{"id":519,"date":"2004-09-09T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-09T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=519"},"modified":"2014-03-17T12:08:11","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T12:08:11","slug":"der-untertangdownfall-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/?p=519","title":{"rendered":"Der Untertang\/Downfall, 2004"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plot<\/strong> East Prussia, 1942. Twenty-two-year-old Traudl Junge is interviewed to be Adolf Hitler’s personal secretary. Her dictation is awful but Hitler chooses her as she is from Munich, young and pretty. Berlin, 20 April 1945. Traudl wakes up in the bunker below the Reichskanzlei<\/cite> to the boom of approaching Soviet artillery fire. It is Hitler’s birthday and the Red Army is within 12 kilometres of the city centre. Albert Speer encourages Hitler to stay in Berlin, but other top Nazis turn to Eva Braun to persuade Hitler to leave. Above ground, the Hitler Youth \u2013 including 13-year-old Peter \u2013 are fighting on and idealistic SS doctor Schenck wanders amid official detritus, ignoring Himmler’s orders to attend a makeshift field hospital outside Berlin. Eva Braun holds a dance to celebrate Hitler’s birthday, which is interrupted by an artillery shell. Hitler emerges from the bunker to give medals to Peter and the children. General Mohnke, who has ordered the western displacement of Hitler’s troops, arrives at the bunker expecting to be shot but is charged with defending Berlin. Hitler is forced to admit the war is over. Traudl decides to stay. Hitler rants about Goering’s attempts to take charge and gives Traudl and the other women suicide pills. Traudl types up Hitler’s and then Goebbels’ last wills. Speer begs Hitler to surrender, admitting he has been ignoring his orders for months. Hitler and Eva Braun are married in the bunker and Hitler orders his body to be burnt before the Russians arrive. The final days of the Third Reich pass with the guards staying drunk. 30 April 1945. Hitler helps to put down his dog and takes advice on how to kill himself. He shoots himself and Eva while taking the suicide pills, and his body is burnt. Magda Goebbels murders her six children in their drugged sleep and her husband shoots her and himself, their bodies too being burnt. Traudl makes it through the Russian lines with young Peter to safety (Falcon).<\/p>\n

Film note<\/strong> Based on German historian Joachim Fest\u2019s book Der Untergang\u2013Hitler und das Ende des dritten Reiches\/Inside Hitler\u2019s Bunker\u2013The Last Days of the Third Reich <\/em>(2002) and the critically acclaimed documentary Im Totem Winkel\u2013Hitler\u2019s Sekret\u00e4rin\/Blind Spot\u2013Hitler\u2019s Secretary <\/em>(Andr\u00e9 Heller and Othmar Schmiderer, 2002), Downfall<\/em> plays with \u201cthe voyeuristically enticing prospect of observing the last [twelve] days of [the Third Reich\u2019s] existence\u201d (Haase 2006: 191). The film grossed $39m at the German box office, and $58.2m worldwide, including $5.5m in the US. Positive reviews, a Bambi Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film helped boost ticket sales. Many critics praised the stage-quality acting (particularly by Bruno Ganz who was awarded the Bavarian Film Award for Best Actor in 2005), the film\u2019s realist style, its historical verisimilitude and its Hollywood-style dramatic tension. Yet, the film also attracted criticism, with a number of commentators raising moral, ethical and political questions about the use of the conventions of entertainment cinema to represent the Nazi past.<\/p>\n

History on film<\/strong> Downfall <\/em>can be usefully placed within the longstanding and ongoing debate concerning the role that German cinema has played in attempting to acknowledge and examine the nation\u2019s traumatic past. As Reimer and Reimer note, \u201cThe German term for coming to terms with the past through film, Vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigungsfilm<\/em>, implies that film can be used as a means for reflection on and judgment and internalization of the past\u201d (2). Beginning this tradition only one year after World War II, Tr\u00fcmmerfilme<\/em> (\u2018rubble films\u2019) such as Die M\u00f6rder Sind Unter Uns<\/em>\/The Murderers Are Amongst Us<\/em> (Wolfgang Staudte, 1946) dealt with questions of guilt and atonement and sought \u201cto come to grips with the recent past against the still contemporary background of ruined cities\u201d (Kaes 12). From the 1950s, once economic conditions started to improve (at least in West Germany), an increasing number of films reflected the population\u2019s general desire to put \u201cthe past [\u2026] at rest\u201d (Kaes 17). Costume epics, comedies and melodramas replaced the Tr\u00fcmmerfilme<\/em> and the popularity of the Heimatfilm<\/em> and a cycle of nostalgic war films indicated how West Germany cultivated a form of collective amnesia and attempted to regain national pride by \u201cturning the Federal Republic into a new (idyllic) homeland\u201d (Hake 118). It was not until the late 1970s that filmmakers once again broached the subject of wartime atrocities. A denunciation of the state\u2019s willful amnesia was at the core of the collective film Deutschland im Herbst\/Germany in Autumn<\/em> (Alexander Kluge et al<\/em>, 1978). This film, made by nine directors of the New German Cinema, aimed at recreating the effects of memory\u2013as a momentary impression\u2013by means of experimental montage and juxtaposition of historical, fictional and non-fictional images. Similarly, Die Blechtrommel<\/em>\/The Tin Drum<\/em> (Volker Schl\u00f6ndorff, 1979) explored the difficulties of growing up within and identifying with a country capable of the Holocaust, while Die bleierne Zeit\/Marianne and Juliane<\/em> (Margarethe von Trotta, 1981) depicted the rebellion of those born after the war against their parents through the dramatization of the life of terrorist Gudrun Ensslin. Downfall <\/em>shares with this 1970s cycle a desire to return to World War II. However, unlike the New German Cinema, the contemporary cinema is driven first and foremost by a commercial imperative and Downfall<\/em> leavens its account of Hitler\u2019s last days with a melodramatic narrative focused on interpersonal relationships. In this respect, the film has much in common with another key film of the 1970s, the US television series Holocaust <\/em>(NBC, 1978) which when broadcast in West Germany was watched by over 20 million people (50% or the adult population) (Kaes 30). Like Downfall, Holocaust<\/em> combined public history\u2013enhanced by sparse intercutting of authentic film footage\u2013with fictional, dramatized private stories. Another significant precursor is Das Boot<\/em>\/The Boat<\/em> (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981) which, according to Sabine Hake, is indicative of the \u201ccontinuous compromise between art cinema and popular {film]\u201d that has shaped German cinema since the 1980s (Hake 3). Indeed, Petersen\u2019s film managed to \u201cmake [the] serious topics [of war] accessible to mass audiences by means of popular genre cinema\u201d (Haase 2007: 77). Das Boot<\/em> appealed to national and international viewers as it touched universal issues and the experience of global war, yet it did so by making spectators engage and identify with a \u201cgroup of unfortunate [Nazi] innocents under pressure\u201d (Haase 2007: 77). This mixing of familiar and unfamiliar themes as well as the unusual\u2013national and international\u2013alignments that the film offers to its audience is precisely what links Petersen\u2019s film to Downfall<\/em>. Indeed, Downfall<\/em>, in line with the global ambitions of its production company, Constantin Film\u2013responsible for international blockbusters such as Resident Evil<\/em> (Paul W. S. Anderson, 2002)\u2013is primarily aimed at a mass audience and does so especially by means of exploiting the \u201caffective\u201d power of classical Hollywood style and convention (Moltke 21).<\/p>\n

This concern about the depiction of traumatic historical events with the codes and conventions of entertainment cinema is inherently linked to a wider debate about film and history. As we have seen, many filmmakers have attempted to come to terms with the Nazi past and the dispute between different approaches has often concerned the modes of representation. The filmmakers of the New German Cinema often opted for a Brechtian approach utilizing confrontational aesthetics which ignite in viewers a reflexive and critical detachment; others have favored a realist style combined with entertainment cinema conventions that encourage the audience to engage emotionally yet remain passive. Following this latter trend, Downfall<\/em> has been praised by many\u2013not least producer Bernd Eichinger, director Hirschbiegel, and the Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw\u2013for its accessibility, authenticity and political neutrality. Others, such as David Denby, have found the film\u2019s commercial style \u201cmorally and imaginatively questionable, [as it results in] a compromise with the unspeakable that borders on complicity with it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Unreliable testimony<\/strong> This issue comes in to stark relief around the use of the testimony of Trudl Junge. Downfall\u2019s<\/em> narrative linearity, its use of continuity editing and historical verisimilitude serve to offer the old woman\u2019s testimony as one of \u2018truth\u2019. In contrast, the documentary Im Totem Winkel\u2013Hitler Secret\u00e4rin <\/em>uses crosscutting between Junge and a number of other interviewees, in order to indicate the unreliability of her testimony. Im Totem Winkel <\/em>also uses fade outs to indicate the questionable nature of Junge\u2019s perspective; black inserts are used, for example, to allow viewers to reflect on the revelation that Hitler had an aversion to speaking ill of Jewish people. To this extent, the comparison between Downfall<\/em>\u2013which only once makes mention of the Holocaust\u2013and the documentary which influenced the film also reveal how Downfall<\/em> fails to acknowledge the essential \u201cblindness that accompanies [\u2026any sort of] individual memory\u201d (Davidson 71).<\/p>\n

The film, from the beginning, invites us to align with Junge by introducing the narrative with an extract from Im Totem Winkel <\/em>followed by a close-up of Junge illuminated only by torchlight. Further shots reveal her anxiety but also excitement at her imminent meeting with Hitler. This meeting is carefully constructed following the classical rules of suspense: an officer opens the F\u00fchrer\u2019s door and invites him to greet the girls; we still have not seen Hitler but we know he is going to make his entrance, we hear his slow steps offscreen, one more shot of the potential secretaries leaning toward the door parallels our heightened curiosity, then finally the F\u00fchrer appears, shot from a low camera angle that symbolically conveys his \u201ccelebrity status\u201d (Krimmer 97). The following scene, rather than keeping Hitler in a position of superiority, puts him on the same level as Junge. A series of shot-reverse-shots give each character equal status and create a filmic \u201cproximity [\u2026] and intimacy\u201d between the two (Moltke 35). As a consequence, the spectator\u2013who is already aligned with Junge\u2013has access to the emotional\u2013and possibly sexual\u2013tension that links the young girl to the F\u00fchrer. Here, Downfall\u2019s<\/em> \u201cdeliberately staged dramaturgy of intimacy\u201d (Moltke 35) functionally assists the film\u2019s attempt to explore the relationship between Hitler and \u2018das Volk\u2019<\/em>, a relationship based on a notional equality and on \u201cHitler\u2019s much vaunted sex appeal\u201d (Krimmer 94).<\/p>\n

Likewise, the viewer is invited to participate in the emotive stress of the Nazi female bystanders in a later scene. Hitler is depicted announcing the impending defeat; although he invites the women to leave, they refuse to do so, following the example of Eva Braun whose loyalty is rewarded by Hitler with a passionate kiss. The melodramatic mode of representation here is accomplished by means of placing the camera in the middle of the group and alternating slight camera movements\u2013showing medium shots of the worried expressions of Hitler\u2019s followers\u2013with close-ups of Junge\u2019s shocked face. This alternation makes us believe that the Junge\u2019s look stands for the crowd surrounding her, and that through her reactions we can grasp those of the others. Yet, what is compelling about this composition is that it occurs at a time when Junge is depicted as hypnotized by Hitler\u2019s sexual power. Indeed, the erotic appeal of Hitler and Eva Braun\u2019s kiss seems to be the reason for Junge\u2019s decision to stay. Here the film suggests sexual attraction is a form of hypnotizing power one that seems to refer to what Denis de Rougemont has defined as Hitler\u2019s ability to seduce the unconscious of the individual as well as that of the masses by means of \u201cdepriving them of their means of reflection\u201d (73). To this extent, the scene skillfully manages to explore one of the most controversial aspects of the relationship between fascism and its followers \u2013 that is fascism\u2019s ability to \u201csexualiz[e\u2026] collectivism\u201d (Rougemont 79).<\/p>\n

Fascism\u2019s collapsing of the erotic and the political is also explored in the Italian film Vincere<\/em> (Marco Bellocchio, 2009) which in one sequence crosscuts between a scene of brutal sexual intercourse\u2013between the young Mussolini and his secret mistress\u2013and extracts from a historical documentary showing the Duce making a powerful speech to the masses. In making this juxtaposition, Bellocchio chooses to portray fascism as a dictatorial power that understood \u201cleadership as sexual mastery of the \u2018feminine\u2019 masses\u201d (Sontag 132). Both Downfall<\/em> and Vincere<\/em>\u2013even if in very different ways\u2013question the insistent commitment of fascism\u2019s followers to their idols even after their leaders, respectively, die or repudiate them. Indeed, Downfall<\/em>\u2019s film score (composed by Stephan Zacharias) contributes to this: the film insistently plays Zacharias\u2019s reworking of \u2018Dido\u2019s Song\u2019 from Henry Purcell\u2019s opera Dido and Aeneas<\/em>. The song is \u201cthematically\u2026 concerned with [Dido\u2019s feared] death from a broken heart over her husband\u2019s leaving\u201d (Bathrick 15). In using this song, Downfall<\/em> conveys a sense of emotional and personal loss, one that stems from the understanding that the man who seduced his subjects with the promise of both a \u201cmagnificent experience [\u2026] forbidden to ordinary people\u201d (Sontag 132) and the appealing \u201cprospect of being freed from a guilty conscience\u201d (Rougemont 74). Here the film\u2019s formal construction provides \u201cemotional cue[s] for engaging with the narrative\u201d (Moltke 33). Certainly, in the case of a mainstream film about Hitler, the use of this kind of emotional, melodramatic technique is extremely controversial in that there is always the risk of \u201cbath[ing] the atrocities of historical perpetrators in the revisionist light of compassion\u201d (Moltke 42).<\/p>\n

Cinema of consensus<\/strong> Downfall<\/em> can be said to belong to what Erich Rentschler has described as a post-wall cinema of consensus (274). Contemporary directors tackle controversial events but do so using various methods that seek to unify their audience, a feature of German culture since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Downfall<\/em> is a form of heritage film, which according to Lutz Koepnick is \u201ca mode of filmmaking [\u2026] typifie[d by\u2026] the production of usable and consumable pasts, of history as a site of comfort and orientation\u201d (51). The move towards consensus is made possible in Downfall<\/em>\u2013as in other heritage films\u2013by means of construction of a unified tone that plays with the viewers perception of public history as a collective element experienced equally by everyone. The film relies heavily on the evocative power of visual references such as swastikas, Nazi uniforms and fascist architectures as well as on the emblem of Hitler\u2019s bunker and the F\u00fchrer\u2019s image. In doing so the film turns public history into a site of familiar symbolic elements and makes it a consumable spectacle that can \u201cbe explored, experienced, and enjoyed without guilt\u201d (Hake 213).<\/p>\n

Downfall<\/em> continuously shifts its gaze between outside and inside, between the military situation of the crumbling city and the private stories of those inside Hitler\u2019s bunker. In the bunker \u201cMr. Ganz’s Hitler is obviously the central figure, [yet] he is [also] frequently offstage\u201d and nearly never shown alone (Scott). This underlines what Eva Braun clearly states in the film\u2013that it is impossible to really know Hitler. Indeed, instead of attempting to decode the enigma of Hitler, the film focuses on Hitler\u2019s followers: some are cowards, some are confused and some are even portrayed as brave; however, \u201cthe mechanisms of character identification\u201d (Bathrick 12) urge us, according to each personal story, to empathize with most of them. Indeed, the more Hitler (and Goebbels) brutally rage against the entire German people, \u201cthe more we sympathize with the hapless bystanders\u2026 and the more convincing they seem\u2013despite their various pasts\u2013as victims\u201d (Bathrick 13). Thus, the film invites us to look at war criminals like Speer, Schenck and Mohnke as Hitler\u2019s opponents; indeed, this contrast is conveyed through both the narrative and mise-en-sc\u00e8ne such as the table and desks that very often separate Hitler from those who oppose him. In so doing the film offers \u201coversimplified portraits of German as victims [\u2026] run[ning] the risk of leveling differences between different kinds of victims\u201d (Krimmer 82).<\/p>\n

This narrative focus on personal drama and victimhood, which is shared by a number of other contemporary German heritage films, is used to address questions of individual culpability. Films such as Sophie Scholl\u2013Die Letzten Tage\/ Sophie Scholl\u2013The Final Days <\/em>(Marc Rothemund, 2005) and NaPolA\/Before the Fall<\/em> (Dennis Gansel, 2004)\u2013the latter co-produced by Constantin Film\u2013use the conventions of mainstream melodrama to explore the effect of the Nazi regime on the lives of young and na\u00efve Germans. These quite different films share a manifest desire to depict their protagonists as fundamentally not responsible for the horrors of the Third Reich. Similarly, Downfall<\/em> does not show the horrors of Nazi crimes and the Holocaust; and, in the penultimate scene of the film, the portrayal of the distraught Traudl Junge and the orphan Peter Kranz in the middle of ruined Berlin implicitly aligns the sufferings caused by fascism on its na\u00efve followers to those of the whole nation.<\/p>\n

In sum, Downfall<\/em> shows history through the lens of a post-Berlin Wall heritage cinema that seeks to absolve ordinary Germans of culpability in the Nazi past. The film is \u201ceasy to digest [\u2026due to] its consensus oriented perspective\u201d (Koepnick 78). Yet, if the film has a saving grace, it is in the activation of empathy towards Hitler\u2019s followers and the activation of strong emotions that may be helpful in increasing awareness of how individuals inhabited historical events in complex and contradictory ways. According to Alison Landsberg, this is the potential power of cinema\u2019s \u201cprosthetic memory\u201d (26). At a time when the witnesses of the Holocaust and the Nazi past are beginning to pass away, \u201corganic memory\u2026 has become precarious, [thus] German cinema now turns it into a primary site of transmitting memory between generations\u201d (Koepnick 57). Indeed, it is a new generation with no direct memory of the war that Downfall <\/em>addresses. In the film\u2018s closing scene, Junge\u2019s final exploration of her personal guilt serves as a call for reflection on the meaning and effects of mediated, \u201ccelluloid memory\u201d (Koepnick 76). This final scene reflects on the dangers that lie underneath young people\u2019s unconditional trust in popular figures and media product; indeed, by showing Junge\u2019s reflections on her inexcusable fascination with Hitler, Hirschbiegel requires us\u2013and especially a younger generation\u2013to think about the similar fascination experienced in watching the film. Thus, Downfall<\/em> finally\u2013and unfortunately only at the very end\u2013acknowledges the limits of film history and asks us to remember that the cinema can be an instructive form of historical writing only as long as \u201cthe contingent and ruptured nature of [\u2026] history\u201d (Koepnick 82) is recognized.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bathrick, David. \u201cWhose Hi\/story Is It?: The US Reception of Downfall<\/em>\u201d. New German Critique<\/em>. 34.3 (2007): 1-16. Print.<\/p>\n

Davidson, John E. \u201cShades of Grey: Coming to Terms with German Film Since Unification\u201d German Cinema Since Unification<\/em>. Ed. D. Clarke. London: Continuum, 2006. Print.<\/p>\n

Denby, David. \u201cBack in the Bunker: Downfall\u201d. Newyorker.com<\/em>. 14 Feb. 2005. Web. 11 Jan 2011.<\/p>\n

Falcon, Richard. \u201cReview: Downfall<\/em>\u201d Sight and Sound<\/em>. May 2005. Web. 11 Jan 2011. Web.<\/p>\n

Fest, Joachim, Der Untergang\u2013Hitler und das Ende des dritten Reiches\/Inside Hitler\u2019s Bunker\u2013The Last Days of the Third Reich<\/em>. London: Macmillan, 2002. Print.<\/p>\n

Haase, Christine. \u201cReady For His Close-Up?: Representing Hitler in Der Untergang<\/em>.\u201d Studies in European Cinema<\/em>. 3.3 (2006): 189-99. Print.<\/p>\n

—. When Heimat Meets Hollywood: German Filmmakers and America 1985-2005. <\/em>Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2007. Print.<\/p>\n

Hake, Sabine. German National Cinema<\/em>. London: Routledge, 2008. Print.<\/p>\n

Kaes, Anton. From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film<\/em>. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989. Print.<\/p>\n

Koepnick, Lutz \u201cReframing the Past: Heritage Cinema and Holocaust in the 1990s\u201d. New German Critique<\/em>. 87 (2002): 47-82. Print.<\/p>\n

Krimmer, Elisabeth. \u201cMore War Stories: Stalingrad<\/em> and Downfall\u2019<\/em>. The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and its Politics at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. <\/em>Eds. J. Fisher and B. Prager. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010. 81-109. Print.<\/p>\n

Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture<\/em>. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Print.<\/p>\n

Moltke, Johannes von. \u201cSympathy for the Devil: Cinema, History, and the Politics of Emotion.\u201d New German Critique<\/em>. 34.3 (2007): 17-43. Print.<\/p>\n

Reimer, Robert C. and Reimer, Carol J.. Nazi-retro Film: How German Narrative Cinema Remembers the Past. <\/em>New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. Print.<\/p>\n

Rentschler, Eric. \u201cFrom New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus\u201d. Cinema and Nation<\/em>. Eds. M. Hjort and S. MacKenzie. London: Routledge, 2000. 260-77. Print.<\/p>\n

Rougemont, Denis de. \u201cPassion and the Origin of Hitlerism\u201d. The Review of Politics<\/em>. 3.1 (1941): 65-82. Print.<\/p>\n

Scott, A.O. \u201cThe Last Days of Hitler: Raving and Ravioli\u201d. New York Times.com<\/em>. 18 Feb. 2005, Web. 09 Jan. 2010.<\/p>\n

Garrett, Diane. \u201cHomevideo Biz Takes a Hit in \u201908.\u201d Variety.com. <\/em>5 Jan. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.<\/p>\n

Sontag, Susan Under the Sign of Saturn<\/em>. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980. Print.<\/p>\n

Written by Caterina Lotti (2010); edited by Guy Westwell (2011), Queen Mary, University of London<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article may be used free of charge. Please obtain permission before redistributing Selling without prior written consent is prohibited. In all cases this notice must remain intact. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2011 Caterina Lotti\/Mapping Contemporary Cinema<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Production Companies: Constantin Film Produktion GmbH, Norddeeutscher Rundfunk, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Degeto Film, \u00d6sterreichischer Runndfunk, EOS Entertainment, RAI Cinemafiction<\/p>\n

Distribution: Constantin Film (Germany), Momentum Pictures (UK), Newmarket Films (USA)<\/p>\n

Executive producer: Christine Rothe<\/p>\n

Producer: Bernd Eichinger<\/p>\n

Screenplay: Bernd Eichinger (based on Joachim Fest, Inside Hitler’s Bunker (2002) and Junge Traudl and Melissa M\u00fcller, Until the Final Hour: Hitler\u2019s Last Secretary (2002))<\/p>\n

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel<\/p>\n

Cinematography: Rainer Klausmann<\/p>\n

Editing: Hans Funck<\/p>\n

Music: Stephan Zacharias<\/p>\n

Cast: Bruno Ganz (Adolf Hitler), Alexandra Maria Lara (Traudl Junge), Corinna Harfouch (Magda Goebbels), Ulrich Matthes (Joseph Goebbels), Juliane K\u00f6hler (Eva Braun), Heino Ferch (Albert Speer), Ulrich Noethen (Heinrich Himmler).<\/p>\n

Running Time: 156 mins.<\/p>\n

Classification: Germany 12\/MPAA: Rated R for strong violence, disturbing images and some nudity <\/p>\n

Box office gross: Germany $39m\/worldwide $58.2m<\/p>\n

Tagline: April 1945. A nation awaits its\u2026 downfall Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38,81,83,16,82,80],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-note","tag-38","tag-constantin-film","tag-cultural-memory","tag-germany","tag-war-film","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1199,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions\/1199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}