MIM Notes 223   December 1, 2000

Criminal silence and willful forgetfulness in the face of 
atrocities

Back Home to the Reich With "Bubi" (ITAL Mit "Bubi" Heim ins Reich 
END)

Documentary, 2000, 75 min.

Directed by Stanislaw Mucha

When Hubertus von Albensleben learned that his grandfather Ludolf 
'Bubi' von Albensleben was a Nazi war criminal, responsible for 
30,000 killings in Poland alone, he wrote to his family council, 
asking that they officially criticize Bubi and his crimes. When 
the family council ignored him, he asked filmmaker Stanislaw Mucha 
to document his search to uncover Bubi's story. "Back Home to the 
Reich With 'Bubi'" -- currently in limited, art-house distribution 
-- is the result.

MIM mildly recommends this film as an exposé of how west German 
bourgeois society covered up much of what really happened under 
the Nazis. "The Nasty Girl" (ITAL "Das Schreckliche Mädchen," END 
1990) is more entertaining and politically sharper on the same 
subject. That film shows: (1) Former Nazis rose to power in post-
WWII west Germany, (2) How this failure to smash WWII-era fascism 
is linked to the rise of neo-Nazis; and (3) How bourgeois liberals 
and social democrats make a show of fighting fascism, while in 
fact protecting most fascists. "Back Home to the Reich With 
'Bubi'" only hints at some of these important themes.

Mucha's strategy in interviewing former Nazis and Nazi 
sympathizers seems to be "give them enough rope to hang 
themselves." However, because of the confusing editing, this never 
really happens. For example, Mucha doesn't introduce many of the 
dozens of people interviewed, so we're never sure who's talking 
about whom. 

Furthermore, this "let them prattle" approach allows several 
people in the film to take advantage of historical amnesia and 
muddle the issues. Some intimate that Nazi atrocities were 
committed by Communists. Some even use the Communists record of 
justly executing Nazi war criminals to suggest that the Communists 
were a bloodthirsty horde. As WWII recedes into history, the 
bourgeoisie is trying to hide the Soviet Union's leading role in 
the defeat of fascism, even equating fascism and communism. It's 
irresponsible to let pro-fascist lies go unrebutted. MIM 
recommends MIM Theory 6, "The Stalin Issue," for important 
historical background. Also, MIM Notes often runs reviews of books 
on WWII (see e.g. 
www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/europe.html), since even 
today new information is becoming public.

Still, the film contains some bits and pieces of interesting 
information. For example, at the end of WWII, Bubi was sentenced 
to death in absentia in Poland -- in absentia because an English 
officer helped him to escape from a prison camp. Bubi eventually 
settled under an assumed name in Argentina, where he died in 1970. 
One person interviewed hints that Bubi's escape was made possible 
by "the Cold War." The implication is that he cut a deal with 
Western imperialist powers.