Riefenstahl Really Delivered for Hitler in 'Triumph of the Will'

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In the annals of filmmaking, the influence of German director Leni Riefenstahl is unique.

For one thing, she was a woman doing essentially what had long been (and, for that matter, remained almost exclusively) a man's job, directing films. She started out as an actress and dancer, but she gravitated to work behind the camera when she reached her 30s and was no longer suitable for the roles she was typecast to play — adventurous, athletic. Sometimes she played a pretty peasant or a dancing girl.

(Eventually, of course, anyone in an athletic profession must concede that time conquers those athletic attributes. It is a big reason why so many professional athletes retire from their chosen sports in their 30s.)

For another, she was a trailblazer in the field of propaganda. There is a pretty good case to be made that, without her, Hitler might not have become as powerful as he did — because it was thanks to "Triumph of the Will," the filmed record of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg that premiered on this day in 1935, that he was able to consolidate his support from many groups.

I suppose "filmed record" is being generous. Much of what was shown in Riefenstahl's film was staged. It was not a record of a spontaneous response to what took place in Nuremberg that year, but it was Riefenstahl's masterful manipulation of what she did see — and her creation of staged events — that made it so effective as propaganda.

It is so easy, after all, to become blinded to unpleasant facts by appealing imagery. It must have been even easier 80 years ago. There was no internet, no cable, no satellite TV. How many alternative accounts of events could have been available? Not many, I'm sure.

Besides, the real objective of the movie was not to present a faithful "filmed record" of what really happened but to produce a celebration of Hitler and national socialism.

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It was in "Triumph of the Will" that Riefenstahl pioneered techniques that are still used by filmmakers today.

She very skillfully established Hitler as a Messianic figure from the start, opening with shots of clouds above Nuremberg, then rising above the clouds and appearing to float over the crowds below. The shadow of Adolf Hitler's plane could be seen as it passed over; on the screen, the image was accompanied by an orchestral arrangement of the Nazis' anthem — which had been the party's anthem since 1930 and had been the co–national anthem since Hitler seized power in 1933.

That was truly a Valhalla–esque scene.

(Had it been up to me, I would have preferred to play "Ride of the Valkyries" — a la "Apocalypse Now" — as the soundtrack for Hitler's descent from the clouds.)

It should be noted that, during the opening sequence, there was a prologue on the screen — the only commentary in the entire movie, which was nearly two hours long. That prologue said, in German:

"On 5 September 1934
20 years after the outbreak of the World War
16 years after the beginning of German suffering
19 months after the beginning of the German rebirth
Adolf Hitler flew again to Nuremberg to review the columns of his faithful followers"

Any other words that were spoken were clips from the speeches given by Hitler and the other Nazi leaders during the rally.

Riefenstahl was reluctant to take on the assignment, telling Hitler that she knew little about the Nazi Party and its organization — on top of the fact that she had never made a full–length documentary. Hitler told her that was why he wanted her to do it. Someone who was more knowledgeable might tend to pander whereas Riefenstahl's lack of knowledge left her free to explore things that interested her. If they interested her, they would interest ordinary Germans. The Nazis had taken power during a period of instability in German government, and they were still largely unknown to many Germans, let alone the rest of the world. Hitler wanted to make a good impression on his people and the world.

It wasn't Riefenstahl's first film for Hitler and the Nazis. After her first meeting with Hitler, she was asked to direct an hour–long documentary on the 1933 Nuremberg rally. Riefenstahl, incidentally, had asked to meet with Hitler, beginning her close association with the Nazis that would haunt her later in her career. She read Mein Kampf when Hitler was a candidate for office in 1932 and, by her own admission, was strongly influenced by it. She accepted his request, and it was Hitler's turn to be impressed. He was so impressed, in fact, that he asked Riefenstahl to film the 1934 rally.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote of his admiration for the success of England's propaganda during World War I. He believed it was the difference between victory and defeat for Britain, and he wanted a film that would be "artistically satisfying" for German audiences. In short, he wanted something that would win over those Germans who still had doubts whether he could revive Germany from the economic burden it had carried since World War I.

Riefenstahl accepted the challenge.

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And she delivered what Hitler wanted, I think — or, at least, what he said he wanted (given his actions for the next decade, I believe he was already making plans to conquer Europe and the world and to purge it of its Jewish population, plans he kept mostly to himself — except for what he wrote in Mein Kampf — until later in the 1930s. But that is another story for another time). In fact, it was probably more than he expected.

Riefenstahl, as I said, pioneered many techniques that are still in use today — camera angles, the use of panoramic shots — but that is negated in some people's minds by the knowledge that she manufactured some of the things she filmed.

As a student of history, does it bother me that much of the footage that was used was apparently staged? Yes, but not as much as — and probably not for the reasons — you think.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that, as someone who holds two degrees in journalism, I have studied propaganda, and I know that it is always produced with an ulterior motive. Documentary makers often have agendas, too, but the best documentaries I have seen were done by people who had no agenda, really, except to share with others something that they found interesting for one reason or another.

When there is good reason to believe that something that is being promoted as documentary is really propaganda, that changes the rules and the expectations. If I know something is propaganda, I don't expect it to be a faithful record of an event. I have worked for newspapers as both a reporter and an editor, and I know the difference between reporting and editorial writing. While it almost certainly contains some facts, the knowledge that the one who is producing it has more than a commercial interest in how it is perceived or a dedication to the truth tends to lower the expectations bar.

By the time I was old enough to know anything about "Triumph of the Will," I knew it was propaganda, which I have always considered to be a special kind of fiction. It always has some truth in it — but you don't order a cheeseburger and expect to get filet mignon.

I believe "Triumph of the Will" really must have been more than Hitler expected because it broke so much new ground, going beyond what Hitler hoped to duplicate.

'Triumph of the Will' Served Propaganda Purposes

During World War II and in the years after the war ended, the Nazis' reputation for comprehending the value of effective propaganda became almost legendary.

But their appreciation for the power of propaganda preceded the war by several years.

On Sept. 5, 2009, it will be 75 years since the Nazis gathered for the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. It was an important event for rallying the faithful in person — but it also served as the basis for filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl's influential propaganda documentary, "Triumph of the Will."

Because of the role it played in the development of filmmaking techniques — such as the advanced use of telephoto lenses, aerial photography and moving cameras — "Triumph of the Will" earned a spot in film history.

It also played an important role in the rise of the Nazi Party. Hitler and the Nazis had come to power the year before and were still largely unknown to many Germans — and much of the world.

The film opened with a brief commentary written in German. Translated, it said: "20 years after the outbreak of the world war, 16 years after the beginning of our suffering, 19 months after the beginning of the German renaissance, Adolf Hitler flew again to Nuremberg to review the columns of his faithful followers."

From that point, the only written commentaries were merely the surnames of the speakers. That may have been helpful to many viewers, since most of Hitler's subordinates were hardly household names at the time.

Anyway, following the opening commentary, Riefenstahl's camera took the viewer into the clouds, aboard a 1934-era airplane, preparing to descend into Nuremberg.

In the film, Hitler emerged from the clouds, like Thor in his chariot. Once Hitler's airplane was on the ground, Riefenstahl's film crew captured his enthusiastic reception and his ride into the city from every possible angle.

Nuremberg in 1934 had all the zeal and piety of a religious revival.

Indeed, at the closing ceremony, Hitler compared the Nazi Party to a "religious order" while Riefenstahl's camera filmed from below, making Hitler look larger than life, almost godlike.

In the years that followed, Riefenstahl's film attracted full houses to movie theaters across Germany. The mood was altogether different a little more than 10 years later — when Germany had lost the war and the surviving leaders of the Third Reich were brought to Nuremberg to stand trial for "crimes against humanity."

But, in 1934, those days were still in the future.

That four-day gathering in September 1934 was filled with speeches from Hitler, Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels, Julius Streicher and others, special rallies for the Labor Service and for the Hitler Youth, torchlight marches and music. It was all filmed in black and white, but it must have been quite a spectacle in color.

Riefenstahl was provided with everything she asked for and given access to anything and anyone she desired — pretty heady stuff for a 31-year-old actress directing her first documentary.

However, the film was lacking in some ways — by modern standards.

As advanced as it was in some of its techniques, the film used no transitional devices to indicate a shift from one day to the next.

For a film that sought to document a four-day event, that's a significant shortcoming. Unless the viewer was familiar with the itinerary, there was no way to tell if you were watching the Hitler Youth rally on the third day or the rally for the Labor Service on the second day — except through excerpts from speeches.

The only way to tell much chronologically was through natural light — or the absence of it. Day faded into night. And then a new day dawned in the film with little, if any, fanfare.

But the pomp and circumstance of the final day was hard to mistake.

The imagery was the most memorable, the music consisted of themes from Wagner's "Götterdämmerung," and Hitler, who shortly before laid a wreath at a World War I memorial, delivered a stirring concluding speech, in which he told the crowd, "All loyal Germans will become National Socialists. Only the best National Socialists are party comrades."

One of the primary propaganda purposes of the film, from Hitler's point of view, was to absolve himself and his associates from any guilt for the "Night of the Long Knives," a series of political executions carried out by the Nazis a couple of months earlier. Ernst Röhm, co-founder of the Nazi stormtroopers, was among those executed because he was perceived to be a rival to Hitler — something the Nazis wanted to obscure from public view.

"Only a lunatic or deliberate liar could think that I, or anybody, would ever intend to dissolve what we ourselves have built up over many long years," Hitler told his listeners.

Hitler must have sensed that the rally had achieved the party's objectives. In his closing speech, he told the crowd that the party "will be unchangeable in its doctrine, hard as steel in its organization, supple and adaptable in its tactics" — stating his intentions as clearly as he did in his book, "Mein Kampf."

After nearly three-quarters of a century, "Triumph of the Will" continues to cast a long shadow, influencing movies, commercials and modern documentaries.

But the questions it raised about the blurring of the line between artistic interpretation and integrity remain unanswered.

Few Films Re-create Nuremberg Trial

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Some of the defendants at the Nuremberg trial.

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On this day in November 1945, testimony began in the first Nuremberg Trial.

The first trial was noteworthy for being the prosecution of the leadership of Nazi Germany. As subsequent trials were held, more and more people expressed doubts about the wisdom or necessity of prosecuting soldiers whose crime appeared to be carrying out orders during wartime.

Few doubted the necessity for the first trial, in which the likes of Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Alfred Jodl — the upper echelon of the Nazi regime — were held responsible for their acts.

The trials gave the world the definition of "war crimes." It can be found in the "Nuremberg Principles."

And the trials have influenced the evolution of international crime law for nearly 65 years.

Yet, considering how important the role of Nuremberg was in the postwar history of the world, there have been surprisingly few dramatizations of it.

The best, by far, was "Judgment at Nuremberg," a 1961 film that was not a re-creation at all but rather the story of a fictional trial that explored issues that were raised by the real-life later trials.

It's a great film with great performances, but it is fiction. It does not tell the real story of the landmark tribunal.

A couple of TV movies attempted to tell the story of what happened at the first tribunal in 1945-46.

In 2000, TNT aired a film called "Nuremberg," which was actually a pretty good and — based on my own knowledge of what happened in Nuremberg — mostly accurate re-creation, although factual dedication sometimes was sacrificed in favor of more appealing story angles.

The courtroom and other trial-related scenes, however, appeared to be accurate. As Albert Speer observed in the film, when the splendor of Nuremberg during the Nazi rallies was recalled nostalgically (especially in comparison to the dreary, bombed-out city in which the trial was held), "The look in Hitler's eyes wasn't radiance. It was madness."

And, oh, how easily it could all happen again. Later in the film, Speer tried to explain Göring's grip on his co-defendants, even with no authority or real power of any kind, using merely the power of his "ideas and thoughts."

"What ideas? What thoughts?" Speer asked. "They were only platitudes. Nazi Germany was built on empty platitudes."

Anyone can fall under the spell of a psychopath like Hitler. It is not, as was implied in the film, exclusively a German character flaw. It is a trait that is not unique to any group.

The main problem that most film buffs seem to have had with "Nuremberg" was its casting — Alec Baldwin as Justice Robert Jackson, for example.

Baldwin made for a relatively youthful Jackson to play opposite Christopher Plummer as British prosecutor David Maxwell-Fyfe.

Although Maxwell-Fyfe was, in fact, younger than Jackson by several years, Plummer is more than 30 years older than Baldwin and played the role as more of a fatherly figure.

And, while it may be common knowledge among historians with access to better research sources, I am not aware of the intimate relationship between Jackson and his dedicated secretary (played by Jill Hennessy) that was suggested in the film. I suspect that was a liberty that was taken with the facts to capitalize on Hennessy's beauty and give the story a romantic angle.

But, in spite of these relatively trivial matters, the film was largely accurate, and the portrayal of Göring by Brian Cox was particularly noteworthy. Cox displayed an uncanny ability to mimic Göring’s affable yet cunning Jekyll-and-Hyde personality — particularly in his depiction of Göring’s friendship with the American soldier "Tex" and how he may have manipulated it to get access to the cyanide he took to commit suicide rather than face execution by hanging.

Göring was often parodied in cartoons and films of the era, but, other than "Nuremberg," the only supposedly fact-based portrayal of the Reichsmarschall and the trial that I’m aware of came in a British TV production, " Nuremberg: Goering's Last Stand," in 2006.

I’ve never seen it, but I’ve been told it’s been broadcast on The History Channel from time to time. From what I’ve read, it’s a pretty poor historical re-creation.