A marvelous and internationally acclaimed masterpiece of Soviet cinema. Is it the crowning glory of documentary cinema? No, I would rather call it an auteur cinema, film-meditation, as Romm himself says: "From the enormous amount of material, we selected what seemed to us the most striking, which gives us the opportunity to reflect together with you". Nevertheless, a lot of work was done: research in German archives, collection of photographs, visits to concentration camps. The film was released in 1965 to remind the younger generation who had not witnessed the war, the roots of that inexplicable event, the mass hysteria that had seized the entire German nation. This film is universally applicable to vivisect the genesis of any dictatorship. It's about ordinary people who willingly become diligent cogs in a system aimed at waging an incessant war against "alien elements" of its society and against the external threat of "inferior human species". Romm's sarcastic off-screen comments certainly don't want to make a laughingstock of Hitler and his entourage, or to diminish the importance of what is happening using a "comic relief", Romm only emphasizes the absurdity of what is happening on the historical footage. You'd think, why concentrate on nuances like where Hitler liked to keep his hands? But in fact, the next photo - and everyone is imitating their fuhrer! The farce and idiocy of personality cults lie in such details. The counterpoint technique creates a tragic impression. A dire contrast between the paraphernalia of Nazi butchers and the pure forever perished eyes of innocent people - really act on the emotions. Analogies with previous and current totalitarian (or even authoritarian) regimes will appear to you naturally. This was the case in 1965, when the main Soviet ideologist Suslov asked Romm: "Why do you dislike us (the Bolsheviks) so much?" The film was shelved for a while for this implicit comparison of two totalitarian regimes. None the less, the final scenes show us "dogs of imperialism", the aggressive West, the growling Marines, ready to turn the Cold War into a "hot" one. Whether Romm really intended some kind of covert criticism of the USSR is irrelevant, because the Soviet public took this message for granted. In a system where any criticism could only be expressed in Aesopian language, people got used to read double hidden meanings into such works. B. Strugatsky said after watching the film: "Now it is clear to any reasonable person that communism and fascism are "twin brothers", because both of these regimes grow from a single root called "a totalitarian state"." Few people can say for sure that they will not become the next useful cog in the system: it takes great courage to preserve individuality and strength to say no to dehumanization and violence, when everyone around you says yes. That's why its important to convey the messages of this film to future generation, to children, so that they won't become "a mass".
