2 - Seductive Encounters with Nazi Perpetrators

Summary

The turn toward private experiences of the Third Reich is particularly critical when it takes the form of close encounters with the regime. Films showing such encounters confront us with two interrelated but contested aspects of the Nazi past: on the one hand, the appeal of Nazism, its representatives, aesthetics, and ideology, on the other, one’s agency in the face of these. By the mid-1990s, German film began to explore the potential for and dangers of seduction in encounters with Nazism and its perpetrators in a new way. What distinguishes these films from earlier portrayals is that they offer their viewers an intimate experience of seduction, allowing them to indulge in the allure of the Third Reich. In fact, the more recent productions specifically aim at seducing their viewers through their narrative and visual design. While they subsequently denounce this seduction as deceptive or fatal, it nevertheless serves to characterize the experience of the times. And, crucially, it is shown to influence or even undermine the agency of the seduced, raising questions about their ability to decide and act, their autonomy and accountability. Through such portrayals, German film of the Berlin Republic has worked toward a re-enchantment of the Third Reich and a rehabilitation of its seductive appeal.

Although “seduction” is one of the most persistent tropes in German discourse about the Third Reich, a critical phenomenology of this concept still remains to be written. Since the postwar era, the term has been used time and again in testimonial accounts, public debate, scholarly works, literature, and art. It has been mobilized to explain or mystify the ideology, aesthetics, and politics of Nazism, above all, its effects on the German people, both from an individual and a collective point of view. The modes of its usage vary from the apologetic to the confessional, from the empathetic to the accusatory. Unsurprisingly, the notion of seduction has remained particularly problematic with regard to films about fascism and Nazism, especially those reproducing propagandistic footage. In fact, the history of the Third Reich in German film since 1945 is to a significant degree one of a preoccupation with this seductive imagery, be it through citations, emulations, or re-enactments.