BERLIN

Leni Riefenstahl had to have known whom she was dealing with. In May 1933, when she resumed her relationship with Adolf Hitler, a great deal had come to pass in Germany. In the first days of February, the Reichstag had been dissolved and new parliamentary elections were slated for March 5. On February 27, the Reichstag was set ablaze. Arrests began in the early morning hours of February 28. Thousands of leftist party officials and other individuals who were deemed unwanted were hauled into cellars and prisons where they were beaten, tortured, and even murdered. The next morning, this state of affairs was legalized. An emergency decree “for the protection of people and state” suspended civil liberties for an indefinite period of time: freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, as well as the privacy that had been guaranteed to postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications. The constitutional state of the Weimar Republic was replaced by an ongoing state of emergency under Nazi rule. Political scientist Ernst Fraenkel called this law “the constitutional charter of the Third Reich.”

For Riefenstahl, by contrast, the best time of her life began in 1933. Within the space of five years, she would be world famous and finally attain the success for which she had yearned for so long. She achieved this status by means of unwavering cooperation with the new Führer of the Germans. “Adolf Hitler had achieved his goal, but as Reich Chancellor he interested me far less than he had before the takeover,” she later wrote in her memoir.¹ In Hitler’s milieu, of which she was a part, everyone made a point of saying “takeover of power” rather than “seizure of power.”² Her remark that he interested her less once he was chancellor is odd, since she had spent the previous year preparing for this very situation. She claimed to know nothing about National Socialist anti-Semitic policies until she came back from the mountains.

Riefenstahl had spent the previous five months abroad and could stay abreast of the political events in Germany by reading independent newspapers. Still, she pleaded ignorance about the boycott of Jewish businesses, quotas for Jewish students, destruction of the unions, burning of books, and the Ermächtigungsgesetz (enabling act), which gave the government the right to pass laws without parliamentary consent. Riefenstahl feigned astonishment at the changes: “Many great Jewish actors and actresses, such as Elisabeth Bergner, were no longer performing, and Max Reinhardt and Erich Pommer had also left Germany by this point. What terrible things must have happened there! I couldn’t understand any of that. What was I to do? I hadn’t heard anything from Hitler since December or, of course, from Goebbels, which I was happy about.”³

She maintained that she now fared badly in Berlin. Because of her extended absence, she was unable to capitalize on the success of The Blue Light, and she was running low on money. She decided to get in touch with Harry Sokal, to whom she had “trustingly” left everything. But when she called him up, she found out that he had left, which was understandable, in her opinion, because “Sokal was half-Jewish.”⁴ She declared in frustration that he had not given her a penny of the profits from her “international triumph” and had even taken the original negative of the movie with him.

In the throes of a deep depression and out of money, Riefenstahl bided her time in Berlin until she got a call from the chancellery and learned that Hitler wished to meet with her the following day. Trembling from head to toe, she “didn’t have the courage to say no.”⁵ When she headed to the chancellery on a warm and cloudness summer’s day to pay Hitler a visit, she had on a simple white dress and light makeup, in deference to his taste. Hitler offered her artistic oversight of German filmmaking, but she turned him down, claiming that she lacked the ability to assume this task. Then he offered her the opportunity to make films for him. Again she demurred, this time on the grounds that she was an actress and wanted to achieve success in that arena.

Joseph Goebbels’s diary reveals that Riefenstahl went to see him one week after the May 10 book burning. He noted in his diary: “Afternoon Leni Riefenstahl. She tells me about her plans. I suggest a Hitler film. She is keen on the idea.” They got along so well that Leni Riefenstahl accompanied Goebbels and his wife to the opera that evening.⁶

A photograph of an opera evening five months later shows Riefenstahl next to Magda Goebbels in a box seat. The Italian ambassador to Germany, Vittorio Cerrutti, was keeping them company; Joseph Goebbels and his adjutant can be seen in the background. Riefenstahl looks relaxed and does not give the impression that she is unhappy in this group. To the end of her life, she vehemently denied having had any close collaboration with Goebbels, which she got away with in large part because the diaries cited here were not tracked down until 1992 in Moscow.⁷

Riefenstahl claimed that Goebbels never stopped besieging her during the spring of 1933. He called her up when she was on vacation, appeared at her door at night, and summoned her to his official residence on Pariser Platz in Berlin for private talks. Their meetings invariably ended with Goebbels trying to kiss her or fondle her breasts. When he realized that she would not be intimidated or yield to his advances, his desire flipped into hatred. Even before she shot her first film for the National Socialists, we are told, he was already her enemy.

Riefenstahl was determined to focus squarely on Hitler. From this point on, she believed that only the admiration and support of the omnipotent dictator would be suitable for her genius. But Goebbels evidently gave her quite a bit of help. She could heap blame on him and count on his inability to defend himself. She would later deny doing everything in her power to get into the social circles of Goebbels and Hitler so she could advance her career.

Goebbels got to know Riefenstahl on November 2, 1932, before his speech in the Sports Palace: “I meet Riefenstahl . . . very enjoyable, smart, and pleasant. . . . We chat for a long time. She is a very enthusiastic supporter of ours.”⁸ Two days later, she visited Goebbels and his wife at their home. “Late in the evening Leni Riefenst. at our house. She entertains us until four in the morning. A clever and amusing person. She is very pleasant. Magda likes her as well.” From then on, Riefenstahl seems to have been a welcome guest at the Goebbels home. Two days later, she shared a sofa with Hohenzollern prince August Wilhelm and Hitler supporter Viktoria von Dirksen. In late November 1932, Riefenstahl displayed her talents. Together with Adolf Hitler, she was a guest at the Goebbels residence. “Evening Hitler at our house. Leni Riefenstahl too. It is very nice. Leni R. dances. Good and effective. A lithe gazelle.”⁹ Goebbels was well informed about Riefenstahl’s love affairs. In her mountain films, which Hitler also found quite appealing, she played the sexually active woman who challenged the men.

On December 3, there was another big party at the Goebbels’. “Riefenstahl flirts with Göring. And Slezak entices her away from Hitler. A great show. Goes on until 4 in the morning.”¹⁰ Over the course of the next few days, she turned on the charm for Italo Balbo, a leading Italian fascist, and invited Ernst Hanfstaengl, Magda and Joseph Goebbels, photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, and Hitler to her home. Presumably this was the attempt to pair off Hitler and Riefenstahl that Hanfstaengl described. Her later claim that she had only minimal contact with Hitler is highly implausible in light of these casual get-togethers.¹¹ Riefenstahl actively sought out contact with Hitler by way of Goebbels and played up her feminine charms to capture the interest of both men.

Although the cinemas, theaters, and cafés were packed and everything appeared to be the same as ever, the world was beginning to fall apart. Sebastian Haffner wrote, “It was as if the ground on which one stood was continually trickling away from under one’s feet.”¹² But Riefenstahl herself was on firm ground. She does not appear to have noticed that there was only one political party left, that the red notices posted on advertising pillars announcing the latest executions were updated on a near-daily basis, and that many of her colleagues in the film industry were no longer around. She was caught up in the whirl of her new circles and no longer needed to beg Arnold Fanck for roles or cultivate contacts in the odious film business. At first she seems to have consulted with Goebbels on matters pertaining to film. Although she claimed otherwise, she was discussing a film project with him in November 1932. This film, Madam Doctor, would depict the life of a World War I female spy.¹³

On March 13 the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was established, and Goebbels was appointed to head it. This ministry oversaw film as well as many branches of art and the media. Goebbels had been attempting for several years to exploit the film medium for the party. In the “Gau Berlin,” of which he was in charge, the first party film division had been established in the fall of 1930. But short films, such as With the Berlin SA to Nuremberg, did not accomplish much. Now that he was finally in power he was eager for change. On March 28, 1933, at Hotel Kaiserhof, the film people were told what Goebbels expected of them and what they could expect from him. They were dumbfounded to learn that he did not want to support any “so-called National Socialist” films, and were equally surprised when he revealed the type of films he favored. No one would have imagined the titles he named. At the top of his list was Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, followed by a diverse group of movies that included 1928’s Love (Edmund Goulding) with Greta Garbo, 1932’s The Rebel (Kurt Bernhardt) with Luis Trenker, and Fritz Lang’s 1924 The Nibelungs. The propaganda minister appreciated both Hollywood and the avant-garde.

He knew of Riefenstahl as a supporter of the party and as an actress. On December 1, 1929, after seeing The White Hell of Piz Palü, he wrote in his diary: “The beautiful Leni Riefenstahl is in it. A splendid child! Full of grace and elegance.”¹⁴ The two of them seem to have gotten along splendidly at first. They had a picnic with Hitler at the seaside resort of Heiligendamm and watched the latest Hans Albers movie together, and Goebbels was positively tickled by her sympathetic understanding of the Nazi soul. “She is the only one of all the stars who understands us,” he wrote in his diary.¹⁵ Riefenstahl was now a regular guest at the Goebbels’ home and chatted with SA section commanders and film colleagues until all hours of the night. There were unforeseen difficulties with the subject matter of the film. “Evening Corell, Köhn, and Riefenstahl: Film Madam Doctor. I’m helping as much as I can. Now there are objections regarding foreign policy & R. W. [Reichswehr].”¹⁶

Riefenstahl claimed that Ufa wrote her a brief letter stating that her film project could not be completed because the Ministry of Defense had prohibited the production of spy films. The descriptions of Riefenstahl’s meetings with Goebbels refute her claim that she had no social ties with him and provide insights into the events leading up to her first Reich party rally film. Her claim that Hitler forced her to make this film had no basis in fact; once her feature-film project had fallen apart, she was “thrilled” to be offered this opportunity, as Goebbels noted in his diary.¹⁷

In late August, Riefenstahl finally had it in black and white, and readers of the Film-Kurier learned what a coup she had scored:

At the directive of the Reich Administration for Reich Propaganda, Department IV (Film), a film will be made of the party congress. Fräulein Leni Riefenstahl will be the artistic director, at the special request of the Führer, and supervision of this movie will be in the hands of the director of Central Department IV (Film) Party Member Arnold Raether. Party Member Eberhard Fangauf is the technical manager. Next week, Fräulein Riefenstahl will go to Nuremberg after a detailed consultation with Party Member Raether to lay the groundwork for this film.¹⁸

Victory of Faith was the first film Riefenstahl made for the National Socialists. The fact that many artists had left Germany, fearing for their lives, worked to the advantage of those who, like Riefenstahl, chose to offer their artistic services to the new rulers. There were now unprecedented opportunities for advancement, and Riefenstahl did not hesitate to take full advantage of the situation. Hitler needed no more than a couple of months to establish his dictatorship and get his adversaries out of the way. At the same time, Riefenstahl had become a favorite of the dictator’s. She could finally heave a sigh of relief: Hitler had freed her from the constraints of the film industry and she could give free rein to her genius. However, she had not taken the party members’ views into account. Up to this point, she had been dealing only with high-ranking National Socialist dignitaries and their adjutants. She often spent whole nights with them, feeling like a great artist. When she got together with Hitler for tea at the chancellery, she was always alone with him and she savored her proximity to power. But now she had to deal with a larger group of small-minded, overly ambitious party members as well. For these men, Riefenstahl was an outsider and a troublemaker. A set of correspondence provides insight into the kinds of attacks she faced. A mere three days after the official announcement of Riefenstahl’s appointment, a confidential note called for a background check of her Aryan ancestry. “Herr Podehl, the dramatic adviser at Ufa, met with the film author Katscher, a Jew. Herr Katscher is married to an Aryan. Frau Katscher explained that Leni Riefenstahl was her cousin, and that Leni Riefenstahl was the only Jew among her blood relations. Leni Riefenstahl, she went on to say, has a Jewish mother, who is thought to be the only Jew in her extended family.”¹⁹ The next day, Riefenstahl received a letter requesting documentation about her mother and grandparents on both sides of her family “in order to verify your Aryan lineage.” These investigations confirmed Riefenstahl’s Aryan ancestry. Arnold Raether, the head of the film division, was immediately informed of this status, and on September 8, he sent a handwritten letter to a fellow party member, Hinkel.

Dear Party Member Hinkel,

Your letter in the matter of Riefenstahl was forwarded to me while I was on vacation. In Nuremberg, I had called Herr Hess’s attention to things known to me as well, since he wanted to have the case investigated. I have received notification from Berlin that with regard to her ancestry nothing detrimental has turned up. Not that I can imagine that even a Jew would make up something of this sort. One thing is certain: until a year ago, Fräulein Riefenstahl knew nothing about National Socialism. Her landscape films—or rather, the films made by good cameramen—were also put together for the sole purpose of business.

Heil Hitler and yours sincerely, A. Raether²⁰

Raether was one of the few people in the propaganda ministry who knew anything about film. He had studied business, then worked as a manager at Ufa. He joined the Nazi party in 1930. Raether was a former member of the Free Corps and a staunch National Socialist. He was responsible for Hitler over Germany (1932), Hitler Youth in the Mountains (1932), and other films in that vein. Goebbels was not particularly fond of this overblown party glorification, but he knew that Raether was a loyal party member and competent worker, and he assigned him many key functions, entrusting him with a seat on the Film Credit Bank’s board of directors and putting him in charge of allocating loans for film projects. The recipient of this letter appears to be Hans Hinkel, who had been decorated with the prestigious Blood Order for participating in the 1923 putsch. In July 1933, he became a state commissioner in the Prussian Ministry of Culture and the Prussian regional director of the Combat League for German Culture. Riefenstahl worked directly with Raether and Eberhard Fangauf. Fangauf, who was born in 1895, volunteered for military service and was honorably discharged when he was severely injured in 1918. In April 1933, he joined the Goebbels ministry as a film consultant and was put in charge of organization and production management of government and party-run film propaganda. He would remain in this post until 1945.

Fangauf, Raether, and Hinkel, all confirmed National Socialists, were profiteers of the new system and disgruntled to learn that Riefenstahl had been commissioned to film the party congress. They did not want to yield any of their privilege and status, especially not to a woman. Riefenstahl, in turn, was buoyed by her own sense of importance as the artist who had been chosen by the Führer. Now that she had finally succeeded in finding a powerful patron and admirer, she had no intention of backing away. Raether, Fangauf, and Hinkel had not counted on a woman like Riefenstahl. She had already tackled more difficult situations. With Fanck, she had learned how to assert herself as the only woman among men.

A chilly reception awaited her when she went to see Fangauf in Nuremberg to discuss the film work. Fangau was disturbed by her presence in the place that was rightly his and refused to make film stock and cameramen available to her. Once again, Riefenstahl was able to turn a seemingly hopeless situation to good advantage. She signed cameramen on her own and sought to maintain her independence from the cumbersome party machine, which was hostile to art. Her former lover, Sepp Allgeier, joined her crew. As was so often the case, her erotic connection to this man enhanced their artistic collaboration. However, she had not enlisted his services for sentimental reasons. In 1932, Allgeier had worked as the cameraman in Trenker’s feature film The Rebel, and Goebbels and Hitler loved this film. Allgeier joined the NSDAP in 1935. Riefenstahl’s other cameramen were Franz Weihmayr and Walter Frentz. Frentz had been recommended by Albert Speer, whom Riefenstahl had met in Nuremberg. Because he was able to infuse Hitler’s May Celebrations at Tempelhofer Feld with some degree of theatrical atmosphere, he had been sent to Nuremberg to reenact this feat there. Speer later recorded his impressions of Riefenstahl in his memoirs.

During the preparations for the Party Rallies I met a woman who had impressed me even in my student days: Leni Riefenstahl, who had starred in or had directed well-known mountain and skiing movies. Hitler appointed her to make films of the rallies. As the only woman officially involved in the proceedings, she had frequent conflicts with the party organization, which was soon up in arms against her. The Nazis were by tradition antifeminist and could hardly brook this self-assured woman, the more so since she knew how to bend this men’s world to her purposes. Intrigues were launched and slanderous stories carried to Hess, in order to have her ousted.²¹

Riefenstahl thought of Speer as her friend. The tie that bound them was their utter devotion to Hitler.

Frentz was similarly pleased to find a point of affinity with Riefenstahl: “We had very much the same attitude toward film: I hated wastefulness and so did she.”²² With Allgeier, Weihmayr, and Frentz on Riefenstahl’s side, she dared to defy small-minded and spiteful party members. However, shooting on location turned out to be more difficult than the crew had anticipated. No matter where they set up their equipment, they were thrown out by SA or SS men. Eventually Riefenstahl was summoned to Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, who confronted her with an SA man’s claim that she had made disrespectful statements about Hitler. As we know from Raether’s letter to Hinkel, he had advised Hess that Riefenstahl was a shady person. Hess was a man known for his modesty in everything except his love of Hitler. In all probability he was jealous of this young woman and daunted by her beauty and talent. But Riefenstahl did not get distracted. She went back to her filming, confident in her mandate and her skill.

The Volk that Hitler was addressing as chancellor had yet to evolve into the Volk he envisioned. Once the democratic structures had been done away with, he was planning for an inner reeducation of the German people. Hitler wanted to reorient the Germans to become a Volk that would go off to war for him and attain supremacy in the world, and he envisioned the film of the party congress serving to propagate this vision. As a lover of movies and an aficionado of Riefenstahl’s films, he knew that she was predestined for this kind of work. Her art had never been based in reality.

Movies had been made of the Nuremberg party rallies in 1927 and 1929. The focus of the 1927 film was the party itself, specifically the men from the SA, whose merry camp life was shown in great detail right down to their odd rituals. In the movie that was made two years later, Hitler was still far from his later role as savior. Such a depiction was no longer considered appropriate. In September 1933, he wanted to be portrayed on film as the Führer of the Germans.²³ Riefenstahl admired Hitler. She knew nothing of all the scheming that had plagued the party—or at least she had no desire to know. She focused squarely on Adolf Hitler. He could rest assured that she would make him the centerpiece of the film.

Beyond her burning ambition, her boundless admiration of Hitler, and her talent, Riefenstahl was able to develop a plan with military precision. Her orders had to be obeyed; everyone and everything had to submit to her will. Three days before the rally began, she arrived in Nuremberg. A film journal reported on her preparations for the shooting:

The city was already festively decorated. With the aid of a city map that highlighted the scheduled events and in particular the parades and processions, the filming strategy was plotted out. The car with Leni Riefenstahl and her crew raced from one place to another, again and again; the camera placements were selected, the possible time schedules planned and altered. And then came the four big days themselves: an enormous amount of work from early in the morning until late at night, with new arrangements and split-second decisions necessitated again and again, which required an overview of the whole situation and great powers of concentration.²⁴

Fanck had taught her how to lay claim to uncharted territory. Her work in the mountains had also taught her the importance of waiting for just the right moment. Still, everything had to move very quickly in Nuremberg. She needed cameramen she could rely on. Every detail was planned out, yet was subject to spontaneous change if an enticing opportunity arose. “The sheer abundance of events threatened to overwhelm us all the time,” she wrote. “The mass of material being presented to us could have kept a hundred crew members busy. That was the only possible way for us to capture the key moments on celluloid.”²⁵ Her cameramen had to be on site for all the important speeches and events, but they could neither be noticeable nor disturb the events with their equipment. The final day of shooting in the Luitpoldhain municipal park would pose a particular challenge in this regard. The cameramen would follow the rally from the scaffolding and also stand among the SA men as they filmed so that every last spot in the huge complex was covered. Everything was worked out to the last detail to bring together a film of lasting historical import.

Victory of Faith begins without people. After catching a glimpse of the clouds, we see a city from above in the morning light. The city awakens, an old city with densely clustered buildings, crooked alleyways, and a great many church towers. The camera comes back down to earth, and the following shots look as though they were taken from a moving car. Fountains, clocks, statues of saints and kings go by, accompanied by a music track. Suddenly, people appear: young men are building bleachers in front of a church; the mood is elated. Carpenters hoist a small swastika banner, which flutters gaily in the wind—the first indication of what lies ahead. Not a word has been uttered. Then a sea of swastika banners comes into view. Scenes of urban traffic with backlit passersby, legs cut off, and a muddle of bodies and automobiles recall the aesthetic of the previous decade.

In the following shot, we see formations of SA men marching into the city. Boots in lockstep, singing, old and young men in rank and file—that is the new aesthetic. The SA arrives on foot, on horseback, in carriages, or by car, and is hailed as it marches through the villages. The onlookers stand at attention and give the Hitler salute. Several times, Riefenstahl also shows children with their arms raised in the air. Cheerful party officials emerge from trains and limousines in uniform, though a few are in civilian dress. An airplane lands. Hitler appears in a trench coat, a dismissive look on his face. Voices can now be heard for the first time: the spectators are roaring “Heil!” Hitler has a magnetic effect, and everyone streams toward him. The camera shows him from behind, standing in the car as it moves past the rapturous crowd. At this moment, the viewer can almost share Hitler’s perspective. The city is full of life. People are now climbing all over the fountains that were still empty in the earlier morning shots. The storefronts are decorated with swastika banners, their own ornamentation blocked from view. Bells are ringing. There are unintentionally funny scenes, such as when Hitler fidgets with his hair or when he is flummoxed by two children handing him a bouquet of flowers, and so passes it along to Hess, who is seated next to him.

Hess opens the Reich party congress. The people jump up from their seats, laughing and shouting “Heil,” barely able to grasp the fact that Hitler is among them. Riefenstahl shows a heterogeneous, enthusiastic crowd. There are close-ups of elegantly dressed women, but at the stadium ceremonies we see only determined, angular faces of young men. Röhm, the head of the SA, displaying his facial wound from World War I like a mark of honor, is clearly Hitler’s right-hand man. He reports that one hundred thousand SA, SS, and Stahlhelm troops have lined up. When Hitler speaks of the “young German freedom movement,” he is referring to his own party. In long sequences, Riefenstahl shows marching SA men, then the SS, who appear in the film for the first time. Hitler is clearly the master of the German people’s emotions. He radiates equanimity while unleashing frenzied fervor in the crowds. The film closes with fluttering swastika banners and the anthem of the Nazi party, the Horst Wessel Song.

Hitler was the first politican who sought to be portrayed in a full-length film. The earlier films of party rallies ran only thirty minutes; Riefenstahl’s film would be twice as long. She regarded herself as an artist, not as a filmmaker with a party badge. Her goal was not merely to edit footage, but to find a rhythm and a cinematic language for this massive political event in the new Germany. Together with her cutting-room assistant, Erna Peters, she headed back to Bergmannstrasse in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin, where the Tesch printing laboratory was located, to edit the film. The work took longer than expected, and she excused herself in the pages of the Film-Kurier for the weeks of waiting. It required great effort to “create a flow for events that were repeated again and again, escalate the action, find transitions, in a word, to give rhythmic form to this great film of the movement.”²⁶

Riefenstahl’s decision to present the material without voiceovers and out of chronological order gave her more latitude to diverge from the sequence of events at the rally. Apart from the music track, she used only original sounds, thus rendering the film an acoustic acclamation for Hitler. The shouts of Sieg Heil roar, boom, and break forth again and again, while the ardent crowd stands with right arms outstretched at eye level, palms open in the Hitler salute. On July 13, 1933, this salute had been made mandatory. Riefenstahl’s first film for the National Socialists served as instruction in the proper ways to act in this new era. It is unlikely that even a single German was unacquainted with the need for a Sieg Heil accompanied by a Hitler salute. The film demonstrates impressively how many people on the streets of Nuremberg adhered to this ritual of compliance and subjugation. Victory of Faith would be shown in villages as well as big cities; the idea was to reach as many Germans as possible. Many of them now got to see something about which they had heard or read but had not witnessed up close. “The movie shows the Germans’ dedication to the idea of National Socialism,” according to a review in Die Filmwoche.²⁷ Victory of Faith is a kind of object lesson in how a National Socialist needs to behave.

On December 1, 1933, the premiere took place in the Ufa Palace in Berlin. Just three months earlier, Riefenstahl had stood on the stage here after the premiere of S.O.S. Iceberg. The time between the filming in Nuremberg and the premiere in Berlin had been brief. “One simple telephone call to Hitler got her the use of his big tri-motor airplane, along with a personal pilot, Captain Bauer. We can imagine the effect of this unexpected arrival on the eyewitnesses, when the big silver bird landed in Tempelhof and the triumph of Leni when she stepped out, with a smile on her lips and accompanied by a handsome blond lad!”²⁸ S.O.S. Iceberg was well received by the critics, but they panned her acting: “Leni Riefenstahl, whose acting is just as rudimentary as it has been for years, plays a stereotypical feminine adjunct in monumental mountain films and thus runs the risk of being typecast in these outdated kinds of movies.”²⁹ Not even Joseph Goebbels had liked her in this movie: “Film S.O.S. Iceberg. Magnificent nature scenes. Plot quite anemic. Leni Riefenstahl seems awfully conventional. She was not effective here.”³⁰

Her success with Victory of Faith more than compensated for this criticism. The premiere was splendidly orchestrated. Hitler, Goebbels, Röhm, and Hess were present, along with von Papen, von Neurath, and Frick, to celebrate her debut as a political film star. The curtain rose, and for a good hour, the audience of party members could bask in its own glory. “When the final sound faded away, the audience, which was visibly moved, rose to its feet spontaneously to express its bond with the Führer and his movement by singing the National Socialist song of security and strength. Even then, there was no clapping, but rather reverent silence, followed by a burst of enthusiasm and resounding applause.”³¹ The audience roared its approval of Riefenstahl, and the Führer handed her a bouquet of flowers. The two of them were the stars of the evening. To celebrate the premiere of the film, Hitler threw a big party.

After 1945, Riefenstahl dissociated herself from Victory of Faith. Her only mention of it was to dismiss it as a mere “short film.” For a long time this film was thought to be lost, and her statement could not be verified. She claimed that after telling Hitler about the impediments to her work in Nuremberg, Goebbels had been enraged and became her enemy on the spot. However, Goebbels’s diaries reveal that he was a supporting and calming influence on her during the three months it took to make the movie.³² On November 29, when she showed her film to an intimate group, he noted: “Dinner at Alfieri. . . . Hitler comes later. Film Victory of Faith. Marvelous SA symphony. Riefenstahl did a good job with it. . . . Hitler moved. This will be a huge success.”³³

With Victory of Faith, Riefenstahl cut her critics and enviers down to size. Hitler thought more highly of her and she stayed in close contact with Goebbels. She would have been ill-advised to have a falling-out with Goebbels, who, in turn, could not do without her because there were not too many talented directors remaining, now that most had fled the country. Her moment of triumph came through in the film’s opening credits. Her name appeared in large and bold print; Raether’s was small and thin. He had failed in his attempts to upstage her as artistic director. Now even mid-level party officials knew that Riefenstahl was a force to be reckoned with. In the 1990s, a copy of Victory of Faith surfaced in the State Film Archive of the GDR, and Riefenstahl faced a barrage of questions. She deflected director Ray Müller’s question with the remark that she had a few scenes on hand and simply assembled them. In her eyes this was not a film at all; it was nothing but exposed film stock that satisfied the party members who had commissioned it. She was not prepared to take their satisfaction as praise, she insisted, because “Let’s face it: they were happy with every newsreel. The main thing was to have swastika banners on view.”³⁴ A statement of this kind makes it clear how superior she felt to the average party members. Riefenstahl savored the privileges of her insider status, no longer dependent on the evil “industry.” As Hitler’s darling, she did not have to worry about box office success. Riefenstahl could rest assured that her film would be shown nationwide, and everyone would see it.³⁵ She reported to the press that she was thrilled to have experienced the rally in Nuremberg. “What I saw in Nuremberg,” she declared, “was one of the most impressive experiences of my life. All of it was so enthralling and grand that I would not be able to compare it to anything I have experienced in my previous work in the arts. I will never forget the processions of the hundreds of thousands of people [and] the cheers of the masses when the Führer and his closest associates appeared.”³⁶

Before setting off with Walter Prager on a ski trip to Davos, she met with Julius Streicher, editor of Der Stürmer and the gauleiter of Franconia. He was known as a fanatical anti-Semite and a corrupt businessman. This was the man to whom Riefenstahl chose to grant power of attorney just a few days after the premiere of Victory of Faith: “I hereby grant Herr Gauleiter Julius Streicher from Nuremberg, editor of Der Stürmer, power of attorney in matters concerning claims by the Jew Belà Balacs [sic] pertaining to me. Leni Riefenstahl.”³⁷ This power of attorney was handwritten on Hotel Kaiserhof stationery. It is not known whether Balázs had taken legal action against Riefenstahl to get his payment.³⁸ In any case, Riefenstahl had no qualms about pitting her new friends against her old ones on both financial and artistic matters. She wholeheartedly supported and exploited the terrorist dimension of the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community).³⁹ If The Blue Light were to have a revival, she wanted to reap the fame all on her own.

The change of mood that emerged among the German people in the spring of 1934 set the stage for Riefenstahl’s second party rally film, Triumph of the Will. After a year of National Socialist rule filled with celebrations and terror, the excitement curve had leveled off. It was not that the Germans missed their civil rights or opposed the National Socialist violence against the Jews, but rather they were frustrated that the miracles they were anticipating failed to materialize.⁴⁰ There were also National Socialists—the men in the SA—who were dissatisfied with what had been achieved. Their chief of staff, Ernst Röhm, was the only one in this group whom Hitler addressed with the familiar du. The SA men equated politics with brute force, which had enabled Hitler to become chancellor. Röhm was well aware of his special status and boasted that he was preserving the revolutionary legacy of the party. Röhm judged the world exclusively from the standpoint of the soldier. His goal was to make the SA the most powerful military organization in Germany and have the Reichswehr generals obey him. His vision was summed up in this statement: “The gray cliffs must be swallowed by the brown tide.” The Reichswehr officers looked down on the proletarian SA men, who were neither disciplined nor schooled in the art of national defense. The Reichswehr may have been inferior to the paramilitary SA in terms of numbers, but its prestige was much higher. It enjoyed support from the nobility and the conservative middle class; it had weapons; and it established a connection to President Hindenburg, who had served as a commander in the Reichswehr. To secure total power in Germany for the long term, Hitler had to have the support of the Reichswehr. If Hindenburg died in the near future, he would be able to bury him only if the Reichswehr stood by him.⁴¹ Even so, he could not afford to sever his ties to the SA, which was experiencing an enormous increase in membership. In the spring of 1934, Röhm had command over 4.5 million men. In the course of a single year, the number of SA men increased sixfold. In Victory of Faith, Riefenstahl showed that these young men were drawn to the SA by its military features: the uniforms, male bonding, banners, and marches. Röhm spoke more and more often about a “second revolution” that had yet to occur. Hitler could not allow this “revolution” to take place. His useful private army SA had become a growing destabilizing factor. To defuse the situation, Hitler arranged with Röhm to send the SA on vacation for the entire month of July 1934. In early June, Hindenburg had moved to his manor in East Prussia; evidently he was close to death. It was time to designate a successor. As usual, Hitler had been letting things slide and avoiding confrontations with the SA, but Hindenburg’s imminent death forced him to take action. All SA leaders arrived at the town of Bad Wiessee in Bavaria on the morning of June 30 for a meeting with Hitler, who got with Goebbels there shortly after 6 a.m. The SA leaders were brought to Stadelheim Prison in Munich, and many were executed that same day in a purge that has come to be known as the Night of the Long Knives. In Röhm’s case, Hitler waited until the following day. Two SS men brought a pistol into Röhm’s cell in the expectation that he would take his own life, but when he did not do so, he was shot. Göring saw to the smooth liquidation of the death squads in Berlin. Among those murdered were Kurt von Schleicher, the former chancellor of Germany, and his wife, who were shot in their home. Other prominent victims included Edgar Jung, a consultant to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen; Gregor Strasser, the former national organization leader; and Erich Klausener, the head of the Catholic Action group. The SA was stripped of its power, and Hitler emerged victorious from this bloodbath.

Hitler asked Riefenstahl to make a film about the 1934 party congress, and she was offered every conceivable advantage, including distribution of the film by Ufa.

The managing board hereby authorizes a distribution agreement with Leni Riefenstahl as a special agent of the NSDAP Reich leadership. . . . The artistic and technical direction of the film goes to Fräulein Riefenstahl, who was commissioned by the Führer to do so in the name of the NSDAP Reich leadership in a letter dated April 19, 1934. According to a letter sent the same day, Fräulein Riefenstahl will have up to 300,000 reichsmarks at her disposal. The Führer has given his approval to having the film distributed by Ufa.⁴²

She chose Walter Ruttmann, who had made the film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, one of the most important cinematic expressions of New Objectivity, to be her codirector. His film was driven not by plot but by atmosphere, dynamics, and rhythm. Riefenstahl knew that this film of the party congress would also revolve around atmosphere and dynamics, and that Ruttmann was the right man for the job. Ruttmann and Riefenstahl shared an aversion to the motion-picture industry, which in their view only stood in the way of art. In the late 1920s, he had worked as Abel Gance’s first assistant in Paris, and in 1932 had gone to Italy. To the surprise of his friends, he returned to National Socialist Germany in March 1933. Ruttmann was a friend of Philippe Soupault’s and was held in high esteem by René Clair. James Joyce was said to have felt that only Eisenstein or Ruttmann would be capable of adapting his Ulysses for the big screen.

Riefenstahl was in a lesser league. In 1934 she was largely unknown outside of Germany, and within the country her name was associated with athletic prowess in mountain films and her close relationship with Hitler. Ruttmann does not appear to have thought much of her talent as a director, and he even coined a term specifically for The Blue Light: beautise, a portmanteau of foolishness (bêtise) and beauty (beauté). Still, he accepted her offer and was reported to have declared: “I am nothing but a whore; I have sold myself to Riefenstahl.”⁴³

It appears likely that he was dependent on Riefenstahl if he wanted to pursue his career in National Socialist Germany. And Riefenstahl would stop at nothing to recruit and retain other men of talent for her projects, as she had already shown with Béla Balázs and Carl Mayer, and would do so again with Ruttmann. Riefenstahl was well aware of what a talented artist she was placing under her command by hiring Ruttmann. She was superior to him solely on the basis of her good relationship with Goebbels and Hitler, even though not a single one of her cinematic achievements measured up to Ruttmann’s. Her awareness of this inequality doomed their collaboration to failure from the start; as always, she strove to outshine everyone else.

In October 1933, Ruttmann applied for admission to the Reich Film Department. On June 1, 1934, his application was granted and he could start in on his work. According to Riefenstahl’s version, she thought of Ruttmann because she had no intention of making a second party rally film by herself. It is odd that she still consulted with Goebbels about her new film. She was involved in two projects at once, traveling to Spain with a small team (Hans Schneeberger, Sepp Rist, and Heinrich George) to make the feature film Lowlands while Ruttmann laid the groundwork for the party rally film in Germany. We can only imagine her feelings of omnipotence as she played the beautiful, passionate Marta in Spain and everyone awaited her orders in her Führer-appointed role of director back in Germany.

While Riefenstahl was having one nervous breakdown after another in Spain as a result of countless delays in filming, Ruttmann traveled through Germany with Sepp Allgeier. The Film-Kurier introduced Ruttman as the scriptwriter for the party rally film who worked with Riefenstahl on the artistic presentation. He filmed German landscapes, workers, peasants, SA men, and labor service men, as well as the Feldherrnhalle in Munich, the Landsberg Prison in Bavaria, and a memorial to Albert Leo Schlageter, a hero to the Nazis who had been executed in 1923. Ruttman envisioned movement and “productive people” as the foreground of the movie—not Hitler.

When Riefenstahl had a look at his footage in Berlin, she was shocked. “What I saw on the screen was, to put it mildly, unusable. It was a jumble of shots of newspapers fluttering along the street, their front pages tracing the rise of the Nazi Party. How could Ruttmann present work like this! I was absolutely miserable.”⁴⁴ She decided to dispense with him and the footage he had shot. Now she supposedly had no choice but to bite the bullet and make the movie herself.⁴⁵ Ruttmann switched over to the Ufa commercial division, and Riefenstahl would go down in history as the creator of the second party congress film, as she had intended all along.⁴⁶

Enterprising as ever, she wrote a book about the making of the film. Behind the Scenes of the Reich Party Rally Film was published in December 1935 by Eher-Verlag in Munich, the central publishing company of the NSDAP. After 1945, she claimed that Ernst Jäger had written it and that she had not even read it in advance of the filming, which does not sound credible coming from a woman with her control mania and business acumen.⁴⁷ She names Sepp Allgeier as the head cameraman; Walter Ruttmann is not mentioned at all.

Before the shooting began, she was a bundle of nerves. “Discussed party congress film with L. Riefenstahl,” Goebbels noted disapprovingly in his diary on August 28, 1934. “This will not amount to much. She is too tense.” However, her tension must have subsided by the time she arrived in Nuremberg. Riefenstahl relaxed in the circle of her crew, which included many people she had worked with before. Guzzi and Otto Lantschner and Walter Prager were signed on as her assistant directors, and Sepp Allgeier, Walter Frentz, Franz Weihmayr, and Walter Riml as her cameramen. Hans Schneeberger’s wife, Gisela, would be in charge of the publicity stills. One week before the party congress opened, Riefenstahl and her key crew members traveled to Nuremberg. She wanted to personally oversee the preparations for this film, which would “convey a stylized reality in documentary form for centuries to come.”⁴⁸ Extensive arrangements were required. She spent several days roaming through the city in her long white coat with her aides, examining, approving, or rejecting camera positions. She knew the strengths and weaknesses of her men; she divided up and assigned the tasks. “One is good at pictorial images, another at exhilarating motion. One can capture inner life on film, another sees only the outer forms. Many different capacities have to be allotted appropriately.”⁴⁹ Allgeier, the lead cameraman, was quick on his feet, a wizard of lighting, an athletic ski jumper, and tough as nails.⁵⁰ Allgeier and his colleagues clung to monuments, gables, façades of houses, church steeples, or fire escapes to shoot this film. Lifts were installed on statues and flagpoles, and in one building, a twenty-meter-long track was installed on the second floor so that a dolly could travel back and forth with a camera capturing the marching troops on film.

The crew stayed at a villa on Schlageterplatz.

Within 24 hours, this house, which had previously been vacant, was newly furnished throughout, and then Leni Riefenstahl could move in with her large staff. The mezzanine had a big reception room and several offices, and upstairs, on the second floor, there was a big conference room, which was also used as a breakfast room. The other rooms served as quarters for Leni Riefenstahl’s entire technical team, including cameramen, assistant cameramen, sound engineers, lighting technicians, and so forth, for a total of about 120 men. All of them had to sleep here for the duration of the party rally so that they would be on call at all times.⁵¹

Makeshift darkrooms were set up in the cellar. Riefenstahl had a telephone switchboard, office and work rooms, and a conference hall. Eight to ten men slept in each room. Riefenstahl was familiar with this kind of camp life from her work on mountains.

The members of the film crew dressed as SA men so that they would fit into the picture. Perfectly camouflaged, they could operate within in the crowd. Riefenstahl herself wanted to remain recognizable. Wearing a trench coat–style elegant white coat with a white peaked cap, she could be made out even in all the hubbub. In the published photographs of the filming process, she assumed multiple roles. In one, she had a motherly chat with a Hitler Youth member; in another, she lay on the pavement with her cameramen to try out different camera angles. In yet another photograph, she is sitting among her cameramen, looking regal in a ladylike white outfit complete with white hat and white gloves. She is not wearing a party badge, but she is clearly in a key position.

Even today, Riefenstahl’s films foster the illusion that these party congresses were highly disciplined events riding on a wave of enthusiasm. This was decidedly not the case.⁵² In 1934, half a million people were expected in Nuremberg. The political leaders, who numbered 180,000, were the largest group. The rest comprised 88,000 SA men, 12,000 SS men, 60,000 Hitler Youth, 50,000 Labor Service men, 120,000 party members, and 9,000 SS functionaries and special police.⁵³ Nuremberg’s 400,000 residents had to cope with the onslaught of hundreds of thousands of people, which also included spectators who often came in for just a day. In order to portray the Volksgemeinschaft and cover the immense costs of all the fanfare, there needed to be a large turnout of paying participants and spectators. The men who marched in Triumph of the Will had paid a rally fee, and those cheering them on from the sidelines had bought admission tickets.⁵⁴ The status reports of the Nuremberg vice squad indicate what sorts of entertainment the participants sought out after the rally. One hundred SS men were assigned to keeping their fellow party members from heading to brothels. Their efforts were likely in vain. The number of prostitutes was rising every year, a great deal of alcohol was consumed, and drunken political leaders staggering down the street were now part of the urban landscape. Albert Speer reported that even the party elites who were privileged to sleep under the same roof as their Führer in the Hotel Deutscher Hof carried on like this. The gauleiter went on drunken rampages. As Speer saw it, “only in alcohol could these fellows resurrect their old revolutionary élan.”⁵⁵ Hitler did not need to worry about Riefenstahl and Speer, however. His architect went to every Wagner opera, and his director devoted her efforts to portraying him and his party rally exactly as he wished.

There were daily briefings in the villa. Every evening at about nine o’clock, Riefenstahl climbed onto a chair, called the group to order with a bottle of beer, and shouted: “The gentlemen whose names I now announce have to be ready to leave at 6:30.”⁵⁶ Each cameraman was assigned the use of a car. White and red slips of paper on the car windows indicated to the security forces that these vehicles had clearance to enter the grounds. The management directed the vehicles to the cameramen’s locations. These sessions often ran until two in the morning. Breakfast was served in the dark at 5 a.m. Military order prevailed in the villa. On a huge chalkboard, the boss noted down the final instructions for her crew. During the day, the cameramen were on their own. No retakes were possible; the shots needed to be perfect the first time around. The hunt for images was carried out on the streets and from an airplane.

“On September 5, 1934, 20 years after the outbreak of the World War, 16 years after Germany’s Suffering, 19 months after the beginning of the German Rebirth, Adolf Hitler again flew to Nuremberg to review the assembly of his faithful followers.” This opening crawl is all that remains of Ruttmann’s prologue. The film begins above the clouds with an airplane approaching the city of Nuremberg. The shadow of the fuselage glides over the medieval walls of the city. The viewer cannot see who is in the airplane, but it can only be Hitler. This opening scene is remarkable because the images formed by the clouds evoke not only an enormous realm of fantasy as defined by the history of Western imagery, but also recent German history. The World War I combat pilots ranked among the unforgotten heroes of the Germans. All alone in the skies, their sole mission was to kill the enemy. As they fired, they were like gods bringing death to the people below.

Hitler’s arrival is eagerly awaited. Riefenstahl shows us crowds going wild at the sight of him, in much the same way as she had in Victory of Faith. Even before a single word is uttered, we hear the roar of Heils. In Riefenstahl’s films, the crowds remain mute apart from formulaic acclamations. Standing in an open Mercedes, Hitler celebrates his entry into the medieval city. The fixed black formation of the SS men shields him from any intrusiveness from the crowd. The camera casts what seems like a loving eye on every detail lingering almost tenderly on boots, belts, black uniforms, and helmets. Hitler is tacitly present throughout the film, as sequences shot from multiple perspectives and with a movable camera convey the impression that everyone in Nuremberg is constantly on the lookout for a glimpse of the Führer.

On the rally’s opening day, Riefenstahl shows the men awakening in their tents. A merry chaos ensues. Young men splash water at one another, wash their backs, line up to get their food, and roughhouse. These scenes of exuberant masculinity make it perfectly clear that Hitler and Riefenstahl needed the collective energies of hundreds of thousands to create the image they were after. Rudolf Hess opened the party congress, directing his special greetings to the foreign diplomats, who had turned out in large numbers, and to the men of the Reichswehr. Riefenstahl edited the subsequent speeches by the leading party members to ensure that each one appeared briefly on the screen. To limit the amount of time spent on speeches, she included footage of each speaker with a statement she regarded as typical for him. Even her artistry could do nothing to improve the puffy, vacuous, disagreeable, sweaty, and unsightly faces of these men. During the labor service roll call on the rally grounds, she highlighted a series of clear, proud, fanatical faces that were welcomed by their various regions with the question, “Comrade, where do you come from?” Riefenstahl’s men had installed wooden tracks on the field on which they now rode back and forth to get direct shots of people’s heads. Hitler greeted the men in the labor service who were taking part in a party rally for the first time. To William Shirer, they seemed like a “highly trained, semi-military group of fanatical Nazi youths.”⁵⁷ Their roll call was followed by a commemoration of the casualties in World War I, during which Riefenstahl displayed Hitler’s face against the sky.

The atmosphere at the evening SA gathering is almost eerie, with open fires burning, swastika banners fluttering, and smoke rising. The men are heard singing. The new SA chief of staff, Viktor Lutze, disrupts this elaborately staged setting when he begins to speak in his shrill voice. The crowd starts shouting: “We want to see our chief of staff!” In these scenes, Riefenstahl was making a direct reference to recent history. This evening assembly is the only part of the film that is not listed in the official program. Going into this much detail was the director’s decision. She presented Lutze, Röhm’s successor, as a popular, well-respected chief of staff. Long shots of fireworks symbolize the explosion of the SA men’s feelings, followed by images of interlocked male bodies seeking physical closeness to their chief of staff.

The next day, Baldur von Schirach reports to his Führer that sixty thousand Hitler Youth have arrived. He calls on them to endure sacrifices and steel themselves. While he speaks, the camera scans the rows of the listeners. These cross-cutting sequences were one of Riefenstahl’s key stylistic devices to show Hitler in constant interaction with his audience. “The Hitler Youths are generally filmed at a different time in a different place—but the editing sequence suggests that they are hanging on to the ‘Führer’ ’s every word. The technique of contriving fictitious encounters on the editing table is both simple and effective.”⁵⁸ Riefenstahl shows us handsome, sincere-looking faces of young men that her cameramen culled with telephoto lenses.

Aside from the black bronze eagle on the speakers’ platform, three large swastika flags hoisted on steel poles over a hundred feet high are the only decoration at the tribute to the dead in the Luitpoldarena. Hitler strides down the center aisle through the line of the 120,000 men, followed by Himmler and Lutze. They are the only ones in motion; the masses are frozen in place. In these scenes, the lift mounted on the flagpole is visible. Nobody besides Riefenstahl and the men she appointed have access to this aerial view. Hitler enters the atrium of the memorial, pauses in front of the wreath and the “blood flag” from the failed 1923 putsch, and honors the casualties of the Nazi movement and the war.⁵⁹ Mussolini had figured out how to use the casualties of world war as his political capital. The “aristocracy of the trenches,” the dead and the living, were united in comradeship. The fascists would ensure that their comrades had not died in vain. Mussolini had hit a nerve with this ploy more than a decade earlier, and now Hitler was copying it, with Riefenstahl supplying the requisite images. The death ritual at the party rally was not backward-looking, however, but rather future-oriented. Hitler would demand proof of loyalty to the death from the men lined up there.

Then all the marching began. A never-ending stream of male bodies poured through the narrow streets of Nuremberg like molten lava. SA, SS, the Stahlhelm paramilitary organization, and the labor service men filed past Hitler. One of his secretaries found out how he managed to keep his arm outstretched for hours at a time: “At teatime one day, he said . . . that daily exercises with an expander enabled him to accomplish this, but that a strong will was needed as well. He added that he tried to look at every man who marched past in the eye to give him the feeling that he was singling him out.”⁶⁰ Riefenstahl’s shots reflect this attentiveness. Hitler saw the individuals only as a part of a series, but for each of these men, this parade signified a very personal recognition as a National Socialist.

In Triumph of the Will, the words of their Führer seem to be inscribed on the men’s bodies. The masses are either feverishly active or rooted to the spot, reminiscent of the characters in Riefenstahl’s mountain films, with some intrepid climbers scaling the cliffs and others winding up as frozen bodies in the ice. Hitler captured the masses with his gaze and his words, Riefenstahl with her cinematic direction and montage. After 1945 Riefenstahl categorized Triumph of the Will as a documentary, but prior to that time, she called it an “artistically constructed film” in order to distinguish it from mere newsreels.

She and her crew needed two weeks to sift through the footage at her film laboratory, Geyer, in the Neukölln section of Berlin. One workroom was adorned with a larger-than-life portrait of Hitler, and the vestibule displayed pictures of NSDAP leaders. She had the latest technology at her fingertips. According to Steven Bach, no director in Germany—and perhaps anywhere in the world—had ever enjoyed these kinds of working conditions.⁶¹ However, she kept falling into a state of exhaustion and being assailed by doubts.

For Riefenstahl, art and utter devotion, both mental and physical, went hand in hand. In 1934, she strove to be better than in 1933. If this film won over the top brass, a place at the top would be hers. On October 17, 1934, Goebbels noted in his diary, “Leni Riefenstahl talks about the party rally film. It will be good.” In the fall, she visited Hitler at his mountainside retreat in Obersalzberg to fill him in on the progress of her work. In December he came in person to visit the cutting room, which indicated to the Germans that she was still in his good graces.

Quite a bit had changed since the 1933 party rally. On October 14, 1933, Hitler had proclaimed that Germany would be pulling out of the League of Nations, which was tantamount to pulling out of the league of civilized countries. Abroad, the word “war” came up more and more frequently in connection with Germany. The photographs Erich Salomon took of the conferences of European politicians in the late 1920s and early 1930s in Geneva, London, and Paris show well-dressed men sitting together in beautifully appointed salons and deliberating the state of the world. There is no hint of the fanatical pathos that the National Socialists brought into politics. The Germans, by contrast, considered it a sign of national strength for their chancellor to show up in his bizarre swastika uniform.

Triumph of the Will was conceived of as a lasting document, and it certainly became one. Riefenstahl’s images continue to have a powerful impact to this day. Excerpts and stills from Triumph of the Will are shown again and again to illustrate the relationship between Hitler and the Germans. No distinction is drawn between intention and impact: the film conveys the National Socialist experience. Riefenstahl documented Hitler’s wish as reality. Her film displayed the body of the masses. These masses then see themselves onscreen as a powerful historical force. In this sense, the films of Riefenstahl are an important part of a self-referential system that is still evident today. In Triumph of the Will, a single individual—Adolf Hitler—stands apart from all the others. He alone enjoyed the privilege of not mingling in the social sphere. Riefenstahl molded these images of the great loner into the enduring images of Hitler.

On November 22, 1934, she showed the first segments of her film. Goebbels wrote in his diary, “Afternoon with Leni Riefenstahl; splendid shots of the party rally film. Leni is quite adept. Imagine if she were a man!” And five months later, he remarked, “Afternoon Nuremberg film. A magnificent show. Somewhat long-winded only in the last part. But otherwise a stirring display. Leni’s masterpiece.” Two days later, she met with Goebbels again and talked about the film. Her appearance must have alarmed him, because he noted, “She simply has to take a vacation.”

On the evening of March 28, Riefenstahl, sitting next to her mother in box seats with her eyes shut, re-experienced her “sleepless nights and the grueling efforts at finding transitions from one sequence to the next.”⁶² For the premiere at the Ufa Palace in Berlin, she wore a black evening gown from the famed Schulze-Bibernell fashion salon that showed off her slim figure and red curls. When she heard the long applause at the end of the film, she knew that she had made it. “While the film was still running . . . the viewers rose from their seats, and, gripped by the intensity of this experience, sang the Horst Wessel Song. Then the lights went up, and the man who would resurrect the nation, who was being glorified in this film stood at the balustrade of his box seat. It was as though a spell hung over the crowd, a spell that resolved into enthusiastic shouts, enthusiastic Sieg Heils. The Führer handed the creator of this cinematic work, Leni Riefenstahl, a big bouquet of lilacs with a gilt-edged bow.”⁶³

In the photograph of the two of them, she is staring deep into Hitler’s eyes and seems as though she is in a trance. Suddenly she fainted dead away and lay on the floor while the steps of Hitler and his escorts faded away outside. A doctor on call gave her an injection. Carl Zuckmayer claimed that she had actually hoped to fall into Hitler’s arms, but her plan misfired, so she landed at his feet and he had to climb over her.⁶⁴

However, Riefenstahl recovered and basked in the glory of her triumph. The Germans faithfully queued up in front of movie theaters and did not undermine the predetermined success of the Riefenstahl film. On Sunday afternoons, there were even showings for children.

Once her film had gotten off to a successful start, Riefenstahl and several of her crew members went off to Davos to relax in the mountains, and on May 1—while she was still there—she learned that Triumph of the Will had been awarded the National Film Prize. As soon as she heard the happy news, she hastened to send off a grateful telegram to Hitler: DEEPLY MOVED AND DELIGHTED I HAVE JUST HEARD THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE FILM PRIZE ON THE RADIO THIS GREAT DISTINCTION WILL GIVE ME STRENGTH TO CREATE MORE FOR you my fÜHRER AND FOR YOUR GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS YOUR LENI RIEFENSTAHL.⁶⁵ She accepted the prize from Goebbels on June 25, by which point they were already in negotiations for her next film, Olympia.

But before starting in on a new project, she had to go to Nuremberg one more time. Evidently the military felt that it had been misrepresented in Triumph of the Will. The closing day of the rally, during which the Reichswehr had put its strength on display, had been rainy. Riefenstahl was dissatisfied with the footage and cut most of it out, which caused problems with Hitler when the generals complained to him. She therefore decided to film the military maneuvers of the Wehrmacht at the “Rally of Freedom” in 1935. The result was the twenty-eight-minute short film Day of Freedom—Our Wehrmacht—Nuremberg 1935. ⁶⁶ In March 1935, Hitler reintroduced compulsory military service in Germany. Accordingly, Riefenstahl’s new film was closely tied to current political developments. Hans Ertl reported that Riefenstahl looked fabulous and was full of plans. As always when she undertook major film projects, she sought out colleagues and friends for her crew. The men gathered in Riefenstahl’s penthouse on Hindenburgstrasse to plan out the project. New to the group was Willy Zielke, a former teacher at the State Academy for Photography in Munich, whose latest documentary film, The Steel Animal, had impressed them all.⁶⁷

Ertl divided the world into artists (by which he meant himself, his close associates, and Riefenstahl) and party bigwigs who knew nothing about art. “The real connoisseur and artist did not have an easy time of it then provided that his art was not an end in itself and had no primitive, propagandistic value. Even a Leni Riefenstahl had to contend with scathing criticism and intrigues, although she was quite adept at combining art and propaganda in her party rally films.”⁶⁸ But he left no doubt that she was adept at using Hitler’s admiration for her to push through her own interests. In early September, Riefenstahl and Ertl traveled to Nuremberg together. This time, the cameramen did not appear in quasi-military uniforms, but rather as camera sharpshooters. Their disheveled hair, relaxed suede jackets, and long corduroy pants marked Riefenstahl’s men as the artistic fringe of the party rally. She deftly distributed her men throughout the premises to have them “ ‘partake in the combat’ as roving reporters and camera shooters—they went around with their ‘celluloid ammunition’ and long, telephoto lenses that looked like gun barrels shooting, right alongside the young maneuver soldiers.”⁶⁹ According to Ertl, the days in Nuremberg were both a challenge and a sport. He depicted his boss and her crew as a close-knit group that carried out its mission with a high degree of professionalism. Riefenstahl’s cameramen had to be bold, well-trained, and daring. During World War II, many of these men went on to make war films.

Day of Freedom—Our Wehrmacht is an alarming film. It shows an army gearing up for war. The sounds of military technology combine with bellowed Sieg Heils to form a deafening soundscape. Peter Kreuder, a talented composer who had also produced the sound effects for Zielke’s Steel Animal, was in charge of the music. In this film one could hear what lay ahead: state-of-the-art military technology and German soldier songs.⁷⁰ There were demonstrations of motorcycle militias, anti-aircraft guns, armored cars, reconnaissance aircraft, bombers and tactical aircraft, cavalry, and machine guns. These miracles of technology were operated by serious-looking young soldiers and observed with evident excitement by heavyset older men in swastika uniforms up at the podium. On December 29, the Filmwelt carried an advertisement with a shot of Riefenstahl in profile, looking up at Hitler and his young soldiers. The caption under the picture indicates that she was in charge of this German Wehrmacht film, which Völkischer Beobachter hailed as “the first cinematic monument to the German military.”⁷¹

William E. Dodd, who was serving as the United States Ambassador to Germany at this time, was dismayed by the film:

[T]his evening my wife and I went to the great movie theater, the Ufa Palace, to see the widely advertised Unser [sic] Wehrmacht (Our Defense Power) film. For an hour a huge audience watched and applauded the scenes: vast army fields with tanks and machine guns operating and soldiers falling to the ground, all shooting and some killed great parades of heavy trucks and big cannon [sic]; air attacks with hundreds of flying machines dropping bombs on a city. At strategic moments Hitler, Goering and even Goebbels appeared on the scene indicating their approval of all that was going on. The audience applauded many times. I could hardly endure the scene and what seemed to me the brutal performances.⁷²

The movies that Hitler commissioned from Riefenstahl’s production company made her a wealthy woman. Even though she spent long hours behind the camera and in the film laboratory, she made sure not to neglect her public image. Sporty, independent, successful, childless, talented, unmarried, with short hair—and short on charm—she became a prominent figure in National Socialist Germany. In the mid-1930s, Nazi Germany developed into a modern feudal system. Nothing was more coveted than personal access to Adolf Hitler. Riefenstahl was skilled at deflecting rumors about a love affair between her and Hitler; she neither denied nor confirmed them. She was called “the Reich’s glacial crevasse” behind her back, which referred not only to her past work in mountain films, but also to her cold-blooded, calculating work method. Everyone knew that the Führer adored her and that she cherished him. She left everything else to the imagination, and thus built up an aura of power. No one knew for sure how much influence she wielded.

People wondered why the Führer was so adamant about placing her in charge of major film assignments. “She raves about Hitler, calls Mein Kampf a revelation; during a film expedition to Greenland, she had Hitler’s picture hanging in her tent. She is part of the innermost circle, uses the informal du with both Hitler and Göring, yet explains that Hitler stands high above any personal relationship,” Konrad Heiden wrote in his 1936 biography of Hitler.⁷³ Hitler gravitated to Flietscherln, somewhat coarse young women, yet he also liked to surround himself with admiring society ladies. Riefenstahl offered him both. She savored the role of the well-bred daughter who became the great artist and cosmopolitan lady, racing through Berlin in her silver-gray Mercedes coupe that Hitler had given her as a present, ordering the latest styles in the fashion boutiques. However, she was also a woman who fell in love again and again, and had many affairs. Riefenstahl was an attractive woman who made the most of her feminine wiles. As an artist she gave Hitler the feeling that he was an important patron of the arts, which in turn gave her—along with all kinds of material advantages—the feeling of towering above everyone else with her genius. In the official portrayals, she was celebrated as a woman who bravely took on the honorable commissions of the Führer and was extolled for her utter dedication, ceaseless drive, boundless energy, and iron will. Riefenstahl’s name was now known beyond the borders of Germany. Time magazine, which featured her on the cover on February 17, 1936, reported that Hitler regarded her as the epitome of a German woman, as evidenced by her health, energy, youth, love of sports, ambition, and beauty.⁷⁴ Riefenstahl became an important representative of National Socialist Germany and had no trouble leaving the country. She gave lectures in England, shot a film in Spain, took a vacation in Switzerland, and visited Italy. During her trips abroad, she could hear an array of opposing views and observe Germany from the outside. However, she did not make comparisons.

In early March 1936, there were rumors in Berlin that Hitler was planning a foreign policy coup. He convened the Reichstag on March 7. The evening before, eager officials gathered in the Kaiserhof, and their Führer did not let them down. He explained that Germany no longer felt bound by the Locarno Pact, and that as of that day, the German government would be restoring unrestricted and absolute sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. The six hundred delegates leaped up and extended their arms in a Nazi salute. Hitler felt that he was well on his way to predominance in Europe. On the domestic front, he had secured absolute power within three years. No one could stand in his way; his adversaries had been disposed of; and the majority of Germans believed in the mission of their Führer.

Hitler’s juggling of war and peace formed the backdrop for the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin. The Olympics had been assigned to Berlin back in 1931, and Hitler pledged that no part of these arrangements would change under National Socialist rule. Even though there were protests, the International Olympic Committee stuck with its decision to hold the Olympics in Germany, but they called on Hitler to embrace the Olympic ideal.⁷⁵ Hitler paid lip service to it because the Games would offer him a unique opportunity to present the “new Germany” to the world at large. He would spare no expense or effort. The best means of disseminating images of a modern, peace-loving Germany was film. He entrusted Riefenstahl with the task of presenting the best side of National Socialism to the world. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Riefenstahl stuck to her version of the facts: that she was commissioned to film the Olympic Games by Dr. Carl Diem, the Secretary General of the Organizing Committee of the Berlin Olympic Games. She also claimed to have financed this mammoth enterprise independently of Hitler. As usual, Goebbels figured as her dark adversary, but the accusations she leveled at him were nothing but smokescreens to distract from her own privileges and entanglements. The records show that both parts of the Olympia film were financed by the German Reich at the express wish of Joseph Goebbels. In August 1935, she told him about her preliminary work. He noted admiringly: “She is a clever one!”⁷⁶ Three days later, Goebbels came to meet with Hitler. One of the outcomes of their discussion was a decision to authorize one and a half million reichsmarks for the Olympia film.⁷⁷ In early October Goebbels talked to Riefenstahl again about the Olympia film, and he stated unequivocally that she was “a woman who knows what she wants.”⁷⁸ Eight days after this evening they had spent together: “Contract with Leni Riefenstahl regarding Olympia film approved.”⁷⁹ This course of events tallies with the records stating that on October 16, 1935, Riefenstahl was offered a contract to make a film of the Olympic Summer Games for a fee of 250,000 reichsmarks. Olympia Film Inc. was a shell corporation of the propaganda ministry, founded on December 9, 1935; the partners were Leni Riefenstahl and her brother, Heinz.

The year 1936 got off to a good start for Riefenstahl. On January 26, she was received by Mussolini in Rome. Il Duce’s interest in this director of the Reich party rally films stemmed from his recently developed secret admiration of the Führer. He was impressed by the fact that Hitler had left the League of Nations and announced that there would be compulsory military service. Mussolini began to suspect that he had underestimated this strange German and might be well advised to have Riefenstahl make a film for him as well. He suggested filming the drainage of the Pontine Marshes. She turned down this idea, explaining that the production of the Olympic Games documentary would keep her busy for a good two years. Six months after this meeting, the Italian film institute Luce awarded Riefenstahl the grand prize for Triumph of the Will. At a ceremony in the Italian embassy, Ambassador Bernardo Attolico presented her with the Coppa Mussolini. In attendance were Joseph Goebbels; Oswald Lehnich, the president of the Reich Film Chamber; Ulrich von Hassell, the German ambassador to Italy; and Countess Edda Mussolini Ciano, daughter of Il Duce and wife of the foreign minister, and hence an influential woman in Italy. There is a photograph showing the countess congratulating Riefenstahl. Both women are in elegant evening gowns, and they are smiling joyfully at each other. The men in tailcoats gathered around them look delighted. This was a prize among friends.

The preparations for the Olympic Games were guided by the motto, “Olympia—a National Duty.” For the National Socialists, this duty included the enhancement of their image in the international community. They wanted to demonstrate that their opponents were liars. Anti-Semitic posters and signs were taken down, but the daily terror against the Jews went on unabated. For many Berliners, the Olympic Games amounted to a kind of “pseudo-freedom”: the guests from abroad in the city made it possible for them to forget the fanatical pathos of the National Socialists for a few days. With any luck, they could listen to American jazz pianists in the bars and buy the Times or the Neue Zürcher Zeitung at the newsstands.

Riefenstahl knew that the whole world would be her audience. Earlier films of the Olympic Games had been of poor quality. Even in 1932 in Los Angeles, filming took place, but no actual film resulted from it. Riefenstahl thus once again faced the challenge of transforming an event that so far had not been discovered by the cinema into a cinematic work of art. She was certainly spurred on by the knowledge that this film could make her famous beyond the borders of Germany. Kings, princes, and other notables had confirmed that they would be coming. They were curious about the new Germany.

Riefenstahl’s productions in National Socialism could not have come about without patronage at the highest level, yet they were so powerful artistically because she worked with a group of cameramen who regarded themselves primarily as artists and not as National Socialists. Walter Frentz was appointed head cinematographer; he was also in charge of capturing the sailing and the rowing regatta events on film. To bring on Hans Ertl, Riefenstahl had to entice him away from Arnold Fanck. She was able to offer him quite a bit more money, and he signed on. Hans Scheib, who had been a highly skilled cinematographer in the Marlene Dietrich film The Woman One Longs For, became Riefenstahl’s expert on telescopic shots. Her camera team also included Willy Hameister, the cinematographer for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919).

Once she had put together her crew, she was constantly on the move: in the Olympic village, on the Reich athletic field, and in Grünau or Kiel, where preparations were underway for the sailing regatta. She was generally accompanied by members of her crew. They discussed camera placements, experimented with footage, and tested the equipment on site.⁸⁰ She surrounded herself with innovative and ambitious men who were absolutely loyal to her and carried out her orders. She had a combination of talented young people and skilled experts. Nearly all of them were avid sportsmen. “I spent many months doing nothing but experiments. I began to study one type of sport after the other systematically. . . . I doggedly went from sports field to sports field, studied where the most enthralling and dramatic competitive moments of each sport and the greatest beauty and grace took place, and determined the best way to capture these moments on camera.”⁸¹

To film the stadium from the aerial perspective, they sent up a balloon equipped with a handheld camera every morning. They placed a newspaper advertisement asking for it to be returned at the end of each day so they could evaluate the results. Small cameras were mounted on boat seats, on flying spearheads, on the saddles of the cavalrymen, and on oar blades. In the Olympic stadium, pits were dug for the cameramen so that they could come quite near to the competitors. Riefenstahl wanted to go right onto the scene with her camera and film what a spectator would not be able to see even up close. She needed “sweating” images that would convey the excitement, the effort, and the fever of the athletic competitions. She had to respect the fact that the Olympic Games were not a party rally and comply with regulations that forbade her from interfering with the athletes. She took many of the shots during training sessions, or reshot footage after the official competitions. A system had to be developed to classify and review the film footage immediately. The Geyer printing laboratory guaranteed that the footage would be ready by the next day. A copy machine was developed for the express purpose of processing the immense quantities of film at top speed. Each roll of film was labeled with the name of the cameraman, the date, and the type of sport. Two supervisors assessed the quality of the images and wrote up reports that were passed along to the cameramen to keep them informed about their daily output. Ten assistants organized the footage according to time and subject matter.

The film crew’s base camp was Ruhwald Castle, a nineteenth-century, thirty-room villa with a park in the vicinity of the Reich Sports Field. Riefenstahl and her 180 crew members lived there under one roof for the whole month of July and the first half of August. A work schedule on which everything was planned down to the last minute determined the sequence of events. The day in Ruhwald Castle began at six in the morning with a meeting in which Riefenstahl assigned tasks to each individual crew member for that day. In the evening, they met again to plan the following day. Riefenstahl seems to have been the only one who was not worn out after a sixteen-hour workday. She responded to complaints by reminding them that they could sleep once the Games were over.

The weather was cold and rainy. The weary cameramen worked around the clock; they were hollered at by the marshals in the stadium, and at times they were booed by the audience or thrown out by the security guards. A major source of interference for the cameramen, in turn, seems to have been Riefenstahl herself. Even during the most exciting competitions, she was running from one camera to the next and giving important stage directions with sweeping gestures. To make matters worse, her personal photographer, Rolf Lantin, was following her to shoot publicity pictures. The party officials, who had to sit with the spectators and lacked any important role, were annoyed at how Riefenstahl was crafting an image of herself as the great director. Ertl suspected that it was Riefenstahl’s foes in the party who started chanting “Leni, Leni, let’s see you!” to make her look ridiculous. Narcissistic as she was, she waved delightedly to the crowds, and was promptly booed. At several points she came close to suffering one of her nervous breakdowns. During the filming, Riefenstahl would go from displaying remarkable energy and steely resolve to losing her temper over petty matters and revealing her frayed nerves. Her crew was used to her breakdowns, and their deep respect for her artistic ability was undiminished. She was able to snap out of her bad moods, halt her torrent of tears, and show that she was a tough director. She made no concessions in her quest for the best camera angles. A New York Times reporter complained bitterly about the way Riefenstahl took charge of everything. Any cameraman who stood on a spot that she did not approve of would get a pink slip from one of her attendants, which said: “Remove yourself from where you are now—Riefenstahl.” If people disregarded her instructions, she threatened to have them removed from the premises.⁸²

Often even Riefenstahl’s own crew members were thrown by her behavior, but they stuck by her. They knew full well that her adversaries from the Reich Film Chamber were just waiting for her to fail, in which case the hetaera (courtesan), as they referred to her, would lose her power. Her crew was not about to let this happen. These party members were no match for the bond Riefenstahl had formed with her men.

In the stadium, pits were dug and steel towers erected to give the cameramen perfect vantage points. Riefenstahl did not care in the slightest whether that would bother the guests of honor. Frictions arose between the propaganda minister and the director. Goebbels, who was otherwise quite satisfied with the way the Olympic Games were going, noted in his diary on August 6: “I bawl out Riefenstahl, who is acting unspeakably. A hysterical woman. Clearly not a man!”

In the Olympia film, Riefenstahl added a human component to Hitler’s portrait. In the party rally films, she had portrayed him as a Führer who stood apart from all others, but in Olympia she played up his affable side. He watched the events through his binoculars, chatted with his neighbors about the competitions, fretted about major decisions, and grinned when the Germans won. Although it was somewhat odd for the German chancellor to show up in uniform at a peaceful event designed to promote understanding among nations, in the Olympia film Hitler played the dictator who knew how to behave himself. He let the athletes shine and happily assumed the role of spectator. Der Film reported, “We have never seen Adolf Hitler looking so human, warm, and up close in any newsreel. A deep immersion in the noble games is the mark of the true Führer, who can bring enthusiasm and a sense of humor to these ‘non-political’ matters.”⁸³ Riefenstahl’s imagery conveyed the message that the world ought to trust this man.

Complex logistics were required to get all the cameramen sufficient film stock. Two cars went back and forth constantly to bring negative stock to the shooting locations, and two trucks had been converted into darkrooms in order to transport the exposed film from the Olympic stadium to the Geyer laboratory in Neukölln. By the time the group gathered for the evening meetings to plot out the following day, Riefenstahl had already viewed the footage and made up her mind about the coming day’s work. She devoted five minutes to each crew member. Each photographer’s work was marked with a number; once she reviewed the footage, she knew who had taken the good and the bad shots.

The fact that she fell in love in the stadium heightened her desire to make this film a perfect success. Her passion for the American decathlete Glenn Morris was proof positive of her love for athletes, whose beauty and strength she sought to immortalize in her film. When she met him for the first time, we are told, she was thunderstruck. He had won a gold medal, and the stadium was darkened for the awards ceremony. “When Glenn Morris came down the stairs,” she later recalled, “he headed straight to me. I held out my hand and congratulated him. Then he grabbed me in his arms, ripped off my blouse, and kissed my breasts, right in the middle of the stadium, in front of a hundred thousand spectators.”⁸⁴ Not wanting to complicate the situation, she then avoided him. Morris returned to the United States and tried his hand at acting in a 1938 flop, Tarzan’s Revenge (he played the lead role), but his onscreen role of a lifetime was in the Olympia film. He eventually became an insurance agent.

The closing ceremonies took place on August 16. The National Socialists had offered the world a refined, well-orchestrated exhibition; Hitler had received royalty at his table; Goebbels and Göring had hosted lavish parties. The National Socialists had put on a show for the Olympic Games, but they had no intention of changing. Thomas Wolfe described the situation in his 1940 novel You Can’t Go Home Again:

The sheer pageantry of the occasion was overwhelming, so much so that he began to feel oppressed by it. There seemed to be something ominous about it. One sensed a stupendous concentration of effort, a tremendous drawing together and ordering in the vast collective power of the whole land. And the thing that made it seem ominous was that it so evidently went beyond what the games themselves demanded. The games were overshadowed, and were no longer merely sporting competitions to which other nations had sent their chosen teams. They became, day after day, an orderly and overwhelming demonstration in which the whole of Germany had become schooled and disciplined. It was as if the games had been chosen as a symbol of the new collective might, a means of showing to the world in concrete terms what this new power had come to be.⁸⁵

Riefenstahl’s film helped shape this symbolic complex.

She spent the period from October to mid-December archiving the material.⁸⁶ She was eager to revel in her success even before the film was complete. On September 16, 1936, she wrote a letter on her personal stationery to Paul Kohner at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Los Angeles:

Dear Mr. Kohner,

I am also convinced that the Olympia film will enjoy colossal success throughout the world. It has never been possible to make such a magnificent sports film with these kinds of resources and artists. As you have already read in the reports, this will of course not become a documentary, but instead a timeless, artistic film that is a hymn to the beauty of the human body, and its dramatic elements are competition and record-setting. Because the American Olympic champions, such as Morris, Meadows, Carpenter, Towns, Owens, and many others, have made themselves available for an incredible number of special shots and close-ups and we were thus able to obtain unprecedented footage, particularly of the Americans, I think that this film will be of great interest to America. . . . The ultimate decision regarding who gets the film lies with Herr Reich Minister Goebbels. Olympia Film Inc., of which I am the business manager, has had an enormous number of inquiries and offers for the Olympia film from all over the world. . . . If an American company of the size of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer makes a very good offer for foreign distribution to Olympiafilm GmbH, it is conceivable that it will be able to acquire the film for foreign distribution. If you really are quite interested, I would suggest that you make offers to my company as soon as possible, because in the space of the coming four weeks it will be decided whether Tobis will be getting the film for foreign distribution as well. . . .

With best regards,

Leni Riefenstahl

Kohner wrote to his boss, Ben Goetz, on September 30:

In view of my previous connections with her (having made some pictures with her in Europe) she offers Metro an opportunity for the foreign distribution rights of the picture in all countries of the world outside Germany. In view of the unquestionable importance of this picture, for the completion and perfection of which neither time nor money is being spared, I thought that possibly Metro might be interested in it. In this case it will be necessary for me to cable Miss Riefenstahl. Details of the negotiations could, I presume, be handled by Metro’s representative in Germany, but it is essential at the present moment that I advise Miss Riefenstahl in principle whether or not Metro is interested. Paul Kohner

And he replied to Leni Riefenstahl as follows:

Dear Leni Riefenstahl,

Many thanks for your letter of September 16. I just wanted to let you know that I have passed along your proposition to Metro’s head office in New York and as soon as I have an offer, I will get in touch with you right away. Until then I remain with best regards

Sincerely yours, Paul Kohner.⁸⁷

This correspondence clearly shows the influence Riefenstahl wielded. In a somewhat condescending tone, she was deigning to offer Hollywood her film. Kohner, who had experienced the enthusiasm for National Socialism up close and worked in Vienna, Paris, Rome, and London until 1935, knew who was making him this offer. He would have known Riefenstahl’s film of the party rally, and met the ambitious Riefenstahl out at Fanck’s home in Grunewald. We know that he learned everything he could about her because in his literary estate there is a collection of newspaper clippings about Riefenstahl’s prominent role in National Socialist Germany. Kohner was Jewish, and in the following years he would devote himself tirelessly to securing sponsorships and affidavits to save as many persecuted people as possible. Even so, he did not dissuade his boss from entering into negotiations with Joseph Goebbels. By the time Riefenstahl paid a visit to Hollywood in 1938, the situation had changed.

In early January 1937, she decided to make two films out of the Olympic footage. In mid-January she moved to the film laboratory in Neukölln and began to edit it. Her work was part logistics and part intuition. The logistics of the hunt for images had been successfully concluded, and it was time for intuition to take over. Michel Delahaye asked her in an interview for Cahiers du Cinéma whether she set down her ideas in writing before the filming began. She replied that she did not need even one page of a script for either Triumph of the Will or the Olympia films. “It was purely intuitive.”⁸⁸ Like Albert Speer, she used a combination of cold methodology and organizational mania. She identified completely with the planning and execution of a project, and regarded her subsequent work in the cutting room as the actual creative process. Riefenstahl withdrew from the outside world for nearly two years to edit the Olympia films. She did not come home until five in the morning. No one could help her to find the proper rhythm for the images. The slightest deviation could mean the loss of the desired effect. People who saw her at this time described her as a ghost. She edited and assembled the film alone. She stated in an interview in Cahiers du Cinéma that this was how she achieved the special character of her films. There is a photograph of Riefenstahl in the cutting room in a white lab coat with many filmstrips around her neck. With the same enraptured gaze as her cinematic counterpart, Junta, when staring at the mysterious glowing crystals, Riefenstahl’s eyes are trained on the images, oblivious to the outside world, in a state of ecstatic devotion to the artistic process that is her calling in life. However, this art exacted its price. Riefenstahl made endless demands. Her disputes with Goebbels centered on a report from the supervisory board of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on October 16, 1936, which alleged that the financial management of Olympia did not meet the requirements of proper accounting. The Film Credit Bank planned to launch a full evaluation of this project. She fought that with everything in her power, arguing that she did not have to answer to anyone besides Hitler, and obstinately applied for a budget increase of five hundred thousand reichsmarks. When Goebbels turned her down, she went to see him. After her visit, Goebbels noted in his diary: “Fräulein Riefenstahl is turning on the hysteria for me. It’s impossible to work with these wild women. Now she wants ½ million more for her film, and to make two films out of it, even though things are more rotten over there than ever. I stay cool. She weeps. That is a woman’s ultimate weapon. But it doesn’t work on me anymore. She ought to be working and keeping things in order.”⁸⁹ In the end, Riefenstahl got her money from Hitler.

In addition to coping with these disputes, she had to finish her work on Olympia. The dubbing posed a special challenge. Herbert Windt had written most of the film score, which was played by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Once Riefenstahl was finished editing the film, she got together with Windt and told him precisely what effect she intended to achieve with the music. Every sound had to match the image on the screen down to the last second. Even the composer worked with a stopwatch. This was the first time Riefenstahl was using announcers. Two radio sports reporters were charged with this task.⁹⁰

Hitler decided to put an end to all the talk about Riefenstahl’s and Goebbels’s quarreling and arranged for a visit to Riefenstahl’s new house in Dahlem. At roughly the same time that Hitler settled on the idea of building the Berghof, it also occurred to Riefenstahl that she had always wanted a house in the country. Now she could build the house that her father had never been able to afford. The ground floor had an expansive living area with a sunroom, kitchen, and pantry, and a work area with an anteroom, workroom, photo laboratory, screening room, and vault. Upstairs was the bedroom, along with a spacious dressing room, two bathrooms, several guest rooms, and a large massage room. The detached garage had an adjoining living room and bedroom as well. Riefenstahl had built herself a house that was tailored to her personal and professional needs. A family was not in her plans.

A reconciliation visit took place at her home in the summer of 1937; Goebbels and Hitler were joined by Heinz Riefenstahl and his wife, Inge. A photographer took a picture of the group for the press. The men wear civilian clothing, and Hitler tries to look easygoing—Goebbels fails utterly in this regard. The hostess has on a white dress and is smiling bashfully. “With Führer at Riefenstahl’s for lunch. She’s built a very nice little house. We talk for a long time. She is so effusive.”⁹¹ Riefenstahl was not just sitting at the cutting table in Neukölln and drinking coffee with Goebbels and Hitler in Dahlem; she also took trips abroad to rub shoulders with the international gilded youth of the 1930s. When Erich Maria Remarque was in St. Moritz for two months in the spring of 1937, he avoided the ski slopes, but spent his evenings at the hotel bar where he saw Riefenstahl in the company of a long list of luminaries.⁹² Remarque’s lover, Margot von Opel, was a close friend of Riefenstahl’s. They spent several weeks together on the island of Sylt before the outbreak of the war. In 1940, von Opel would be living in New York with her new lover, the Swiss writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach, a close friend of Erika Mann, Thomas Mann’s eldest daughter. Riefenstahl clearly kept in contact with the emigrants in the art world.

In July 1937, she left her editing room yet again to attend the International Exposition in Paris and introduce her films in person. The art that the dictators displayed in Paris staged totalitarian power as public and populist theater. Albert Speer was honored for his pavilion, and Riefenstahl for three films: the Olympia teaser film, The Blue Light, and Triumph of the Will.

On the trip back to Berlin from Paris, she was invited to visit Hitler at Berghof, his residence in the Bavarian Alps. This was a privilege that was extended to only a select few. He wanted to meet with her in an intimate setting and hear about her impressions from Paris. A black limousine picked her up in Berchtesgaden. An adjutant greeted her and brought her into the empty entrance hall. As she stood there alone, she saw that a film was running and recognized Marlene Dietrich on the screen. Then Hitler came to get her.

Hitler congratulated her on her successes, and they chatted while strolling outdoors. There may not have been any new agreements or promises made during this get-together, but the very fact that it took place at all was an unequivocal message: Leni Riefenstahl enjoyed the Führer’s protection.

On March 11, 1938, German troops crossed the border into Austria. Two days later, the “annexation” of Austria to the German Reich was announced. When Riefenstahl found out that these political developments would likely postpone the premiere of her film until the fall, she sprang into action by taking the next train to see Hitler in Innsbruck. When she voiced her concerns to him, he initially reminded her that politics now had to take precedence over films. But then Riefenstahl thought of a date that would draw a great deal of attention to the film and connect it to the political situation: April 20, Hitler’s birthday. As was so often the case, she found a way to turn a seeming minus into a plus for herself.

On April 20, 1938, the Ufa Palace was decorated with huge red swastika flags and white Olympic flags. Riefenstahl drove up in her Mercedes limousine. Clad in a white kimono-like dress, she strode through the line of men in their black uniforms. The premiere of the Olympia film served as the highlight and finale of the festivities for Hitler’s forty-ninth birthday. Riefenstahl could not have dreamed of a more sumptuous venue for her film. About two thousand guests were expected. Every one of the party leaders was in attendance, as were many members of the diplomatic corps, gauleiters, Olympic champions, film stars, and high-ranking members of the International Olympic Committee. Riefenstahl sat with her parents and her brother, Heinz, in box seats next to the Führer. She stood out in her Asian-inspired evening gown. After the first break, Hitler turned to her and shook her hand. The applause went on for several minutes. The Greek ambassador gave her an olive branch from the sacred grove on Mount Olympus on behalf of the crown prince of Greece. There she stood with the Führer, her face aglow with pleasure, clutching her olive branch. Her efforts had paid off; he liked the film. And if he liked it, its success was guaranteed. At the end of the second part, Hitler handed her a bouquet of white lilacs (representing Olympia) and red roses (for the swastika), and the audience went wild. Then Goebbels hosted a reception at the propaganda ministry.⁹³ Riefenstahl had demonstrated to the world what National Socialist Germany was able to achieve. To assure her international success, she issued several versions of the film, in German, English, and French, and thus sought outreach to an audience that was not especially fond of watching Hitler. With Olympia, Riefenstahl had succeeded in making an overtly political motion picture that is still considered one of the finest sports films ever made. Olympia set new benchmarks for cinematic sports coverage.

Festival of Nations, as part one was called, opens with a prologue that establishes a connection between ancient Greece and National Socialist Germany. Riefenstahl used this introduction to make it clear that the audience would not be seeing a newsreel; this was a work of art. The camera meanders over deserted temple ruins, smoke rising, and clouds passing. The image of Myron’s Discobulus statue dissolves into a flesh-and-blood athlete. A lone torchbearer runs along the sea, on his way to Berlin.

The Olympic stadium, seen from an aerial perspective, resembles an ancient coliseum yet highlights the technological progress of the twentieth century. The action clearly takes place in the present, complete with rounds of Heil Hitler accompanied by Hitler salutes. It is as though the director wanted viewers to awaken from the dream into which the prologue had transported them. The film started with the statue of the discus thrower evolving into a human being, and the competition itself begins with the discus throwing event. The camera shows us the feet in motion, the concentration, and the athletes’ utter devotion before, during, and after the throw. Footage of the competitions is interspersed with shots panning up to the scoreboard, the Olympic flame, Hitler, or the spectators, who take on the role of commentators with their gestures, facial expressions, and shouts, as we see Germans, Japanese, and Italians worrying about, rooting for, or rejoicing with their athletes.

The spectators, who have turned out in large numbers, are elegantly dressed and international. A Wehrmacht officer settles in happily next to an English gentleman. Together, they chuckle over a false start, groan when the baton is dropped during a relay race, and form groups to cheer on the athletes. During the men’s 110-meter hurdles, the bodies seem to fly synchronously over the hurdles. Often, the pace of the filming varies during a competition, and one can study the athletes’ technique, muscle tension, and strength giving out in slow motion. Riefenstahl shows the joy of the winner, but also displays the effort and exhaustion that accompany this victory. The images of the runners lurching to the finish line, their faces contorted with pain, are tantamount to an autobiographical reminiscence of the film’s director. She knows what it means to triumph over the body. The men’s pole vault goes on for five hours. Japanese and American competitors fight the battle for medals until nightfall. The athletes are photographed against the backdrop of the twilight sky as they push off their poles and soar through the air.

Festival of Beauty, the second Olympia film, opens with shots of the Olympic Village. In the morning fog, a group of runners approaches, their bodies reflected in the lake as they complete their morning training session. These elated men head into the sauna, crowding together on the benches and massaging each other’s sweaty bodies, then jump into the lake. The naked men sitting together on the landing stage in the early morning form a tightly knit group. It is evident that the female bodies in artistic gymnastics held little interest for the director. The shots of divers flying through the air like birds make it hard to tell whether they are moving toward the sky—and out of the water—or the other way around, and show the directorial mark of the former dancer. At the editing table, she was able to fulfill the unfulfilled dream of every dancer: weightlessness in space.⁹⁴

Riefenstahl perfected the blend of physicality and technology. Technology enabled her to pull away from reality and create images that suggest pure energy. The diver’s body melts into the infinitude of the sky, then we see it shoot into the water. His body appears to be sheer force and motion juxtaposed with images of composure and serenity. We see happy bodies soaked with sweat. With perfect organization, artistic intuition, and technical proficiency, she was able to shoot a film that helped her rise to the position of exemplary artist in 1930s Germany.

On May 1, Goebbels awarded Riefenstahl the National Film Prize for 1937–1938 for the Olympia film. Then she went on tour. She had been radiantly happy since the triumphant premiere. She had finally made a film that was understood throughout the world and aroused interest everywhere. Over the weeks that followed, she showed her film in Brussels, Belgrade, Athens, Zurich, Rome, and Paris. The young German director was acclaimed by people of note. A photograph taken of her with the film director Sasha Guitry after the premiere in Paris shows a well-to-do gentleman in lively conversation with an elegant lady. Riefenstahl hoped that her appearance and demeanor would quell the rumors about the evil Nazis. Her visit shocked the German emigrants in Paris, who thought they had found a safe haven. Riefenstahl was advised not to attend the premiere because of feared protests by the emigrants, but she could not follow that advice. She slipped into the movie theater without revealing her identity, and supposedly she witnessed the French breaking into applause whenever Hitler appeared on the screen. She was eventually recognized by the crowd, which gave her an enthusiastic reception. The German magazine Lichtbild-Bühne carried this report from Paris: “The emigrants here were left speechless by this success. . . . This powerful document of history in the new Germany is tearing away at many a web of lies, and many foreigners will be seeing the Third Reich in a whole new light.”⁹⁵

There is no doubt that Riefenstahl was on the move as a cultural ambassador for Adolf Hitler. This artist confounded people’s images of a National Socialist. She did not have a husband or children at her side, did not braid her hair, wore elegant evening gowns, and was not averse to having fun. In late July, another tour took her through Scandinavia. Her itinerary included Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki. The artist was received by prime ministers and kings, and her premieres were attended by generals, diplomats, princes, and princesses. On August 26, she headed to the Venice Biennale, where Olympia was competing with Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Marcel Carné’s Port of Shadows. Völkischer Beobachter reported, “At the very beginning, the creator of the film, Leni Riefenstahl, who was in attendance and sitting in the first row of the balcony between Minister Alfieri and Count Volpi, was given a special hearty round of applause.”⁹⁶ Everyone rose when she entered the room. She was awarded the Coppia Mussolini, and gave a radio interview that was broadcast throughout Italy. Riefenstahl looked dazzling. Her hair was upswept; she was wearing an eye-catching gown and long glittery earrings; her face was relaxed, and her fingernails red. During the summer months of 1938, she felt like an internationally acclaimed artist. She finally had the feeling that she was a star.

In order to keep her image as an actress alive, she arranged for The Blue Light to be brought back to movie theaters right after her European tour. However, the names Béla Balázs and Carl Mayer, and the financing by Harry Sokal, were kept from view.⁹⁷ Her name dominated the film posters.

This summer of triumphs also marked the beginning of Riefenstahl’s comedown. Her art paled in comparison to politics. During the summer months, the Sudeten crisis was keeping Europe on tenterhooks, with people fearing that Hitler would initiate a military strike against Czechoslovakia. The coming weeks were spent in negotiations with England and threats against Czechoslovakia. On September 26, Hitler gave a speech in the Sports Palace. The whole world awaited this speech with bated breath; it was a matter of war or peace. He bellowed about getting his Sudetenland on October 1. Foreign observers noted that for the first time, he seemed to be losing his self-control. On the evening of September 27, when The Blue Light was rereleased, a motorized division rolled through Berlin, heading to the Czech border. People on their way home from work hurried to the subways and made a point of ignoring this military demonstration. The Munich Agreement, which was signed in the early morning hours of September 30, 1938, averted war for the time being.

One month later, Riefenstahl traveled to the United States on the German luxury liner Europa. Triumph of the Will had given her quite a reputation in this country, and the Americans were curious to find out more about the career of this unusual artist who bore no resemblance to their vision of a Nazi German. Riefenstahl and her seventeen monogrammed suitcases arrived in New York on November 4. She preferred to travel under the pseudonym “Lotte Richter,” but she was quickly recognized on the ship. Riefenstahl was accompanied by Ernst Jäger, her personal adviser, and Werner Klingenberg, who had served on the preparatory commission for the 1936 Olympic Games and was now acting in the same capacity for the 1940 Games. Klingenberg, a fervent National Socialist, had lived in the United States and spoke fluent English. Now that Riefenstahl had achieved fame and fortune at home, she wanted to conquer the world, and in the world of the cinema that meant conquering the United States. Her suitcases contained several versions of her Olympia film. Jäger later insinuated that she was actually intending to spread propaganda for Hitler, but that is unlikely for such a self-centered individual. She was looking to boost her own fame. Whatever became of the others—and in this case Hitler was no exception—was of secondary importance to her. Her expectations were high, but she soon realized that not all Americans were on her side. The influential Anti-Nazi League sought to prevent her film from being shown in the United States. However, she also found influential supporters, such as Avery Brundage from the IOC, who was kindly disposed to National Socialist Germany. Before she could show her film to anyone, though, something happened that threatened to upend her further plans in America.

On November 9, the synagogues in Germany burned; Jewish businesses were set aflame; Jewish private residences were destroyed; and Jews were locked up, assaulted, and killed. Everyone urged Riefenstahl to head home. People tried to make her realize that no one in the United States had any interest in seeing her film now, let alone acquiring it. She could not accept that, and insisted that the news was fictitious. Riefenstahl refused to believe what she was reading in the American newspapers. She claimed not to have noticed any anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany before her departure. She bore the consequences of this willful ignorance when doors were slammed in her face. After flying high in Europe, she came crashing down in America. The negative headlines about the National Socialists dashed any hopes she had for success in the United States.

Determined as ever, she continued on to Hollywood and arrived on November 24. No red-carpet treatment awaited her, and the Garden of Allah, where rooms had been reserved for her, did not wish to have her as a guest. “American films are barred from Germany, so we have nothing to show Miss Riefenstahl,” a studio executive informed her curtly.⁹⁸ The major studio bosses saw no need to get together with her. Parties that had been arranged for her were canceled, and she was ignored when she showed up at a gathering, even though she had packed her best designer clothes and sassy fur hat. Eventually there was a private showing of the film in the presence of Glenn Morris and Johnny Weissmuller, followed by articles in the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Citizen News that praised Olympia. These two reviews and a visit to Walt Disney were all she had to show for the weeks she spent in the United States.

Although Riefenstahl had ample opportunity to stay informed about the events in Germany, she chose to keep her eyes firmly shut and side unequivocally with the National Socialists. On January 15, 1939, she returned to Berlin from the New World. An entry in Goebbels’s diary dated February 5, 1939, reveals her true feelings about her trip: “In the evening Leni Riefenstahl tells me about her trip to America. She gives me an exhaustive picture, which is far from gratifying. We have no say over there. The Jews are running things with terror and boycotts. But for how long?” Leni Riefenstahl must have been glad to be back in the familiar totalitarian terrain. Hitler was busily preparing for war, and she was planning her next motion picture. In a sense, they were both setting the stage for the roles of their lives: Hitler as the self-proclaimed greatest commander of all time, and Riefenstahl as the Amazon warrior Penthesilea.

On March 8, 1939, one week before German troops invaded Czechoslovakia, there was an initial meeting about the “Construction Project Leni Riefenstahl.” In order to meet the requirements of the major tasks ahead, she would be getting her own studio lot. A plot of land near her villa was being sought for this purpose. Albert Speer was involved in the project and attended the meetings. The Party would cover the full costs. Riefenstahl could ask for whatever her heart desired: spacious, brightly lit workspaces; a film archive; a casino; a gymnasium; dubbing rooms; cutting rooms; projection rooms, all on a lot measuring 2,700 square feet. The prospect of a mini-Hollywood in Dahlem made it easy for Riefenstahl to put the ignominy in America out of her mind. In addition to working on this major project, she devoted herself to her dream role, Penthesilea. She lost no time in founding Leni Riefenstahl Film Inc., then hired her loyal crew members Walter Grosskopf and Walter Traut as officers in the company, practiced horseback riding, and engaged in “Amazon gymnastics” to tone her body.

When Riefenstahl went on vacation on August 30, bombers had been thundering over Berlin for a week. Two days earlier, a comprehensive system of food rationing had gone into effect for the population, and troops were heading east. All signs pointed to war. In this highly charged situation, Riefenstahl went off to the mountains so that she could relax before traveling to Libya for the film shoot. She most likely encountered military vehicles on the autobahn when she left Berlin and headed to Bolzano in her sports car. On August 31, she stood on a mountain top, “happy, and filled with dreams of the future,” blissfully unaware that Penthesilea would be called off.⁹⁹ As of September 1, there was war.