Review by Thom Hartmann: Triumph of the Will

[Guest guest]

http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/04/10/pre04057.html

 

" Triumph of the Will " by Leni Riefenstahl

 

Review by Thom Hartmann

 

" Triumph of the Will, " a movie made in 1934 by the legendary Leni

Riefenstahl (who died in September 2003 at the age of 101), documents

the 1934 Nuremberg rallies organized by Hitler's Nazis, and won gold

medals for filmmaking in Venice in 1935 and in Paris in 1937. The

Nazis required that the full or a truncated version of it be played

before every other movie in theatres all across Germany, a requirement

that stood until the Third Reich fell.

 

This film is important -- vital -- to see and understand for several

reasons, even aside from the cinematic genius of its filmmaker. (There

is an excellent biographical profile of her at

http://www.leni-riefenstahl.de/eng/bio.html. The last scene of the

movie, including its music, was eerily echoed in the end of George

Lucas' first Star Wars movie, and other filmmakers over the years have

pointed to " Will " as a seminal influence. Although she became one of

the world's most famous photographers –- her last book published just

last year –- she never made another movie after the fall of the Third

Reich, as her reputation was so damaged by her association, at the age

of 32, with Hitler in making this movie.)

 

The first non-cinematic reason this movie is still important 70 years

after its creation is that it helps Americans demystify the rise of

Hitler and helps us understand that the German people of that era were

neither cartoon characters nor incarnations of evil, but real and

average people swept up in a nationalist hysteria. Keep in mind that

this movie was made just a year after the nation's most famous

building had been burned in a " terrorist attack " that Hitler blamed

first on communists and later on Jews, and he used the attack on the

German Parliament Building to consolidate his rise to power. And that

this movie was a very large part of the barrage of propaganda Germans

absorbed in the 1930s (when you see the film, this realization will

take on added significance).

 

Just prior to the filming of " Will, " Hitler had also achieved passage

of the famous Enabling Acts (in response to the burning of the

Reichstag), which gave the government the power to open people's mail,

tap their phones, break into their homes and collect their personal

financial data without a warrant, and imprison protesters or corral

them into separate zones. The Acts so offended the German parliament

that Hitler had to add to them a 4-year sunset provision, so they'd

automatically expire should his war on terrorism end within that time

span. And they helped insure that there would be no protesters at the

1934 rally documented in " Will, " even though at that time -- only a

year into Hitler's reign -- many within Germany still openly opposed

him. (One of the best books on this is Milton Mayer's " They Thought

They Were Free, " which you may want to read after watching this movie.

Or just read this excerpt:

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html)

 

In the early 1930s, Germany was recovering from the crippling effects

of the reparations provisions of the Treaty of Versailles that

followed the end of WWI, and Hitler was widely credited with restoring

both prosperity and a sense of national identity to the demoralized

electorate. He worked hand-in-glove with big business to produce a

giant war machine, and the side effect of all this defense-industry

spending was a general increase in prosperity. The nation was being

militarized while being told their national mission was to create a

1000-year reign of peace around the world. Peace through strength.

Preemptive war. Get the terrorists before they can get us. Peace

through military power and domination of the world.

 

As the world knows, Hitler and his closest advisors said Germany must

find a " solution " to the " problem " of those dangerous people of

middle-eastern ancestry, the Jews -– a " solution " which became the

Holocaust. Ironically (or horrifyingly), in this movie you'll see the

first major roll-out (by Hess, when introducing Hitler) of a word that

Nazi propagandists borrowed from the Zionist movement. They began, in

1934, to heavily use the word " homeland " to promote the idea of

" German blood and soil, " using this word as part of an overall

campaign to transform ordinary nationalism into a " patriotic " cult

that quickly swept the nation.

 

If the first reason for seeing this movie -- aiding your historical

understanding of the time and its propaganda -- is important, the

second reason is vital. " Triumph of the Will " shows what can happen in

a nation when its leader lies to their people, objectifies and then

blames a cultural and religious " other " for their problems, stifles

dissent, and -- with the complicity of an obedient media -- carefully

stage-manages public appearances to seem that everybody totally adores

him.

 

While there are parallels between the rise of George W. Bush and that

of Adolf Hitler (I wrote about them just a few months after 9/11 in an

article titled When Democracy Failed, which is now also a chapter in

my new book " What Would Jefferson Do? " ), it is disingenuous to try to

draw too many comparisons. Hitler's evils -- and his ambition -- were

on a scale unimaginable by Bush, and pointing out the similarities

with too shrill a voice can diminish the horrors of the Holocaust and

Hitler's other crimes.

 

But just as the CIA (then the OSS) fine-tuned its investigative

techniques after WWII by learning technique from Nazi spies they

brought into the agency, the Bush administration is using today -- for

the first time in American history -- many of the same techniques for

manipulating the people as did the Nazis in their early days (the Big

Lie; controlled, adoring crowd scenes; stifling dissent; hyping terror

for political gain; hypermilitarization of domestic police to create

the storm-trooper look and feel).

 

For Americans awakened to today's realities, watching " Triumph of the

Will " is an experience at once educational, enlightening, and

horrifying. But it's a horror we must face if we are to avoid the same

trap so many average Germans fell into in 1934.

 

---> GET YOUR COPY HERE <---