sempervirentz That's the starkest documentary about the Third Reich, I have seen so far. At the age of 19 Franco-Australian film student Philippe Mora made the archive discovery of his life. With the help of a historian he found the Obersalzberg film roles that Eva Braun once stored in her bedroom at the Berghof and that were later seized by US military personnel. Mora mixed these private recordings with Nazi propaganda material and created a documentary. Only in the second part of the movie he used footage from "the other side". The movie misses any comment. Mora let the pictures speak for themselves. The documentary caused a scandal back then and was first shown in German cinemas 37 years later. The contrast between cosy mountain idyll, martial parades and evil propaganda is hard to overcome. The film conveys a sense of how powerful and thrilling the atmosphere was at that time. The Overture to Wagner's Tannhäuser combined with pictures of a country on the move, politics as religion, the Olympic Games, the eerily beautiful Riefenstahl scenes, Adolf and Eva at the Berghof playing cheerfully with dogs, next to hate speech, first acts of violence against Jews and military armament. We all know what came and had to come. The German population did not know every detail, or did not want to know. Repression as a survival strategy. "Better go with the flow" was the motto. Go with a movement unseen in history. Even in the faraway US there were tens of thousands who got infected by the Hitler mania. (This is also shown in the documentary.) And then the second part of the movie. The great destruction. A crescendo of violence. Bombs, flashes of light, dead bodies, total war; sicker and more intense as any Hollywood production can ever be. Then camera flights over a completely devastated country, images from the concentration camps. So terrible that you don't want to look at them. Time for the end credits? No. The movie ends with a scene at the Berghof in which Hitler is hosting a few guests. Coffee and cake is served. I repeat. Coffee and cake. I can hardly imagine a more bitter contrast. I recommend this movie to anyone who is not only interested in theories about mass psychology and the phenomenon of "ideology as a substitute for religion", but who wants to sense an undertone, a mood, an inkling of what was going on back then. Yes, the first part of the film is dangerous. It depicts Hitler as a human being and shows a country that is completely inebriated. But if one really wants to understand the events of that time, one has to expose itself to this.

hotspurh I think the scariest thing about Swastika is that Hitler and his amoral cronies looked about as threatening as a bunch of accountants on holiday for most of this movie. For the bulk of the home movie sequences the fuhrer & co could have been just as easily been seen as "uncle Freddy from Bathurst", which is an indication of just how non-evil these people appeared on the surface, no slavering fanatics or blood drinking monsters to be seen here kids, just a group of rather dull, boring people with nothing much to say that would set them apart from anyone else. And it can't help but make me wonder that if a bunch of boring old farts like these people are capable of initiating one of the most horrifying periods of the twentieth century then there is perhaps no limits to the potentiality for evil buried in the darker recesses of the human psyche, no matter how banal the person may appear on the surface.

Randall Berger This feature length documentary will knock your socks off ... if you're ever lucky enough to see it. If you have ever wondered how Hitler and his thugs wooed the Germans? Philippe Mora has assembled an incredible body of film footage here and let the material tell the story ... there is no narration, something Philippe does particularly well (see his next doco, BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME). He was even able to find Eva Braun's home movies of Hitler, mostly taken at Obersalzburg, and with the help of German lipreaders, bring them to life. Students of history will find it particularly enlightening. It is also horrifying. Most people didn't think Hitler was at all bad. Famous reporter Dick Brinkly singing the praises of Hitler in the mid 30s must be embarrassing. See it if you can. Pray it comes out on DVD one day.

Joel Nelson Philippe Mora was the person who as a 19 year old film student discovered the now well known personal films of Eva Braun (that would make a fine film in itself). This fascinating color film footage is incorporated into this un narrated documentary along with a wide assortment of original Nazi newsreels and propaganda films to present life in Nazi Germany from 1933-45 as seen through the propaganda filmmakers (and Eva's) camera lens. A wonderful classical music score accompanies. This film is quite rare and is generally unavailable. I believe it was nominated for an award (or won an award). Nevertheless,if you get a chance to see it, buy it, etc, do it. It is the best documentary film on Nazi Germany of it's kind with much never before seen original footage.