morrison-dylan-fan A year ago I read a good review about a doc that looked at the family life of Nazi Heinrich Himmler,but missed the TV airing. Recently watching the intriguing Iceland murder doc Out of Thin Ice,I found out that the Himmler film was being repeated at a decent time.The outline of the doc:The film is based on letters,photos and reels of film of Heinrich Himmler and his family,that were gathered shortly after he killed himself. The letters, diaries and photos go from Himmler's childhood in the build-up to WWI, the love letters and birth of his daughter Gudrun with wife Marga,and the growing loyalty and power Himmler shows and gains towards Hitler.View on the film:Seamlessly combining archive footage with shots of letters and photos set against classy narrations of the various family members,co- writer /(with Ori Weisbrod) director Vanessa Lapa writes a horrifying study of psychopathic behaviour,in the mundane letters the Himmler's exchange, (which includes daughter Marga writing about a family picnic at a concentration camp) revealing a complete disconnection about the horrors the Nazis (and Himmler himself) were performing for "Uncle" Hitler. Opening the psychology of evil, Lapa using graphic archive footage of contraction camp murders,feels at- odds with the in-depth psychological studying that Lapa has done,of the indecent ones:the Himmler's.

l_rawjalaurence In 1945, shortly after Heinrich Himmler committed suicide, the US Army found a huge cache of his letters, papers and diaries at his house. Instead of handing them in to the appropriate authorities, they kept them; many of the papers subsequently found their way on to the international auction market.Vanessa Lapa's documentary tells the story of Himmler's life through these letters and other documents exchanged between Himmler, his parents, his wife Marga and daughter Gudrun. Contrary to what other reviewers have observed about the title's so-called banality, the term THE DECENT ONE refers to a moment late on in the film, when Himmler discovers that the Nazi cause is about to collapse. He insists that he and many of his fellow-officers were decent in their behavior, as they were committed to the patriotic ideal of a greater Germany. We might interpret the term ironically, especially in light of our knowledge about Nazi atrocities, but in Himmler's view the Party always acted according to the noblest motives - for the greater good of the German (i.e. Aryan) people.The documentary derives much of its power from the contrast between the sentiments exchanged in the letters - where Himmler expresses his love for his daughter and his concern for his family's welfare - and the images projected on screen, such as the burning of so-called "seditious" literature in Berlin in 1933, the regular parades of the SS in front of Hitler and Himmler, and the callous shooting of Nazi enemies in cold blood. We understand just how ruthless Himmler and his acolytes actually were, while at the same time realizing just how much their patriotism had corrupted them.Despite the sentiments expressed in family letters, Himmler was in truth not really concerned about anyone except himself. He embarked on a well-publicized affair with one of his former staffers, by whim he had another child. But this did not stop him proclaiming his commitment to noble ideals such as the propagation of the Aryan race. He forced his family to take on an adopted child, Gerhard, who seldom got on with Gudrun and eventually joined the Nazi army at the earliest possible opportunity. Himmler did not really care; so long as he and his family could be seen to support the noble cause of Nazism, that was all that mattered.In the end we are left with the sense that Nazism was actually an ideology that so blinded its supporters that they had no real sense of morality; they no longer understood the difference between right and wrong. They could claim quite innocently that they were kind and understanding towards their people, while at the same time embarking on a campaign to systematically exterminate Germany's Jewish population. Himmler's letters, as well as those written by his family, embody this (lack of) morality; to proclaim (as Marga did) that she "did not know" about the so-called "Final Solution" is no excuse.This is the true horror of Lapa's documentary; it provides a lesson in the ways in which dictatorships erode human values, not only corrupting those at the apex of power, but the people willingly allowing themselves to be ruled in favor of a cause.

John Johnson I liked the first half or so. They use German voices to read letters, and using these letters they paint a very intimate portrait of Himmler and his family. It honestly got so intimate that I had to remind myself that it's an Israeli production. Towards the end though, their use of era footage, which seemed like stock footage, was very graphic. This footage turned away from a psychological examination to just gore. I think the idea of a psychological examination of a mass murderer is a very good idea, but the footage was too distracting and seemed more like a History Channel documentary. If they had labeled where some of the footage was from, perhaps it would have been OK.

Alex Deleon Der Anständige" (Himmer's private letters) is saddled with the unfortunately banal English release title of "The DECENT ONE" which will undoubtedly cause too many people to overlook it -- which is indeed unfortunate, because this film --fortunately caught at the Miskolc film festival in Hungary in September -- is definitely one of the more interesting documentaries to probe the background of top Nazi leaders and Holocaust perpetrators to come out in recent years. What this film does is is let Himmler, the most notorious Nazi of all next to Hitler himself -- speak for himself, through private letters sent to his wife throughout his unbelievably nefarious career. We therefore see an absolutely callous mass murderer as he saw himself -- which is to say as basically a warm hearted family man in love with a woman whom he eventually marries, but having to sacrifice his love in the name of duty -- a higher calling ...to exterminate all enemies of the Third Reich -- revealing his personal feelings to her in private letters at various stages of his insanely murderous career which is barely hinted at in the nebulous background lurking behind these letters. As Hanna Arendt pointed out in "The Banality of Evil" it is necessary to see that mass murderers like Himmler, Eichman, and company, did have private lives, and did not see themselves as evil bastards but rather as devoted men carrying out a lofty mission. Ugh. Shrug. Shudder. This remarkable documentary will evoke a different kind of revulsion in a new dimension. A must see for all having any interest in Naziism and Holocaust studies as well as, on a purely formal level, styles of documentation. Belgian~Israeli director Vanessa Lapa assembled this utterly amazing film from a cache of Himmler family letters that were "liberated" by advancing American troops at the end of the war and circulated for decades on a paper black market until winding up somehow in the hands of Vanessa's father in Israel -- but that is sordid story of its own.