ABSTRACT
The Downfall focuses on the chaotic denouement to the war, and Hitler's last few days in the Fuhrerbunker underneath the Reichstag, during the final days of the Third Reich, as the Red army gradually encircles Berlin. It juxtaposes scenes underground, in the bunker, with life outside, as the battle for Berlin takes place, with its carnage amongst the tenement streets and courtyards of Berlin. Hitler's pathological irrationality can be exaggerated and this preoccupation may serve to get away from a more disturbing reality, the nature of willful destructiveness. This chapter develops this subject matter by returning to Herbert Rosenfeld's ideas (1971) about 'destructive narcissism'. Rosenfeld was describing metaphorically the dominance of 'bad' parts of the self, over a more vulnerable, dependent, and needy part of the personality that might wish to engage with reality and with ordinary human relationships.
