Last night we finished watching CBS' miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil. It recounts his life from boyhood to when he becomes president.
It presented a lot of factual events, but it did very little in the way of explanation of why these things happened; why people fell under his charm, why the Nazi party grew so powerful, why people listened to him. Maybe you just can't capture that in a 4-hour made-for-TV movie, but to me that's the important part. Here he just comes across as a shouting, sweaty crazy guy.
I was also confused a lot--all those guys with moustaches looked alike after a while. I think they should have had nametags.
The most interesting part of the whole thing, to me, was before his name started to be known. People would introduce him and say, "Here is Herr.. Hitler is it?" or whatever. Imagine a time when that name meant nothing. When the swastika was still an unknown symbol for much of the world.
The scariest part was when he was standing before the congress, saying how in desperate times, civil liberties must be foregone. Don't forget.
