As the title indicates, The Hitler Gang depicts the trivial side of the Third Reich from an astonishing moment in time – 1944! – weak humor, inside jokes, utter tastelessness, a sick way of talking about comrades (“why waste time for that miserable little dwarf,” asks Rosenberg, referring to Goebbels). It’s based remarkably close to the facts in a way that accentuates the Nazi movement’s proximity to gangsterism. There is plenty of humor but a fundamental toughness as well: faked suicides (“he was the first man who ever shot himself in the head five times…”), murders that go unpunished, brutal executions, plus a view of the movement’s financial background. The approach makes sense even if the brightest contemporary critic, James Agee, rather doubted its “solemn effort to stick to ‘facts'” and noted that Hitler was “something other than a pitiful, vicious psychotic incapable of an idea”. Still, due to John Farrow’s inspired direction, the film is more than mere fun – it’s an effort to develop a character study along the same lines as the psychoanalytic treatments then under way analyzing Hitler’s profile.
With Hitler a swindler and coward, and Göring in a Swedish mental institute (where he obviously should have been kept), the point of view is clear enough. Yet Agee protested the “apparent suggestion – through the respectful portrayal of Gregor Strasser – that there would be nothing wrong with National Socialism if only the vicious ringleaders were eliminated”.
What fascinated Agee, however, and will fascinate us today, is the film’s waxworks dimension; this is surely the best American entry in the look-alike competition for the Hitler role (assuming we don’t include Chaplin), ready to compete (although loosely) with the variants created in the films of Čiaureli, Pabst or Sokurov. The name of the remarkable Hitler actor is Robert Watson – the entourage included no internationally known stars. Yet, some come close or are recognizable faces: the Estonian-born Ivan Triesault, the controversial Reinhold Schünzel (the extravagant light genius who stayed and joked in Nazi Germany up until 1937), the legendary Viennese Fritz Kortner, from Max Reinhardt’s theatrical circle, plus Sig Rumann, the actor of a recent great Nazi role in To Be or Not to Be (1942), seen here with a remarkably subdued interpretation.

Peter von Bagh