13 Minutes

13 Minutes is a really important film, cause it tells a really important story, that of Georg Elser the man that was about to kill Hitler in November 1939, little after the start of WWII. It's hard to believe that this event is so little known. I'm not by far as educated as I'd like to be, but you know that I'm pretty much into history and social/political stuff, I've been tons of times in Germany... and I'd never heard about this. On the other hand, I've watched documentaries and one film about the assassination attempt of July 1944. This attempt would have moved forward several months the end of the war, but it pales down in importance when compared to the one of 1939 that could have just stopped it from the beginning.

The story of Georg Elser is that of a real hero, an incredible example of humanism. A humble, incredibly smart (the nazi officials could not believe that he had managed to build that bomb) left wing christian (though close to the German Communist Party he was not affiliated) that fed up with what was happening before his eyes decided to take matters into his own hands and work alone for one year in a thorough plan to bomb out the Adolf motherfucker. Hitler left the venue 13 minutes before the bomb exploded, so those 13 minutes would cause suffering and destruction as humanity had never experienced before. I'm not going to tell you more, you just have to watch the film and search some information about this hero.

The German people is deeply aware of its recent history, of its failure as a society that allowed the Nazi monstrosity to deceive it, poison it and almost destroy it (well, with the rise of AFD this awareness seems to be starting to fade, and I don't say this for whatever the opinions of AFD regarding immigration, but because of their minimization or even approval of multiple aspects of the nazi regime). German society has lived with this feeling of guilt and responsibility for what happened, and you can still feel it today in facts like that the German left (contrary to the pro-Arab obsession of most of the European left) has never been particularly supportive of the Palestinians (unfortunately, this has started to change in the last years, caused by the massive increase of Muslims in the country, that as in the rest of Europe infiltrate any association, political group, whatever... with the only objective to push their own communitarian agenda). I'm waiting for the day when Muslims will infiltrate LGTB organizations to ask for homosexuality to be considered again a sickness and demand funds to get healed... OK, back to the point, so why has this hero been kept relatively hidden? Is it maybe to avoid any lessening in this feeling of guilt? Maybe knowing that there were individuals inside that society that fought against its destruction would reduce the idea of a whole society gone crazy and would reduce the sense of guilt? I don't think so, in that case Germans that saved Jews would also be kept under the carpet...

Maybe the problem lies in the fact that the bombing killed 8 people. One of them was a waitress, I don't know if she was a nazi sympathizer or a beautiful human being, the other 7 were part of the audience, so they were fucking nazis. The dead of an allegedly innocent person as collateral damage of an action that would have saved millions of lives should not undermine the value of such action, so I don't see this as an explanation... So honestly, I have no idea... Reading the Wikipedia entry I can see that he has received some recognition in the last decades, but anyway it seems too poor to me...

Watching this film reminded me of this really interesting German film about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistence movement. Another must see that shows us how one (small) part of the German people fought to their last breath against the Nazi madness.