 | There is no ideology more anathema to Objectivism that Nazism. And nothing characterizes the evil of Nazism more than the “Final Solution” – the systematic murder of over six million Jews in death factories throughout German-occupied eastern Europe during the final years of World War II.
With chilling brilliance, Conspiracy dramatizes the infamous Wannsee Conference – the two-hour meeting held in the winter of 1942 that planned and approved the Final Solution. A dozen Nazi Bureaucrats were invited to a lakeside manor in Berlin for a meeting under the jurisdiction of SS-General Reinhardt Heydrich (played by Kenneth Branagh - Hamlet, Frankenstein) and organized by his adjutant, SS-Colonel Adolf Eichmann (played by Stanley Tucci – The Terminal, The Big Night.)
The movie never leaves the Wannsee house, so relies heavily on the actors’ dramatic performances - which are superb. Of special note is Branagh, chilling in his portrayal of the model Aryan, Reinhardt Heydrich. Ostensibly urbane, cultured and handsome, cracks occasionally appear in his veneer of polished civility and we glimpse the true monster beneath. A warning to us all that politeness is not necessarily indicative of virtue.
Also excellent is Colin Frith (Love Actually, The Importance of Being Earnest) as Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart, a senior legal advisor to the Interior Ministry, who drafted the infamous Nuremburg Laws, defining Jews as second-class citizens. Stuckart is initially opposed the Final Solution mooted by Eichmann and Heydrich for pragmatic reasons; to avoid the “legal train-wreck” that was to follow. When challenged as a “Jew-lover,” he launches an unnerving tirade of intellectual anti-Semitism, asserting that he has a stronger basis for hating the Jew than the typical ignorant Nazi.
Conspiracy’s subtitle is appropriately “The banality of evil.” A dozen functionaries sit around a table, casually discussing train timetables while enjoying refreshments. They speak in inoffensive euphemisms that only hint at their true meaning, as if the words they use absolve them of their monstrous actions (“evacuation” is code for extermination at Wannsee.) Dissent is silenced with a sharp glance or a veiled threat. (“I would so hate to see the SS take an undue interest in you.”) Sadly, the Wannsee legacy of “political correctness,” speaking in “nuance” and groupthink lives on in the boardrooms and capital cities of today.
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