Downfall - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Downfall or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Downfall

[jamie]

During the premiere in Germany, a large part of the audience broke down in tears at the end. Every person remained seated until the last of the credits were shown and the lights remained dimmed.

[ivan]

In the scene where Peter Kranz and other teens return home, they stop near a dead young woman in an armored half-track. This incident refers to a well-known photo. The woman is supposed to be the member of the Norwegian Red Cross, attached to SS Division "Nordland." The Czech-produced half-track OT-810 (post-war production) was used in the movie.

[cameron]

The Goebbels children are reading a German translation of the "Sam Pig" stories by popular English children's author Alison Uttley when Magda Goebbels arrives with Dr. Stumpfegger.

[mathew]

This is a list of the Goebbels children and their ages at the time they were murdered by their mother: Helga, 12Hilde, 11Helmut, 10Holde, 8Hedde, 6Heidi, 4Magda Goebbels had another son from her first marriage, Harald Quandt, who was born in 1921. He served in the Luftwaffe during the War, was captured by the Allies in 1944; therefore he was not in the Bunker in the final days and was the only member of the family to survive the War. He died in 1967.

[bernice]

Karl Richter, a member of the German NPD, managed to get into the movie via the normal way. He played the uncredited part of Generalfeldmarschall Keitel's adjutant. He later expressed his pleasure and satisfaction when the casting department asked him to try on the uniform, lift his right arm and shout "Heil Hitler." The filmmakers did not know who he was and that he actually was quite experienced in performing the salute.

[wallace]

During the letters montage, Magda Goebbels is seen writing a letter to her son, Harald Quandt (there is a picture of him in front of her), by her first husband, industrialist Günther Quandt. He was her only child to survive the war. In 1944, as a Lieutenant in the Luftwaffe, Quandt was injured and captured by the Allies in Italy. He was released in 1947 and later died in an air crash in 1967.

[jamie]

Of the thirty-seven named real-life people featured as characters in the film, Rochus Misch was the only one who was still alive when the film was released. He died on September 5, 2013 at the age of 96.

[duane]

Rochus Misch outlived the much younger actor who portrayed him, Heinrich Schmieder. Schmieder died in 2010 at age 40 and the real Misch died in 2013 at age 96.

[gerald]

The April 23, 1945 telegram that Adolf Hitler received from Goering indicating that he was planning to announce himself head of state under the assumption that Hitler was incapacitated, had been taken prisoner or was dead, was sold at auction in July 2015 for US $55,000. The document had a history of its own, passing first into the hands of United States Army Captain Benjamin Bradin in 1945, after Bradin took it off of a desk as he was collecting war souvenirs from the Hitler Bunker. It later passed into the hands of Bradin's son, who then gave it as a present to a professor at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina. That professor in turn gave it to another student who ultimately sold it in 2015.

[kim]

Bruno Ganz practiced Adolf Hitler's distinct Austrian accent with the help of a young actor from Hitler's area in Upper Austria.

[janice]

Many of Adolf Hitler's lines are historically accurate, based on accounts from Albert Speer and Traudl Junge. Most of them, however, are from earlier dates.

[victoria]

The film takes place in November 1942 and from April 20 to May 8, 1945.

[addison]

The film is based on the books "Der Untergang" by historian Joachim Fest and "Bis zur letzten Stunde" by Traudl Junge, Adolf Hitler's last private secretary from 1942 to 1945.

[sara]

Also helping Bruno Ganz in preparing for the role was the unique, only known recording of Adolf Hitler when he held a private conversation with Field Marshal Gustaf Mannerheim of Finland; at that time, he was a World War II ally of Germany against the Soviet Union. Hitler unexpectedly showed up to congratulate Mannerheim on his 75th birthday on June 4, 1942. Finnish intelligence agents secretly made the recording in a train wagon, as Hitler did not allow recordings nor photographs to be taken in private. Some eleven minutes of the recording feature relaxed, normal-tone talk in which Hitler generally describe his views about the war. One of two copies of the tape was discovered in 1992 and has since been studied by scientists and historians.