One of the most effective things about the movie "Der Untergang" is that it shows the many sides of Hitler, including the human side. Most people are a mixture of qualities, both good and bad, and you get to know this when you're around them. Their worst aspects tend to come out under extreme stress. We're all very familiar with Hitler's worst aspects, having been told about them all our lives. We're not so familiar with the man who could be genial, kind, friendly, and sentimental in quieter moments when he felt safe.

To see the contrast is quite striking, and it makes it all the more horrifying to see the madness that consumes him when the regime he built is falling in pieces all around him. He literally wanted the entire German nation to perish with him at the end, because they had been "too weak" to win the conflict! Albert Speer quietly disobeyed most of Hitler's orders to destroy the entire domestic infrastructure as the Allies advanced into Germany. Speer wanted to spare the German people and was looking beyond the end of the war to a time of rebuilding...as any truly rational person would.

Hitler, on the other hand, was determined to bring everything crashing down with him if he couldn't win.

The two men in the inner Nazi circle who seemed the least "human" to me were Himmler and Goebbels...Himmler because he was a really treacherous and vicious little man, always involved in some nasty scheme or another...and Goebbels because he was a purblind political fanatic who believed every crazy word he uttered about Jews, Communists, etc.

Watching them being depicted is truly chilling. Watching Hitler, on the other hand, is chilling at some points, pitiable at others, just sad at others. There's a tragic aspect to Hitler the man, and it is brought out quite well in that movie. Among his most unpleasant characteristics were his utter lack of compassion for those he saw as "weak"...and his tendency to blame Germans in general...and the German army...for the failure of his crazy war. He thought they had lacked the will to win! Hardly. They fought as well as anyone could have. Well, one has to wonder if he had any awareness of what numbers mean?

You can't win a war when you end up grossly outnumbered in every significant way by the forces you are fighting against. Other than that, you're not very likely to win in the end when you subscribe to an irrational and repugnant political theory, and that was the key problem with Naziism right from the start.

But they themselves (the Nazis) couldn't see it.