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Description
"Arguably the most gifted of Hitler?s henchmen, Joseph Goebbels was an enigmatic genius whose successful manipulation of mass political opinion was unprecedented. His rise to power, and that of the Nazi Party itself, will forever stand as one of history?s most terrifying examples of the reach of propaganda, a tool with which Goebbels?s name is virtually synonymous. In their fascinating documentary, the filmmakers provide a rare and chilling glimpse into a brilliant but toxic mind. Rejecting commentary, they allow Goebbels to speak for himself (in the voice of Kenneth Branagh), via the extensive diaries that he kept from 1924 to1945. Rare clips from German film and television archives illustrate the readings. At a time when much of our news and entertainment media is controlled by a handful of corporations, The Goebbels Experiment is a cautionary reminder that equal access to the machinery of ideas may be society?s most critical goal."
The rise and fall of the Third Reich is chronicled on an intimately personal scale in The Goebbels Experiment, an essential addition to the vast legacy of Nazi-related documentaries. Like no other film before it, this remarkable experiment in archival biography combines two fascinating elements: rare and extensive archival footage and dramatic readings (by renowned British actor Kenneth Branagh) from the personal diaries that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels kept from 1924 until his suicide in 1945. The net effect is unexpectedly striking: As Hitler's Nazi Party gained social and political momentum in the late 1920s and early '30s, Goebbels' daily life was so thoroughly covered by newsreel cameras, home movies, and Third Reich historians that there is enough existing footage of him to match (or at least approximate) nearly every event mentioned in his diaries. From Goebbels' growing influence as an influential orator to his surprisingly affectionate family life, the meticulously edited footage serves as both point and counterpoint to Goebbels' diaries, revealing a paranoid intellectual capable of breathtaking, if not outright schizoid, shifts from one train of thought to another. A perceptive observer of culture (especially the art of motion pictures), he both loved Hitler and felt repeatedly betrayed by the Fuhrer's perceived offenses against him. Prone to chronic bouts of depression, Goebbels found purpose in his unprecedented orchestration of epic-scale propaganda, but his inner demons haunted him until the very end, when it became obvious that the Nazis had completely lost their power. The final images of Goebbels' partially burned body (along with those of his wife and six children) serve as a chilling reminder that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Having never found a satisfying balance between his personal and professional lives as a top-ranking Nazi, Goebbels' fate seems almost predetermined. As a masterful assembly of archival materials, The Goebbels Experiment is not to be missed. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Review:ATLZNVLYKP9AZ
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Summary: A look inside a delusional mind
This is a first-rate and surprisingly original documentary. The main audio track is Kenneth Brannagh reading from (translated) diaries of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis' propaganda chief -- except when the film cuts to film footage of Goebbels himself, usually from the events being described in the diary entries. The visuals are almost all from stock, newsreel and other surviving footage of the time.
We get to follow the rise and fall of Hitler's regime through the eyes of one of his chief deputies. The film makes clear that one of the Nazis' main weaknesses was an incapability of looking at themselves critically. While Goebbels has plenty of criticism for other Nazis -- Goering, Himmler, et al -- there is no hint that he may have doubted the fundamental idea of German supremacy at any time.
Goebbel's biting, contemptuous criticisms of the English and Americans and how they went about the war are chilling with the hindsight of history. It just drives home how much psychological necessity the Nazi leadership had in thinking others were inferior, how much ideology and hatred were the guiding forces behind German policies of the time, and how little room there was for cold, dispassionate rationality.
As a music fan, I was hoping there would be more -- or even anything at all -- about the Berlin Philharmonic and Wilhelm Furtwangler, its conductor. There isn't. But that's fine.
The diary entries apparently run out a few days before the end. The last we hear of Goebbels is not from his pen, but his last radio speech given as Berlin was under siege. The movie closes with the images of the charred bodies of Goebbels and his wife lying next to their children, whom they had killed with cyanide before committing suicide themselves. The film drives home more than most how pointless the brutality of Nazism really was.
Customer Review:A268WAQS5WNMGJ
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Summary: Try to find the German version of the DVD if you can
I now own both this edition and the German (Region 2) DVD. The German version has both the original German-language soundtrack and Kenneth Branagh's terrific English Language narration - why the American release of this DVD didn't include the German language track is a mystery, and very unfortunate...
Customer Review:ARB94WXA9NS9J
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Summary: Cleverness is not the same as wisdom
It's funny that it has taken this long for someone to do a documentary on Joesph Goebbels. He is an excellent subject for this treatment. He operated in that most public of political operations-propaganda-and he was next to Hitler the prime orater of the Third Reich. Also, he left a rather detailed diary from the 1920's to his death in 1945. The makers of the film wisely let goebbels speak for himself,with an actor reading from the diary through the film. It presents a man who was certainly very clever and ingenious-but to what appaling ends! If ever there was a lesson needed on the difference between even the most brilliant cleverness and wisdom, the life of Joesph Goebbels is a prime example. And the ending, showing footage of Goebbels burned and chared corpse,is the final and inevidable comment. How horroible and completely unneccessary it all was.
Customer Review:A16QODENBJVUI1
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Summary: A spectacular and remarkably original documentary
Of all the Nazis, Goebbels was one of the most vile and abhorrent. As the propaganda minster, he was one of the two or three most important Nazis. He was one of the key players in all of the major decisions made domestically by the Nazis (he played a much smaller role in military affairs). This documentary consists almost entirely of Kenneth Branagh reading excerpts from Goebbels's diary, a remarable document that reveals how petty and paranoid and vengeful he was. It is not a full picture of Goebbels, since he clearly is blind to his own foibles and shortcomings. For instance, he speaks repeatedly of how vile he considers the Jews to be, but he had several affairs with beautiful Jewish females. He was also famous among the Nazis for his sexual appetite, something that does not receive full attention here. All in all, this is one of the finest documentaries about the Nazis that I have ever seen, a film that stands out despite a very crowded field. This is without any possible question a must-see film.
Customer Review:A8VCL85AA94M8
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Summary: Heavily Censored Propaganda - about a Propagandist
The biggest revelation contained in (or more to the point, censored from) the carefully written and edited video titled the "Goebbles Experiment" is the use of the film itself as a Pro-Homosex Propaganda Tool.
While it has been clearly established that the Nazi Party was created and led by Homo-Anal Coprophile Ephebophiles such as founder Ernst Rohm and his protégé Hitler, this fact as well as the nation wide purge known as the "Night of the Long Knives" have been completely censored from the video.
Ernst Rohm is Never mentioned once, despite his central role in forming and leading the Nazis and their homosex Storm Troopers during their rise to power. The facts of the purge of 1934 and Goebbles thoughts on it are completely omitted and the story simply skips over those central events as if they never happened, which is good propaganda if not good historical documentary ethics.
In a propaganda trick that even Goebbles would approve of, the only mention of the Homosex Perversions that pervaded the Nazi movement is in Goebbles lamentations that he is being unfairly labeled as one of the same. This `unfair' characterization is handled deftly by the editors focus on Gobbles eventual marriage and children, which by inference discounts the well documented facts about his boy raping comrades like Rohm and Heines - and of course Hitler (detailed in Machtan's book "The Hidden Hitler").
Brief mention is made of Goebbles unhappiness with his early work in Munich, but nothing of the conditions that led to this - despite the fact that Munich was a nexus for the pervasive endemic Homosex Ephebophilia that truly characterized the Nazis and particularly Rohm's Storm Troopers (who often blackmailed the parents of boys they raped). Brief mention is also made of Reifenstahl and her movie 'Triumph of the Will'- but this was essentially a remake of an earlier film "Der Seig Des Glaubens" that was first widely distributed then recalled and destroyed after the purge of 1934, because it showed Rohm in a positive light as Hitler's equal in the movement. Again, No Mention of this propaganda film or of the central role of Rohm in a documentary supposedly about Nazi propaganda.
Thus in the end a rather slick hollyweird documentary about a propagandist, becomes in itself Propaganda - carefully sanitizing the ugly truth of the rank perversions that made the Nazis what they were, because it suits a more modern agenda of the hollyweird homosex lobby.
Beyond that - there are a few good quotes, particularly those about "Change" - which could have (and perhaps were) recycled by the next generation of fascists for the 2008 Presidential Campaign.
I recommend that those interested in the deliberately `missing' pieces to the puzzle - read a copy of "The Pink Swastika" by Abrams and Lively, as well as view the History Channel documentary titled "Night of the Long Knives". Because only by augmenting the `Goebbles Experiment' with outside sources covering the Censored material - can one understand the propaganda experiment that is the video itself.
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