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The Friday night Hitler documentary

So seriously, do we really need SBS’s weekly Friday Night Hitler Documentary? I mean, almost every single Friday night, or so it seems.

Don’t get me wrong: I know it’s vitally important for the human race remember and learn from the terrible deeds of the past, but don’t people get sick of this stuff?

Okay, so maybe it’s not every Friday night. But looking at the last six months or so, they have been showing a LOT of documentaries about WW2:

Fri 9/5/2008 8:30pm: Deadly Battles of WW1
Fri 16/5/2008 8:30pm: Tiananmen Square: The Tank Man
Fri 23/5/2008 Eurovision
Fri 30/5/2008 8:30pm: The Pacific War In Colour: Part 1

Fri 6/6/2008 8:30pm: The Pacific War In Colour: Part 2
Fri 13/6/2008 8:30pm: The Wehrmacht: The Blitzkrieg
Fri 20/6/2008 8:30pm: The Wehrmacht: The Turning Point
Fri 27/6/2008 8:30pm: The Wehrmacht: The Crimes

Fri 4/7/2008 8:30pm: The Wehrmacht: Resistance
Fri 11/7/2008 8:30pm: The Wehrmacht: To The Bitter End
Fri 18/7/2008 8:30pm: Not Nazis or even WW2 for once: Space Hackers
Fri 25/7/2008 8:30pm: Some other cheery tale called The Body Hunters

Fri 1/8/2008 8:30pm: The Body Hunters part 2
Fri 8/8/2008 8:30pm: The Body Hunters part 3
Fri 15/8/2008 Olympics
Fri 22/8/2008 Olympics
Fri 29/8/2008 8:30pm: Nixon: The Man You Loved To Hate

Fri 5/9/2008 8:30pm: An Ariel Dorfman doco instead
Fri 12/9/2008 8:30pm: Inside The Mind Of Adolf Hitler
Fri 19/9/2008 8:30pm: As It Happened: Tito’s Ghosts (ooh, mixing it up a bit, let’s try a different WW2 Fascist)
Fri 26/9/2008 8:30pm: A merciful break from the doom and gloom: Marvin Gaye

Fri 3/10/2008 8:30pm: As It Happened: Hitler’s Sunken Secret
Fri 10/10/2008 8:30pm: Between Gandhi and Hitler
Fri 17/10/2008 8:30pm: The SS: The Struggle for Power
Fri 24/10/2008 8:30pm: The SS: The Madness Of Himmler
Fri 31/10/2008 8:30pm: The SS: The Rise and Fall of Heydrich

Fri 7/11/2008 8:30pm: The SS: Death’s Head
Fri 14/11/2008 8:30pm: The SS: The Waffen

(Source: SBS online schedule)

I’ve enjoyed plotting little graphs recently, so here’s another one:

Graph of Friday night SBS programmes

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

15 replies on “The Friday night Hitler documentary”

I studied Adolf Hitler last year in Unit 1/2 VCE History, it was very interesting. I am doing 3/4 revolutions France and Russia. Can SBS put on more Russian Revoultion docos on the air?

By the way Daniel the PTUA AGM was pretty cool last night.

I found the recent documentary on the creation of the SA and SS to be quite interesting … had no idea about the antagonism between them nor the behind-the-scenes power plays that went on. General Rohme(sp?) as head of the SA portraying himself as an alternative to Hitler and the general attitude of the Wehrmacht to the whole mess …

WWII Germany is always interesting, especially since my great-grandfather was a wafty. I like learning about things that happened, considering it was stuff that directly affected my family.

History channel on Foxtel is just as bad with the Hitler/Germany doco’s…ok, ok, we’re convinced already, the bloke was a fully-fledged fruit cake, programmers are preaching to the choir!
Good one coming up Nov 11th (Remembrance Day) investigating names of soldiers on War Memorials The Not Forgotten

The lesson is not that Hitler was mad, it’s more that we should ensure it doesn’t happen again. Genocide is a really serious topic and it shouldn’t happen again. Yes, I hear you say, but there are other countries where it’s happened sincer WWII. I know that and it just means there are places where we need to keep putting on the pressure to hopefully make sure they don’t kill off whole areas of society.

Melbourne has a very large population of Holocaust survivors. It’s either the largest or second largest in the world. There are people who feel the topic can’t be brought to public attention often enough. Many families here came out by themselves, being the ONLY surviving member of their family. These people are now beginning to die out and they are trying to ensure their stories don’t die with them.

Melbourne has the largest Holocaust survivor population outside of Israel and the US.

As for Hitler, I’m a bit of a WW2 buff so SBS is a Godsend. One of, if not The darkest moment in human history, the part that keeps me focused is the slide from one of the shining intellectual beacons of Europe and the world, to 1945. How humans can be so barbaric to each other, on an industrial scale, is simply beyond comprehension. These days genocide is pretty much limited to either very small episodes or 3rd World countries that lack the same cultural, scientific and developed status that Germany enjoyed in the 20s and 30s. Germany, prior to the Nazis, was amazingly open and permissive.

Oh dear my hubby loves this stuff. I can’t help but think he already knows everything there is to know about Hitler and WW2 but he continues to go back for more!

Some good points, all.

Though I wonder how many holocaust survivors are Orthodox Jews, and therefore unable to watch the documentaries on Friday nights when SBS airs them. (And bear in mind they’re broadcast nationwide, not just in Melbourne.)

Newstopia commented on this recently. I think Hitler wanted tartan to re-upholster his couch, and quotes on Scotchgarding. Tasteful as always.

For all the banging on that the Jewish population does about the genocide and how it should never be allowed to happen again, it really strikes me as self aggrandizing. If they actually cared about the “never happens again”, perhaps they would have been jumping up and down about Rwanda, with Israel sending in tens on thousands of highly armed troops. Or into Yugoslavia. Or Darfur. But we heard nary a peep. Maybe the “never happens again” thing is just “never happens to us again”.

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