The Movie, “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days”

German made. German acted. For the German people. Finely acted. Portraying the Nazi system of justice, the Nazi ideology, the Nazi automatons. (The Nazi salute had the valuable function of detecting and enforcing compliance, and may have had some brain-washing effect.) Also portraying some German heroes, a German heroine dying for Redefreiheit (freedom of speech). One most interesting scene portrays the German bureaucrat in conflict with that heroine.The script and director of this film reveals the underground feelings toward the Nazi automata. Very subtle signs in the facial affect of the antagonists and protagonist could only be directed by a German. Look closely. It pays to have some familiarity with that period and the nature of German society at that time. (I taught the German language in secondary school in the late 50s.)

Once when I was over there with the U. S. Army, I went to a German movie house. Film of the opening of the concentration camps, the places and instruments of the deadly business there, and the huge piles of clothing and artifacts and of the emaciated bodies of the victims being were shown, some walking out, most naked and dead lying in heaps. (“Arbeit macht frei” over the entrances, “Work Liberates”.) The house was packed tight. I sat toward the rear. The German people sat upright in stony silence.

I did research in Germany on the history over the twenty-year period after the war, focusing on instruction in communication, to determine the training of the German populace in public communication, which was one of the means by which the Nazis attained power. I found no stories at that time of cases of Germans standing up to Hitler’s regime, of course. There was the attempt on Hitler’s life by some German officers.