Dialogue with the Movie “Downfall”
Part Five:
Sorrowful Reflections
Written by Dan McDonald
Traudl Junge interviewed a couple of years after
World War II in Bavaria.
Trudl Junge spoke of feeling
helpless and angry after Hitler committed suicide. She was angry because he had abandoned
them when they most needed leadership.
She remembered frightening images Hitler spoke of when he contemplated a defeat of Germany and National Socialism. On 1 May 1945 Germans, who had largely ceded their
independence of thought to their leader (Fuehrer is the German word for leader) were
thrust into the chaos where each person for a few days had the horror of having to think and act
without a recognized leader.
The movie “Downfall” gives us a symbolic but possibly
misleading view of what happened next.
In the movie Junge and a boy are seen passing through celebrating victorious Russian soldiers as they make their way outside of Berlin and to open lands in the West. But this is a symbolic ending. The intended German audience familiar with Junge's story would understand that she spent a time confined by the Soviets although not charged with any crime. Eventually she made her way out of the Russian sector to her original home in Bavaria. People unfamiliar with her story might see this as misleading but those who knew the story would have seen the ending as a way of showing that the Soviets were a temporary hindrance that eventually she overcame in her desire to go home and begin a new life. Where the movie "Downfall" ends the story Junge tells in the documentary "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary" continues. She described how immediately after the war
Germans tended not to reflect much about what had happened under Hitler. They focused on rebuilding. But things were changing. She talked of how they had so many fears for the future based on what Hitler said would happen if they lost the war. But almost everything he had imagined and warned of proved to be another lie. It was only a short time after the war that Germans in the West, and especially in the American sector felt such a sense of freedom as they had never known it before. So changes were taking place but it was not until the 1960's that Germany began seriously and as a culture to reflect on what had gone wrong that led to the realities of the Nazi era.
Trudl Junge described the event that led her to confront her own connection to Nazism. She tells us of that event in these words:
[ “I wasn’t able at first to see the
connection with my own past. I still
felt somehow content that I had no personal guilt and had known nothing about
it. I had no idea of the extent of what
happened. But then one day I was walking
past the memorial in Franz Josef Street to Sophie Scholl, a young girl who
opposed Hitler and I realized that she was the same age as me and that she was
executed the same year I started working for Hitler. At that moment I really sensed that it is no
excuse to be young and that it might have been possible to find out what was
going on.”]
Junge saw a mirror
image of herself in the life of Sophie Scholl.
They were both born the same year, and in the decisive year when Junge
went to work for Hitler, Scholl took up actively encouraging Germans to do
all in their power, to withhold their cooperation and submission from the Nazi regime. She and other members of a group calling themselves the White Rose expressed a vision for a replacement government that would respect liberty and human rights. This led to Scholl’s arrest, as
well as others in their group.” Scholl was executed by guillotine on February
22, 1943.
I have written about Sophie Scholl elsewhere. I am sure I would write it differently today than I did a year ago. I wrote a year ago as one who saw the world as divided between Christian and non-Christian. But now I see the world as this world into which Christ entered into our humanity and spoke to our humanity, so that when we proclaim the truth Christ would have us proclaim then we would speak from within humanity to all of humanity. So I think I would write the article on Sophie Scholl with a different perspective now. But that said I must admit that Sophia Magdalena Scholl is one of heroes in the history of humanity. So I instantly took note when Trudl Junge described the pivotal scene where she saw herself differently by seeing the plaque, the monument with the remembrance of Sophie Scholl.
Trudl Junge came to a different understanding of her relationship to Nazism and the atrocities of Nazism as she stood at the memorial honoring Sophie Scholl. She saw how weak and unsatisfactory her sense
of innocence based on her not knowing anything was. Junge did not know about the secret atrocities taking place in Germany. She realized, however, looking at the
memorial that Sophie Scholl also hadn’t known much, and their young age meant neither of them could really claim age as an excuse. The great difference between the two ladies had been that Sophie Scholl refused to accept as the final presentation of reality the thinly veiled
veneer of normalcy hiding the ugly truth of what was taking place under the Nazi regime. Scholl had asked questions and probed into the veneer of
normalcy until she opened a tear into that veil and could see evil behind the appearance of normalcy. Scholl followed her instincts when sensing that something didn't fit and her investigation pierced through the veneer to the truth. The façade crumbled when she pushed against
it. A world of evil opened up to her
eyes and she could no longer be silent.
Sometimes someone might imagine that a young lady like Sophie Scholl was so brave because she didn't imagine what would happen to her if the authorities captured her. But a woman who knew her told of how Sophie Scholl confided in her that she lived in constant fear and that she often cried herself to sleep. She was not brave because she was under some illusion that she wouldn't face consequences but she spoke because she had seen what was behind the veil of normalcy to the evil beyond it and she felt that she had to speak. But it seems to me that Traudl Junge's story needs told just as much as Sophie Scholl's story needs to be told.
There are so many ways Junge’s experience during
World War II can be understood in a context outside of war in an ordinary
office where there is a façade of normalcy hiding some evil. There are plenty of staff members who have served with employers who seemed respectable that proved to be hiding an evil secret. Trudl Junge’s story isn’t confined to a consideration by World War II scholars.
I will speak
of just one application because I have known a couple of ladies through the internet who
have sought to deal with the tragic evil of child abuse, and especially with
the sexual abuse that has taken place quite often within respected Christian ministries, whether
they be Catholic or Protestant. One of
the great sorrows, expressed by these ladies is how often when credible accusations are made against abusers,
there are staff members who rise instantly to their defense and then try to undermine the victim's willingness to come forth to point out the abuser so that his cycle of abuse might be ended. Trudl Junge’s relationship to Adolph Hitler
helped me see what might be taking place in these situations. Junge had met Hitler and her perceptions of
him included his being a gentleman, a soft-spoken man, and someone who showed genuine
respect to his secretaries. This perception
was viewed as if it were the fullness of reality. We human beings are not omniscient. We never see the fullness of reality. But we continually imagine that what we see
is reality, and so we take what we see and imagine it to be all there is to reality. We fail to recognize that always what we see is a limited perception of reality, a façade and not the whole scene. An insufficient perception of reality made
Junge slow to imagine that Hitler could possibly be a monster. That same sort of phenomenon happens in so
many abuse cases. It may not be for
months or years until a staff member wondering why he or she never noticed the
evil notices a door and then has an “O my God” moment. The loyal staff member looks at a door
and thinks back upon how often the trusted minister or staff member took a child behind a closed door and
described it as counseling. He assured the rest of the staff that the child had special needs to address. Somehow all the closed doors seemed strange, but this child had special needs. Only afterwards does this staff member realize how she had failed to understand the situation, mostly because he or she had assumed this man could not be guilty and yet he/she had seen numerous closed doors but did not question the situation. This is one of the reasons why I began to believe that Trudl Junge's story was a plausible one. She spoke like one who believed in her employer only to discover that all along there were those things that could have shown how he was a monster if only she had followed some of those things that did not quite fit.
From a grace perspective I try to imagine an
interesting imaginary scene. Two lives, mirroring each
other’s life meet at a memorial. Trudl
Junge looks at the monument and is gripped with the understanding that her not knowing did not make her innocent. She realizes she could have and should have known more. She is overcome with grief
and guilt and laments, “There were things I saw and heard, and I fear I never wanted to understand those things. Can I be forgiven?” An emotion more than words replies as if the
memorial has a soul. The sentiment, deeper than words, conveys, as if saying, "I knew and therefore I had to speak.
But you now in your grief and suffering, you too
have a story to tell. You can
tell your story better than I". A pause to allow those thoughts time to sink in was followed by the sentiment being conveyed again. The voice from the memorial says, "Some people are afraid
they will suffer as I have. But you who avoided my pain must tell of your pain. For truth be spoken between you and me we know that whether we stand and speak against the evil or hide from and deny the evil, our confrontation with evil wounds each of us. So please help me to tell this story. I will tell of how yes there can be pain in standing against evil, but you will tell the story of how there is pain because you did not." Then it seemed to me as if when these two witnesses who told their story had finished that I heard another voice speaking not sorrowfully but triumphantly shouting - “I have overcome the world.
Fear not little children.”
Sophie Scholl and members of the White Rose,
She asked questions, investigated and made her
stand.
She died by guillotine February 22, 1943 aged 21.
Sophia Magdalena Scholl 1921-1943
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