A NAZI LEGACY: Intriguing But No Revelation

In What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy two sons are brought together by a shared legacy, the legacy mentioned in the title. Both are the sons of high-ranking Nazi officers. Both of their fathers played their part in the Final Solution.

But where the pair differ is in their judgments of their fathers’ actions, and it’s this that provides the film with its reason for being.

History’s Reverberations

It’s an undeniably fascinating setup. The first son is Niklas Frank, son of Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of occupied Poland. Frank is haunted by the crimes of his father, a distant father who suspected that Frank was not actually his biological son. Recalling the one affectionate incident between father and son, he describes seeing his father shaving and him playfully putting some shaving foam on Frank’s nose. It’s the small incidental details and recollections like this that save the film from becoming too dry and detached.

The second son is Horst von Wächter, son of Otto Wächter, the Nazi governor in Galicia, Ukraine. Von Wächter’s attitude towards the role his father played in the Holocaust is altogether more troubling. Claiming that he was a helpless cog in the machine, a man who tried his best to help the Jews he encountered despite conventional wisdom within the Nazi Party, Von Wächter defends his father’s legacy determinedly, unwilling to hear a single word said against him.

The two men, Frank and Von Wächter, make for an amiable pair, despite their clear divisions. They’re joined by human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, who also writes the film and provides the voiceover. Members of Sands’ family were killed in the area of Ukraine presided over by Otto Wächter. No one in the frame is free from the weight, guilt and urgency of history that seems not to have dulled but sharpened as it’s been passed down the generations. And when the three men find themselves at the site of the mass grave in front of which Sands’ forefathers stood and were shot by men under the orders of Von Wächter’s father, the film has reached its excruciating best. By that point, all sympathy for Von Wächter has long gone.

Not even documentary evidence that Otto Wächter ordered the murders of Jews and was complicit in the Final Solution is enough to sway Horst. Even more troubling still are the present day political waters in which Von Wächter swims. With the rise of Ukrainian nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment over the last few years, some factions of the far Right have adopted the legacy of Otto Wächter for their own ends. Von Wächter attends what can only be described as neo-Nazi get-togethers in Ukraine, and basks in the adoration the other attendees show for his father, who is for them a symbol of resistance against Russia.

Frank even goes as far as accusing Von Wächter of being a fascist. Many in the audience will argue with his conclusion after watching what started out as Von Wächter’s understandable inability to accept his father’s heinous crimes morph into outright celebration of him as he stands shoulder to shoulder with neo-Nazis. If you can show such support for a high-ranking Nazi and his actions, how far away are you from supporting the Holocaust more generally? It’s not necessarily a straightforward question, and it’s made even messier by the complicated familial ties. It’s certainly hard to imagine such a seemingly intelligent and gentle man denying Nazi crimes if they hadn’t been committed by his own father.

Focus & Form

The film is blunt and focused, and this might be to its detriment. The frustration that Frank and Sands feel towards Von Wächter is evident and understandable. But this creates a film that is geared solely towards changing his mind. The aim is to argue with him until he gives up on the idea of his father as a noble man as opposed to the Nazi war criminal he was. That’s something they never achieve, and they never will. It not only would have been fairer to let Von Wächter speak his thoughts in a more in-depth way, it would also have made for a more interesting documentary.

In narrowing the focus to such an extent, you can’t help but feel that there’s much they’re missing out on. For example, only incidental remembrances give us a glimpse into what it was like to grow up in a Nazi family. And as soon as something interesting is hit upon – such as Frank’s mother’s overwhelming pride at being a Nazi even after the war was lost – the point is dropped as quickly as it was picked up.

The formal aspects of the film, under the remit of director David Evans, are frustratingly miscalculated too. The narration is often detached and uninteresting, and the archive footage is never as compelling as watching the three men simply talk. There’s no flair or creativity hinted at; the direction would be better suited to mild Tuesday night television than cinema.

There’s no doubt, A Nazi Legacy manages to squeeze enough intrigue out of its premise to carry it for its run time. Watching the horrors of the past come to life in the present is fascinating. But the film constructs its own barriers in the form of directorial conservatism and the hectoring nature of some of the discussions with Von Wächter. As a result, it remains interesting, but offers no great revelations.

How well do you think the filmmakers succeeded in handling the difficult subject matter?

A Nazi Legacy is in U.K. cinemas now and was released on 6th November in U.S.A. International release dates can be found here.