Hitler: The Last Ten Days
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Hitler: The Last Ten Days is a 1973 film depicting the days leading up to Adolf Hitler's suicide. It stars Alec Guinness and Simon Ward.
Despite its subject matter, this movie is remarkable for the way it employs black humor in its portrayal of Hitler's last days. Overall, Guinness combines Hitler's impending defeat with his megalomania to create a comic figure.
The black humor includes such memorable scenes as: Hitler holding tea parties and eating chocolate eclairs as the country collapses; Joseph Goebbels and his wife, Magda, getting into domestic arguments; Hitler being forced to certify that he's of "pure Aryan blood" when he gets married; and everyone trying to get around the bunker's ban on smoking, only to finally be able to light up after Hitler's death.
The movie opens with Hitler's 56th birthday on April 20, 1945, and ends ten days later, with his suicide on April 30.
The motif of this movie is that everybody Hitler ever knew or cared for abandoned him, one by one, before his suicide. While this is mostly true, the movie takes liberties by having everyone, including Eva Braun, betray him.
Compared to reliable accounts of Hitler's final days, this movie, while amusing (especially due to Guinness' performance), is not considered accurate. More specifically:
- Guinness portrays Hitler with gusto, whereas in real life, Hitler spent his last days drugged and brooding.
- Hitler's birthday party is pictured as festive. In real life, Hitler had to be severely drugged simply to make an appearance. Also, the movie does not show Hermann Göring or Heinrich Himmler, who also showed up for the party.
- Hitler spends time playing with his wooden model of Germania in the bunker, wishing Albert Speer were with him. The real bunker did not hold this wooden model, and Speer actually did visit him several times.
- Martin Bormann was depicted as a buffoon; in real life, he was one of the most powerful and conniving members of the Nazi Party.
- Eva Braun is depicted as resisting Hitler, especially when he ordered the execution of her brother-in-law. In real life, Braun never protested anything Hitler did, including this execution.
- Hitler is shown being intimate with Eva Braun. In real life, he barely spent any time with her at all in the bunker, and none in private.
- Hitler is depicted as having shot himself almost on a whim, after Eva Braun takes poison to spite him. In reality, Hitler and Braun planned their suicides and had a formal "exit scene."
See also: Hitler's death.