Goebbels and the Führer review - behind the scenes from the Nazi perpetrators' perspective

“Do you know the name of the propaganda minister of England, or America, or even Stalin? No. But Joseph Goebbels? Everyone knows him.” The cynical, grinning Dr Goebbels (Robert Stadlober), perhaps the first master of fake news, is not short on confidence.

Joachim Lang’s controversial film Goebbels and the Führer (Führer und Verfürer, or Leader and Seducer, in German) spans seven years, from the Anschluss in March 1938 to the last days in a bombed-out Berlin in May 1945, when, after the death of Hitler, Goebbels and his wife poisoned their six children, probably with cyanide, and then killed themselves. Lang doesn’t show the murder, but we see the children, dressed in white, trooping into the bunker.

Unlike most films about the Nazis, the action is seen from the perpetrators’ perspective, mixed with archive footage. “This is risky, but necessary,” the director informs us in the opening credits. It was denied public funding in Germany and was shot in secret in Bratislava, as it was deemed too dangerous to show the human faces of Nazi leaders, to allow them to be seen as “people rather than simplistic demons”, as Lang puts it. His mission is to explain why so many Germans followed Hitler into the war and the Holocaust. And that only by doing so can we “disarm the demagogues of the present.” Indeed.

Goebbels, always called Doktor by Hitler (Fritz Karl), is brimming with ambition to be Hitler’s number two, which he achieves, but only just before the grisly end. Hitler calls him his sorcerer; Goebbels says that the Führer is like a father to him. And his children, whose names all begin with H, are constantly being presented to the doting uncle Führer.

Goebbels describes with a sickeningly adolescent relish how he orchestrated every detail of the jubilant scenes of the masses greeting Hitler on his return from Austria after the Anschluss, and the marvellously anti-Semitic films, such as Jud Süss and Der Ewige Jude, that he’s commissioned: “Hidden in a movie like this, our message is much more powerful.” Jud Süss apparently even impressed Michelangelo Antonioni. Goebbels reads out his disturbing verdict: “If this is propaganda, we salute it.”

A maestro of disinformation and manipulation, his self-satisfaction never falters. “I created the myth of the Führer,” he boasts. “I decide what’s true. Truth is what is good for the German people.” The film does make its point with a rather sledge-hammer effect, but it’s fascinating to see how obsessed Hitler was over waging war and how unenthusiastic the German people were about the idea of conflict. "The people don't want war," Goebbels tells Hitler, who has no patience with that. "Every generation must experience war once," he replies.

And Karl’s Hitler is extraordinary. He’s disconcertingly muted, never the barking, screaming madman, though we see him signing death warrants while tucking in to cream cakes and emphasising that Lebensraum and the annihilation of the Jews have always been his goals.

He’s soft-voiced and seductive with Magda Goebbels (Franziska Weisz, pictured below) – the two adore each other and have lunch, vegetarian, of course, no hideous animal cadavers allowed - and look into each other’s eyes. And he acts as a kind of dictatorial marriage counsellor to Goebbels, who is constantly unfaithful to Magda.

Goebbels is having a passionate affair with actress Lida Baarova (Katia Fellin) and wants to marry her. Hitler intervenes. “You’re cheating on your wife with a Czech, of all things.” Goebbels says he’d rather resign than break it off. No hope of that, says Hitler. “I will feel betrayed. And you know what happens to traitors. I need you for my mission.” Divorce is out of the question too – the Goebbels are the Reich’s model family and a separation could set off a government crisis. They sign a document that Hitler prepares, vowing to remain together. Soon another little Goebbels is on the way.

Goebbels is momentarily alarmed when Hitler comes to visit the new arrival, little Heidrun, in June 1941, following up his admiration for the “reconciliation baby” with the revelation that he’s decided to attack Russia. It will be an incredible challenge for our propaganda, murmurs Goebbels – will the public get behind an unwinnable two-front war, never attempted before? - but it only takes him a few minutes to adjust and start planning an announcement with Liszt’s Preludes as a background fanfare.

The unsmiling, intense Himmler (Martin Bermoser) is particularly chilling as he describes executions (we see the archive footage as he speaks) and the “honourable but heavy task” of killing Jews. There are too many to handle, he tells Hitler, so he’s looking at new approaches. “We used gas in lunatic asylums. It has promise for the future.” Hitler tells him to get on with it. In 1943, when the tide was already turning against Germany, Goebbels makes his Sportpalast speech, telling his audience that Bolshevism must be defeated, that total war must ensue and almost letting slip – the film implies deliberately - that extermination of the Jews is the goal, though he changes the word at the last moment to “exclusion”. He crows in a Trumpian manner about the well-trained crowd. “If I’d asked them to jump from the third floor of Columbushaus they would have.”

The film’s last words are from the late Margot Friedländer, a concentration camp survivor: "Be human beings. That is the most important thing," and with a quote from Primo Levi. “It happened…and therefore it can happen again. Therein lies the core of what we want to say.”

• More film reviews on theartsdesk