Triumph of the Will

Our document of choice, Triumph of the Will was released in 1935 and became one of the better-known examples of propaganda in film history. The film shows excerpts from speeches of the Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler in Nuremberg, Germany. Footage of the masses, living off his every word reveals the theme of the film, Germany returning as a great power, with Hitler as the True German Leader who will bring glory to the nation. At this point the documentary reminded us of a scene in Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs; Man working as a unit, singing, happily functioning as tools for a means to an end. The right-facing swastika, the Nazi symbol, worn on the German’s sleeves can be compared to the poisonous apple in Snow White, both disguising their ability to kill.



Controversy of the film is based on the use of spectacular filmmaking promoting a system that, to many, is seen as evil. In Germany, this movie is classified as National Socialist propaganda and cannot be shown under post-war denazification laws, unless it is used in an educational context.
The German producer Leni Riefenstah claims that she was naïve about the Nazis when she made it and had no knowledge of Hitler's genocidal policies. Although in the film Julius Streicher announces "A people that does not protect its racial purity will perish." Defending herself against the charge that she was a Nazi propagandist, Riefenstah said that Triumph focuses on images over ideas, and should therefore be viewed as a total work of art. In 1964, she stated:
"If you see this film again today you ascertain that it doesn't contain a single reconstructed scene. Everything in it is true. And it contains no tendentious commentary at all. It is history. A pure historical film…It reflects the truth that was then in 1934, history. It is therefore a documentary. Not a propaganda film.”

Leni Riefenstah, acting as Hitler’s PR agent has proven herself to be successful manipulating public opinion while remaining invisible.

Wikipedia stated that Film critic Roy Frumkes has called Triumph "the antithesis of an objective work" and suggested that because "the film was altered by practically every in-the-camera and laboratory special effect then known" the film can be labeled anything except a documentary. Roger Ebert has observed that, "the very absence of anti-Semitism in Triumph of the Will looks like a calculation; excluding the central motif of almost all of Hitler's public speeches must have been a deliberate decision to make the film more efficient as propaganda.”

The film portrayed Hitler as a Supreme being, from the opening where he descends from the clouds, to his drive through Nuremberg where even a cat stops what it is doing to watch him, to the many scenes of Hitler standing on a podium addressing hundreds of thousands of followers complying in unison. Stating, “The Party is Hitler – and Hitler is Germany just as Germany is Hitler!” Relates to Aristotle’s law. If Hitler is Germany, and God is Germany, than that makes Hitler God. The thought of this is quite sickening considering the amount of people Hitler had killed and the disturbing ideologies he possessed.

This propaganda used to bring Hitler into power caused the Frankfurt school to propose the “Effects” model, which we learned about in the article by Phillip J Hanes. The model “envisioned the media as a hypodermic syringe, and the contents of the media were injected into the thoughts of the audience, who accepted attitudes, opinions and beliefs expressed by the medium without question.” If this was the case, than each who watched and participated in Hitler’s propaganda, believed that Hitler was indeed the god in which to follow.

Overall I think this was a learning experience for all, and overlapping ideas that we’ve covered in class justified our choice of documentary. It reinforces the power of the media and the effects of propaganda.