My Nazi Legacy

One thing that most sane peo­ple do if the sub­ject comes up in seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion is dis­tance them­selves from the Nazis. That’s the default posi­tion. Nazis equals wrong. My Nazi Lega­cy stud­ies a fas­ci­nat­ing excep­tion to this rule and in doing so explores the lim­its of ratio­nal debate, the binds of fam­i­ly loy­al­ty and the net­work of sub­jec­tive inter­pre­ta­tions that cre­ate an individual’s viewpoint.

Horst von Wächter and Niklas Frank are the sons of dead, high-rank­ing Nazi offi­cials whose sig­na­tures are present on paper­work sen­tenc­ing Jew­ish pris­on­ers to death. Horst [son of Otto] has made a game out of find­ing log­i­cal loop­holes that enable him to sym­pa­thise with and so excuse his father’s deeds. Niklas Frank [son of Hanz] renounces his father at all oppor­tu­ni­ties (“My father deserved to die”). Human rights lawyer, Philippe Sands, who lost rel­a­tives in the Holo­caust, nar­rates the doc­u­men­tary while ques­tion­ing the two men as he escorts them on a tour around increas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal sites.

Sands is an intel­lec­tu­al­ly adroit com­pere, Frank pro­vides reas­sur­ing moral ubiq­ui­ty, but it is stub­born, con­tro­ver­sial, infu­ri­at­ing von Wächter who gives the film its bite. This old man in a base­ball cap repeat­ed­ly explains that his father was a good man in a bad sit­u­a­tion. It would be eas­i­er to dis­miss his denial if it was terse, but he is always mea­sured and artic­u­late. Were the sub­ject dif­fer­ent, it would be tempt­ing to applaud his ana­lyt­i­cal inge­nu­ity and the dogged nature of his defence.

Choos­ing not to is an ide­o­log­i­cal posi­tion that makes von Wächter a source of despair. Otto evad­ed con­dem­na­tion at Nurem­berg but, as Sands points out, based on the evi­dence the law would have seen him hanged. Although it can feel like one, this doc­u­men­tary isn’t a tri­al. Under democ­ra­cy, there is clear­ly no sub­ject that cre­ates a con­sen­sus. My Nazi Lega­cy is a con­fronta­tion­al and engross­ing tes­ti­mo­ny to the mat­ter of opinion.