Giving Hitler a Human Side

Television seems willing to take on any sensitive subject--from such small-scale contemporary horrors as the JonBenet Ramsey killing, to epic dramas taken from the Bible--but it has been more careful when it comes to Adolf Hitler, confining depictions to news documentaries or portraits of the adult fuhrer.

Now, in an unprecedented move, a planned CBS miniseries called “Hitler” is attempting to portray the most infamous villain of the 20th century in a way he has never been seen before: as a human being. The project, which is scheduled to air over two nights during either the February or May ratings sweeps period, is based on British historian Ian Kershaw’s book “Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris.” The accuracy of Kershaw’s work on the pre-World War II Hitler is not being questioned. What has raised concerns is the inflammatory nature and commercial imperatives of a TV movie that would chronicle Hitler’s progression from childhood to adulthood, from outcast starving artist to leader of the Third Reich, without depicting the horrific result of this rise.

Some see the project as a naked play for ratings, using a figure whose name instantly titillates.

“History has made a judgment of the man, he’s a monster,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “So now, why do we need to know when he dated, how he dated? The next one will be Hitler as a preteen, we’ll find out he’s a bed-wetter. We know who he is, we know what he did, what are we going to learn?”

Representatives of CBS and Canada’s Alliance-Atlantis, which is producing the TV movie, have responded that their aim is to explore the roots of evil, to examine what from Hitler’s past made him into the century’s most reviled leader.

In an early draft, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, Hitler is introduced as an imperious, moody 12-year-old boy, playing cowboys and Indians with his friends in Linz, Austria. In the draft’s climactic scene, Hitler, seen in a screening room, luxuriates in his image as captured in German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda piece “Triumph of the Will.”

What is perhaps most alarming--and trivializing--to critics is the very attempt to dramatize Hitler with dialogue, and Hollywood dialogue at that. In “Hitler,” this ranges from off-handed asides (“I’m not accustomed to such excellent pastry,” Hitler says at one point) to his remark about the revolt against communists in Germany. “I’ll need more than words to shut them up. Would you know anyone who likes to crack heads?”

“From a dramatic point of view, the script that I saw, which was the first or second draft, is driven for the best emotional impact, particularly in the second segment,” said Rabbi John Rosove of Temple Israel of Hollywood.

Any film that tackles a tragic time in history faces an inevitable dilemma--to tell a compelling story requires characters speaking not only in colorful language, but also with words that advance the plot.

Can “Hitler” capture the man’s essence without making him sympathetic? The same sort of challenge faced NBC’s acclaimed “Holocaust” miniseries in 1978.

Although upcoming project is designed to depict Hitler’s megalomania and madness--and by implication the roots of tyranny, in any epoch--Rosove and others fear the planned miniseries could have unintended consequences at a time of growing anti-Semitism.

“Even if they get it right, which is like a small percentage of a chance, there’s still going to be a lot of people out there who misinterpret the whole thing,” he said. What those behind the miniseries “fail to understand is the impact this will have on the haters in America, as well as in Europe and the Middle East.”

Attempting to do Hitler-as-protagonist is hardly unprecedented. He’s been parodied on screen (by Charles Chaplin, most famously, in the 1940 film “The Great Dictator”) and taken on as a dramatic character (by Richard Basehart in the 1962 film “Hitler” and Anthony Hopkins in the 1980 TV movie “The Bunker.”)

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves formally announced the miniseries in July at the annual gathering of television writers in Pasadena. “We know how the story ends,” Moonves said at the time. “But this is how Hitler came to power. This is Hitler from a very early age in which people don’t know much of the story. This is a very timely subject about how bad guys get into power and how it affects the rest of the world,” he said, a reference to Osama bin Laden and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Moonves’ announcement last month has thus far generated something short of widespread controversy. Neither Foxman of the ADL nor Rabbi Rosove suggest that preventing the production is the proper course.

Instead, there is cynicism about the network’s motives (it’s more about generating ratings than educating, critics say). On the other side of the argument are Moonves, CBS Entertainment President Nancy Tellem and Alliance-Atlantis Group CEO Peter Sussman, all of whom are Jewish.

Indeed, Moonves told Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd: “My [Polish] grandmother was the only one of 11 children who survived” the Holocaust.

The weekly newspaper the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles has written several questioning articles, including one headlined “Prime Time for Hitler.” In its current issue, the journal critiqued the first draft of the script.

“We certainly hope those concerned can withhold judgment until we have material that is final. At this point, we are still in the early stages of development,” CBS spokesman Chris Ender said Friday. Moonves declined to comment for this article.

Alliance-Atlantis’ Sussman allows that he’s chagrined at the leaking of the script’s first draft, which is somewhat commonplace in Hollywood. That assured the script would change significantly by the time shooting is scheduled to begin, sometime in the fall.

Hitler’s “point of view will be relevant in the film. Whether it’s only his point of view, I can’t say. All you’ve seen is our attempt to map out the sequence of his historical existence,” Sussman said.

Alliance-Atlantis is hardly an upstart; its production credits range from the CBS series “CSI” and the TNT miniseries “Nuremberg” to the acclaimed Canadian film “The Quarrel,” about two Jewish Holocaust survivors.

A miniseries about a young Hitler, Sussman hopes, will fill “a gap in the existing catalog of films” about Nazism and the Holocaust.

Asked why he had chosen Hitler, as opposed to other perpetrators of genocide, Sussman said: “Because this was the biggest monster of our time. Why not do the biggest monster instead of the fifth biggest or the ninth biggest?”

The miniseries will likely shoot in Prague and Germany in the fall, and a lead actor is weeks away from being named, Sussman said. Of concerns that a twentysomething star actor would invite younger viewers, uneducated about the Holocaust, to identify with a young Hitler, Sussman said: “You need to be elegant about this decision. Those WB ... actors in their 20s aren’t exactly the right folks to play Hitler.

“Evil is not obvious, and I think it’s important to never forget how this kind of evil manifested itself. In fact, the German people themselves were fooled into the momentum.

“People say, ‘Careful, you might make him more human.’ He was human ....We forget at the end of the day he was a human being. I don’t mean he was a good guy. He was a bad guy.”