Humanising Hitler

Can Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone’s new documentary show us the “human side of Hitler?” asks The Independent’s Stephen Foley. “Oliver Stone has never been one to spot a historical controversy without steaming towards it, but the latest project from the film-maker behind JFK and W threatens to pitch him into more dangerously hot water than ever before. The director is battening down the hatches already, saying he fully expects ‘ignorant attacks’ on a new documentary series in which he is promising to ‘liberalise’ Hitler and to finger US corporations for their role in the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Launching Oliver Stone’s Secret History of America, the director promised to lay bare the military-industrial complex his fictionalised movie JFK blamed for a conspiracy to kill one president, and which Stone now says is trapping Barack Obama into the errors of his predecessors. ‘I don’t want to put out a conventional History Channel product where it’s easy to like it,’ the 63-year-old director said. “You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate.”