Bill Moyers’ The Democrat and the Dictator
Bill Moyers’ The Democrat and the Dictator (1984)This PBS Walk Through the Twentieth Century documentary is a classic teaching film, highly recommended for courses in Modern European History, US History II, Comparative Government and the Holocaust. To impart the horrific nature of totalitarianism, the film offers parallel treatment of the two transcendent heads of state, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolph Hitler, whose presence on the world stage was contemporaneous.
The film’s great strengths are both its organizing principle of comparative treatment as well Moyers’ elegant and timeless script. Also noteworthy is the film’s extensive use of excerpts of Nazi Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous Triumph of the Will, generally considered one of the most influential propaganda films in history, if not the most influential. Finally, and importantly, subtitle translations of the Fuehrer’s speeches, (filmed in close-up) make their brutality and pathology all the more accessible and therefore more useful for introductory level students.
The film’s departure point is Moyers own frame of reference: an old tiny wooden radio, of the type used in the East Texas home of his youth, sets the stage. For Moyers, both FDR’s and Hitler’s voices, emerging from that box,-- one reasoned the other hysterical-- dominated the larger outside world . For Moyers, they were the voices of “diametrically opposed ideas about the human race.”
The Democrat and the Dictator examines both individuals’ family origins, early life experiences and evolving ideologies. For example, the film’s treatment of Hitler’s pre-WWI years in Vienna focuses on his discovery of Wagnerian music, one expression Austrian-Germanic glory and, ultimately, a vehicle for aiding the restoration of a mighty Germanic Empire.
If faculty have time for only one film on the Hitler period--and perhaps only for a portion of one film--a must is the final 15 minutes of The Democrat and the Dictator. Stark and unforgettable is its depiction of the triumph of savagery in the totalitarian state.
Rita Heller County College of Morris rheller@ccm.edu
