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PROPAGANDA NAZISTA (e approfondimenti)
L’esempio italiano fu preso a modello, dalla Germania nazista, anche sotto il punto di vista dello strumento che più di ogni altro venne utilizzato per cementare la diffusione del regime tra le masse, la propaganda. Anche in questo caso l’”allievo” superò di gran lunga il “maestro”; a differenza di Mussolini, infatti, il fuhrer fu in grado di avvalersi di quello che può lecitamente e probabilmente definirsi come il più grande talento propagandista del secolo scorso, Joseph Goebbels.
Grazie a questo uomo, minuto e menomato nel fisico, ma di straordinaria intelligenza, l’ideologia nazional-socialista divenne il punto di riferimento nella vita quotidiana di ogni tedesco, il fine a cui ogni ariano doveva immolare la propria esistenza, traducendo in realtà quel progetto di regime totalizzante che Mussolini perseguì a lungo senza mai realizzarlo compiutamente.
Goebbels era uno straordinario oratore e il suo eccezionale talento contribuì non poco alla scalata al potere del nazismo, ossia di una piccola formazione politica che, nel giro di pochi anni, sarebbe stata in grado di conquistare l’indiscussa supremazia, prima sulla Germania, poi sull’intera Europa.
Negli anni che precedettero la sua nomina a cancelliere del Reich, Adolf Hitler utilizzò sempre con maggior frequenza Goebbels, nell’opera di persuasione delle masse, completamente infervorate ed estasiate dai suoi arditi ed infuocati comizi, incentrati sulla necessità di riportare la Germania umiliata dalle potenze vincitrici, ai fasti di un tempo.
Nominato capo dell’ufficio della propaganda nel 1929, Goebbels concentrò nelle sue mani un potere smisurato, con la nomina a ministro e con l’assunzione, nel novembre 1933, della guida della neonata camera della cultura, avente l’assoluto controllo su cinema, musica, stampa, teatro, radio, ed arte in genere.
Fu comunque la radio, sempre più diffusa nelle case dei tedeschi, lo strumento maggiormente utilizzato, per l’indottrinamento delle masse, da parte del potentissimo ministro, che, prima di ogni altro, colse la grandi potenzialità del nuovo mezzo mediatico.
Con appositi provvedimenti legislativi fu inoltre stabilito che i giornalisti dovessero rispondere, non più ai direttori, ma all’apparato statale, mentre tutte le agenzie di stampa vennero assorbite dall’unica consentita, la DNB ( DEUTSCHES NACHRICHTEN BUREAU).
In Germania, tutto funzionava, dunque, sotto l’egida della svastica, che faceva la comparsa in ogni luogo, in ogni angolo della nazione, accompagnata dal motto Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher (un popolo, una nazione, un capo), lanciato dalle righe del giornale "Der Angriff".
Scopo del regime era di creare l’immagine di una potenza destinata al dominio assoluto sotto l’egida del suo fuhrer invincibile, guida e condottiero del supremo popolo ariano. Per il ministero della propaganda Adolf Hitler doveva apparire, agli occhi dei tedeschi, come una divinità, come una entità al di sopra di tutti e di tutto, cui riservare cieca devozione.
La propaganda nazista produsse documentari e film, volti ad affermare le dottrine codificate nel Mein Kampf e dunque a persuadere i tedeschi circa la necessità di eliminare quelle che venivano considerate le razze etnicamente inferiori, ad inculcare la più totale devozione e fiducia nel proprio fuhrer e ad affermare la grandezza di un Reich che sarebbe durato almeno mille anni.
Eventi come il drammatico rogo dei libri invisi al regime e come la mostra dell’arte degenerata, elaborata per gettare fango su pittori ebrei, si svolsero sotto l’egida e la regia dell’indiscusso capo del ministero della propaganda.
Goebbels, che fu tra l’altro uno dei più fervidi sostenitori della persecuzione degli ebrei, ed il regista della famigerata "notte dei cristalli", organizzò oceanici e sterminati raduni di massa, affidando all’esteta del III Reich, Albert Speer, l’incarico di creare la giusta ambientazione e le giuste geometrie, improntate a mettere in rilievo l’idea di grandezza e di dominio; da questo punto di vista il raduno di Norimberga del 1934 rappresentò la massima espressione della megalomania e della maestosità voluta dal potentissimo ministro della propaganda.
Nella monumentale arena progettata e voluta da Speer, ispirata all’idea di grandiosità, di fronte ad una folla sterminata ed alle milizie, schierate con i loro stendardi, preannunciato dal suono delle trombe, un unico uomo, Adolf Hitler, idolatrato come un Dio, attraversò quella massa di persone deliranti fino a raggiungere il palco, ove un complesso e particolare gioco di luci contribuì a fargli assumere una dimensione quasi soprannaturale; nulla fu lasciato al caso, ogni particolare, ogni minimo dettaglio fu studiato a tavolino, in maniera quasi maniacale, da Speer e da Goebbels.
Le riprese di quel maestoso raduno, furono affidate alla geniale regia di Leni Riefensthal e da esse nacque un autentico capolavoro "Il trionfo della volontà", ove la grande regista raggiunse in pieno l’obiettivo di Goebbels, creando l’immagine di un guerriero invincibile, indiscusso capo di una nazione stretta nella più totale devozione per la sua guida suprema.
L’occasione più ghiotta per far conoscere agli occhi del mondo la potenza e la grandezza del III Reich fu però rappresentata dalle olimpiadi di Berlino del 1936, la cui documentazione venne affidata di nuovo, dal ministero della propaganda, alla grande Leni Riefensthal, che in quell’occasione superò sé stessa, creando lo straordinario "Olympia", in cui si evidenziò la morbosa attenzione per ogni particolare volto ad esaltare il culto della perfezione fisica, incarnata nel mito della pura razza ariana.
Le opere della Riefensthal trovano anche al giorno d’oggi, sia pure considerate nel contesto in cui ebbero a nascere, grandissima ammirazione nella critica, ma stroncarono la carriera della grande regista, accusata di collusione con il nazismo e, per questo motivo, emarginata nel dopoguerra.
L’incessante martellamento del ministero della propaganda contribuì in maniera fondamentale, a creare quella sorta di delirio di massa che caratterizzò la Germania prebellica, totalmente asservita e succube di una ideologia che, solo qualche anno più tardi, avrebbe ridotto il paese ad un cumulo di rovine.
Con lo scoppio delle ostilità anche le produzioni di Goebbels cambiarono scenario: se prima della guerra lo scopo primario dell’ufficio della propaganda era quello di affermare l’ideale di grandezza della Germania nazional-socialista e del popolo ariano e di diffondere l’odio contro gli ebrei, ora l’unico obiettivo era quello di esaltare lo spirito di coraggio e sacrificio di ogni tedesco per la vittoria finale sul nemico, ed in particolare sui "barbari" bolscevichi di Stalin.
Ogni occasione era buona per incentivare i figli della suprema razza ariana alla lotta per l’affermazione del Reich millenario, alla guerra totale contro le potenze avversarie.
Con la fine della guerra ormai vicina, con la Wehrmacht ridotta ad un manipolo di ragazzini della gioventù Hitleriana, la propaganda continuò, incessante ed incurante della realtà, la propria opera di persuasione di massa, con filmati e discorsi radiofonici incentivanti alla resistenza estrema, alla difesa di una Berlino ormai in ginocchio; una delle ultime realizzazioni volute da Goebbels fu il film "Kolberg", che si ricollegava ad un episodio risalente al 1806, ove i difensori di una città cinta d’assedio rifiutavano la resa e decidevano di sacrificarsi resistendo fino all’ultimo uomo, riuscendo a conseguire, quando ormai ogni speranza sembrava perduta, un’insperata pace, che poneva fine all’assedio.
Ma, nonostante gli ultimi, patetici sforzi di sferzare la popolazione, il sogno di gloria di creare un grande Reich millenario era ormai svanito: di fronte ad un’ Armata Rossa ormai padrona della capitale, Joseph Goebbels, il grande oratore, colui che più di ogni altro glorificò, con ogni mezzo a sua disposizione, il fuhrer della grande Germania, creando una simbiosi assoluta tra stato e partito, decise di seguire Adolf Hitler nella morte.
Il primo maggio 1945 si suicidò insieme a tutta la sua famiglia, indegna di proseguire un’esistenza priva di un nazional-socialismo giunto al capolinea e prossimo alla totale dissoluzione.
La macchina del consenso
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Storia della cinematografia tedesca durante il nazismo, illustra sapientemente come Hitler e il suo regime seppero servirsi del mezzo filmico ai fini propagandistici
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E PER CHI VUOLE APPROFONDIRE...
A)
Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003)
German dancer, actor, director and photographer, whose films Triumph of the Will (1935), an NSDAP production, and the two-part Olympia (1938) are the most famous examples of National Socialist documentary propaganda. After World War II Riefenstahl's movie career in West Germany was practically over, although she never was a member of the Nazi party. When Hitler's architect Albert Speer spent the rest of his life analysing how his character was corrupted by fame and power, Riefenstahl refused to admit guilt for her past. "If the director, who should always edit his own work, is musically gifted, he will compose with images and sounds, the way a musician composes according to the laws of counterpoint." (Riefenstahl in A Memoir, 1987) Helena Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born in Berlin into a wealthy family. Her father, Alfred Riefenstahl, owned a heating and ventilation firm. He was an authoritative figure, who did not tolerate opposition. Riefenstahl suffered from her father's sternness. She later said, that when she played chess with him, she always had to let him win to avoid upsetting him. In her childhood, Riefenstahls's favorite pastime was reading fairy tales; magic and fantasy also labelled her own works later as a director and photographer. Riefenstahl was educated at the Realgymnasium in Berlin. In 1918-1919 she studied art at the Kunstakadmie. Because her father did not accept her plans to become an actress, she took secretly dancing lessons at the Grimm-Reiter School. At the age of 21, Riefenstahl lost her virginity and gave her first ballet performance. The former experience was less enjoyable. "I felt nothing but pain and disappointment," she wrote in her memoir. A knee injury forced Riefenstahl to stop her dancing. Then determined to be a film star, Riefenstahl managed to win the confidence of Dr. Arnold Fanck, the founder of the Bergfilm (mountain film) genre. She was casted in three of Fanck's films, in which her beautiful looks were set for her disappointment secondary to the beauty and purity of the mountains. However, during this period she started to learn filmmaking. In 1931 Riefenstahl directed her first film, Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light), which she also produced, edited and co-wrote with the Jewish film critic and playwright Béla Balázs. The Blue Light was released through Riefenstahl's own company. In 1938, when the film was reissued, Balázs's name was removed from the credits. By that time, Balázs had escaped to Moscow. In May 1932 Riefenstahl met Hitler for the first time. Hitler was an avid moviegoer and reader, and he had seen The Holy Mountain, in which Riefenstahl danced on the sea, and The Blue Light, which had won the Silver Medallion at the 1932 Biennalle in Venice. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, saw Riefenstahl as "the only one of all stars who understands us" and repeatedly subjected her to sexual harassment. Impressed by her cinematic skills, Hitler commissioned Riefenstahl to make a feature-lenght film of the Nuremberg Party Rally of 1934. Riefenstahl had already made one documentary, Sieg des Glaubens (1933) of the 1933 Nazi party rally, which was thought to have been lost at the end of the war. Triumph of the Will is considered the most remarkable propaganda film ever made. Much has been written about its opening shot, in which Führer comes from the clouds. The following sequences are a kind of travel documentary of the city of Nuremberg, accompanied with Wagnerian music, but occasionally seen through the eyes of Hitler. Riefenstahl constantly cuts from panoramic long-shots to close-ups. Triumph of the Will ends in Hitler's speech and the marching S.A. men. In the center is always the person of the Führer, he is the leading man, idolized from distance by the director, the leading lady, through her camera. After the war, much of its footage was used in anti-Nazi films, such as Erwin Leisner's Mein Kampf (1961). The Spanish director Luis Buñuel also tried to rework in 1941 Triumph of the Will. He showed his results in New York to Charlie Chaplin, who couldn't stop laughing. Riefenstahl's next long documentary, Olympia, commissioned by the International Olympic Committee, not the NSDAP, was a hymn to the beauty of the human body and physical strength. Later the work has been regarded as fascist because it idealizes athletes as superhumans, psychically comparable with ancient classical sculptures. However, its aesthetics actually followed the ideas of Balász, an ardent Communist. "Facial expression is the most subjective manifestation of man," Balász wrote and emphasized in the moving pictures the language of the body. In Olympia the movement of athletes, close-ups of their faces, and the hypnotic diving montage are the best moments of the picture. Riefenstahl herself appeared in its prologue anonymously among nude dancing women, shot in the sand dunes of a Baltic beach. Olympia won the 1938 Venice Film Festival. At that time Riefenstahl was already the most acclaimed woman film director in the world. A book about the film, mostly frame enlargements, was published in 1937 under the title Schönheit im Olympischen Kampf. The great opposites of the film are Hitler, who is shown only a few times, and the great African-American athlete Jesse Owens, the true hero of the first part, who triumphed over Aryan race theories. Riefenstahl own choice behind the scene was the Olympic Gold Medalist Glenn Morris, with whom she had an affair. Morris later played Tarzan in the film Tarzan's Revenge (1938). In 1938 Riefenstahl traveled with her Olympia to the United States. In New York the Anti-Nazi League connected her work with Nazi ideology. In Hollywood Riefenstahl met among others Walt Disney, but otherwise the journey was fruitless. Again a boycott was organized against her. One of its organizers was the writer Budd Schulberg, who later called Riefenstahl a "Nazi Pinup Girl" (The Saturday Evening Post, March 30, 1946). In her own country, Riefenstahl explained the rejection by noting that the American film industry is controlled by "people hostile to modern Germany." The Berliner Illustrierte was more explicit: "Jewish influence in Hollywood is preventing any public screening of the Olympia film". In 1939 Riefenstahl followed Wermacht to Poland and filmed the invasion of the country. As a war reported she possibly witnessed atrocities committed by German soldiers in the town of Konskie. Subsequently she resigned from her post, but continued her cooperation with high officials of the Nazi regime. In 1940 Riefenstahl founded her own company. With Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, Riefenstahl discussed about building a studio complex. Martin Borman had approved the plan in 1939 but it was never realized. During the war Riefenstahl made a nonmusical screen version of the Eugen d'Albert's opera Tiefland, which had been popular in the 1920s. Riefenstahl's company also produced cultural films and short films. The production of Tiefland began in 1940 but the film was not released until 1954. Not a propaganda movie but a fairy tale, it did not have the support of Speer or the Ministry of Propaganda, where the favorite projects included Josef von Baky's Münchhausen (1943) and Veit Harlan's Kolberg (1945). Gypsies from a nearby concentration camp were used as extras. A number of them were later killed, women and children included. Riefenstahl herself played the role of Marta, a gypsy woman. With her husband, Peter Jacob, whom she married in 1944, Riefenstahl visited Hitler at the Berghof in 1944. It was her last meeting with him. Riefenstahl noticed Hitler's shrunken frame but that he "still cast the same magical spell as before". When Hitler committed suicide Riefenstahl cried all night. After the war Riefenstahl spent in various prisons and detention camps. For a time she was locked in an insane asylum, where she was given electro-compulsive therapy. Riefenstahl divorced in 1947. After a long delay, Olympia was awarded by Gold Medal by the IOC. In 1952 a West German denazification court officially cleared her of charges of Nazi collaboration. Riefenstahl worked on several film project in the 1950s, but in Germany her movie career was over. The Finnish Olympic Committee asked her to make a film on the 1952 summer Olympics in Helsinki, but Riefenstahl turned the offer down. She felt that she could not surpass her earlier work. With the French director Jean Cocteau she planned a film on Voltaire and Fredrick the Great. Misfortunes, starting from a car accident in Kenya, in which Riefenstahl broke all her ribs, stopped her film about slave trade in eastern Africa. For the first time Riefenstahl visited the Nuba in Sudan in 1962 with a German scientific expedition. In the following years she lived for extended periods with the Nubas, learning their language and way of life. Riefenstahl's assistant and cameraman, Horst Kettner, 42 years her junior, became her life companion. Riefenstahl's pictures were published in a number of magazines and newspapers. In the bodies of the naked Nubians she saw innocence and beauty, which echoed the images of Olympia. The British Film Institute had withdrawn its invitation in 1960 for Riefenstahl to give a talk about her filmmaking, but in 1974 she was honored at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, and in 1976 in Montreal Summer Olympics Riefenstahl was invited as a guest of honor. Riefenstahl's first book of photographs, Die Nuba - Menschen wie von einem anderen Stern (The Last of the Nuba) was published in 1972. In 1974, Riefenstahl revisited the Nuba, and showed them her book. For her disappointment she realized that changes had overtaken the Nuba and now they were ashamed of their nakedness. "The age of paradisal innocence was dead." Korallengärten (1978, Coral Gardens) and Wunder unter Wasser (1990, Wonders Under Water), about the undersea world, were born from her diving expeditions to coral reefs and other locales. Riefenstahl learned to dive in her seventies. When she entered a German diving school, she had to lie about her age. Her concern for the environment also prompted her to join Greenpeace. In her controversial autobiography, Memoiren (1987), Riefenstahl portrayed herself as an artist, not a propagandist for the National Socialist Workers' Party. She also claimed that she had no political opinions and by the time Germany was collapsing, she hated Hitler. Enjoying a kind of cult following, her work was widely revaluated in the 1990s, although in Germany a retrospective of her films in Potsdam was greeted with protests. However, the controversial director Rainer Werner Fassbinder tried to hire her as cinematographer for his film Querelle, based on Jean Genet's novel. Helmut Newton photographed Riefenstahl for Vanity Fair; they had met first in Havana in 1987. "I photograph the people I love and admire, the famous and especially infamous," Newton said. In 1995 Riefenstahl's films were shown at the documentary film festival in Leipzig. The German rock group Rammstein used images of Olympia in 1998 in the video Stripped. In September 1997 Riefenstein received a life-achievement award from the Cinecon film association in Los Angeles. Jodie Foster's production company announced plans for a Riefenstahl film. While in Sudan in 2000 filming with Ray Müller she suffered severe injures in a helicopter crash. Leni Riefenstahl died at the age of 101 in Pöcking, Germany, on 8 September 2003. For further reading: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl by Steven Bach (2007); Leni Riefenstahl by Rainer Rother (2002); Leni Riefenstah: The Seduction of Genius by Rainer Rother, Martin H. Bott (2002); Leni Riefenstahl: Five Lives by Angelika Taschen (2000); Leni Riefenstahl by Irene Bignardi, Alessandra Borghese, Michele Falzone Del Barbaro (1996); Der Parteitagsfilm "Triumph des Willens" von Leni Riefenstahl: Rituale der Mobilmachung by Martin Loiperdinger (1987); Leni Riefenstahl and Olympia by Cooper C. Graham (1986); Leni Riefenstahls "Triumph des Willens": Zur Kritik dokumentarischer Filmarbeit im NS-Faschismus by Peter Nowotny (1981); Leni Riefenstahl by Renata Berg-Pan (1980); Leni Riefenstahl by Charles Ford (1978); The Films of Leni Riefenstahl by David B. Hinton (1978); Leni Riefenstahl, the Fallen Film Goddess by Glen Infield (1976); Nazi Cinema by Erwin Leiser (1974) Books by L.R.:· Kampf in Schnee und Eis, 1933 · Hinter den Kulissen des Reichsparteitagsfilms, 1935 (uncredited ghost writer Ernst Jaeger) · Schönheit im Olympischen Kampf, 1937 - Riefenstahl Olympia · Über die Herstellung der Olympia-Filme, 1958 · Die Nuba - Menschen wie von einem anderen Stern, 1972 - The Last of the Nuba · Die Nuba von Kau, 1976 - People of Kau · Korallengärten, 1978 - Coral Gardens · Mein Afrika, 1982 - Africa · Memoiren, 1987 - The Sieve of Time / A Memoir · Wunder unter Wasser, 1990 - Wonders Under Water Films: · Der heilige Berg, 1926 - Peaks of Destiny / The Holy Mountain (act., dir. by Arnold Fanck) · Der grosse Sprung, 1927 - The Big Leap (act., dir. by Arnold Fanck) · Das Schicksal dere von Habsburg, 1929 (act., dir. by Rudolf Raffé) · Die weisses Hölle vom Piz Palü, 1929 - The White Hell of Pitz Palü (act.. script by Arnold Fanck, Ladislaus Vajda) · Stürme über dem Mountblanc, 1930 - Storms on Mount Blanc / Avalache (act., dir. by Arnold Fanck) · Der weiss Rausch, 1931 - The White Ecstacy / The White Destiny / The Ski Chase (act.) · Das Blaue Licht, 1932 - The Blue Light (dir., co-sc., act.) · S.O.S. Eisberg, 1933 - SOS Iceberg (act. dir., by Arnold Fanck for the German version, Tay Garnett for the American version) · Sieg des Glaubens, 1933 - Victory of the Faith (dir.) · Triumph des Willens, 1935 - Triumph of the Will (dir., pr., ed.) · Tag der Freiheit: unsere Wermacht, 1935 (dir., ed.) · Olympia (Olympische Spiele 1936), 1938 (dir., sc., co-ph., ed.) · Tiefland, 1944 - Lowland (dir., sc., ed., actress, released in 1954)
B)
Triumph of the Will
Most religious movements and political dynasties throughout history have had one city that could be called the focal point, or heart, of the movement - Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople and so forth. For the Nazis, the heart of their movement was the magnificent medieval city of Nuremberg, symbolizing the link between Germany's Gothic past and its Nazi future.
Each September, a pilgrimage was held in which followers gathered from all over the Reich to participate in torchlight marches and solemn ceremonies honoring fallen Nazis. There were also big military-style parades, and most important of all, a chance to see the Führer in person.
In September 1934, American journalist William L. Shirer had just arrived in Germany to work as a reporter for the Hearst company. He proceeded to keep a diary of the entire seven years he spent reporting from inside Hitler's Reich.
Shirer thought it would be a good idea to attend the 1934 Nuremberg Rally to better understand the Nazi phenomenon. On his very first evening in the old city, he found himself accidentally stuck among a throng of ten thousand people in front of Hitler's hotel, shouting: "We want our Führer!"
"I was a little shocked at the faces," Shirer wrote in his diary, "when Hitler finally appeared on the balcony for a moment. They reminded me of the crazed expressions I once saw in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers...they looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman."
The next morning, Shirer was among the attendees at the Rally's opening ceremony, held inside a large hall on the outskirts of Nuremberg. It was Shirer's first experience with Nazi pomp and pageantry.
"I am beginning to comprehend," he wrote, "some of the reasons for Hitler's astounding success. Borrowing a chapter from the Roman [Catholic] church, he is restoring pageantry and color and mysticism to the drab lives of 20th Century Germans. This morning's opening meeting...was more than a gorgeous show, it also had something of the mysticism and religious fervor of an Easter or Christmas Mass in a great Gothic cathedral. The hall was a sea of brightly colored flags. Even Hitler's arrival was made dramatic. The band stopped playing. There was a hush over the thirty thousand people packed in the hall. Then the band struck up the Badenweiler March...Hitler appeared in the back of the auditorium and followed by his aides, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, Himmler and the others, he slowly strode down the long center aisle while thirty thousand hands were raised in salute."
To Shirer, the intoxicating atmosphere inside the hall was such that "every word dropped by Hitler seemed like an inspired word from on high. Man's - or at least the German's - critical faculty is swept away at such moments, and every lie pronounced is accepted as high truth itself."
It was during this opening meeting that Hitler's victorious proclamation was read: "The German form of life is definitely determined for the next thousand years."
At Hitler's personal request, a 31-year-old actress and movie director named Leni Riefenstahl was filming the entire week-long Rally. Utilizing thirty film cameras and 120 technicians, she produced an extraordinary film record of the festivities, featuring many unique camera angles and dramatic lighting effects.
Riefenstahl's finished masterpiece, Triumph of the Will, contains many impressive scenes, but perhaps none more powerful than the scene in which Hitler, Himmler, and the new SA leader, Viktor Lutze, walk down a wide aisle in the center of Nuremberg stadium flanked on either side by gigantic formations of Nazis in perfectly aligned columns.
In previous years, the three men walking that path would have been Hitler, Himmler and Röhm. But the troublesome Röhm was now dead, replaced by the dutiful and lackluster Lutze. Back in February, it had been Lutze who told Hitler about Röhm's comments concerning "that ridiculous corporal." For his steadfast loyalty, Lutze was given command of the SA with strict orders from Hitler to keep the Brownshirts firmly in line.
On Sunday, September 9, during the Rally, Hitler faced a mass gathering of his SA Brownshirts for the first time since the Night of the Long Knives. In scenes well-documented by Riefenstahl's cameras, about 50,000 Brownshirts stood in neat formations and listened to a slightly edgy Hitler attempt to patch things up. Interestingly, the film also shows a huge cordon of SS guards in attendance.
"Men of the SA and SS," Hitler bellowed from the podium, "a few months ago a black shadow spread over the movement. Neither the SA, nor any other institution of the Party, has anything to do with this shadow. They are all deceived who believe that even one crack has occurred in the structure of our united movement...Only a lunatic or deliberate liar could think that I, or anybody, would ever intend to dissolve what we ourselves have built up over many long years...In the past you have proved your loyalty to me a thousandfold, and it cannot and will not be different in the future."
Thus Hitler absolved the SA membership from any complicity in the events precipitating the blood purge. And amid a hearty chorus of 'Sieg Heils,' the Brownshirts sounded their approval. Any concerns over possible trouble from the SA during the Rally had been unfounded.
Riefenstahl's film next shows a lengthy sequence featuring the grand finale parade, and concludes with Hitler's speech at the closing ceremony in which he labels the Rally "a most impressive display of political power." Hitler goes on to declare the Nazi Party "will be unchangeable in its doctrine, hard as steel in its organization, supple and adaptable in its tactics. In its entity, however, it will be like a religious order..."
For many Germans, a trip to the Nuremberg Rally was indeed a religious-like experience and they returned home with renewed dedication to the Nazi cause and increased devotion to their Führer.
Upon the very first screening of Triumph of the Will in 1936 the Nazis knew they had struck propaganda gold. The film played to packed movie theaters throughout Germany. For her efforts, Riefenstahl received a Cultural Achievement award from Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry. The film also won a gold medal for its artistry at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris.
The legacy of Triumph of the Will lives on today in the numerous TV documentaries concerning the Nazi era which replay portions of the film in regard to Hitler's early days, or show snippets of euphoric Hitler Youth, or the SS goose-stepping smartly on parade. The film's most enduring and dangerous illusion is that Nazi Germany was a super-organized state, that, although evil in nature, was impressive nonetheless.
In reality, Nazi Germany was only well organized to the degree that it was a murderous police state. The actual Reich government was a tangled mess of inefficient agencies and overlapping bureaucracies led by ruthless men who had little, if any, professional administrative abilities. From the Reich's first hours in January 1933 until the end in May 1945, various departmental leaders battled each other for power, and would do anything to curry favor with a superior Nazi authority and especially with Hitler, the ultimate authority. Hence, they would all become enthusiastic cogs in the Führer's war and extermination machines.
In 1934, over a million Germans had participated in the hugely successful Nuremberg Rally. And from this point onward, the rallies got even bigger. The following year, 1935, is remembered for the special announcements concerning the status of Jews in Germany. These new rules became known as the Nuremberg Laws and for the Jews of Europe would one day be a matter of life and death.
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