L'Ordre du jour

February 20, 1933: a late afternoon in Berlin, in the comfortable salons of the Reichstag president's palace. A secret meeting between Germany's leading industrialists and top Nazi dignitaries is to seal the financing of the next election campaign. It's the "nirvana of industry and finance": Krupp, Opel, Siemens, Telefunken... From this inaugural scene comes an irreversible consent that will lead to the worst.
Through an intense and staggering narrative, Éric Vuillard's writing renders the spiral of events their derisory and pathetic emotional charge, the fragility of the moment. And behind the triumphant images of the Wehrmacht, the origins of vulgar haggling and sad combinations of interests are revealed.
This masterful, gritty demonstration should remind us that, more often than not, what seems irresistible is not circumstances, but our accommodations and the compromises of the powerful.