While dramatically it's more satisfying for the inmates of Dachau to get their revenge against a monster like Lutze I think it's quite compelling as well to think that even in someone like Lutze their resides a soul and it's that soul that drives Lutze to madness.
shareOh that's what I always thought!
Everyone has a soul but not everyone has a conscience. Lutze seemed to develop one at a late stage in life and finally faced up to the enormity of the evil he perpetrated. He could no longer run and hide from the reality of his murderous behavior and it drove him mad.
Like "Judgment Night" and "Shadow Play" the Hell Lutze finds himself in could certainly be a self-made one. I'm not much of a religious person; I do, however, believe we all have to answer to someone at some point -- and that someone is ourselves.
In some ways this is also a darker version of "Walking Distance," with a Nazi, not a burnt-out ad exec, discovering the old saying "you can never go home again" is true after all.
If he has driven himself mad his death could be suicide. He remembers being a proud general and now touring the old camps could being back the darkness inside of him.
shareThat is certainly an interesting possibility, but he didn't seem to have any shred of remorse going in. Rather, just a psychopathic enjoyment of what he'd done.
shareBut when Becker is reading to Lutze all his crimes Lutze seems horrified by what he's hearing. Perhaps his laundry list of inhumane acts delineated by one of his victims finally brings it all home for Lutze; it puts a face to Lutze's crimes and Lutze understands the gravity of what he has done.
shareThis is an episode I've never cared for much. It's well made, and I sense that all involved were committed to making it work, however IRL how often do things like this happen unless a war criminal is actually caught and tried? It's a wish fulfillment fantasy. A lot of Lutzes never got caught, successfully eluded capture and lived long lives, in maybe anxious hiding but not necessarily in the state of psychological torment Lutze was in. This, sadly, is human nature.
On a smaller scale I've seen it too many times in my own life in horrible people with no moral conscience: they were cruel, manipulative, destructive and, in some cases, worst of all, charismatic and even charming. These types, so long as they kept their pathologies, in check, don't become outright murderers, are well positioned to succeed in the modern world. For this reason,--and I know I'm getting beyond the Twilight Zone carrying on like this--the "comeuppance" Zones don't work for me.
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