Hitler's Reich: Diaries of Nazis and Victims

Editor's Take

Marking eighty years since the war's end, the film assembles diary entries from both adherents and opponents of the Nazi regime to render daily life under the dictatorship. Setting these private records against one another, it shows how differently ordinary Germans experienced the same twelve years of propaganda and war. The method is intimate and documentary, privileging lived testimony over strategic overview. By holding contradictory voices together, it resists any single story of how a society lived through those years.

Marking the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, this film uses diary entries from both supporters and opponents of the Nazi regime to portray daily life under Hitler. The contrasting journals reveal how ordinary Germans experienced twelve years of dictatorship, propaganda, and war, from true believers to those who resisted or suffered. By grounding the history in personal writing, it makes an enormous catastrophe feel intimate and immediate. It is a sobering look at how a nation lived through its darkest era. Free to watch in HD on Dr Documentary.

Courtesy of DW Documentary on YouTube. Watch on YouTube ↗

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