BBC Russian

Leni Riefenstahl in her specially designed flagstaff elevator,
filming the 1934 Nazi Party Rally. Images of her similar
to this one were later used to advertise Triumph of the Will.
_____________________________________________________

Monday, September 8, 2003: Leni Riefenstahl has died; next story. The last figure of major import to the Nazi Regime passed from this world with little notice, positive or negative. The brief biographical sketches that attempted to summarize her days on this Earth were virtually identical to the blurbs that had appeared a month earlier, marking her hundred and first birthday. �Hitler�s favorite director,� �she claimed she was never the F�hrer�s mistress,� �she never actually joined the Nazi Party,� �she later took photos in Africa and began scuba diving in her seventies,� etc. An extraordinary life reduced to lifeless facts and commonly accepted half-truths.

In these days, when every gathering place has become �a Mecca,� every instructional book �a Bible,� and every tragedy �a Holocaust,� Riefenstahl is just another bygone �celebrity� who fell somewhere between John Ritter, Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, and Idi Amin.{1} To make matters worse, Riefenstahl spent the majority of her long life evading and obfuscating her own legacy. She did not wish to be known or remembered for what she was � the greatest propagandist in film history � but her work speaks for itself.

Normally the judgments passed on Riefenstahl, for or against, are made without the benefit of seeing her first �documentary,� Sieg des Glaubens (1933) [Victory of Faith]. In fact, many seemingly reputable sources deny that the film even exists.{2} The present German Government is complicit in this fraud, freely granting access to the film, yet making no effort to tell anyone that they have it. Regrettably, the US Government follows much the same policy, leaving Triumph des Willens (1935) [Triumph of the Will] to be understood in a vacuum.

The purpose of this article is to help raise awareness of Victory�s existence and to offer some insight into the significance of its recently departed director. I write this having seen a 53-minute version of Victory, which is available for viewing on 3/4-inch videotape at the Motion Picture & Television Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.{3} For those who have the means, there is also a complete 35mm print of the original 61-minute version in Berlin, Germany, which is held by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv.{4}

What is propaganda?

Totalitarianism is not only hell, but also the dream of paradise -- the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith, without secrets from one another.{5}

Propaganda was the mechanism by which these dreams of paradise were disseminated.

Propaganda, in its highest form, is more than a politically expedient lie; it is a spiritual invocation of the intangible order of the universe. The first formal use of the word goes back to the "Congregatio de propaganda fide" [the Congregation for Propagating the Faith], "A committee of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church having the care and oversight of foreign missions, founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV."{6} The purpose of this organization was not to discover or transmit Earthly truths that could be objectively or rationally measured; it was to propagate a particular doctrinal view of divinity that would subjugate the individual�s perceptions of reality. Propaganda is not about producing thoughtful understanding; it is about "inducing or intensifying specific attitudes and actions,"{7} for the ever present and necessarily ill-defined, �greater good.� True propaganda does not deal with questions of fact; it is solely a matter of faith.

Unlike Victory and later Nazi works, like Fritz Hippler�s{8} Der Ewige Jude (1940) [The Eternal Jew], or even the most famous Soviet �propaganda� film, Sergei Eisenstein�s Potemkin (1925), Riefenstahl�s Triumph is primarily a religious, rather than a political artifact. To see it, as it was meant to be seen, is to believe that Hitler was the embodiment of providence, sent here to save the world.

A Brief History of Hitler�s Rise to Power

In 1919, Adolf Hitler was an unknown corporal, devastated by Germany�s defeat in the First World War. Under orders from a Reichswehr [German Armed Forces] Captain, Ernst R�hm, Hitler joined a small group of fellow veterans with a reputation for drinking, called the German Workers Party. The goal of infiltrating �right wing�{9} organizations such as this was to use them in the battle against the communists but it inadvertently gave the thirty-year-old corporal an opportunity to cultivate his greatest untapped attribute, public speaking. R�hm, who later joined the Party himself, treated Hitler as an equal and soon became one of his strongest supporters. Many historians have noted the fact that R�hm used the familiar �Du� form of the German word �you,� when speaking to Hitler. This was a privilege that few others would ever enjoy. What is not commonly noted is the fact that it was R�hm, not Hitler who decided on the terms of their relationship. It was the captain who befriended the corporal and first granted the privilege of using �Du,� not the other way around. This was a friendship unlike any other in Hitler�s circle of intimates.

By 1923 these two men, along with a few other key individuals, had recruited approximately three thousand other men into the renamed National Socialist German Worker�s Party (the NSDAP or �Nazis� for short).{10} Underestimating the resolve of the Weimar Government{11} to stop him, Hitler began his call for a national revolution on November 8^th by firing a gun into the ceiling of a Munich Beer Hall. That same night, R�hm lead a group of men who took over the local Reichswehr headquarters. This was the only successful military operation conducted in the short-lived Beer Hall Putsch (a.k.a. The Munich Putsch and The Hitler Putsch). The next morning Hitler marched through the streets with his troops, believing that the people would rally to his side. Three Bavarian police officers and sixteen putschists died when the authorities opened fire.{12} Hitler fled the scene with a dislocated shoulder and was later put on trial for treason, along with R�hm and a gang of fellow conspirators. A sympathetic judge allowed the proceeding to be turned into a venue for Hitler�s speechmaking and for the first time he received international press coverage. He was sentenced to �the legal minimum of five years� imprisonment (with a prospect of prompt consideration for probation).� R�hm �received fifteen months� imprisonment with probation.�{13}

In prison Hitler, with the help of Party Secretary Rudolph Hess, began writing Mien Kampf [My Struggle] and decided to change his tactics to more legalistic ones. This decision offended R�hm, and many in the SA, the brown-shirted Sturmabteilung [Storm Troopers], who only wished to change the world by force, free from pragmatic compromises. In 1925, R�hm resigned from the Party, which was now banned in many parts the country, and later took a job with the Bolivian Army. A battle for control of the movement ensued, pitting Hitler, whose primary popularity came from Southern Germany, against Gregor Strasser, who was more popular in the North. Thanks in part to the defection of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, a once loyal aid to Strasser, Hitler prevailed. Dusting off the ashes of defeat, the National Socialists used the latter half of the 1920s to effectively organize a grassroots effort and widen their appeal. By the end of the decade they had a visible presence throughout the country but there was also growing unrest within the ranks.

The SA was effective at scaring the opposition, particularly the Communists, but they were also a threat to the Party�s attempts at respectability, if not its very survival. In 1930, the Berlin SA went on strike, a situation that was only salvaged by a personal visit from Hitler, who pleaded with them from street corner to street corner to remain loyal. In 1931 the situation grew far worse when this same group took over a Party newspaper, Der Angriff [The Attack] with the understanding that Goebbels would help them, but he skipped town and ran to Hitler. According to Otto Strasser, Gregor�s brother, who joined this rebellion:

The S.A. occupied the Angriff works for three days, publishing the paper on their own. Hitler and Goebbels were declared to have been dethroned�

One man, and one only, could save Hitler, and this was his old friend Roehm, who had recently returned from Bolivia. Adolf did not hesitate to appeal to him, and Roehm, who remained attached to him in spite of many disappointments, consented.{14}

The rebels were both crushed and bribed. R�hm then took charge of the SA throughout the land and, �As S.A. Chief of Staff he decreed that in future Adolf was to be referred to only as �Mein F�hrer,�{15} and that he was to be addressed in the third person."{16}

R�hm was a strong and loyal friend who could be trusted to whip the SA into better shape but he remained committed to a more openly radical agenda and the complete conquest of bourgeois society, which he felt Hitler would one day bring. R�hm was also a homosexual, which gave Hitler�s enemies ammunition for their newspapers and caused some dissension in the Nazi/SA ranks. This problem grew as the cadre of fellow �deviants� around R�hm grew and rumors of job promotions for sexual favors began to circulate. But R�hm�s organizational genius and unique bond with the F�hrer more than made up for the attacks leveled against him. In an effort to put some of this controversy to rest, Hitler reportedly made several personal statements and even some public ones suggesting that he had no problem with R�hm or homosexuality in general.{17}

In 1932, Hitler unsuccessfully ran for the presidency against the incumbent, the popular but aged wartime General, Paul von Hindenburg. The Nazi Party, though still far from a majority, was now the largest in the Reichstag [Parliament] and they used their power, at times in cooperation with the Communist Party, to make Germany virtually ungovernable by forcing new election after new election. Hindenburg finally submitted to this tactic and made Hitler Chancellor, with the Conservative Catholic Franz von Papen as Vice-Chancellor, on January 30, 1933. Shortly thereafter, the first concentration camps for political prisoners, along with the first public book burning and other moves toward complete Nazification began.

The Nuremberg Rallies

National Socialists had gathered in Nuremberg to celebrate their movement in 1923, 1926, 1927, and 1929, but none of these meetings were truly national rallies. According to the classic book on the subject by Hamilton T. Burden:

Starting in 1933, the Nuremberg rallies were to rise to extreme importance in the life of the nation; they were to develop slowly into a national institution� The main emphasis of the 1933 rally lay in the celebration of the Nazi victory over democracy. It was a splendid display of newly gained power and national solidarity.{18}

From August 30^th to September 3^rd, 1933, the Nazis gathered for The Party Day of Victory Rally, which Leni Riefenstahl was commissioned to film. On December 1, 1933, the same day that R�hm and Hess were made Cabinet Ministers, Riefenstahl�s first �non-fiction� production was premiered at the UFA Palace in Berlin.{19}

The first half of 1934 was a tense time for the new Chancellor. The SA and the more impatient elements in the Party wanted to crush the �red front� and the �reactionaries,"{20} while the industrialists, military leaders and other conservative forces wanted Hitler to join the establishment and maintain their ideas of a stable order. The key to this situation was the Reichswehr. Once President Hindenburg died Hitler needed the support of the military to capture the highest office in the land. R�hm�s solution to this problem was to personally take over the armed forces and fold them into the SA, but the career military officers were not going to let that happen without a fight. Below R�hm was Heinrich Himmler, a former chicken farmer who had been recruited into the Party by R�hm, but who greatly disapproved homosexuality. His black uniformed SS, the Schutzstaffel [Defense/Protection Squads] which originally served as Hitler�s elite personal guard, were looking to expand into the nation�s top police force.

Definitive evidence of Hitler�s promises to the Reichswehr, specifically to his Minister of Defense, General Werner von Blomberg, will most likely never emerge, but what happened is known. Over the course of a weekend at the end of June 1934, R�hm and the SA leadership, along with Gregor Strasser, and a few conservative figures (all total between three and five hundred people by most estimates) were rounded up under the direction of the SS, with the backing of the Reichswehr, and executed. The event is most commonly known as The Night of The Long Knives but it is also referred to as The R�hm Affair and The R�hm Purge. Von Papen was spared from this bloodbath, kept under house arrest by Hermann G�ring, the Nazi President of the Reichstag, until it was all over. The Vice-Chancellor�s only response to these actions was to resign his position, which was more than most Germans did. Hitler�s conduct was legalized retroactively as necessary to defend the State from a possible coup d'�tat by sexual �deviants.� This also marked the beginning of the Nazi effort to rid the nation of homosexuality.{21}

�President Hindenburg died at nine in the morning of August 2, 1934. The law declaring Hitler his successor was in fact adopted during the evening of August 1, and by 9:30 the Reichswehr ha[d] sworn loyalty to the new Chief of State."{22} This was not just a new oath to the office but to the individual man who occupied it. Hitler had now become the measure of all things.{23} From September 4^th to 10^th, the Nazis gathered again in Nuremberg, this time to celebrate The Party Day of Unity, and once again Riefenstahl was given the commission to film the event.

Victory was not shown to the German public after R�hm�s murder; nor had it ever been widely distributed to the rest of the world. Once Triumph was premiered on March 28, 1935,{24} Riefenstahl�s first effort at indoctrinatial filmmaking was all but forgotten, along with the only man who could ever have been billed as Hitler�s co-star.

One of the many close-ups of Hitler and R�hm included in Victory of Faith.
No one else receives such treatment in this film or Triumph of the Will.

New and Improved

In many ways the second Party Rally film was not a sequel so much as it was a remake. Thanks to a bigger budget and a larger crew, along with more time to prepare and greater help from Albert Speer (the architect who planned the Rally buildings in Nuremberg and did most of the coordination for the event), Riefenstahl was able to create a technically superior production that ran nearly twice as long and gave a more complete, yet more contrived portrait of her subject.

Elements of a Riefenstahl style, which arguably reached their apex with her presentation of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin,{25} begin to take shape in Victory. Though the camera is more static here than in her later work, there are some evocative dolly shots of SA and SS men listening to Hitler�s final speech at the end of the film. She also took fewer chances with the editing of Victory, but the pattern of nameless reaction shots from the crowd adoring Hitler began here; particularly with his speech to the Hitler Youth and the later one to the SA and SS. Elements that were not directly copied into Triumph, yet seem to invoke its heightened sensibilities, include a shot of church bells ringing, which fade into silhouettes amid the sun and clouds, just after Hitler arrives and salutes the people from his hotel balcony window. Later, to end the marching sequence, there is a shot which follows the line of Hitler�s outstretched arm to his open hand as the screen fades to black. These artistically suggestive moments, along with other elements of Sepp Allgeir et al.{26} cinematography and Herbert Windt�s music, would all continue to improve under Riefenstahl�s direction in the future.

What is particularly noticeable about Victory are its technical deficiencies. The less planned and polished nature of the piece gives it a candid feeling that at times becomes comical. In several spots Hitler pauses to fix his hair by pulling it back off his forehead, or simply shakes it off. G�ring, who continues to appear somewhat nervous on camera in his brief appearances in Triumph, is particularly pensive in Victory. During the parade at Adolf Hitler Platz [Place], G�ring salutes Hitler and then begins to walk away quickly, only to be called back to shake Hitler�s hand. Later, as everyone stands watching the marches, G�ring is caught yelling orders to someone off camera, and then salutes the camera, as if he does not know what he should be doing. More awkward looking than this however is Hitler�s climatic speech to the SA and SS, where R�hm stands behind him fiddling with his belt buckle. The most unexpected sequence of all involves Hitler and Hess. At the Welcoming ceremony, two attractive blond children, one boy and one girl, salute Hitler and then the girl presents him with a bouquet of flowers. Riefenstahl holds on the shot too long as Hitler returns to his seat and realizes that he has no place to put the flowers. With frustrated indifference the Chancellor hands them off to his Party Secretary, who�s surprised expression almost makes him seem like a jilted lover.

The lack of any such less than perfect moments in Triumph demonstrates the degree to which Victory was analyzed and reconsidered before shooting began on its reincarnation. What is less clear, but arguable, is the fact that the skull and crossbones is never featured in Triumph because it would disrupt the celebratory and positive mood that most of the visuals effectively create. Before the ceremony to honor the dead in Victory, an SS trumpeter sounds his horn, which displays the Adolf Hitler-Standart [Standard]. The SS was also known as The Order of The Death�s Head, and the symbol was displayed on all of their uniforms. Nevertheless, putting this on the big screen would undoubtedly make quite an impact, even in connection with a ceremony to honor the dead. The possibility for negative feelings among the theater audience would be even more pronounced at the time, given the prominent role of the SS in carrying out The Night of The Long Knives.

Taking a step back from the details, the overall construction of Triumph betrays its close relationship to Victory.

While both films restructure the chronological events of the actual rallies they were said to document, Triumph alone gives the viewer the impression of coming full circle by ending with the closing ceremony of the Party Congress. This had the added benefit of giving less prominence to the review of the SA and SS, which ended the first film. Unlike Victory, Triumph centers everything on the F�hrer, and Riefenstahl brought all her skills to bear in hammering this point home.

From the outset it is obvious that Triumph reflects the new state of affairs in Germany. Where Victory had begun with shots of Nuremberg awakening and people preparing for the Rally, followed by important figures gathering in front of the hotel at which Hitler would be staying, Triumph does not allow any known figures to be seen before Hitler is first shown.

R�hm waves to the crowd on his way to
greet Hitler at the airport in Victory of Faith.

Flying in an airplane was a luxury known only to a select few in the 1930s, but Hitler had made himself widely associated with the practice, having been the first politician to campaign via air travel. Victory reinforced this image and defined him as the top man in the movement, by showing him as the only one to arrive in a plane and receive an individual welcoming from the crowd. Triumph took this to a significant new height by bring cameras into the sky with the F�hrer. Riefenstahl begins with shots of the white blanket above the city, the view of God, and then moves through the clouds, like an angel, to float majestically above the beautiful scenery and the assembling masses below. The shadow of Hitler�s plane, filmed from another unseen plane, is visible as it passes over the tiny figures marching below.

Once the F�hrer lands, there is the first section which resembles Victory; the drive from the airport to the hotel. This time, the photography is better (with more perspectives and less shaking), the editing more rapid and deliberate, and the crowd is noticeably well behaved. At the 1933 Rally the police were locked arm-in-arm to hold back the piles of people pushing up against one another, while other sections of the mob are noticeably visible running through the grass to find a better vantage point. The V�lkisher Beobachter [People�s Community Observer] newspaper referred to this in the best possible light as �disciplined confusion,"{27} but it was obviously far too much of the latter and not enough of the former to be repeated at the 1934 Rally (at least not in the parts captured on film). In Victory, it feels as if Riefenstahl made cuts because she had to (or did not make them because she had nothing else to cut to). In Triumph, there is a carefully constructed and lengthier montage. The way the viewer moves from looking over Hitler�s shoulder to nearly looking through his eyes, to looking through the eyes of the crowd and then looking through positions that only a camera operator would occupy, creates a sense of identification with the scene, rather than with any individuals in it. The audience members were being put in their place, as one of the masses worshiping the F�hrer, in such a way that it almost appears to be a pleasant idea. To highlight the detailed nature of Riefenstahl�s work, there is the much talked about cat who appears in this sequence. Victory used a shot of a cat watching a group of SA men on the march but there was little in the way of symbolism to read into this. In Triumph, the cat appears to be sitting on a high windowsill as it turns to watch Hitler�s passing car, then Riefenstahl cuts to Hitler who glances slightly up and back, presumably to see the cat. Not only are all creatures captivated by the F�hrer, there is nothing which his eyes miss.

The opening of these two films is indicative of the rest. The intended messages are undeniable. In the first, Hitler is the leader of the movement. In the second, there is no distinction between Hitler and the movement. Besides the exclusion of once politically powerful conservatives like von Papen from Triumph, there is the noticeable inclusion of military figures like von Blomberg. Symbolically at least, this was a fulfillment of Victory�s promise that the national revolution was not through. More interesting than this is the fact that Victory includes a speech from the Italian Fascist Party representative, Professor Marpicati, entirely in Italian, who gives, �the greetings of Benito Mussolini,� and speaks of this meeting as, �a new step along the way toward a secure triumph of the fascist idea in the world."{28} No foreigners speak in Triumph, nor is Mussolini�s name mentioned. To do so would suggest that Hitler lived in someone else�s shadow, a mere part of a fascist revolution.

More important than this however, was the absence of R�hm, and the attempts to deal with the purge. Hitler tried to reassure the SA in Triumph that they were not to blame for the trouble that had recently beset the movement, and they were in no danger of being disbanded. That trouble was never given a name but there were plenty of signals given to make it clear where things stood in the new order. The three key sequences that demonstrate this are the review of the SA and SS, the ceremony to honor the dead and the parade at Adolf Hitler Platz. In Victory�s climatic speech before the review of the SA and SS, R�hm stood directly behind Hitler after introducing him -- the only person to do such a thing in either film. In Triumph�s speech to the SA and SS, Victor Lutze, officially R�hm�s replacement as the head of the SA, stands on a podium below Hitler while Himmler assumes a similar stance at a separate podium on the other side of Hitler. A similar effect is created for the ceremony to honor the dead. In 1933, Hitler stands beside R�hm as near equals. In 1934, Hitler has a man at each side, both Lutze and Himmler. Like the drive from the airport to the hotel, the ceremony to honor the dead is also longer, with technically superior shots in Triumph.

Left - from the program for Victory of Faith - these are two separate shots in the film superimposed together.
Right - from Triumph of the Will - as the shot appears in the film.

The most significant post-R�hm modification is the parade at Adolf Hitler Platz. The F�hrer always watched these marches from his convertible but in Victory he invites R�hm to join him; in Triumph everyone stands below him. Besides this obvious change in cast and staging, Riefenstahl repeatedly films the F�hrer from below in Triumph, with only the open sky framing him, to create a more towering presence.

Behind-the-scenes photo from the 1934 Party Rally.
Riefenstahl and one of her cameramen are lying on the
ground to capture Hitler's image from a more dramatic angle.

The meanings that viewers were expected to take from all this is not hard to imagine. For those willing to believe, the F�hrer was now the only thing to believe in. As Hess so mystically and succinctly puts it in Triumph�s closing statement, �The Party is Hitler! But Hitler is Germany, as Germany is Hitler!� For those unwilling to believe, there was no doubt what Hitler might do to them. If he could have R�hm killed, despite their friendship and the large number of troops ostensibly at R�hm�s command, it was only logical to assume that Hitler could have anyone killed and get away with it.

There is a popular sentiment, which argues that Triumph is rather boring. Before World War II even began, Paul Rotha was already saying that Triumph:

At first viewing, its size and stridency were overwhelming. At second viewing, its technical defects emerged. At third viewing, it was possible to realise {sic} how much it depended for effect on crowd spectacle and sound. At the fourth viewing, you asked what was the Nazi Conference about and who, anyway, was conferring? Mechanically, the film was very well photographed, but the editing was of the news-reel standard� [despite the enormous budget and effort] The result was sheer tedium.{29}

The real question of intrigue though, is one of effectiveness. Did Triumph do anything for (or to) its target audience, the German public? Present day scholarship has cast doubt upon Triumph�s success, but this depends on how success is measured and who is doing the measuring. Nicholas Reeves has spent a good deal of effort combing through the evidence available and while he admits that, �many of the most enduring images of the regime and its leader derive from Riefenstahl�s film,� he also claims that, �it did not prove to be especially popular, and in many cinemas it was replaced after a week."{30} Whether or not this is entirely true, one must ask how many Christians read the Bible or attend Church regularly?{31} Triumph did not need to be the number one box office draw to be believed on a fundamental level. Reeves� more substantive assertion is that �support for Hitler� could not be �manufactur[ed],� even by �propaganda as powerful as Triumph of the Will,� without �real success in domestic or foreign policy."{32} Rather than asking if Triumph could bring people to Hitler a better question might be, how did it alter the way in which his supporters saw him? There were many reasons for Hitler�s success but the reason for the F�hrerkult [F�hrer Cult] was a function of propaganda. So effective were these messages that there are still people who worship the man as a prophet, if not a god, to this very day.

The real power of Riefenstahl�s work may yet lie in the future. As disconcerting a thought as Hitler�s possible rehabilitation is, it must be considered. If this is the way the F�hrer will ultimately be remembered, minus the context of the times and minus the referential points that Victory provides, who can say what a century or more will do for the F�hrer�s image? Who would have predicted a century ago that one of the most literate and technologically modern nations in the world would be capable of creating death factories? A primary lesson of history is the repeated demonstration of the fact that �improbability� and �impossibility� are two distinctly different things.

Putting aside the nightmare scenarios about what �might be,� consider what is. Even those who know that Hitler was in the wrong often tend to see him as a devil, or at least the Devil�s Messiah. For these people, Triumph affirms their deepest fear, that evil figures are inhuman monsters possessed with supernatural powers of seduction. Despite the disparity of opinion between the minority of Hitler admirers presently left in the world and the majority of haters, what they are all seeing is largely the same; the myth, not the man. To speak of this man as a man, to understand that that is all a tyrant truly is, seems incongruous with the vision that Riefenstahl so masterfully presented the second time around.

The buildings for the Nuremberg Rallies were designed based on the �ruins principle,� so that when National Socialism was long forgotten some vestige of its glory days would remain. Speer even went so far as to draw plans with overgrown vines and crumbling concrete to show Hitler how well the structures would age.{33} I submit that Riefenstahl provided the F�hrer with a spectacular set of moving hieroglyphs, which will be pondered over long after the world of today has reseeded into obscurity. One can only hope that those future onlookers possess what few today do; a complete set of images from which to draw their conclusions.{34}

SPECIAL NOTES:

Stills from Victory of Faith originally selected and captured by Luc Deneulin, Phd, Belgium.

Since originally writing this article a copy of Victory of Faith has appeared on a DVD from England
and can be purchased from International Historic Films.

{1} Celebrity Deaths in 2003. September 15, 2003. http://www3.sympatico.ca/jenoff/obit.htm.

{2} To give some examples of the misinformation that is commonly repeated on this subject, David Hinton, a longtime supporter of Riefenstahl who has published three editions of his book, The Films of Leni Riefenstahl, claims that, �[Victory of Faith] disappeared in the destruction at the end of the war, and no copies have been discovered since.� David B. Hinton. The Films of Leni Riefenstahl. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2000. p. 20. When I questioned him on this point by email he insisted that it was an editorial oversight, which had not been corrected in the current edition of the book. When I pressed him further, asking to know what the book should have said and what he thought of the film, he stopped replying to my emails altogether. It should also be noted that the second edition of Mr. Hinton�s book was published in 1991; three years after the 53-minute version of the film found in Munich had been written about in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. Leni Riefenstahl�s official web site claims that, �Since the end of the war, it had {sic} been impossible to get hold {sic} of a copy of [Victory of Faith]. Yet, there might be one in the archives of the former GDR or the former Soviet Union.� Fimlography. Leni Riefenstahl. 2001. September 14, 2003. http://www.leni-riefenstahl.de/eng/film.html.

{3} The 8 minutes missing from this edition are from the opening of the film, which contains no dialog and focuses entirely on the city of Nuremburg awakening and preparing for the Nazi Rally. This version is a reproduction of a 35mm print discovered in Munich in the 1980s. The Library of Congress would not divulge who gave them this copy of the film nor would they allow me to copy it for fear that it would violate German copyright laws as well as their private agreement with the unnamed party who gave it to them. My primary point of contact there was Patrick Loughney, Ph.D., the Head of the Moving Image Section. Mailing address: 101 Independence Avenue, SE / Washington, D.C. 20540-4691. Phone: 202/707-1122. Fax: 202/707-2371. Email: [email protected].

{4} This version was reconstructed from East and West German sources after reunification. Contact Mrs. Okrug to make viewing arrangements. Mailing address: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Fehrbelliner Platz 3, 10707 Berlin, Germany. Phone: 01888-7770-926. Fax: 01888-7770-999. Email: [email protected]. Another point of contact at the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv is Wolfgang Schmidt, email: [email protected]. The general email is: [email protected].

{5} Milan Kundera. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. p. 233. These words are from an interview reprinted in the "Afterword" of this edition and not part of the novel's text.

{6} Oxford English Dictionary Online. April 15, 2003. http://liberbu.library.unt.edu:2134/cgi/entry/00190078?query_type=word&queryword=propaganda&edition=2e&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place=1&search_id=4cXe-n7Y77W-1166&hilite=00190078.

{7} Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe CD-ROM, 1999.

{8} Many would argue that the real directorial credit for this production should go to Joseph Goebbels.

{9} There is a great deal of debate over classifying Nazism as left or right-wing, because it was both nationalist, which is normally seen as right, and socialist, which is normally seen as left. The Nazis� bigotry, particularly their anti-Semitism, is the primary reason that they are seen as �rightists,� yet there were plenty of Communists, including Joseph Stalin and Karl Marx who were also anti-Semitic. To further complicate this matter, Hitler�s wartime ally, Benito Mussolini, who lead the �right-wing� Fascist Party to power in Italy in 1922, was a well respected �left-wing� Marxist who penned more books on the subjects than Vladimir Lenin prior to World War I. More interesting than this is the fact that the Nazis and the Soviets formed an alliance to carve up Eastern Europe in 1939, which began World War II; a partnership that came to an end after eighteen months when Hitler decided to stab Stalin in the back. The inability to account for these shifts with simple �left�-�right� labels is a strong argument against the usefulness of the standard, one dimensional political spectrum, which obfuscates the fact that all forms of collectivism are fundamentally the same.

{10} Nazi is an abbreviation for �National Socialism,� just as Commie is short for �Communism� and Soci is short for �Socialism.� Despite the widespread use of the term �Nazi� (including my use of it here) to refer to Hitler�s movement, Party members almost always spoke of National Socialism, not Nazism when describing their philosophy.

{11} Weimar was the name of the Republic that took over after Germany�s defeat in World War I and the Kisher�s flight from the country. The Weimar Constitution was �temporarily� suspended throughout Hitler�s reign and it effectively ceased to exist once he consolidated his power.

{12} The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. p. 425-426.

{13} Ibid. p. 430-431.

{14} Otto Strasser. Hitler and I. Tran. Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940. p. 127

{15} The concept of �F�hrer� goes far beyond the literal translation, �leader,� �teacher� or �mentor,� into the realm of the supernatural. Like the Roman Emperors who followed the collapse of the Republic, the F�hrer was presumed to have a connection to the divine that transformed the name �Hitler� into more than a moral man�s moniker. To �Heil Hitler� was to �Hail Caesar,� a being so great he transcended the Volk, the collective body of the people, and yet somehow embodied the nation at the same time. One of the meanings of the word �heil� is �salvation,� which is exactly what the F�hrer was meant to bring.

{16} Strasser. p. 128.

{17} An edict issued by Hitler on February 3, 1931, stated that, ��the SA is a body of men formed for a specific political purpose. It is not an institution for the moral education of genteel young ladies, but a formation of seasoned fighters. The sole purpose of any inquiry must be to ascertain whether or not the SA officer or other rank is performing his official duties within the SA. His private life cannot be an object of scrutiny unless it conflicts with basic principles of National Socialist ideology.� Hans Peter Bleuel. Sex and Society in Nazi Germany. Trans. J. Maxwell Brownjohn. New York: Dorset Press, 1973. p. 97-98.

{18} Hamilton T. Burden. The Nuremberg Party Rallies: 1923-39. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1967. p. 75.

{19} V�lkisher Beobachter. December 2, 1933. Riefenstahl denies attending this premier but the V�lkisher Beobachter for December 3/4 shows a picture of her, which is labeled as being from the premier.

{20} Horst Wessel Lied [the Horst Wessel Song], the Nazi anthem, which is song at the end of Victory of Faith and Triumph of the Will names both these groups as enemies of the movement. Adding that, �slavery will last only a short time longer� because, �The swastika is full of hope for millions� and �the day of freedom and bread has dawn.�

{21} An excellent documentary on this subject is Paragraph 175. Dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. HBO Theatrical Documentary and Telling Pictures, 1999. Paragraph 175 was the section of the German Penal Code, first enacted in 1871, that dealt with homosexuality. In 1935, on the first anniversary of R�hm�s murder, the law was expanded and �a new government agency� was created, �the Reich Office for the Combating of Abortion and Homosexuality.� A clear indication of the framework through which the Nazis saw this issue. It was primarily a matter of population growth. For a fictionalized version of what followed The Night of the Long Knives see the film Bent. Dir. Sean Mathias. Perf. Clive Owen, Lothaire Bluteau, Ian McKellen, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Mick Jagger. Ask Kodansha Company Ltd., 1997.

{22} Max Gallo. The Night of Long Knives. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. p. 290.

{23} As Goebbels would say in �his birthday addresses right up until 1945 [the end of World War II],� �Der F�hrer hat immer reicht! [The F�hrer is always right!]� The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. p. 305-306.

{24} Rainer Rother. Leni Riefenstahl - The Seduction of Genius. New York: continuum, 2002. p. 225.

{25} Riefenstahl crafted this spectacle of Nazi hospitality into two films, Olympia I: Teil - Fest der V�lker (1938) [Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations] and Olympia II: Teil - Fest der Sch�nheit (1938) [Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty].

{26} Sepp Allgeier, Franz Weihmayr and Walter Frentz all worked with Riefenstahl again but Allgeier is the most widely known and noted.

{27} V�lkisher Beobachter. December 2, 1933.

{28} Marpicati gives these remarks during the opening of the Party Congress after being introduced by Hess. Sieg des Glaubens. Dir. Leni Riefenstahl. NSDAP Riechspropagandaleitung (Propaganda Administration), 1933.

{29} Paul Rotha. Documentary Film. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1939. p. 267-268.

{30} Nicholas Reeves. The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality. New York: Cassell, 1999. p. 107.

{31} Rother says, in a footnote (4) that, �There are occasional claims that the film was not a popular success, but they are clearly inaccurate. By 31 May, 1935 -- within two months -- the film had earned 815,000 Reichsmarks� Ufa considered it one of the three best films in the production year 1934/35.

{32} Reeves. p. 111.

{33} Underg�ngens Arkitektur [The Architecture of Doom]. Dir. Peter Cohen. Poj Filmproduktion AB, 1989.

{34} This would also mean a copy of Riefenstahl�s final and shortest Party Rally film, Tag der Freiheit - Unsere Wehrmacht (1935) [Day of Freedom - Our Armed Forces]. Many people believe they have seen this production in its entirety but they are unaware that the middle section, in which Hitler gives the only speech in that film, is missing from most copies. The Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv holds a complete copy and there are others floating around but it is not easy to get a copy.