Netflix has put Hitler: A Career online, which is a bit of a surprise. When this two-and-a-half-hour documentary first hit cinemas in 1977, Germans queued around the block to see it. It purported to be the first objective analysis of how Hitler mesmerised the voters and came to power. Siegfried Lenz, the novelist, called it “a deeply dangerous film”.
The first thing you notice about the movie, which was scripted by historian Joachim Fest, is that it hardly mentions the Holocaust. Just a couple of references to the persecution of “minorities”. This is the story of the German people’s experience of Hitler, the movie implies, not of the suffering of specific groups – as though the Jews were not entirely German.
