This movie is two and a half hours long, but it doesn't feel like it. In Downfall, we see the last days of Hitler's Third Reich and the battle for Berlin from the loosing side. There are quiet dialog scenes in the bunker, and "Saving Private Schultz" style the-horor-of-total-war scenes, mixed and paced expertly. True and semi-fictionalized stoies from both historical giants and unknown heroes and villans intertwine and collide. A dedicated doctor worries how to feed civilians amidst collapsing supply lines and a government more concerned with saving its own skin than the welfare of a defeated nation. Traudl Junge (Hitler's secratary, the true life subject of last year's documentary Blind Spot) decides to remain with her employer until the end. Goebblels' wife decides the fate of her children in a world without National Socalism. Hitler falls further and further in to delusion and denial as his empire collapses and he waits for a calvary that never comes.
Downfall is no appologia. It humanizes the Nazis, shows good, bad and normal people, and this is one of the main messages of the film, that there was noting maginficently evil and inhuman in the souls of Nazis, that this could happen to any people, any time.