Operation Eichmann

B picture studio Allied Artists without use of any big names turned out a fine documentary style film detailing the capture of Adolph Eichmann played here by Werner Klemperer. In fact with John Banner playing Rudolf Hess it takes a bit of getting used to see these Hogan's Heroes regulars playing it serious.

One thing I do have to say. Rudolf Hess who lived to the ripe old age of 94 and was the only prisoner in Spandau prison left of top Nazis when he did pass on did not look anything like John Banner. Knowing that it was a bit disconcerting for me to see him in that role.

Hess was a public face of Nazism. Eichmann who was high up in the SS command was the author of the detailed plans for the annihilation of the Jewish people. He was not a public face and this was part of the reason he avoided capture for 15 years.

I do remember news of his capture when I was a kid. Argentina made all kinds of official diplomatic protests to no avail. Israel wanted, went in and got him and the hell with diplomacy.

In the film part of the reason is Jimmy Baird who grows up to be Donald Buka remembers the man who ordered his family killed. Buka is part of Mossad when he grows up and he makes Eichmann his special project.

Klemperer is the show and the year before he played a most convincing Nazi on trial in Judgment At Nuremberg. See that and see Operation Eichmann and you'll know he was capable of a lot more than Colonel Wilhem Klink.

Released in early 1961 to capitalize on the capture and later trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann the movie "Operation Eichmann" obviously has a lot of inaccuracies about Eichmann's flight from the law; A flight from justice that lasted some fifteen years, from 1945-60. But Eichmann's crimes are fully documented, not fictionalized, in the movie as the head and executioner of infamous "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem".

We get to see Adolf Eichmann, Werner Klemperer, at the beginning of the film standing trial and arrogantly saying how the new Nazi Movement will rise again and sweep away and destroy all those who stand opposed to it. This is something that Eichmann never said when he was on trial for his life in a Jerusalem courtroom. Still it, Eichmann's opening and bombastic statement, had a chilling effect on the audience throughout the movie.

Eichmann during those fifteen years as a fugitive from justice was not only on the run from the Israeli Mossad, among other law enforcement agencies, but obsessed with rekindling the Nazi Movement all over Europe as well as South America where he was in hiding.

Eichmann checking out of his beloved Germany as it's military collapsed in the spring of 1945 is on the run with so many different identities that even he at times has trouble knowing just what his name is. Always a step ahead of the law in countries like Spain Italy and the Kingdom of Kuwait gave Eichmann the feeling of invincibility and power over those who were perusing him. Eichmann is also given a beautiful Fraulein Anna Kemp, Ruta Lee, by the movie-makers as his love interest in he movie. What Anna saw in that egotistical and arrogant swine only she and the movie-makers of "Operation Eichmann" could possibly have known.

We see early in the movie Eichmann's climb to power in Nazi Germany and his association with other top Nazi war criminals like the Commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp Rudolf Hoss, John Banner, as well as SS commander the soft-spoken but blood-curdling Heinrich Hmmler, Louis Van Rooten. It's also ironic that both Werner Klemperer and John Banner would be reunited four years later in the wartime TV comedy "Hogan's Heroes" as Nazi's, the commandant and guard, in a WWII German POW camp.

Eichmann is such a loose cannon in the movie that even his fellow undercover Nazis are more then happy to set him up to get knocked off. This just to keep his big mouth shut which was jeopardizing their own safety. It was the Israeli Mossad that in the end did Eichmann in by capturing the wanted Nazi war criminal and not killing him. That was left for a court of law where he was eventually convicted of war crimes and later executed in the early morning hours of May 31, 1962 in Tel Aviv's Ramie Prison. Eichmann's last words on earth before he was dispatched for good,via the gallows, were "I Am Ready!".

In the end opting to capture Adolf Eichmann alive instead of killing him which caused Holocaust survivor and Mossad agent David, Donald Buka, a lot of criticism form his fellow Israelis turned out to be the best and right thing to do. Like David said: if we kill him here and now Adolf Eichmann will just be a small article in a Buenos Aires newspaper but if he's captured and put on trial the whole world will see and remember the crimes that he committed.

The most chilling scene is to see the SS characters of Werner Klemperer and John Banner (Four years before "Hogan's Heroes") matter of factly greeting the Jewish arrivals to the death camp. The contrast between the high comedy of their work together later on belied how easy a shift of perspective of the Third Reich could be achieved. I recommend this film just for this extremely chilling scene alone.

What makes this movie so frightening without spectacular, graphic violence or overly righteous hand wringing is demonstrating that the architects of even the most extreme forms of evil can be quite human and even likable. They may honestly view their workaday world of mass murder as simply a day at the office. The film "The Wansee Conference" makes the point even more effectively but isn't nearly as artful, since it is a straight, documentary style re-enactment of a specific event.

The only thing that hurts the movie is the pairing of "Klink" (Werner Klemperer) as Eichmann and "Schultz" (John Banner) as his chief lieutenant, Hess (no relation to Rudolph Hesse). Of course, this was an unknown dynamic when the film was made since it predates Hogan's Heroes by 2 or 3 years. The actors are actually perfectly matched for their roles and play them well, but their popular identification as the "funny" Nazis of Hogan's Heroes gives the film an unintentional comic slant at times. In fact, there is a scene where Eichmann is having dinner with Hess and his wife and kids. A seemingly normal family scene with dad and his boss discussing business----in this case, how efficient Zyklon B gas is for human extermination. The Hess character replies, (I kid you not) in his best Sgt Schultz voice and manner, that "the best thing about it is that you hear NOTHING you see NOTHING..." As an interesting aside, Werner Klemperer, John Banner, and Hogan's Heroes General Burkhalter (Leon Askin, who is not in this movie) were all Jewish refugees from Nazism who fled their homes in Germany and Austria. Also of note is the fact that "Klink" served in the U. S. Army in WWII; ironically, in the Pacific. Askin and Banner both served in the US Army Air Corps. The former, though only a sergeant, had a plum job teaching European etiquette and social practices to U. S. military officers. "Schultz" was a supply sergeant.

This low budget film effectively communicates the fact that the most fiendish enterprise can readily disguise itself as business as usual.

1961's "Operation Eichmann" served as an Allied Artists quickie to cash in on the upcoming trial of Adolf Eichmann (beating Stanley Kramer's big budget "Judgment at Nuremberg" to theaters by 9 months), who was the man in charge of the 'Jewish problem' that eventually led to over 6 million Jews being exterminated at Auschwitz, captured in Argentina in May 1960 (Dr. Josef Mengele was also targeted but proved more elusive). Perhaps his still being fairly unknown accounted for the screenplay's lack of real factual information, the first half most effective in showing Eichmann's ruthless efficiency in conducting mass murder while also punishing prisoners and bribed officials who cause dissention in the ranks. The second half falls down in its lackluster pursuit of the exiled Nazi on the run, moving from Germany to Madrid, Kuwait, and finally Argentina, his own comrades only too eager to be rid of him one way or another. The narrator is a former Auschwitz prisoner who remains a distant outline to the audience, never a fleshed out character they can identify with, unable to compete with Werner Klemperer's dynamic Eichmann, a fully committed performance that produces the surely unintended, lopsided effect of rooting for a brilliant tactician who eluded capture for 15 years (convicted and hanged for his crimes in June 1962). Joining Klemperer in the Nazi ranks is John Banner, both future veterans of HOGAN'S HEROES, a comic depiction of the war that could only have been possible during a decade climaxed by Mel Brooks and his "Springtime for Hitler" number in 1968's "The Producers." The director was outdoor action specialist R.G. Springsteen, whose only qualification for this touchy subject had to be shooting fast on the cheapest sets to strike while the iron was hot. Making his film debut in the unbilled part of Klaus is Eric Braeden, whose best known movie roles in "Colossus: The Forbin Project" and "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" preceded his longtime tenure on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS, which commenced in 1980.