Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (97 page)

On the other hand, the Nuremberg rallies were physically exhausting. Hitler later recalled that the hardest part had been standing at attention with a raised arm for hours as his followers marched past him: “A couple of times, I got dizzy.”
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At the end of every ceremony, Goebbels would find him lying exhausted on the sofa of his hotel room. “He has given everything he had,” the propaganda minister noted in 1936. “He’ll have to take a break.”
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That year was particularly trying since Hitler also had to attend a “Memorial Party Conference” in Weimar as well as the Olympic Summer Games in Berlin. His entourage pleaded with him to cancel the Nuremberg rally for that year, but he adamantly refused.
⁷⁶

After each rally, Hitler assembled his paladins for a post-mortem of the event. He handed out praise and criticism and made suggestions for the future. But he was unwilling to change the sequence of ceremonies once it had been set. While he was alive, he told Speer in 1938, the “form” had to become “an immutable rite.” As he explained: “Then no one will be able to change it later. I am afraid that those who come after me will feel the urge to change things. Some future Führer of the Reich may not have my talents, but this framework will support him and give him authority.”
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Here, too, Hitler articulated fears that he would die young and that his work might not survive him. The consecration of rituals was his way of lending potential successors something of his own charisma and establishing the Third Reich for the long term.

The mass spectacle of the Nuremberg rallies had the desired effect on both German and foreign observers. The French ambassador, François-Poncet, who attended the 1937 rally, recalled:

Amazing and indescribable was the atmosphere of general enthusiasm into which the ancient city was submerged, that unique intoxication that seized hundreds of thousands of men and women, the romantic excitement, mythic ecstasy, a kind of holy madness. During those eight days Nuremberg…was a city under a magic spell—one could almost say a city transported to an altogether different world.
⁷⁸

In retrospect, British Ambassador Henderson opined that no one could claim to be fully acquainted with the Nazi movement without having attended and soaked in the atmosphere of a Nuremberg rally.
⁷⁹

Even as sceptical an observer as William Shirer would write in late 1934: “You have to go through one of these to understand Hitler’s hold on the people, to feel the dynamic in the movement he’s unleashed and the sheer, disciplined strength that the German people possess.”
⁸⁰
The magical backdrop of Nuremberg had a particular effect on foreign journalists who would otherwise have been expected to maintain critical distance towards the spectacle. A
New York Times
report on the last day of the 1937 rally recorded foreign journalists from all over the world listening to Hitler’s concluding speech in their hotel and all spontaneously performing the raised-arm German greeting and enthusiastically singing along with the German national anthem and the “Horst Wessel Song.”
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Both Germans and foreigners were taken in by the majestic surface of the Third Reich, so that they lost sight of the dark sides of the dictatorship.

—

From the very beginning, the Nazi leadership had tried to reach out to the greatest number of people possible with the mass spectacle in Nuremberg. The main means of doing so was radio broadcasts. Yet they were largely restricted to recordings of speeches and were unable to communicate much of the atmosphere. By 1935, listeners had begun to get tired of them. “The comprehensive coverage on radio and in newspapers did not truly captivate the masses even during the rally week,” concluded a report from the Rhineland. “The people were indifferent.”
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It made sense to use the medium of film as a disseminator.

The NSDAP had the 1927 and 1929 Nuremberg rallies filmed, but the end results consisted of primitive, silent footage intended only for party initiates and never broadly distributed. Moreover, at that time Hitler was not yet the absolutely dominant figure of the event.
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That changed after the “seizure of power,” and for the “Party Rally of Victory.” In 1933, a work of vastly superior quality was commissioned to allow cinema audiences the chance to “experience” the event. Leni Riefenstahl’s hour had come.

The gifted young actress had established contact with Hitler in the spring of 1932 after attracting his attention in the lead role in her directorial debut,
The Blue Light
. By that autumn, she had become a regular guest at the Goebbelses’ house, where she occasionally encountered Hitler. She knew that her career would benefit if the National Socialists came to power,
⁸⁴
and in mid-May 1933 Goebbels proposed a collaboration. “In the afternoon Leni Riefenstahl,” he noted. “She told of her plans. I suggested a Hitler film. She was very enthusiastic.” In June, the two discussed the details, with the propaganda minister remarking, “She’s the only one of the stars who understands us.” By August the deal was done, and Riefenstahl was invited to lunch at the Chancellery—a sign of Hitler’s special favour. “She’s going to make our party rally film,” Goebbels enthused.
⁸⁵
The news was officially announced at the end of the month, only a few days before the Nuremberg rally. “At the express wish of the Führer,” it read, Fräulein Riefenstahl had been entrusted with the artistic direction of the party-rally film.
⁸⁶

The fact that an actress-turned-director and a non-party member was handed this project was a thorn in the side of the veteran Nazis at the film division of the Propaganda Ministry, in particular its director, Arnold Raether. Behind the scenes, there was intriguing and feuding aimed at calling Riefenstahl’s competence into question. But as long as she enjoyed Hitler’s favour, she had nothing to fear. And after her first Nuremberg rally film, which would bear the title
The Victory of Faith
, even the doubters in Hitler’s entourage were convinced of her skill as a director.
⁸⁷

On her own initiative, Riefenstahl hired three gifted cameramen: Sepp Allgeier, Franz Weihmayr and Walter Frentz, the last of whom would become Hitler’s preferred cameraman and play an important role during the Second World War.
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Understandably, the young female director, who led her team with great self-confidence during the four days of filming, caused quite a stir in Nuremberg. After the rally was over, she retreated to edit her footage. Goebbels, with whom she conferred, was certain: “She will produce something worthwhile.”
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Riefenstahl’s most original contribution was to break the static, somewhat monotonous sequence of speeches and marches by giving them a flowing rhythm, which made them more interesting. Disregarding the chronology of the rally, she recut the events into a suggestive series of visual images. She did without a voice-over, which was quite unusual for a documentary film, using only original statements by the speakers and the audience’s reaction. The entire film was accompanied by a soundtrack by Herbert Windt, a mixture of Wagneresque passages, folk melodies and crisp marches.
⁹⁰

Nonetheless,
The
Victory of Faith
was anything but perfect, partly because the director was still a novice editor, partly because she was forced in part to use conventional weekly newsreel footage. Some scenes were unintentionally funny, such as when Göring paraded past Hitler’s limousine unaware that the Führer wanted to shake his hand, or when Baldur von Schirach accidentally brushed Hitler’s uniform cap from the rostrum with his behind.
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But the dictator had no objections when the film was shown to a select private audience in November 1933. “A fabulous SA symphony,” remarked Goebbels. “Riefenstahl did a good job. She is absolutely shattered by the work. Hitler moved. Should be a huge hit.”
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The film premiered on 1 December in the Ufa-Palast cinema in Berlin. The event was like a state occasion. Taking part along with Hitler, Goebbels, Röhm and Hess were other prominent government representatives including Papen, Neurath, Frick and Blomberg. “When the final note had faded, the visibly moved audience took to its feet and sang the ‘Horst Wessel Song’ to express its connection with the Führer and the movement,” reported
Lichtspielbühne
magazine. “But even then no one clapped. There was a moment of solemn silence, after which the enthusiasm was released in deafening ovations.”
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In the days that followed, Hitler’s entourage was subjected to repeated screenings of the film. Even Goebbels got sick and tired. “Evening at home,” he noted. “Führer…party rally film. Soon I’ll have had enough of it.”
⁹⁴

The press also greeted
The
Victory of Faith
warmly as a “document of its time of incalculable value,” a “cinematic oratorio” and an “Eroica of the Nuremberg Rally.” One publicity campaign asserted: “The Führer has become Germany…[and] all of Germany shall now hear him thanks to the miracle of this film.”
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Local NSDAP chapters were instructed to cancel all other events on the day this “massively powerful cinematic work” was shown so that the greatest number of party members and people in general would be able to attend. With the help of mobile film trucks, the film was also shown in rural areas that did not have cinemas. As a result, as many as 20 million people were said to have seen Leni Riefenstahl’s directorial debut.
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But after six months the film was withdrawn from circulation. In a number of shots, Röhm could be seen next to Hitler, and after 30 June 1934, he was
persona non grata
on the silver screen. Almost all copies of the film were destroyed, most likely on Hitler’s orders. After 1945, the film was considered lost, until a copy was discovered in the East German state archives in the 1980s.
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The Nazis needed a replacement film, and Riefenstahl was once again hired to direct it. In late August 1934 as a “special representative of the NSDAP Reich Direction,” she signed a distribution agreement with Ufa.
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A week before the “Party Rally for Unity and Strength,” she travelled to Nuremberg to begin preparations for
Triumph of the Will
. The title had been Hitler’s idea.

Riefenstahl’s second film was on an entirely different level in terms of finances, personnel and technology. The director could draw on a budget of 300,000 reichsmarks and a staff of 170 employees, including 18 cameramen. “Film towers,” equipped with cameras, microphones and spotlights, were erected at high points on the Nuremberg party rally grounds. A lift was installed on a 28-metre-high mast in the Luitpoldarena so that an operator with a hand-held camera could get new perspectives on the gigantic marching grounds. Tracks were laid around the speakers’ stage so that Hitler could be filmed at unprecedented proximity and from various camera angles. Ultimately 130,000 metres of film were developed. Working at the Geyer Film Copying works in Berlin, Riefenstahl eventually trimmed that down to 3,000 metres, yielding a 114-minute film.
⁹⁹

As in
The Victory of Faith
, the director did not use a voice-over and ignored the chronology of the rally, instead boiling the seven days down to three and a half.
¹⁰⁰
In contrast to her first film, Hitler was the all-dominating main character this time. The entire narrative was focused on the expectations of spectators who cried out, “We want to see our Führer!” Even the opening credits were preparation for his appearance: “On 5 September 1934 / 20 years after the outbreak of the World War / 16 years after the beginning of Germany’s suffering / 19 months after the beginning of Germany’s rebirth / Adolf Hitler again flew to Nuremberg to inspect his true followers.” The opening scene shows the Führer in his aeroplane descending towards Nuremberg like a saviour sent from heaven. Riefenstahl then staged Hitler’s journey from the airport to his hotel as a secular version of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Standing in an open Mercedes, Hitler receives the adulation of the masses. A camera mounted in the car filmed him from behind, against the sunshine, so that his head seems to be ringed by a halo. A skilled use of cuts and counter-cuts shows Hitler mostly filmed from below and his jubilant admirers mostly from above. The Führer and his followers—the great, godlike charismatic leader and the faithful masses who looked up to him—are combined in a mystic unity.
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In November 1934, Goebbels viewed the first excerpts from the film. “Afternoon with Leni Riefenstahl, magnificent shots from the rally film,” he noted. “Leni has got talent. If she were a man!” Five months later, when the film was finally finished, Goebbels was no less enthusiastic: “A grandiose spectacle. In the final section perhaps a bit drawn-out, but otherwise a mind-shattering portrayal. Leni’s masterpiece.”
¹⁰²
Triumph of the Will
premiered on 28 March 1935, two weeks after the reintroduction of compulsory military service. For the “film event of the year,” Albert Speer had dressed up the façade of the Ufa-Palast cinema and hung gigantic swastika flags all over it. An 8-metre-tall bronze Reich eagle was mounted above the entrance, which was illuminated by spotlights on the evening of the premiere. Once again party and government VIPs put in appearances, and after the frenetic applause had died down following the screening, Hitler presented the director with an enormous bouquet of lilacs.
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The reviews in the Nazi and Nazified press read like hymns. “The greatest cinematic work we have ever seen,” gushed the
Völkischer Beobachter
.
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Cinemas reported record numbers of ticket sales in the first few weeks of the film’s run, and
Triumph of the Will
became Germany’s most-watched film that year. On 25 June 1935, Goebbels presented Riefenstahl with the National Film Prize. In his citation, the propaganda minister praised her work as “the great cinematic vision of the Führer, who appears in it for the first time with a previously unknown, visual urgency.”
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