An urgent portrait of the last living generation of Hitler’s Third Reich in never-before-seen interviews raising vital questions about authority, conformity, national identity, and their own roles in the greatest human crimes in history.
“Final Account” adds another – perhaps closing – chapter to the genre of documentary films intended to aid our understanding about how and why Nazi Germany descended so far into the abyss right up until its surrender to the Allied forces in 1945. Filmmaker Luke Holland offers valuable screen time to now-elderly members of the Waffen SS and Hitler Youth Corps in order to let them describe what life was like during the rise of Hitler in the 1930s.
The cast constitutes a cross-section of interviewees that include both men and women along a wide spectrum of ideological perceptions – then and now. Some of it might have seemed comical if it weren’t so tragic. One man exhibits a pained expression as if trying to forget everything that happened. Moments later a macabre attempt at humor, quickly followed by the realization that it’s not funny, segueing into embarrassment until finally, his face goes blank.
The film is nothing if not a tale about the accomplices, to greater and lesser degrees, about the wholesale incarceration, experimentation, and annihilation of Jews in Germany. Allusions are made to Wannsee, excellently depicted in the HBO film “Conspiracy” where the Third Reich’s Final Solution was articulated, if not documented.
Nearly as chilling as the interviews with Japanese soldiers nonchalantly describing in graphic details of their role in the Rape of Nanking, the Germans interviewed here show little or no remorse. Some are openly defiant with regard to the number of Jews killed. Others confess selective shame. Nearly all speak in matter-of-fact tones, no matter how heart-wrenching the narrative.
Like so many conspiracies, the truth at the time was mostly whispered quietly or otherwise ignored altogether. Certainly, the Nazi indoctrination machine was formidable, reinforced by ruthless implementation at every level. Further, once the Nazis had assumed full control of the state in the 1930s, anyone who spoke out against them was summarily arrested or killed.
Still, several camps and train stations where Jews housed or departed to penal facilities were situated adjacent to residential areas in plain view of the local townspeople, who simply went about their business from day to day. The aerial drone shots that move up from the site of the atrocities and then pan around to the neighboring houses are simultaneously breathtaking and revealing.
Films like this, hard to watch as they are, should not only serve to ensure that we remember the past, but also to inform the present and future. The propaganda apparatus that enabled Nazi atrocities – the Big Lie – certainly has relevance to our time. The stage where facts cease to matter, when magical thinking reigns, then the wheels that drive society forward start to fall off. It’s not hard to draw at least a few parallels from the early 1930s in Germany to recent events in the U.S.
In German, with English subtitles, the real-life interviews lend credibility, as well as an uneasy sort of insight into how masses of the populace can be taken in by a demagogue. Clearly a labor of love, the narrative is interspersed with chilling never-before-seen footage of enthusiastic Nazi youth activities. Though a heightened sense of drama or urgency would have been welcome, the documentary nonetheless succeeds in telling an important story. Directed by Luke Holland – who died shortly after filming, and whose grandparents were murdered in concentration camps – “Final Account” offers an all-too-powerful testament about the ever-present danger of collective societal insanity.
In Theaters Friday, May 21st
