Rating: 
Summary: Hitler's art-school rejection unleashed monstrous bitterness
Review: At 120 minutes, Architecture of Doom should not deter a sensible, thoughtful viewer from shunning an exhaustively lengthy documentary, with such an imposing title. This item is a valuable visual history collectible and frame for frame is worth its price in DVD ($20.95). My copy, though, is VHS, acquired two years ago, hence if I strongly recommend it to other viewers with ample store of attention span, then this fresh DVD copy delivers a more impactful presentation, much much better than stone age VHS. The film ended with the unprecedented conclusion that the Nazi war cannot be defined alone by the normal raison d' etre of warfare: territorial expansion, exploitation of neighbours' resources, or simply to settle old or new scores. Hitler and his war was also unleashed to mould - terrifyingly,literally - a society who will define his ideal of perfection and superiority. The Jews, the Russians and native German themselves who were misfortuned to be incapacitated by mental and physical retardation and defects, have to be eliminated because they were infections and parasites against what should be a hygienically and genetically superior German "Volk body." The war has simply justified an excuse to eliminate them, to such an obliterative brutality. Architecture features two valuable propaganda films that were not issued before as a full length film like "Triumph of the Will" is today. These are "The Wandering Jew" and another which likened Jews to the anopheles mosquito. The former equated European Jewry with rat infestations, the latter emphatically advocated the extermination of Jews as should be done with the pestering mosquito. For these alone, the viewer will be given a "time-transporting" avenue to "feel" how the Nazis fiendishly indoctrinated their willing executioners to begin hating the Jews through the cinematic medium. Valuable also are color footages of Nuremberg rallies and obscure monochrome footages of Hitler planning and mulling over his grandiose monuments which he plans to build when the war is over and complete victory is achieved, in what would consists for a new Berlin, more splendid, and bigger and mightier than Paris or classical Athens and Rome. These monuments on blueprints and lifesize dioramas, visualized by Albert Spheer,one of which was "cinematographically realized" in the film "Motherland" (about Hitler victorious and presiding over a European empire called Germania), are what the film's title refers to. A sizable portion of Architecture expounded on the artistic backgrounds of the leading Nazi hierarchy, beginning of course with Hitler. According to Nazi historian Trevor Roper, Hitler's rejection by a Vienna Fine Arts School unfortunately planted the germseed of bitterness on young Hitler. When he assumed absolute leadership of Germany, it can almost be put as poetic justice that he strengthened and "carved" anew his country according to his aesthetic ideals. Presumably, it must have made his bygone rejectors in Austria's E'cole de Arts wet their pants. During Hitler's rule, degenerate artworks, like the works of Picasso, were ridiculed and effectively banned. Architecture presented the fine details how Hitler meticulously revised the definition of what is art, during that period in European history. While waging war in two fronts, Hitler's native artistry compulsed him to also attend to the selection of what should be exhibited in German art museums. If there's something that could be commended about this German monster, it is his decent and conservative standard for art that truly glorifies beauty rather than "modernistic" art that only brings ugliness. Architecture presented an array of "degenerate" paintings and sculptures some of which were by people like Picasso. If the viewer would be very objective and discerning about it, chances are that he'll be provoke to ask himself if the Nazis were, at least, have gotten it "right" in a single instance, with their choice for good and bad art. On my experience, what was condemned by the Nazis, as Architecture has impressively showcased, were not much different than what I find today as modern art. They glorify ugliness and obscure and alters the human figure as if the artist was hallucinating. The only diff'rence is that the Nazis unjustifiably attributed their degenerate art as the work of Jews and dissenters who wants to bring the standards down, and in so doing "infect" the sanitized German body organism. Architecture brings you sights of retardates and insanes whom the Nazis condemned as unfit to co-exist with healthier folks, thus, before the concentration camps were on full horrible operation, the crematuriums for mental condemnees were already churning out copious smokes. Tear-inducing footages of Jews now being rounded up for firing squad executions gives you a glimpse of the last seconds of lives that are to be extinguished without any dignity or reason. To sanitized the Final Solution, the Nazis engaged instead the authoritative hands of professional doctors to switch on the exhaust pipes of the gas chambers, instead of the pedestrian butchers. After watching Architecture, you'll learn a new term: Cyclone B. Watching this work affords the viewer a glimpse of both the (potential) glory and what were so reprehensible about Hitler and his movement. "Murder took on the guise of a hygienic measure." After this film, buy also for your video reference library "The Last Days" by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. I'm proud to say that the purchase of these films, as well as ten others on Nazi visual history, has made me poorer of several thousand pesos, yet I still have to GO through the misery of watching any films of John Travolta or Bruce Willis, on their entirety. There's just no comparison....
Rating:
Summary: Very good
Review: At first I was a little bored with this video because it was a little slow, the narrator was not as good as ones that host History Channel documentaries and the narration script was below average. But the footage is very rare and the video gets very in-depth with regard to Hitler's obsession with art and his plan to create a new art culture for Germany. I didn't know he was this enthralled with architecting a new society to the point of deciding which art was good for the country and which was bad and what art should be destroyed. Goes into good detail about how the history and mechanisms for extermination of Jews were slowly developing. I learned a great deal. Well worth the time and money.
Rating: 
Summary: A look behind HITLER'S regime
Review: Captures the inner workings of the third reich. A brilliant look behind the scene and the influential aspect of art through propaganda. An essential chapter dealt towards the final solution. A provocative and powerful documentary. Among the best works on the subject matter.
Rating:
Summary: NAZISM AN ART? INTERESTING PREMISE, BOGGED BY MONOTONY
Review: Google lists nearly 200 films about Adolf Hitler, most of them documentaries such as Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will and Fuhrer: Rise of a Madman. The Architecture of Doom was perhaps the first to propose the notion that Hitler embraced the art of politics after failing as a painter, suggesting that Nazism was a reflection of the dictator's perverse aesthetic tastes. In its deconstruction of the Nazi movement, the movie is novel and shows an interesting, perhaps true, perspective. But what minor grouse I have is with the narrative, which is just shy of 2 hours or so and sports a frequent monotone of showing Nazi art. Yet, thankfully, it doesn't detract substantially from the intriguing perspective that Hitler's whole pet project was perhaps more of a dogged pursuit of an aesthetic. This documentary is definitely worth a watch if you are interested in the Third Reich in any way.
Rating: 
Summary: First half excellent documentary, 2nd half not good
Review: Gripping discussion of the factors that developed the design innovations that occurred during this era in Germany. Very good even if you know nothing about the subject.
Rating:
Summary: The Architecture of Doom
Review: Gripping discussion of the factors that developed the design innovations that occurred during this era in Germany. Very good even if you know nothing about the subject.
Rating:
Summary: GERMAN MEDICINE JOINS HITLER'S ART TO CREATE HELL ON EARTH
Review: Having been a student of the Holocaust and World War II for fifty years, I am always on the lookout for new information or new perspectives. THE ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM provides both within two hours and presents Nazi documentary and propaganda films never before shown. The original film 1989 "Undergångens arkitektur" was made in Sweden by Peter Cohen and presents a history of the rise and fall of Hitler's Nazism from the perspective of art and design. ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM opens with an overhead pan of the peaceful autumn forests over Linz, Austria, boyhood home of artist, designer and draftsman Adolf Hitler. The film shares with the viewer in pictures, music and words the early influences on that mind: in fact, Richard Wagner's music and writings are shown to have had the most profound effects on Hitler's development of the Nazi culture and its ethos. It is in Linz that the design for a new Germany with its Master Race evolved in the head of its designer. The narrator points out, virtually all leaders of Nazi Germany were failed artists, poets and writers. They organized the Nazi movement and promoted its central aesthetics for both the parade ground and museums. Then they recruited the entire German medical profession to aid them in perfecting the Aryan Race by weeding out for destruction those characterized as inferior. Newly presented in ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM are the most complete collections of original drawings and paintings by Hitler, and documentary footage of his opening Nazi art shows where often he purchased most of the works. Hitler's 3 hour tour of the art museums of German occupied Paris is most interesting. Also shown are the early medical propaganda films seen in theaters all over Nazi Germany at the beginning of the 1940s. Their purpose was to prepare the German people for social cleansing of the "inferiors" in their midst. This Nazi project backfired because, as the narrator points out it made the people worry that soldiers wounded in battle would suffer a similar fate. The medical propaganda programs in public movie houses had to be discontinued. But the so-called euthenasia programs continued and grew. Also novel in this film was presentation of Hitler's concept that the "other" pure race competing with the Aryan is the Jew. This explained why Hitler was willing to sacrifice his own soldiers in order to facilitate the Final Solution to the the Jewish Question. Faced with the virtual certainty by 1943 that Germany would lose its two front war, Hitler decided that exterminating the world's Jewry was a higher priority than winning battles. Indeed, he had a vision of Nazi Germany as the Phoenix that would rise out of the ashes of its World War II destruction. As ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM points out with archival examples, Hitler and Speer had designed many of their most ambitious public arenas and citadels for such inevitable destruction .... complete with drawings of weeds growing out of the rubble! The Holocaust was part of Hitler's grand art and design. The viewer will come away from this film with horrified fascination and a better appreciation for what happens when artists and physicians collaborate to produce a Hell on Earth in the name of human progress!
Rating:
Summary: GERMAN MEDICINE JOINS HITLER'S ART TO CREATE HELL ON EARTH
Review: Having been a student of the Holocaust and World War II for fifty years, I am always on the lookout for new information or new perspectives. THE ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM provides both within two hours and presents Nazi documentary and propaganda films never before shown. The original film 1989 "Undergångens arkitektur" was made in Sweden by Peter Cohen and presents a history of the rise and fall of Hitler's Nazism from the perspective of art and design. ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM opens with an overhead pan of the peaceful autumn forests over Linz, Austria, boyhood home of artist, designer and draftsman Adolf Hitler. The film shares with the viewer in pictures, music and words the early influences on that mind: in fact, Richard Wagner's music and writings are shown to have had the most profound effects on Hitler's development of the Nazi culture and its ethos. It is in Linz that the design for a new Germany with its Master Race evolved in the head of its designer. The narrator points out, virtually all leaders of Nazi Germany were failed artists, poets and writers. They organized the Nazi movement and promoted its central aesthetics for both the parade ground and museums. Then they recruited the entire German medical profession to aid them in perfecting the Aryan Race by weeding out for destruction those characterized as inferior. Newly presented in ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM are the most complete collections of original drawings and paintings by Hitler, and documentary footage of his opening Nazi art shows where often he purchased most of the works. Hitler's 3 hour tour of the art museums of German occupied Paris is most interesting. Also shown are the early medical propaganda films seen in theaters all over Nazi Germany at the beginning of the 1940s. Their purpose was to prepare the German people for social cleansing of the "inferiors" in their midst. This Nazi project backfired because, as the narrator points out it made the people worry that soldiers wounded in battle would suffer a similar fate. The medical propaganda programs in public movie houses had to be discontinued. But the so-called euthenasia programs continued and grew. Also novel in this film was presentation of Hitler's concept that the "other" pure race competing with the Aryan is the Jew. This explained why Hitler was willing to sacrifice his own soldiers in order to facilitate the Final Solution to the the Jewish Question. Faced with the virtual certainty by 1943 that Germany would lose its two front war, Hitler decided that exterminating the world's Jewry was a higher priority than winning battles. Indeed, he had a vision of Nazi Germany as the Phoenix that would rise out of the ashes of its World War II destruction. As ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM points out with archival examples, Hitler and Speer had designed many of their most ambitious public arenas and citadels for such inevitable destruction .... complete with drawings of weeds growing out of the rubble! The Holocaust was part of Hitler's grand art and design. The viewer will come away from this film with horrified fascination and a better appreciation for what happens when artists and physicians collaborate to produce a Hell on Earth in the name of human progress!
Rating: 
Summary: Drink lots of coffee before watching this.
Review: I am a student of third reich history and when I heard of the release of this film I managed to see it at an independent theatre. While there is a great deal of interesting documentary footage and fair analysis this has got to be about the dullest documentary I have ever seen. There is no style to the directing or editing. The narration is even worse. The good points are negated by the overall stale production. This is certainly not a film to even rent let alone purchase. (Unless you are an insomiac.)
Rating:
Summary: Drink lots of coffee before watching this.
Review: I am a student of third reich history and when I heard of the release of this film I managed to see it at an independent theatre. While there is a great deal of interesting documentary footage and fair analysis this has got to be about the dullest documentary I have ever seen. There is no style to the directing or editing. The narration is even worse. The good points are negated by the overall stale production. This is certainly not a film to even rent let alone purchase. (Unless you are an insomiac.)
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