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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Comedy > Mystery > Fraud > British TV > Mini-Series > Selling Hitler (1991/Acorn DVD Set)

Selling Hitler (1991/Acorn DVD Set)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Episodes: B

 

 

The Holocaust, WWII, the Nazis, and just about everything else associated with the period from the rise of the Third Reich in the 1930’s to the end of the war in 1945 are all big business.  From those who rightfully assert the Holocaust’s importance to history, to those who ludicrously deny its happening, there is money to be made.  Everyone can agree that Adolf Hitler sits at the nexus of this phenomenon, the hundreds of hours of footage of him leading the Nazis into a world war that cost millions of lives can be so compelling as to make it difficult for the viewer to look away.

 

It stands to reason that in the decades following the war, callous profiteers might try to take advantage of this shameful period in Germany’s history.  No greater example of this exists than the story of the Hitler Diaries.  A hoax perpetrated in 1983 by German forger Konrad Kujau, the Hitler Hoax included more than forty volumes purported to be Hitler’s personal diaries.  When they were revealed as fakes, several careers were ruined, and Kujau and the German journalist Gerd Heidemann were sentenced to forty-two months in prison on various charges.

 

Selling Hitler tells this sordid tale in five episodes.  Produced in 1991, Acorn Media has released it in a two-disc set along with a short documentary on the hoax.  True to the actual events, Selling Hitler introduces an edge of dark humor into the production that helps underscore the desperate avarice that drove these men to perpetrate such an act.  Jonathan Pryce makes an excellent Gerd Heidemann, a once great journalist searching for any sort of life-line to pull himself from the mire of a stalled career.  Alexei Sayle strikes just the right pitch as the forger, Kujau, injecting just a bit of the zaniness that made him so successful on the classic Young Ones comedy show.

 

These episodes feature a great ensemble cast, including Doctor Who’s Tom Baker as Manfred Fischer, the editor of the German periodical Stern that so unwittingly pushed the diaries’ authenticity.  The excellent casting and solid execution make the re-telling of this absurd but true tale well worth watching.

 

 

-   Scott Pyle


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