Now I’m not saying that BBC2’s “Hitler’s
Children” dealt with a subject-matter akin to eating chocolate or larking about
with Lego, but to a degree did pick a topic that viewers are familiar with.
National curriculum aside, puns, popular references and the nitty-gritty core
of our national identity makes sure that the Second World War is a big-player
in the background noise of our day to day lives. How long could one go without
any reference to Hitler, concentration camps, Germanic tensions or rationing?
We as a nation know the atrocities of WWII, and have been deluged over recent
decades with shows exploring its causes and military intricacies. Just as the
Head of Cadbury Studies at the local comprehensive would be forced to harvest
the arresting rather than instructive side of teaching, then, this show’s
producers were called to engross their viewers in war issues instead of playing
teacher. The show’s premise was to trail five descendents of Hitler’s inner circle,
charting their struggles to disentangle themselves from the war crimes of
ancestors and to captivate Wednesday evening telly-watchers whilst doing so. It
was “Jeremy Kyle” meets “Piers Morgan” meets some run-of-the-mill, dry BBC2
documentary. And it worked.
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| Then and now: The "Gate to Hell" was a huge focus |
The documentary kicked off with a visit to
The Institute for Contemporary History, based in Munich. It was a standard
history-show opening, and I prepped myself for an hour of sluggish voiceovers
and droning war-talk. But, thankfully, the show was using the museum merely as
an introductory backdrop for what would become its driving force; the grandson
of Rudolf Hoess, the commander at Auschwitz, was rapidly introduced and evolved
into the catalyst for the entire documentary. Hoess was to visit Auschwitz for
the first time in his life, having been haunted by photographs of his father as
a young boy growing up in a villa yards away from the gas chambers. Hoess’
tale, standing alone, would have provided ample material for a documentary. The
surreal photographs passed down the generations offered a chilling insight into
the private life of a concentration camp orchestrator: an often overlooked part
of WWII’s death chambers. Hoess’ trip to Auschwitz, too, was to be conducted in
movie-worthy conditions; he had invited a journalist whose grandfather survived
the camp to document the emotional visit and stand beside him where their
grandfathers stood under unfathomably different circumstances. The men’s
venture lived up every inch to its sensational-viewing potential. Hoess became
particularly troubled before reaching the camp about a gate his father had
posed by, on the other side of which the barbarity of Hitler’s regime would
have come into fruition. The most skilled fiction screenwriter couldn't more entrancingly
have written the shots of him stood by the gate himself, overcome by
repetitions of "Insanity!" Hoess’ Auschwitz quest refused to
culminate solely with the visit itself, either, with his subsequent questioning
by schoolchildren and embracing an Auschwitz survivor providing comparably
tender and enthralling scenes. Had the program’s makers opted to keep him
static and simply probe him on his grandfather’s savagery, Hoess’ psyche would
have held its own as intensely moving T.V.; he mused on more than one occasion
that he sometimes felt he was alive only to repent for his grandfather’s evils,
and to carry the burden of guilt.
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| Unthinkable: The show included moving shots of the effects of the Nazi regime |
Shrewdly, though, Hoess did not occupy the show’s
entire hour slot. Rather, his story gave the documentary a sort of basic shape
and thematic focus that the remaining “Hitler’s Children” complicated. Hoess
mournfully recalled the brutality of his father (the Auschwitz commander’s son)
and how when he and his siblings cried as children “we were beaten even more.” Hoess speculated of
his father that “he never abandoned the ideology”, and reflected candidly on
how being raised by a pillar of the Third Reich instilled him with savagery.
The show hastily turned to Niklas Frank, son of the former Governor-General of
occupied Poland Hans Frank, and it was fascinating to learn whether this man
would be as supposedly heinous as Hoess’ father (being the son rather than
grandson of a figure implicated in Nazi Germany). Niklas comprised about 30% of
the hour from his initial appearance on screen: an inevitable effect of his
having faced the issue of his parentage in such brazen and public a manner.
Niklas’ attitude bore the identical streak of repentance that Hoess’ left its
mark on audiences with; he condemned his boyish self for being remotely
entertained by the abuse of Jewish prisoners. Niklas outlined his making a
career of the monstrous actions of his father, drafting numerous books and
declaring that with every edition “I execute my parents anew.” The show’s
makers unflinchingly screened even Niklas’ highly controversial view that
German people, if backed into a corner by economic hardship, could return to
the suppression of minority groups. This was a man evidently cynical of his
nation and, at a guess, humanity itself; during a book event, Niklas conjectured
that his audience would never understand the fundamental depravity of seven
decades ago. The show’s final scenes of Niklas at home with his only daughter
and grandchild were heart-wrenching, with his daughter admitting she felt if it
weren’t for her father’s sacrificing his existence to grappling with the ills
of her grandfather she would have been plagued with the burden.
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| Facing up: Niklas Frank has used the public to exercise his demons |
Not content with
showing the bold steps of Hoess and Frank to face the facts of their ancestors,
the program seemed at pains to stress variation in the manners used to pacify
the burden of being a “child of Hitler”. I remarked that Hoess’ journey to Auschwitz
provided an underlying fabric to the other subjects’ stories, and this was as
striking with Niklas as with Bettina Goering, the great niece of Hermann
Goering (a prevalent member of the Nazi Party). Bettina’s very inclusion as an
indirect descendent of a Nazi figure widened the net of the documentary, and
forced viewers to consider the less obvious individuals afflicted by the
actions of the movement. Bettina first discussed her close resemblance to
Hermann relatively light-heartedly, and I reasoned that she, more distantly
related to him than Niklas and Hoess were to their father and grandfather
respectively, had evaded much of the woe they were badgered by each day. This
trail of thought pervaded when Bettina explained relocation to Santa Fe,
Mexico, thirty years ago, hypothesizing that it had offered her the distance
needed to come to terms with Hermann’s crimes. The documentary, like the most
apt of teachers, questioned the audience head-on with a voiceover: “But how
much is that to do with distance, and how much is to do with isolation?” Goering briskly admitted that she and
her brother had opted to be sterilised so as not to pass on the shame they felt
to further relatives of Hermann, and instantly my perception of her shifted.
With lightning agility, the show’s creators stunned viewers with the hint that
the issues faced by “Hitler’s Children” may lack palpability, but want for
nothing in the way of poignancy.
Spots four and five on
the show went to Monica Goeth, the daughter of Amon Goeth who had spearheaded a
concentration camp in Plaszów, and the great niece Heinrich Himmler,
who had overlooked the Gestapo and is remembered perhaps as the man closest to
Hitler himself. Again covering all bases and catering to every pallet for
entertainment, “Hitler’s Children” stressed the variation between each of these
women. The former’s screen time was dominated by her remembering an encounter
with a concentration camp survivor who had reacted to her with fear and
animosity, whereas the latter figure took a more philosophical route, speaking
of her desperation as an average German to conceal her accent in foreign
countries and her uncertainty about the point at which it becomes impossible to
love one’s elder relatives in spite of their actions. Divining the necessity to
monopolize viewer interest, the brains behind “Hitler’s Children” avoided
making these two accounts (or, indeed, any of the other three), too samey.
Admittedly, I turned off the telly on Wednesday
with my less than encyclopedic expertise of 20th Century politics
and warfare not especially advanced. But this was not a show about education,
but about guilt, generational conflicts and the motley of ways humans come to
terms with the evils of their forefathers. And looking at it this way, it
ticked every box with taste.
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