The Wave
Since the end of World War II, Germany has had to face the consequences of their actions as a whole. As a country, they have made it their priority to never repeat their past mistakes, because Germany before Hitler was also a democracy, just as it is today. The country makes sure that what they have done and how it happened never occurs again. However, in the past months, we have all witnessed the protests going on in the country against the rise of right-wing extremism in Germany. While the fact that there are so many people going out to protest this political poll increase is reassuring, the fact that such political parties are rising is worrying, especially for a country like Germany, that has made it their number one priority to never be associated with such positions and ideals ever again.
Via AP News, 2024.
Something like fascism and Nazism seems so distant from our present reality. One would say, especially in Europe, that something as authoritarian would never happen again. Democracy is seen as a key foundation of most countries within Europe. However, extremism has risen everywhere in Europe, with populist and nationalist ideals becoming more and more popular, with undertones of fascist values and ideals. Even with this rise, people do not think that an authoritarian leader would ever come to power, maybe slightly overestimating the strength of democracy in Europe. However, democracy was also strong before World War I and World War II, or at least that is what people were convinced of, and we all know what happened afterward. A depiction of this is the German movie named “The Wave,” which came out in 2008, directed by Dennis Gansel. Set in Germany, it depicts a realistic social experiment of a dictatorial regime carried out among schoolchildren in the form of a game. The movie was inspired by a true story from a California high school in 1967. The American students called their group “The Third Wave,” and it was firstly revived and re-contextualized in a novel by Todd Strasser, under the pseudonym Morton Rhue. It was also followed by the recent Netflix series "We Are the Wave." The intent is to broaden the implications of that experience and impact the consciences of young people, of those generations who mistakenly consider themselves immune to the advent of a new totalitarianism. That is why, for more than two decades, Morton Rhue's novel has been a classic of children's literature, a required reading in many German schools. So not to stimulate a debate on bullying, which is, in fact, not the main subject of the film nor are there any acts strictly ascribable to the phenomenon, but rather to prevent the remembrance of the Nazi horror from losing its effectiveness through excessive repetition. "Precisely this is the greatest danger. It is interesting to observe how we always think that such things happen to others and not to us. One blames others, the less educated ones or the East Germans. But in the Third Reich, the porter was just as fascinated by the Nazi movement as the intellectual," said the director Dennis Gansel. The goal was to give a realistic answer to questions such as: could such a thing still happen? In today's democratic and liberal Germany, where a great deal of time is spent talking about Nazism and the Third Reich, would the return of a new dictatorship be possible?
Poster of the film “The Wave” by Dennis Gansel. Via “David Moody”, 2015.
The Plot of the Film “The Wave”
In Dennis Gansel's film “The Wave,” the man who devises the experiment is Professor Rainer Wenger, a German high school teacher with a past as an anarchist rocker. We are in the week of themed school workshops, and on stage are the different types of government, and Professor Rainer will have to find a way to engage his students on the concept of autocracy and the consent of the masses. The students participating in the workshop are shown to be lazy and absolutely convinced of the impossibility of a new rise of a dictatorship like Hitler's in modern Germany, stating that people have learned from the mistakes of the past. That is why Professor Rainer decides to organize a classroom experiment, to show the students how in reality the masses can still be easily manipulated. Current ingredients such as a charismatic leader, well-packaged rhetoric, loss of fundamental values and ideals, extreme ease of persuasion, and extreme individualism will be sufficient, in his opinion. Once a leader is chosen, who is identified as the teacher, and a name for the group, "The Wave," is decided, all that remains is to make "Herr Wenger's" strict disciplinary system his own, which includes:
Changing the arrangement of the desks, so that the friendship groups are disrupted, and the less good students can stand next to the better ones;
Standing up and giving short and concise answers when you want to say something out loud;
Wearing a kind of uniform, consisting of a white shirt and jeans, so that individual and class distinctions are removed;
Greeting each other through the recognizable greeting, which is the simulation, made with the right arm, of a wave.
The class is therefore seen as a single entity where each person identifies with the group. A unison march on the spot will suffice to make the strength of it felt. In a few days, the group is formed, and in an equally short time, the strength of The Wave will become increasingly disruptive.
The Consequences
The project gets out of hand, even to its own creator: what began as an innocuous illustration of concepts such as discipline and community, turns into a full-fledged "movement": The Wave. Initially, there is greater cohesion among the students, who are able to master their insecurities and fears thanks to belonging to the group. Added to this is a great commitment to carrying out a project and the search for a social identity through which to build a group. It will be the feeling of being part of a community that will excite many students, who will be joined by others from different classes. But soon, it is the "logic of the pack" that takes center stage, where some group dynamics run the risk of turning into dangerous antechambers of fascist behavior. A real spirit of camaraderie makes them feel legitimized to animate acts of violence, discrimination, and vandalism. The group, in fact, begins to:
Perform acts of vandalism throughout the city, spreading The Wave logo by means of stickers and spray cans, and going so far as to daub the scaffolding that hides City Hall;
Isolate or suppress any dissenters, such as Karo and Mona, two girls in the class who do not accept the group's decisions and abandon the experiment, disgusted by how uncritically the class has embraced The Wave's ideals;
Organize parties where only members of the movement are allowed to attend, discriminating against those who are not members.
Via Pinterest.
The Strength of the Group
Obsessively identifying with the group is Tim, a boy who is insecure, submissive to the strongest, and psychologically unstable. Only within the group does he finally feel accepted. Rainer himself, suffering from an inferiority complex compared to the other professors, feels involved with the group, so much so that he does not actually see and notice what the group is actually becoming. It is only when, thanks to one of the students, he is able to open his eyes to the seriousness that the experiment he has devised is bringing, that he decides to disband the movement, a decision that will unfortunately have tragic consequences. The goal has been achieved, albeit at great cost: the students' initial belief in the impossibility of the birth of a new dictatorship in Germany turns out to be resoundingly and painfully disproved by the facts. After all, it is not very far from reality to think that if a strong and extremely authoritarian personality existed, a dictatorship would not take long to re-establish itself.
