The English title of a German movie called Napola once again tries to reinforce in American thinking the linkage of Hitler with satan. Consider the title..."Before the Fall". What image does that conjure up for you? The biblical paradise that was the earth before satan gave the apple to Eve and she seduced Adam into joining her in choosing evil.

I have not seen this movie (and I wont) but from the review below it is obvious that the pre-Hitler world was paradise, Adam and Eve are the German people, National Socialism is the apple and, of course, the always resourceful Hitler is satan.

Metaphors can be very dangerous because they operate outside of our fully rational thought process. They tend to work more on our emotions than on our logical abilities. It is considered bad form to pick metaphors apart and state them in a more literal sense as I have done here.

People like to be comforted by the delusions that metaphors provide for them. They don't like to think hard and rationally about what is being put into their heads. Go along, get along. Don't think, absorb. Hitler is satan, jews are victims to be pitied and paid for their suffering.

The same crap...over and over and over.

At least until WNs say, "Now it's over!".

The Path to Power in Hitler's Germany
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
One of the cornerstones of Hitler's plan for world domination was a network of elite schools to groom young Germans for positions of power both at home and abroad. The National-Political Institutes of Learning - known as Napolas - were a major component of this network, using ruthless military techniques to encourage loyalty to the Reich and conformity with Nazi ideology.

Set in Berlin in 1942, Dennis Gansel's intensely beautiful film, "Before the Fall," brings us inside one of these Napolas in the company of Friedrich Weimer (Max Riemelt), a young factory worker whose boxing talent has caught the eye of a school recruiter. Lured by promises of wealth and Olympic glory, Friedrich defies his Nazi-hating father and is soon immersed in the school's brutal curriculum, a sadistic combination of boot camp and brainwashing. Crisply uniformed and touchingly eager, he and the other new cadets learn weaponry and anti-Semitism with equal punctiliousness, belting out the school song with shiny, happy faces. There is no time, or intellectual space, for the flexing of a moral conscience.

Shot on location in Prague, "Before the Fall" presents its heated material in cool blues and wintry grays, creating a forbidding world filled with boys who, unlike Friedrich, have had little say in their confinement. Knowing this, Mr. Gansel (who also wrote the film, along with Maggie Peren) reserves his contempt for the adults: brutish teachers who humiliate the weaker students, with tragic results, and a loathsome governor (Justus Von Dohnanyi) sickened by his sensitive, poetry-loving son, Albrecht (Tom Schilling).

In scene after scene, Mr. Gansel faces his country's past without flinching, presenting unimaginable cruelties through the lens of Friedrich and Albrecht's growing intimacy - the film's emotional core and the one thing the Nazi instructors can't control.

It all ends in a rather predictable, if photogenic, tragedy. But if "Before the Fall" feels a tad overdetermined, it also feels emotionally honest. Calmly and carefully, Mr. Gansel makes large points with small scenes: in one particularly creepy example, a doctor maps and measures Friedrich's Aryan features, assigning him a rating of "Nordic, Class 1B." The pride in the room is palpable, a chilling testament to the seductiveness of groupthink and the allure of superiority, however illusory. For that one moment, the sovereignty of blond, blue-eyed perfection seems the most logical notion in the world.