Past is Prologue: Downfall

 

I know I've just seen a good World War Two movie when it makes me interested in World War Two again. That is no small feat. After nearly half a century marinating in an era that is now less a historic period and more a multimedia empire of films, documentaries, television series, video games, and books, I've reached the point of saturation. It's one reason I eventually drifted toward the Cold War, a period that receives only a fraction of the attention (I am a contrarian, if nothing else!). So, when a movie sends me rummaging through my shelf of World War Two wargames, I know it has accomplished something remarkable. Bernd Eichinger's Downfall did exactly that.

While Downfall didn’t reveal anything I hadn’t already known, what struck me wasn’t the events themselves but seeing those familiar facts brought vividly to life through exceptional acting. It’s one thing to read about Frau Goebbels poisoning her children because she didn’t want them to live in a post-Nazi world, and quite another to watch it portrayed with chilling detail. Despite my WWII fatigue, I suppose that’s the value of the constant stream of multimedia content that keeps the horrors of fascism present, even nearly a century later.

As with any historical epic, there are moments in the film that made me sit up and point at the screen in startled recognition.

One such scene was a chilling confrontation in which Berlin's brigade commander asks Goebbels to withdraw the Volkssturm, an untrained civilian militia, from the battlefield because they were accomplishing nothing beyond getting themselves slaughtered.  Goebbels' response is chilling in its blunt Machiavellian calculus:

"I don't pity them. I repeat, I don't pity them! The people called this upon themselves.  This may come as a surprise to you. Don't fool yourself. We didn't force the people. They gave us a mandate.  And now they are paying for it."

When I heard those words, I was immediately reminded of Donald Trump's callous disregard for the suffering of his MAGA base.  Let me explain:

It has been often observed that the most reliable Trump voter is one who is also struggling financially. The appeal of Trump has always been his success as a businessman (one must disregard his six bankruptcies for that to be true, but I digress). His base, comprised of many Americans who struggle to live paycheck to paycheck, both admired and desired similar success for themselves, and Trump promised them just that. But now? As with any Ponzi scheme, they have been left with a bill instead of a pot of gold.  His trade wars have increased the cost of living by over $800 per American family, while his unprovoked military conflict with Iran, a clear breach of his campaign pledge concerning "no new forever wars", has driven gasoline and diesel prices ever higher, something that will serve to further inflate prices even beyond what the trade wars have done.  And what is Trump's response? "'Affordability' is a democrat hoax!" he declares while the American people sink further into economic crisis. "I love inflation!" was another tone-deaf response made by Trump after being told consumer prices were hitting a three-year high.  The Goebbelsian parallels are too striking to ignore.  Here, yet again, was a regime watching ordinary people suffer from its policies, with the only response being callous dismissal of that suffering as something that must be endured as a consequence of supporting the regime.

There were other similarities to contemporary reality in Downfall as well. For example, as Soviet artillery is heard to be creeping ever closer to Hitler's bunker, the movie shows us a Führer preoccupied with architectural projects for a never-to-be future Nazi Berlin as the contemporary one crumbles into the detritus of a lost war.  

The past is proving to be prologue yet again in 21st Century America, as an increasingly disengaged president dismisses concerns about a lost war, an affordability crisis, a slowing economy, and ever-rising fuel costs, while gushing, often unprompted, about inconsequential vanity projects, such as a reflecting pool, a masturbatory victory arch, and a grand ballroom that is described as being something for the volk...er, people but being couched strictly in the foreboding terminology of a defensive bunker for Trump's protection and well-being.  

History shows that such architectural obsessions are common among authoritarian regimes.  As Sankjana Sarkar wrote in a piece for Rethinking the Future, "...totalitarian architecture creates and reinforces narratives by creating tales that justify the regime’s dominance and its place in history and culture."  As can be surmised, as a regime becomes increasingly brittle and disliked, such visual messaging becomes an increasingly important bulwark against collapse. Also, as in the case of increasingly physically isolated and paranoid authoritarian leaders, planning such fantasy cities provides an escape, a mental safe space as reality crumbles around them, be it from advancing Soviets or Iranian dominance of a crucial Middle Eastern strait. 

Now, I am sure that by this point in my essay, someone has already been spitting "Godwin's Law!" at their screen as if that is a real thing. Even worse, some misconstrue this "law" (which is just an anecdote that says that as an online discussion goes on longer, the chance that someone compares another person to Hitler or the Nazis approaches 100%) to mean that comparisons to Hitler are inappropriate and indicative of a losing argument.  I don't have time to deal with such idiotic falsehoods.  Rather, as someone who not only enjoys learning history but also enjoys teasing out the lessons found in history, I believe that if the jackboot fits the times, the only proper thing to do is say it loudly and damn those who squeal invented "laws" to shy away from uncomfortable truths.

And that jackboot does fit the times.

After all, it wasn't that long ago when the Young Republicans from New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont were outed as fascists when a secret group chat was leaked in which they referred to black people as "monkeys and 'the watermelon people' and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery." One openly declared that he "loved Hitler," while another declared, "I'm ready to watch people burn now." 

That was in October of 2025.  However, just yesterday, Republican Senator Jon Husted dismissed his political director, Stephen B. Woytek, "who used a photo of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile picture." In addition to that, Mr. Woytek "recently added to a public playlist of songs on Spotify celebrating Rhodesia, the white-minority-ruled African colony that became Zimbabwe and has been frequently celebrated by white-supremacist groups." 

Then there is Republican Congressman Mike Collins spotted history with antisemitism. Not only was he one of the few to defend the notorious Young Republicans leaked chats,  but he also attended a Young Republicans gala that celebrated Markus Frohnmaier, a far-right German politician, as well as featured appearances from known antisemitic figures, including the livestreamer Sneako.  What is more, Collins' son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, used social media to amplify known white supremacist accounts and to share antisemitic tropes online. And just last month, we learned that Preston Parra, a former congressional intern and political action committee contractor for Collins, also shared posts that included swastikas, racial slurs, and AI-generated images of himself in Ku Klux Klan robes. 

These recurring instances of Nazi-adjacent Republicans evoke the old intelligence adage: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action. This points to an alarming pattern—one that this brief accounting merely scratches the surface of.

I will wrap this blog post up with one more incident from Downfall that caught my eye with its echoes of contemporary politics.  It is when Hitler begins to rant about his views on compassion:

"Life doesn't forgive weakness.  This so-called humanity is religious drivel. Compassion is an eternal sin. To feel compassion for the weak is a betrayal of nature. I have always obeyed this law of nature by never permitting myself to feel compassion. I have ruthlessly suppressed domestic opposition and brutally crushed the resistance of alien races."

When I heard those lines, they rang a bell, though it took me a while to recognize the tune. Then it hit me: it echoed remarks made by both Elon Musk and Vice President J. D. Vance. Musk—who has amplified extremist views and celebrated dismantling USAID, a move researchers link to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths in what Donald Trump once referred to as "shithole countries"—once quipped to Joe Rogan that 'the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit.' Echoing this black-hearted mentality, Vance later cited the medieval catholic doctrine of ordo amoris ('order of love') to defend the administration's immigration crackdowns. He argued that empathy operates in concentric circles, prioritizing immediate family over the wider world. In a vacuum, prioritizing loved ones over strangers is a matter of common sense. But when weaponized to justify xenophobic policy (the so-called "alien races" targeted by the white Christian nationalist MAGA movement) rather than true necessity, it becomes a framework rejected by the biblical Good Samaritan—and explicitly rebuffed by Pope Francis, who wrote that 'Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.'"

Maybe Vance was onto something when, in 2016, he messaged a former law school roommate that he thought Trump was "America's Hitler." When he sent that message, I doubt he suspected he would later eagerly don the jackboots himself. What changed? Who knows, but it is likely the old story that has motivated countless scoundrels the world over: a lust for power. As Hitler remarked in Mein Kampf, "If you win, you need not have to explain..." Perhaps Vance soothes his conscience with those words.

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I have probably said enough about this unsavory topic, sparked by an excellent film. The fact that I am even able to make such comparisons is profoundly embarrassing to me as an American. But here we are. In the tumultuous first quarter of the 21st century, the discarded political trash of the previous century has somehow become the treasure of the modern right—whether in America's MAGA movement or Germany's rising AfD party, which now boasts significant electoral victories.

As I've lamented many times in this blog, things are not going well for the world. It feels more and more like the late 1930s all over again—perhaps explaining why, during his first term, Trump asked his then-chief of staff John Kelly, "Why can't you be like the German generals?" 

History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. One has only to listen to hear.

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Now, for a digression.

As I wrote at the start of this blog, I have been thoroughly tired out by the endless stream of WWII content produced in just about every entertainment medium, particularly in modern video games. There are literally so many WWII-themed games out there that you don't even have to buy them; they just sort of collect in your game library like barnacles on a ship's hull. Worse, WWII games—particularly those dealing with the Wehrmacht—have an uncomfortable tendency to attract gamers who, um, shall we say, have more than a history buff's interest in the failed Third Reich. For these reasons, I've largely hit the pause button on the genre. But because of the excellence of Downfall, I started poking around again and discovered a fantastic title called Hex of Steel. Developed by a French indie team appropriately named War Frogs Studio, Hex of Steel is an easy-to-play, hard-to-master strategy game operating similarly to the classic 1994 SSI wargame Panzer General or Slitherine's contemporary Panzer Corps. However, unlike those titles that lock the player into the role of Hitler's armed forces for their base campaigns, Hex of Steel lets you command either side of the European conflict, alongside a wealth of scenarios outside the Wehrmacht's conquest. For someone living in a political climate growing increasingly fascist and having little interest in playing a fascist simulator too, that is a welcome relief! What is more, War Frogs Studio made it an all-inclusive title: no need to fork out extra cash for DLC just to play the Allied Powers. That generosity of spirit is all too rare in game studios these days.   

Here is the trailer for the game:

In addition to all those virtues, Hex of Steel is available on Steam, the Apple App Store, and Google Play, with generous demos for all three. (I tried the Android version from Google Play and found it ran smoothly even on my three-year-old Samsung tablet, which is always a bonus.)   Since I was talking about WWII anyway, I thought I'd mention this overlooked title from a small developer who is doing everything right.

Perhaps this will provide a welcome diversion as the world sinks into a shadow that we once thought the sun of democracy had banished nearly a century ago. Afterall, it can be therapeutic to play a wargame that allows us to take the part of the victorious Allied Powers, something that reminds us that fascism and nationalism can be defeated if good people stand together and make it a mission to do so.

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