DOWNFALL [GerMAn: DER UNTERGANG] 89
wanted to make a more mainstream film about Adolf Hitler. Developments in 2002
gave him the fresh source material he needed. Traudl Junge, Hitler’s personal sec-
retary from 1942 to 1945, wrote a memoir in 1947–1948 but left it unpublished
for more than half a century. El derly and suffering from terminal cancer in 2001,
Junge was fi nally persuaded by her friend, Anne Frank biographer Melissa Müller,
to let her book, Bis Zur Letzten Stunde [ Until the Final Hour], be published and to be
interviewed for a documentary film by Austrian artist André Heller. Junge’s book
came out on 1 January 2002, and Heller’s film, Im toten Winkel— Hitlers Sekretärin
[Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary], was released six weeks later. Soon thereafter histo-
rian Joachim Fest published a more objective account of the same events: Der Unter-
gang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches [Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third
Reich]. Sensing the time was fi nally right for a docudrama on Hitler— a subject here-
tofore taboo in Germany— Eichinger wrote a screenplay that detailed the last 10
days of Hitler’s life in the bunker, based primarily on Junge and Fest, but also draw-
ing on a number of other sources: Albert Speer’s Inside the Third Reich (1969); Gerhard
Boldt’s Hitler’s Last Days: An Eye- Witness Account (first En glish translation 1973);
Siegfried Knappe’s 1992 memoir, Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936–1949
(1992); and Dr. Ernst- Günther Schenck’s Das Notlazarett unter der Reichskanzlei: Ein
Arzt erlebt Hitlers Ende in Berlin [Field Hospital Under the Reich Chancellery: A Doctor
Experiences Hitler’s End in Berlin] (1995). After completing a script, Eichinger sent it
to director Oliver Hirschbiegel, who agreed to take on the proj ect. Soon thereafter,
acclaimed Swiss actor Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) was cast as Hitler. To prepare for
the role, Ganz researched the part by visiting a hospital to study patients with Par-
kinson’s disease (from which Hitler suffered). He also studied an 11- minute tape
recording of Hitler in private conversation with Finnish Field Marshal Carl Gustaf
Mannerheim secretly made in June 1942. Hirschbiegel also made every effort to
achieve authenticity, especially with regard to the look of the Führerbunker. As he
told interviewer Carlo Cavagna, “The bunker was constructed at the Bavaria Stu-
dios in Munich, following precisely the floor plan. What you see is really how it
looked... I told them I wanted it exactly the way it was, and did thorough research
about even where the table stood, and the position of the chairs, and things like
that. And, furthermore, it was a fixed set. You couldn’t take walls out. I couldn’t
remove anything, really. There was no, ‘Let’s take out that wall and use a long lens.’
So it was like we were shooting in the [ actual] bunker” (Cavagna, 2005).
Production
Principal photography of Downfall took place over a 12- week period (12 August–15
November 2003). All the interior scenes inside Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair in East Prus sia
and in the Berlin Führerbunker were shot on sets constructed at Bavaria Studios
near Munich. Ironically, Hirschbiegel chose St. Petersburg, Rus sia, to stand in for
war- torn Berlin. On certain streets of the city the architecture was virtually indis-
tinguishable from Hitler’s capital because St. Petersburg’s early 18th- century build-
ings had been designed by such German architects as Leo von Klenze and Georg
Peter Bärenz. The filmmakers found a street with empty buildings and obtained
permission to block it off for many weeks. There they built a façade of the war-
torn Reich Chancellery and installed Berlin- style street lamps, signs, WWII