Within only a day on the platform, the documentary series ‘Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial’ has become one of the trending titles on Netflix. According to FlixPatrol, as of June 6th, the show is the sixth most watched globally, and the seventh most watched in the US.
The series was directed by the veteran documentarian Joe Berlinger, who is known for titles such as “Paradise Lost” and “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster,” as well as the popular true-crime shows like “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich” and the “Conversations With a Killer” series.
The documentary is directed to younger audiences, which might not be too familiar with World War II lore. Actually, according to a 2020 state-by-state survey conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (and cited by Times), 63% of American millennials and Gen Z do not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
Belinger explains ‘Evil on Trial’ and why it’s important
“This is the right time to retell this story for a younger generation as a cautionary tale,” Belinger told in a promotional material. “In America, we are in the midst of our own reckoning with democracy, with authoritarianism knocking at the door and a rise in antisemitism,” he added.
Overall, Berlinger hopes the docu-series will convey to younger viewers worldwide that “democracy is fragile,” while also helping them identify authoritarian tendencies in government figures and politicians. The series also tackles how propaganda and dehumanization can make “normal people can do horrific things,” in the words of the director.
One of the innovative ways the series tells the WWII story, is mixing interviews with academics and archival footage with reenactments of key moments of the War.
Apart from the reenactments, journalist William L. Shirer is the series’ (unofficial) narrator, despite having died in 1993, due to anA.I. recreationof his voice that recites passages from his many books about the period. However, sometimes his real voice is used with excerpts of broadcasts and interviews.
The series has received mostly positive reviews, with The Chicago Sun Times giving it 3.5 stars out of four, and describing it as a “riveting and essential” documentary, while Joel Keller of Decider says that the director “does a good job of making a powerful case that the conditions that gave us the horrific atrocities that Hitler and the Nazis committed can very easily happen again.”