Downfall

In spite of the incredibly bleak subject matter, there is a sense of hopefulness that such reigns of terror inevitably cannot last, that there can be good people even among the horrors of war, that there is a kind of humanity even in the worst among us.

The film contains a near-relentless pace of wartime atrocities and their accompanying bloodshed, including bombs, explosions, dead bodies, graphic murders, and nearly a dozen suicides by gunshot, multiple scenes of execution-style deaths by individuals or death squads, piles of severed limbs, limbs being sawed off to amputate, and several graphic scenes of poison by cyanide capsule, gunshots to the mouth or head, and a mass grave of burned corpses, sometimes including those of children. There are multiple scenes in which people are dragged to be hanged, or shown hanged. In what is a particularly sickening scene, a woman gives her six children liquid morphine to drink, then feeds them cyanide capsules in their sleep. Additionally, a dog is given a cyanide capsule to test its efficacy, and is heard dropping to the floor (but not shown).

Language is harsh and macabre, with multiple explicit references to killing or murdering those believed to be traitors to Nazi Germany with phrases such as "slit their throats, "drown in their own blood," or "put a bullet in their head."