought for Germany on the frontlines. Meanwhile, as one of their contemporaries pointed out, sure there were SS on the frontlines. They were the ones burning entire villages in pogroms, and then sending the survivors in on trains. For those who aren’t aware, the SS were essentially the ringleaders of much of the exterminations, in many ways. The claim that they weren’t involved, would be laughable, if it weren’t such a dire subject.
One of the most impactful scenes to me, among many that I am sure will stay with me forever, is one of the former Nazi soldiers standing in the gated yard of a farm and talking about how the nearby camp had many prisoners. He offhandedly mentions that many of the prisoners would be found within the walls of the farm, trying to escape. He then mentions that it was his family farm. The interviewer asks him, what happened to those people? Oh, they would be rounded up, he says. And then what, asks the interviewer? Oh I have no idea. No one knows. No idea. The interviewer asks, how did they know that there were people hiding here? And we then see the answer, that the interviewer called and turned them in, get painfully and evasively answered. On display across his face, is guilt, defensiveness, evasion, discomfort, and the hints of self loathing, chasing one another like clouds.
There was one former Nazi soldier who seemed to me, have been trying to come a reckoning about his part. Unlike many of the other interviewees, he admitted that he was complacent, and that his complacency and the complacency of others like him is what allowed this to happen. We are shown a room with this man speaking to a group of young people with blurred faces. He tells them that he is proud that he served his country, but ashamed of what his country did. And in a shocking rebuttal, a young man in the crowd vehemently argues that he had nothing to be ashamed of. That this man should not be ashamed of fellow Germans, but instead of “Albanians who would stab you on the train”. This uncomfortable discussion happens, in which both men are arguing back and forth, with the former Nazi saying, You sound just like them! And to hear the arguments that Hitler used to justify his terror, come from the mouth of a young person in the current day, was absolutely bone chilling. I felt that the former Nazi in this scene had done the closest one could come to self atonement. He did not seek to skirt responsibility; he did not use the excuses that so many others did in their interviews, of “I didn’t know. It wasn’t me. It was others who did it. I had no idea.” He takes credit for both his actions and his inactions, and has decided the only way to make up for it is to educate others to try to keep it from happening again.
As I previously alluded to, I went into this, without thinking very hard about it, having expectations of how people would behave. And my expectations were woefully off in most cases. As I reassess the reality of how the former Nazis dealt with the guilt of the Holocaust, as an American of course I looked at it through that lens. In America’s history, there are many awful acts. The slave trade, the treatment of the Native Americans, manifest destiny, Jim Crow laws…there are many acts that are shameful in our past. Frequently, in thinking of how we as a nation parse that history without tearing ourselves apart, I have compared the shame of our sins to the shame of Germany’s. But it was only after watching this documentary, and being shocked by not only the denial and excuses, but also by the modern Nazi ideals raising their head again, that I realized an important difference I hadn’t pondered before.
In recent years, it’s been clear that in America we are still reckoning with much of our past. And we have our share of deniers, as well as those who stunningly think the past doesn’t deserve to be examined or taught, unless it makes us feel good. What I believe is an important distinction in America’s reckoning, that seems to have heavily affected the way some Germans process their sins, is that the issues in America’s past have been changed from within. We didn’t stop the slave trade because the rest of the world forced us; Americans decided it needed to change and it did. The Jim Crow laws and racial segregation didn’t start to change because the UN said so; Americans thought we could do better. But in the case of Germany, the Final Solution didn’t fizzle out at 6 million Jews, instead of all of them, because the German people decided they had had enough. It stopped because the Allies finally defeated Germany, and Hitler ate a bullet rather than face accountability.
I believe the most important thing to do when history is uncomfortable and shameful, is to shine a light on it and figure out why it happened, until we can be sure that we aren’t accidentally waltzing the same steps to a different song, and thinking we have come up with something new. When I was a child in school, the school system I was part of seemed to believe that too. I was lucky in that I was taught about the Trail of Tears, the Holocaust, and how awful slavery was. But that is increasingly becoming a rarity in many parts of our country.
We need to be proud, not of the mistakes that we’ve made, but that we took the steps needed to start on the hard road to change. Because as this documentary helps to highlight, that is rare in human history. Most of the ugliest parts of history were born from the seeds of complacency and looking the other way. And from what I can glean, if someone comes in and forces you to change, it’s much harder to admit that you’ve made mistakes. One of the subjects, a literal SS officer, said he didn’t even blame Hitler for the Holocaust. He said, “Nuremberg said Hitler was guilty, but the German courts didn't. So I don’t believe I am guilty either, according to Germany.” That lack of accountability, wrapped in shame and evasiveness, is a poison that it would seem still needs to be drained.
I know that Germany has a nation has done many things to atone for what it did, and has made great strides to be equal and face down its past (in many ways, they seem to be doing better than we are at it these days). But the fears born of populism, the Other, and feeling unheard are able to combine into very heady cultural monsters, and they are never as far away as we think; particularly in the age of misinformation and a seeming lessening of critical thought. This documentary truly did a wonderful job of reminding us that human nature hates guilt, and it will take the grains of sand from a shameful past and use whatever excuse it can to coat them with pearls of complacency and evasion. And it’s a lesson we should all listen to. Please watch this very important film. It’s only on Netflix until March 1st, which is a shame. Because it’s truly one that should make us all examine what we think we know, and remind us of where true evil really lies: just around the corner.