• Directed by Tracy Atkinson and Joan Barron
• Narrated by Malcolm McDowell

I’ve never been much of a military or war buff. Descriptions of large-scale troop movements and tactics leave me nodding, and I’ve never been up to memorizing the names, serial numbers, and specifications of various armaments and vehicles. Thus, while I appreciate the importance of World War 2 in 20th century history in an academic sense (and had one grandfather serve on each front), I’ve never really put forth much effort in studying up on it. Or on the First World War, or the Civil War, or the Revolutionary War, or…

What does catch my interest with the Second World War, though, is the Nazi phenomenon itself. We’ve now had over sixty years of Nazis in movies and books, to the point that the it’s a dictionary word for us now. Without needing to explain historical context, it evokes fascism and ruthlessness and dictatorial fiat and, oh yeah, there was some anti-semitism in there too. The image of the Nazi is the image of the ultimate fallback villain; even more than godless Commies, we define Nazism as being wholly antithetical to everything that we, as Americans, like to think we stand for.

Nothing makes a man look more macho than a spiffy Nazi skirt.

But simply painting Nazis as the generic reactive villains, standing for dirt simply because we stand for soap, really keeps us from understanding who they really were, what they really stood for, and how intensely, actively, charismatically evil they were. And thus this documentary, noticeably sensational as it is, valuably ignores most of “who attacked, who defended” events of the war and instead explores the revisionist pagan philosophy that informed the legitimate “-ism” of Nazism.

As presented through the Nazi’s own propaganda films, interviews with historians and eyewitnesses, and pontifically narrated by Malcolm McDowell, the film takes us into the formation of the Aryan race religion, based on the idea of a descended race of god-men from Atlantis who had escaped the sinking continent, landing first in the Himalayas before resettling in Northern Europe, where they forgot their heritage and became weak by intermingling with “lesser” beings. The goal of the Third Reich wasn’t nearly so mundane as the political and economic conquest of the Soviets, but nothing less than the recreation of that primordial god-race, whose blood ran most strongly (naturally) in the Germanic peoples. And naturally, that goal ran hand in hand with the complete annihilation of all the lesser races.

The question “Where do babies come from?” had a very different answer in Nazi Germany.

To this end, Himmler, one of the more mystically-involved Nazi leaders, formed the SS partly to be an Aryan stud project: Each was selected for physical characteristics and encouraged to breed well and breed often. Young German women were encouraged to bear children for these strapping Aryan lads — marriage was an optional formality. And what of the children of such unions — some 11,000 between 1935 and 1945? Oh, they were planned for as well, with the creation of the Labensbaun, a huge nursery project that cared for the infants and either raised them in state-run institutions or farmed them out to good Nazi families. (The footage shown here is of babies on veritable conveyor belts, attended by dozens of nurses.) And not to let the racial crusade be bounded by national borders, the Labensbaun took possession of masses of foreign-born but nonetheless Aryan children (the film cites 200,000 such children from Poland alone) for similar treatment.

All of this was done with a ruthless warrior ethic, a pseduo-Darwinian ethic of holy racial survival which very clearly contradicted some of the basic tenets of Christianity (Hitler spoke of it as “wash[ing] off the Christian veneer”). So how did such a philosophy take such hold in a traditionally Christian country? Through three basic inroads:

“The pear-shaped physique is the true indicator of the Master Race!”

- Anti-semitism, while by no means basic to Christianity, was nevertheless a common idea throughout Europe. It fit in perfectly with Hitler’s racial ethos, and provided the German people with a common enemy: Those damned Jews. (Let me just say here that anti-Semitism has never made any sense to me. I can understand, without condoning, garden-variety racism: Othering another people, considering them inferior and filthy, has been an unfortunate part of human society since its beginning. But the idea that Jews are both inferior and yet clever enough to be running things and ruining the lives of deserving Aryan families — it makes so little sense that it took me five tries to even type that sentence coherently.)

- Unlike the later Communist regimes, Hitler didn’t make the mistake of simply obliterating Christianity, leaving a void in the name of rationalism. Just last week I mused on the possibility of a human need for devotion, though in a much more benign context. Hitler’s new state religion replaced the pomp of Christendom, dulled by tradition and long use, with a new set of rituals and pageantry, overflowing with mythic significance and sustained by revolutionary fervor. Huge rallies with parades of warriors in Teutonic armor, speeches that frothed with excitement, and a fully-formed religion that mimicked so many themes familiar to a Christian audience — martyrs, a chosen people, and a messianic leader — couldn’t help but be intoxicating.

Gee, look — Hitler even had his own pet Neanderthal!

- And the most important feature: Nazism told the people that they were innately superior and deserving of better than they had. The fierceness of the old Teutonic heritage had always had an uneasy truce with the Christian virtues of humility and repentance; here was an ethic that required no humiliating servitude. Hitler presented them with an ancient Golden Age come again, and an assurance that they were deserving of it through no merit beyond birth; how could he not have their allegiance? One of the interviewees here is Henry Metelmann, a member of the Hitler Youth back in the heyday, and his reminiscences reveal how natural it was to him, having been brought up singing hymns to Hitler and the Reich, that he was a member of the “greatest race on earth.”

We really can’t tell how much Hitler himself bought into the full-blown occultic teachings of his own state religion; we know that Himmler was fully devoted to the rituals that he had designed for the SS, and believed himself a reincarnation of the legendary King Heinrich. Goebbels, on the other hand, used astrology and other mystic beliefs as nothing more than powerful weapons of propaganda and morale. But really, what Hitler believed is immaterial to the scope of this documentary; the salient point is that he made a nation believe it, simply by making them want to believe it. The members of the Nazi party would have followed Hitler into a reign of genocide to make the Holocaust look like a schoolyard scuffle, because they had allowed themselves to accept a philosophy which told them and their children that it was noble to do so. Thank God that the Third Reich was broken before the generation raised with Hitler’s name on their lips became the leaders, or they might have had the holy fervor to complete their task.

That’s a lot harder to follow without the bouncing ball.

Now, I feel I need to make a few univeralized comments here; because as a Mormon, I’m very much aware that my own religion was founded by a charismatic leader. I cannot very well say, then, that charismatic leadership is inherently evil. Neither can any Christian of any stripe, for really, ours is the faith that most literally exemplifies the concept of “messianic leadership.” Nor can I denigrate the idea of rallying for the cause, or martyrdom, or a millennial future awaiting the faithful. Because evil is not the polar opposite of good; it is good that has been twisted. The Dark Side of the Force isn’t wholly other, it’s merely an easier, more seductive variation on the theme. And when we use Nazis as cardboard villains, monstrous to the point of complete alienness, we fail to grasp the true evil, and we condition ourselves to look to the distance for the appearance of evil, rather than close at hand, wearing an appealing guise.

Some Notable Totables:

• Body count: Fifty million (granted, very little of it appeared on-screen)
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• footage of marching troops: apparently limitless
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • narrator Malcolm McDowell played Dr. Tolian Soran in Star Trek: Generations