When we look back at
Leni Reifenstahl's classic
propaganda film,
Triumph of the Will, it is too easy to miss what it meant when it came out in 1935. Westerners today live in reasonably effective democracies. We view
Adolph Hitler through the lens of history. We know who he was: shattered, burning cities and millions of bodies make his true nature emphatically clear. We are also reasonably fat, happy and comfortable. We are not the German people who saw that film, or attended the 1934 Congress of the Nazi Party. We aren't the people Hitler and Joseph Goebbels sought to influence. In the age of the steady-cam Reifenstahl's use of moving cameras, distorted perspective and the use of aerial photography are old hat to us, so we forget how revolutionary they were at the time. To understand what it means we need to travel back to Germany in 1935.
Imagine that you are twenty-four years old. Uncle Rolf who bounced you on his knee during the war now walks with a limp because dozens of pieces of shrapnel left in his body after the surgeons got done. His happy-go-lucky brother Uncle Dietrich died at Verdun. I suppose many of you modern readers my think I exaggerate here, but today in every small English village stands a small monument to the dead of World War I. Most every single family lost at least one man during that conflict. Some lost every military age male. The Germans fared no better, in fact worse. Everybody lost a relative. Some mothers lost every son. These were brave, strong, young men now gone forever.
Logically such a horrendous outcome might make you something of a pacifist and for many it did. But not everyone felt that way. The lost young men were Germany's best and most found it hard to understand how such as they could lose. Some claim they did not lose, but were betrayed! Germany gave up the struggle still occupying sections of France and Belgium. Many claim German soldiers were not defeated by sheer military power, but by a failure of will. True the rising strength of American troops made military defeat inevitable, but that was 1918. This is 1935 and most have forgotten that inconvenient fact. Uncle Rolf will speak of his comrades after a few steins, and he remains proud and confident, hardly a beaten, broken man despite his obvious pain.
And what did peace bring Germnay? The Treaty of Versailles took away lands that contained many Germans-- border regions are always a mix but most ethnic groups don't see it quite that way, particularly when you've been in charge for a while. Versailles imposed crushing reparations, and forced the once proud German Army, which had dared to fight the entire world combined into a shell of its former self, far too small to defend its diminished borders against any neighbor. You had a democratic government imposed as well. At the end of World War I many held that democratic governments really couldn't go to war, so the Weimar constitution had been written with the idea of being the most democratic possible. The writers specified a system of proportional representation and a parliamentary government in many ways similar to that of modern day Israel. In 1935 the world still lay in the depths of the Great Depression, where American unemployment rose to over 25%. In Germany matters were worse. Buried under the crushing reparations of Versailles, the exceptionally weak Weimar government was paralyzed to act in face of such economic challenges. Fit young German men competed to join the Army in Germany because in many cases it was the only place they could get a job, and men enlisted for twelve years! How could there be so few jobs after 2.5 million German war dead, almost all males of prime economic age, plus many many more invalided like Uncle Rolf? You considered yourself lucky to have a job.
Worse, German dignity is fading. Have you seen the streets of Berlin? Traditional music, art and achitecture are under attack by people who play
jazz or some of those horrid
Bauhaus buildings. Prostitutes abound, and while you might find yourself tempted the risque
Cabarets a bit the sheer decadence of today's Germany frightens you. Germany has always been a clean, orderly place, where people lived good family lives. Now homosexuals and the dissolute parade themselves. One of them winked at you the other day, you're sure of it, and it made you both mad and frightened. What use is it going forward if German society itself is falling apart. Believe me, you have heard plenty on this subject from Uncle Rolf and others. And since Hitler took power in 1933 things have started to look up. At least the man knows how to make a decision! Things seem to be happening now that Hitler is in charge.
So now here you sit watching Triumph of the Will with some friends, one of whom speaks highly of this Hitler fellow. You feel like you are riding in his plane when the clouds part and you see the beautiful city of Nuremberg beneath you. And the streets are full of people, marching in a line straight toward the great stadium. And there are a lot of them. No tricks here, no hiding it. The Nazi party conference was attended by over 200,000 people out of a national population of something close to 65 million. That's huge. Mile after mile you see them walking toward . . . something.
Hitler arrives by air, and he alone, a huge luxury in 1935, and a symbol of modernity in those times. Now the party begins. And there they are, every single man uniformed and well groomed, each man proud to be German in a time when the whole world wants nothing more then to see Germany piled in shame. You see the dignitaries arrive and speak. Rudolf Hess calls the party to order and slowly the Nazis come forward to speak; Goebbels, Rosenberg, Todt etc. Every speaker seems confident and proud. No waffling like other politicians. Then they feature a set of maneuvers by the members of the Reicharsarbeitsdienst, where your friend will soon find work. The Labor Service is something akin to the American Civilian Conservation Corps, only the military drill with shovels instead of rifles makes clear its paramilitary nature. They are all proud and handsome men.
Then Hitler speaks. The man is mesmerizing! Passionate, he speaks of a greater Germany. there are more parades, of the uniformed SA parading by candlelight, the beautiful young boys and girls of the Hitler Youth in the morning. Again Hitler speaks, and it is of the future and future sacrifices required. There are military maneuvers of a sort, but it is good in demilitarized Germany to see the Wehrmacht acting, and then another torchlight speech.
The climax comes to the music of Wagner. Hitler walks between a mass of well over 100,000 uniformed, handsome and fit SS and SA men, a force large enough to rival the army itself. There he lays a wreath at the World War I memorial. It is a symbolic burial of Versailles, and with so many troops demonstrates that Germany is not weak and guilty, but strong and decisive again. They mention the recent Night of Long Knives in passing, but it is as a purification, and Rohm is absolved for excessive zeal in a good cause. For Hitler speaks of a pure Germany, one whose strength was sapped from within as it could not be beaten from without. And when you think of the young Uncle Rolf, you see these strong and proud young men standing disciplined by the thousands Hitler's world seems quite plausible.
True there were plenty of warnings of Hitler's true nature. He wrote of his xenophobic and grandiose dreams openly in Mein Kampf, a book that became a best seller well outside Germany. The Night of Long Knives was troubling but wasn't a communist found in burning Reichstag? Besides, the homosexual Rohm is dead and gone now. Hitler's anti-semitism is obvious, but in the 1930s open anti-Semetism was accepted in polite company. Hitler wasn't saying anything that others weren't saying in public, such as that American radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin. And if parties like the opposition Social Democrats had been banned and the legislature rendered impotent to resist the Nazis by the Enabling Act well what of it? Odds are our hypothetical young German didn't care if the seeming incompetent Social Democrats were gone or that the Enabling act in effect gave the Nazis unchecked power to rule Germany. Most people are apolitical and little inclined to look deeper into matters. Remember the Great Depression hit Germany hardest of all. The sad truth is that most people care little for democratic niceties when they're worried about their immediate futures. Americans willingly gave away some of their civil liberties after 9/11 and they have over 200 years of Democratic tradition. In 1934 Germany had 'enjoyed' democracy for only fifteen years, none prosperous.
So look back now at a nation well used to unemployment, hunger, feeling despised by the rest of the world and under attack, and becoming increasingly unruly. Think of the things defeat and depression must have done to their minds. Then listen to the words of a truly charismatic speaker who has no doubts about the future, surrounded by clean-cut, disciplined men by the thousands all hanging on his every word, promising a brighter and truer future if only our land can be purified, and Germans stand tall and demonstrate their will to the world.
Think that way when you watch Triumph of the Will. Then realize you are looking at the greatest horror film ever made.