Diplomacy —A film by Volker Schlöndorff (2014) "Am deutschen Wesen wird die Welt nicht genesen"

Abstract

Diplomacy (German and French: Diplomatie) is a 2014 Franco-German historical drama film. In the last months of World War II, General Dietrich von Choltitz has orders to destroy Paris as Allied Forces move towards the city, and the Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling is asking the general not to do it. The two protagonists can be interpreted as ego and alter ego, with Nordling representing the split-off self-parts of the general who strive for freedom and justice and experience life as lovable and worth living. Since the outcome of the film is well known, the film tries to find answers whether and how the general, representative of what was described by Fromm as an authoritarian character, will move from collective obedience to individual decisions of conscience. When the author watched Diplomacy, she was shocked about von Choltitz's statements that he had, in the past, carried out extermination orders of the Jews in Sevastopol. Even though this statement is historically not clearly documented, the participation of the Wehrmacht in war crimes is undisputed. The author has to admit that she—as a daughter of a Wehrmacht soldier—has a tendency to trivialise this involvement.