Awash in the sublime sights of Bavaria, I relished not only natural beauty but also the tidiness of quaint German towns. During my three-week visit, I never once saw junk in yards or litter on roads. It all seemed so wonderfully CLEAN! Even the public restrooms had toilet brushes with placards reminding users to clean up after themselves. In one such facility, my husband observed a young man bearing all the signs of cultural defiance: purple mohawk, piercings, black leather and chains. Upon exiting from the stall, however, the leather-clad lad suddenly stopped and turned, re-entering in order to clean the toilet with the state-provided brush.
When I mentioned this incident to an American running a German bed-and-breakfast, she grumbled about government restrictions and cultural pressures that dictated the color of paint on her house, the neatness of her yard, and even uniform log lengths in her woodpile. Lowering her voice she concluded, “Nazis still run things around here,” as though to say “ethnic cleansing” was merely an extension of an obsession with tidiness. Though her remark did not fit my experience of the generously gracious Germans, I find it interesting that Germany has made it illegal to deny the historicity of the Holocaust, emphasizing, as it were, the need to come clean about its past.
Film has become part of that cleansing process, testifying to Holocaust horrors and heroes. Two films, Amen. (2002) and Valkyrie (2008), build upon historical records of the German Resistance, focusing on military officers who tried to cleanse Germany of the leader to whom they had sworn allegiance: Adolf Hitler.
Amen. makes explicit the ambiguities of cleansing. Its real-life protagonist, an ss Officer named Kurt Gerstein, served the Nazi cause by developing a chemical that could purify even the most fetid water, making it potable for soldiers on the battlefield. A scene in which Gerstein drinks treated ditch water before the amazed eyes of German compatriots comments ironically upon his own amazement when he discovers that his mentally disabled niece has been executed in a state-enforced “euthanasia” program. While Gerstein was decontaminating water, Hitler was decontaminating society. The irony intensifies as Nazis adulate Gerstein for his amazing chemical cleanser. Driving him to a special compound, they invite him to look through a peephole in the wall. The camera never shows us what Gerstein sees, keeping the shot on his body tensing up against the wall. For he peers inside an Auschwitz death chamber, watching as his chemical is now used for ethnic cleansing.
The rest of the film shows Gerstein’s attempts to expose the cleansing without exposing himself. He buttonholes a Swedish diplomat on a train, asking him to let word out through the Swedish embassy. He talks to leaders in his Confessing Church who had denounced Hitler’s euthanasia program. He barges in on the Papal Nuncio in Berlin, hoping that Pope Pius XII might be persuaded to publicly denounce Nazi atrocities. But no one believes him (except for a fictional priest inserted into the plot). As the Papal Nuncio remarks to an aide, “it’s just a Gestapo provocation. Imagine an ss officer defending the Jews!” We can’t help but wonder why Gerstein, an earnest Christian, joined the ss in the first place. Rather than getting answers or witnessing positive results, we only see Gerstein’s desperate frustration, as though the wall at Auschwitz were the symbol of his plight: witnessing evil cleansing, he cannot break through to cleanse it.
The film, in fact, generates its power through what we do not see. Rather than immersing us in concentration camp degradations, director/co-writer Costa-Gavras offers absence. Several times he inserts long shots of trains clacking across the horizon, cattle car doors open on both sides so that through them we see the sky. Their haunting emptiness fills our minds with despair when we later view similar shots: trains clacking across the horizon in the opposite direction, this time with doors all shut. The absence of visual evidence overwhelms with a chilling presence.
And that is precisely the film’s point: the Holocaust intimates the palpable presence of God’s absence. How could God’s Chosen People be so egregiously abused? Why did the Church not take dramatic action when it heard reports of genocide? How might we explain the failure of numerous attempts on Hitler’s life? Who is out there that might cleanse us of the cleansers?
Tom Cruise, that’s who. At least, that is what the recent film Valkyrie suggests. The contrast between the European-made Amen., with all its moral ambiguities, and the American made Valkyrie, with its Mission Impossible leading man, is telling. The difference parallels that of the directors. Costa-Gavras (born Constantinos Gavras in 1933, in Greece, but long a resident of France) is best known for his gritty political thrillers Z (1969), State of Siege (1973), and Missing (1982). The director of Valkyrie, Bryan Singer (born 1965), achieved fame with comic book films: two X-Men movies (2000 and 2003) and Superman Returns (2006). His superhero for Valkyrie (2008) is Claus von Stauffenberg, a colonel recruited by German officers to join the famous 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. Significantly, like the X-Men heroes, Stauffenberg bears physical disabilities, having lost an eye, a hand, and additional fingers in the war. Tom Cruise plays him with austere rectitude and control, undaunted as brain and marrow of the cause.
To be fair, Valkyrie adheres dutifully to the historical record—more so, in fact, than Amen., which generated controversy when it showed Vatican leaders breezily dismissing reports from the fictional priest. Valkyrie, however, delivers the facts without emotional or psychological depth. Amen.’s Gerstein is traumatized by his role, torn between his commitment to Christ and his allegiance to Germany, between his horror over ethnic cleansing and his fear that exposing Nazi atrocities will lead to his death. In contrast, Stauffenberg demonstrates the same moral stolidity as Professor Xavier (read “Savior”) in X-Men, unswervingly maintaining his commitment to undermine evil.
Valkyrie does not invite us to agonize over God’s apparent absence when guardian angels (devils?) repeatedly protect Hitler from harm. It offers us absence only to reinforce Stauffenberg’s superhero status. When someone greets him with the “Heil Hitler” salute, Stauffenberg mimics the stiff-armed gesture to maintain his cover. A close-up shot, however, magnifies the absence of a hand at the end of his extended limb: a perfect synecdoche of his character. Though going through the motions of supporting Hitler, the hand of Stauffenberg is elsewhere, joined with those of other noble Germans attempting to cleanse Germany of the Nazis.
The difference between Amen. and Valkyrie is summarized by their endings. Gerstein, captured by Allied forces, dies in jail. But, as with Jews behind walls, we don’t see the death; a prison guard reports it. We exit the film baffled: did Allied soldiers, or perhaps disgruntled Germans, kill Gerstein because he was an ss officer? Or did fellow ss officers kill Gerstein because he betrayed Hitler? The official account, that he committed suicide in prison, has been questioned. The ambiguities of Gerstein’s death match the ambiguities of his life.
Valkyrie, in contrast, establishes Stauffenberg as a martyr for righteousness, showcasing his execution by firing squad. We leave the film comforted by the knowledge that, even in the midst of Hitler’s army, superheroes could rise to the occasion, even if they failed for the moment to defeat the superdevil.
For a non-superhero account of assassination attempts, read the book Valkyrie (Knopf, 2009), written by Philipp von Boeselager, the last surviving member of the 20 July plot. It has little to do with the film, sharing a title only because “Valkyrie” names the operation by which conspirators planned to take control of the government after Hitler’s assassination. The book, in fact, marginalizes Stauffenberg, dismissing him as merely “The arm bearing the weapon” for Valkyrie. According to Boeselager, other officers served as the “rain” and “pinal marrow” behind the plot.
Boeselager’s account displays the messiness of memoir, exigencies of life contrasting with urgencies of conspiracy. A cavalry officer and explosives expert, Boeselager struggled with angst as he and his brother considered the treason and terror of the conspiracy they joined. Boeselager doesn’t even mention Valkyrie until page 140, giving us his life story up to then. If I had not seen Valkyrie the film, I would have been confused by Boeselager’s narrative, which assumes ample knowledge of the 20 July plot. Both Valkyrie texts are therefore necessary, cleaning each other up: one offers historical clarity, the other historical complexity.
Whether of history or society, cleansing is a double-edged sponge: one man’s washing tool is another man’s germ spreader. When it comes to portrayals of Nazi cleansing, we must resist despair, realizing that only grace can wash away the grit and grime of sin.
Crystal Downing, professor of English and Film Studies at Messiah College, is the author of Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers (Palgrave Macmillan 2004) and How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith: Questioning Truth in Language, Philosophy and Art (IVP Academic 2006).
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