Der Anständige

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.

In order to be really monstrous, evil people need good qualities. Being psychopathic will only get you so far. But,combine a psychopathic personality with a twisted moral compass, a functional but shallow intelligence, and the ability to work at a given task ceaselessly, and you have a Heinrich Himmler.

Himmler was a socially awkward young man. These days we would probably call him a nerd. Through his self studies, he converted to that hotch-potch of false science and false history, which later crystalised into Hitlerian Fascism.

He saw Germany as a once great country, which had become degenerate. He wanted to return to this mythic past, and, like Hitler, thought that progress required an increasing population, destroying populations to the East, and taking over their territory. He and Hitler made a diabolical double act.

The Nazis held themselves to be racially superior, and held that inferior races, while appearing human, were lower than animals because they had the capacity to corrupt higher races, both culturally and genetically. The lower races were like a disease which had to be eradicated. For a while, if they were useful, these peoples could be enslaved, but they would not be allowed to reproduce.

Himmler was an idealist, who wanted a better world for himself, his family, and his countrymen to live in. He was also a mass murderer with an evil ideology. That conflict is the subject of this excellent documentary.

Der Anständige is a curious film. The historical footage is interesting, but it is spliced together to support a rather obvious conclusion: Himmler was a Nazi. Does anyone disagree with that? Some reviewers see this as a banality of evil effort, but if you listen to Himmler's words, even in early childhood, you will discover that he was always a Nazi and an antisemite, from start to finish. So now we know, it wasn't a mistake. He really meant everything that he did. The end.

A documentary that uses a cache of letters, diaries and documents to reveal the life of SS-leader Heinrich Himmler.

How can a film about Heinrich Himmler be bland? A documentary that explores his personal life, mixed with his professional life, ought to flesh out a very interesting individual. And to some degree it does, but presents the story in as bland and boring a way as possible, with nothing but voice-overs of letters and other documents. No experts reflecting on the importance of any of it.

Students of Himmler or World War II may enjoy this, and learn something new about this man. His strong distaste for homosexuals is interesting, for example. But presented like this, out of context, it remains lacking.

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.