The Architecture of Doom (1989)

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Based on the interesting theory that the Third Reich was merely an expression of its architects' desire to create, Peter Cohen has written, directed, produced and edited this compilation documentary. Many of Hitler's top guns were not only well educated but had creative bents - Hitler was a… More Based on the interesting theory that the Third Reich was merely an expression of its architects' desire to create, Peter Cohen has written, directed, produced and edited this compilation documentary. Many of Hitler's top guns were not only well educated but had creative bents - Hitler was a frustrated watercolorist, Goebbels had an unpublished novel and play to his credit and von Sitach was a poet. It is the contention in this "documentary" that the creative urges of these men are what drove them to try to reshape their entire environment into their own unique vision of a perfect society - helping to design everything from the clothing worn to the houses built, and molding even the surviving humans into their own monocular vision of mankind by labeling anything different than the Aryan mold as diseased and degenerate. A unique postulate as to the origins of the Nazi movement, Cohen fails to account for the fact that there were numerous antecedents when Hitler was young who were equally racist and bigoted and their politics can be easily seen in Hitler's own molding and shaping into the monster he became. However, the notion that for Hitler and his group aesthetic considerations often outweighed the mundane and pragmatic is borne out by much of the evidence presented in this documentary, making it worthwhile as a historical perspective from a slightly different angle than usually seen when discussing the rise of the Third Reich. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi