Grey Wolf - Escape Of Adolf Hitler [DVD]

To my mind there is no detail on how Hitler actually escaped the Berlin Bunker ad escaped to Argentina. To find this you need to see the very solid academic analysis in the series 'Hunting Hitler: The Final Evidence' on the History Channel. The series has excellent academic credentials. This series actually used the released documents from MI5, the FBI and other intelligence agencies. Why it was felt necessary to not release the secret documents until now is beyond belief.. What the book The Grey Wolf: Finding Hitler reveals was that he lived a fairly good life in Argentina until his death in February 1962.Fine, we know he was cremated and his ashes scattered,, where is open to debate, but it is stated that Hitler remained in Argentina when history tells us that the Nazi sympathiser President Peron was overthrown much earlier than Hitler's death. Most Nazis at the time of Peron' s overthrow made a very quick dash to Chile which was more than welcoming. Did in fact Hitler go to Chile or as this book and documentary say that he remained in Argentina to his death. Boorman held the purse strings to the Nazi fortune, did he help Hitler. Martin Boorman ,did not die in Berlin in 1945 he escaped with he help of the Red Cross and the Catholic Church. There is still more to come but regrettably actual first hand witnesses no longer exist.

It’s a pity that they clearly didn’t have the funding for a ‘real’ movie and settled on giving it the essential credentials for a film (the crucial 90 minute mark) by padding it out with a tedious night club scene, for example, and drawn-out scenes of Hitler sobbing in his final days. Everything is even summed up at the end, with little more to add, just to extend the runtime.As is acknowledged at the end of ‘Grey Wolf’, the accepted history is that Hitler and Eva Braun killed themselves in the Fuhrerbunker after marrying, and their bodies were cremated. The Soviets bluffed everyone when Zukhov was forced to claim they were still hunting Hitler after 1945.The movie’s closing line is: “We were lied to.” Yes, we were, but it was not that Hitler escaped to Argentina (although many Nazis did), it was the fact that Stalin refused to confirm Hitler’s death and ordered the bodies brought to him by train. This sadistic denial just adds up to more evidence that Stalin was 300% more ‘the worst and most evil criminal of the twentieth century" than Hitler. The point being that this movie would not be necessary if the world had simply been given the facts and closure in 1945.As it is, even as an ‘alternative history’, this movie’s just too amateurish and cheap to be enjoyed and, although the place names will be recognisable to Argentinians and might lend some credibility as a route for fleeing Nazis, to outsiders they mean nothing, so there’s no grounding.

If you are buying this then you are probably aware of the subject matter and the level of research that has gone into it - so there is not much point in moaning about that. I suggest you listen to the free pod cast on 'The Unexplained with Howard Hughes' where Gerrard Williams talks about the 18 trips he made to Argentina to research the book. Incidentally, a writer would never make profit on book sales (in this category) to come close to covering that expenditure, so a level of personal dedication has to be the driving force.As for the film, it actually is quite well made - the acting and cinematography is very respectful and it has the look of a decent TV drama / doc. But, and this is a really BIG 'but', the pacing is unbelievably slow. No editor would ever edit a film or drama to look like this. This will never be shown on TV in it's current state. After 20 minutes I had to watch this at double speed and it was still slow. In truth, it is a good and interesting 30 min TV dramatised doc. spun out heavily to an unwatchable 90 mins. A great shame as there are some good production values in this. I can't imagine the pacing was the editors choice, they were probably instructed to stretch it out so they could call it a 'feature'.

Who knows if this is true? I have always found it hard to believe that if the Hitlers had ended up in a hole outside the bunker, that more photographs of them do not exist or have come to light. Also, if it were the case, surely much more would have been made of this as with Mussolini. It can't be said that it was too horrific to show as film of the death camps was being shown as they were uncovered.But, on the other hand, would not more photographs and evidence of their survival have come to light before?

I was really worried this film would not live up to the book, which is a powerful and important read, leading to much implications of how and why history is rewritten. Having seen the horrible reviewer that wrote before the film was even out, I find it sad that such a case is not more widely known and is rebuffed as plausible. I am glad this film was made an an effective manner of narrative, drama, interview and presented an overview of what the book shows in a more complex manner only accessible through reading. Gladly I am impressed, as was my flatmate how found the premise preposterous and now he is going to buy the book and is already finding the basic evidence trail so widely available in the reputable press. Glad this translated well and deserves to be seen even though I fear it wil not be seen widely enough.