The Black Fox

This Oscar winner for Best Documentary is a harrowing look at the rise and fall of Adolph Hitler. Narrated by Marlene Dietrich (who, interestingly, sounds a bit like Barbara Walters here), the film uses Goethe's moral fable "Reynard the Fox" to illustrate how Hitler weaseled his way into power. As opposed to other WWII documentaries, the emphasis here is on Hitler himself, with a step by step detailing of his rise to the head of the Nazi Party, followed by his eventual crowning as Chancellor, and his putting into motion the degenerate plans for Aryan supremacy outlined in Mein Kampf. Over 50 million people would die in Hitler's war, a staggering loss of humanity in mankind's darkest hour in modern times. The film aptly demonstrates that it was the Western world's policy of "appeasement" that allowed Hitler's war machine to rumble across Europe, and, in the end, Hitler's own megalomania that led to foolish military decisions resulting in the collapse of the Third Reich. In the final third of the film, viewers see several photographs set in the concentration camps, where the ultimate toll for the world's folly was methodically and brutally collected. These snapshots of man's inhumanity to man continue to have the power to disturb (and hopefully they always will). Highly recommended. (Available from most distributors.)