There appear to be a number of critical reviews of this TV series, mostly about "inaccuracy." For example, they worry about Hitler's father shown dying in his home instead of in a bar. Who gives a damn?.How do you portray the rise of Hitler? Do you get bogged down in trivia, or do you portray broad strokes.Did Hitler hate Jews because he hated communists, and many Jews were communists? That could have been better developed.Hitler was a loner and voracious reader in the army, obsessed with Germany's loss of WWI. That could have been better developed.I could go on and on, but the fact remains, Hitler was the most evil man in all of human history. How did Hitler develop from a homeless vagabond to the world's most powerful and feared individual, within a period of 20 years, who could extract a personal loyalty oath from millions of blind followers. How can that possibly be covered in a visual medium such as a movie or TV series. Personally, the explanation can only be found in the anti-Christ. Hitler was the devil, in human form. Not a devil's disciple, but the devil himself. Decision after decision was flawlessly executed in pursuit of absolute political power, all opposition was outsmarted, outmaneuvered and eliminated.The really frightening thought, if Hitler had not overreached from absolute political control to making all military decisions, we would all speak German today. If Hitler had wiped out the British in Dunkirk and immediately following had invaded Great Britain, and had bypassed Stalingrad to go straight into Moscow, the Nazis would have won the war. There would have been no Normandy invasion, no three fronts to defend.So how can a Hitler, so flawlessly achieving power in Germany, make these fatal mistakes on the battlefield. Divine intervention? I certainly hope to believe that.But this movie has not to worry about the military history; it stops shortly following passage of the Enabling Law in 1933. In showing Hitler's rise to absolute political power, this movie is OUTSTANDING.

Most film depictions of Hitler are WW2 movies about 1939 onwards so this impressively well produced 2 part television movie about 3 hours long fills a needed gap in the history of WW2. Things move briskly from Hitler's childhood to surprisingly elaborate First World War battles where his life as a soldier is shown. His anti Jewish speeches in beer halls to his eventual position of leader of the Nazi party and Germany are portrayed. It's extremely involving and has the thoroughness and clearness of a documentary without the dullness and detachment.There are a lot of characters some of whom are not that familiar that were instrumental in his rise to power and who tried to oppose him. Yet things aren't confusing. Liev Schreiber is convincing as an opportunistic German publisher who rides on Hitler's coattails along with his supportive wife played by Julianna Marguiles. Matthew Modine as usual plays the voice of good in as a journalist writing against the Nazis. Peter O'Toole makes a brief but convincing appearance as beleaguered Hindenburg.As Hitler, Robert Carlyle doesn't have that much physical resemblance to his subject but his intensity, often with frothing a the mouth makes the portrayal mesmerizing. He is personifies the insane fanaticism.It's quite an achievement that so much history could be shown relatively clearly without confusion in a 3 hour mini. Worth watching.

I was really expecting a critically accurate analysis of Hitler's rise to power. Instead I got a political diatribe. We all know the evil that was done, but making up a fictional story to support an agenda is just plain wrong. It just plays into the hands of the Nazis and Neo-Nazis. They can point out all the inaccuracies in this movie and the accompanying documentary and say that Hitler was just misunderstood and that the Holocaust never happened (a prime example is Iran's Ahmadinejad). I believe the truth is far more sobering and frightening than what this movie portrayed, particularly because Hitler was very cool, logical and calculated in his rise to power. He was brilliant in his judgement of people and their desires and motivations. By downplaying his innate capabilities we're very likely to repeat this abhorrent chapter of history again. Look at the current situation in the US and the antisemitism that that is being espoused by our own government. There are so many parallels: the high unemployment, middle-class discontent, government handouts, hatred of Israel, incompetent governance, ...

There were various reasons why it took me almost 10 years until I felt like watching this TV two-parter: for one, I'm from Germany and if you ever switched on German TV to some random channel, there's a good chance you'll get to see some Hitler film or documentary. "Hitler: What did the gardener know", "Hitler: Man or Demon", "Hitler: how guilty was his chauffeur", etc. Indeed, many of my countrymen have developed a certain Hitler-fatigue; or, as some acquaintance once said: "Another bloody Hitler documentary and I'll vote for some Nazi party in the next election". He was only half-joking.Second reason, I'm a little suspicious of none-German-speaking actors portraying the long-dead dictator. Anthony Hopkins: great actor but less than impressive playing Hitler. Same goes for Sir Alec Guinness or Frank Finlay. Call it a form of cinematic chauvinism but something doesn't sit quiet right with a "foreign Hitlers".Whether Robert Carlyle speaks with a broad Scottish accent, I cannot tell (having seen the film in dubbed German, where the accent is very authentic Bavarian/Austria) but it must be given to the actor: the plays one of the better Hitlers that far. Sure, Carlyle is no Bruno Ganz but Carlyle plays "the Fuehrer" to a tit, aided by an almost demonic stare that gave viewers the creeps in "Ravenous" just a few years earlier. At the same time, Carlyle doesn't portray the man Hitler as some super-evil fiend, rather showing us a bitter man, who is possessed entirely by his ideas, mental complexes and convictions – for better and, as we now know, for worst.What really strikes the eye is that few major characters physically resemble the real thing: Peter Stormare chillingly plays the brutal, psychopathic head of the SA-units and early Hitler-supporter but looks nothing like the real-life Ernst Röhm (who was short, overweight and effeminate). Worst yet are the depictions of Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess; unless they're addressed by name, you'd never guess their identity. Matthew Modine and Liev Schreiber are on auto-mode, but it seems to be the 'curse' of charismatic people with limited acting abilities that they repeatedly have to play themselves. Peter O'Toole as Von Hindenburg plays the role of dignified yet doomed-one-foot-in-the-grave character he's been playing for the last 15 odd years.Is there any deeper insight, do we learn something new about the person Hitler? No, not really. It's a historically accurate recounting of Hitlers rise to power, no more and no less. But, speaking as somebody who knows the city of Munich like the palm of his hand, the first part of the film almost had me convinced.I'd give it a decent 6.5 out of 10 points.