The ten-part ZDF documentary “The German Abyss” aims to deal with the history of National Socialism.
The German abyss is deep. Measuring it takes time and attention and demands a certain amount of effort. Ten documentaries of 45 minutes each, that’s seven and a half hours, and you should allow for an hour to relax afterwards. Those who cannot see all of this in one go now have ten years – that’s how long ZDF keeps this remarkable documentary series available in its media library.
Of course, it’s about the phase of German history that the member of the Bundestag with the dog tie once described as “bird shit” in a thousand-year success. Ten hours of bird shit? Well, if you include the prehistory of what the documentary does, there is a continent devastated twice, deaths in the high tens of millions, and a gigantic series of crimes against all humanity that continue over seven and a half decades after its termination the unconditional surrender of the German Reich is still beyond imagination.
The documentation works mainly with historical film material
Historians always face the problem that one already knows the results of the processes they describe, so that the danger arises that history is told from the perspective of the know-it-all. This is difficult to avoid and makes past events seem inevitable. This documentation mostly succeeds in avoiding this impression.
She works predominantly with historical film material and has also called together a number of serious historians from different origins and with different focus areas, who comment on the narrative. The historical narrative is careful. It begins with the First World War, draws on socio-psychological moments, names the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic, German militarism and authoritarianism, the mentalities of the victorious powers and, at the same time, traces the political career of a World War II corporal who first attacked the 1923 with a coup Power tries to come. Again and again and everywhere, political and legal decisions are made that are anything but without alternative, but as a consequence lead to a constantly threatening development.
The German abyss
Documentation in ten parts. ZDF info, May 8, 2021, in the media library until May 7, 2031.
In any case, the private with the little beard under his nose does not let up, times are getting rougher and more violent, he takes a considerable part in it, an aged warlord who is left over from the imperial era makes him chancellor. But even then, many things could have been very different.
The fact that anti-Semitism and racism had (have?) A home in all of Europe is not concealed, and that the so-called appeasement policy encourages Hitlerism is sufficiently clear. The story continues, increasingly oppressive, with great clarity, always carefully designed polyphony and prudence. That is precisely why it is difficult to escape the dramaturgy of this documentary, because the horror it is about becomes more and more hopeless and ever greater and seems unstoppable. The extent of the horror contained in the plainly presented facts is still incomprehensible.
Who was responsible for all of this? Oh, a few misguided rulers who in the end mostly fled to suicide or abroad or stayed in the country with a new identity. Most of the national comrades have impregnated themselves with not having known anything. What little they knew was just bird shit. Or? (Hans-Jürgen Linke)
