Hitler: The Last Ten Days 1973

The film follows Hauptmann Hoffmann (Simon Ward), an SS officer stationed in the Führerbunker as Berlin’s last days unfold and the Nazi regime teeters toward collapse. From his position inside the bunker, Hoffmann observes a pivotal meeting with Adolf Hitler and the top military staff, where stark warnings from Wilhelm Keitel and Hans Krebs are dismissed. Hitler, stubborn and convinced, orders a renewed assault under Steiner’s command, clinging to the belief that his will can push back the Red Army. Hoffmann, excited by the proximity to the leader, quickly sees through the surface: the senior officers privately despair, even as they toast Hitler’s 56th birthday.

A pact forms among Hoffmann and a circle that includes Hitler’s partner Eva Braun and Joseph Goebbels along with his wife Magda Goebbels. They vow to stay in the bunker together until the end and to die if Berlin falls; the decision cements a grim camaraderie that frames the coming days. Throughout, Hitler refuses to acknowledge the deteriorating situation and clings to grand plans for a future Nazi conquest, even as the reality outside the bunker grows bleaker by the hour.

On the afternoon of 22 April, the mood shifts when General Alfred Jodl reveals that Steiner did not commence the attack—he does not have enough forces to make it viable—and the news pushes Hitler toward a bitter conclusion: he intends to end his life rather than be captured. The staff are left paralyzed by fear of reprisal and unsure how to act without explicit orders from the man who holds ultimate authority. Hoffmann’s resolve wavers as the weight of the truth sinks in, but he is briefly buoyed by a horoscope from 1941 predicting the war’s end, misreading it as a sign that the Allies can be defeated.

As the days pass, senior figures scramble to equilibrate power and purpose. Robert Ritter von Greim is brought in to replace [Göring] in the eyes of the bunker’s leadership, and the sense of a possible pivot slowly gives way to the inescapable reality of defeat. Hoffmann watches as hope fades and the ethics of loyalty collide with the imperative to survive, while the relationship network in the bunker remains tight, bound by fear, duty, and the hollow rituals that mark the regime’s final hours. The various plans and counterplans ripple through the rooms, each echoing the generals’ growing recognition that the war’s end is near.

Hitler’s personal life intrudes on the bunker’s grim calculus as he marries Eva and begins to prepare for the end. Hoffmann’s duties pull him toward the responsibility of safeguarding secrets, including a copy of Hitler’s last will and testament, which he ultimately destroys in a moment of disgust at how easily he was swept into the Nazi cause. In the climactic hours, the tension heightens as the generals debate a scorched-earth policy for what little remains of Berlin, while Hitler retreats to his private chamber. He berates Eva, expressing a cold emptiness he never admitted to anyone else, and she takes a cyanide capsule in the moments before a final gunshot shatters the bunker’s uneasy calm.

The staff respond to the gunshot with a grim, almost stoic ritual: cigarettes are lit, orders are whispered, and life in the bunker carries on with a broken sense of purpose. The story holds steady to a quiet, clinical honesty about a moment when a world ends and another, darker one begins to take shape on the ruins of a city and a regime that refused to accept the truth. The result is a somber, measured portrait of power, illusion, and the human beings caught in the machine’s final, catastrophic gears.