Essay Questions

One of the key reasons that so many prominent Nazis were successfully tried after the war was their tendency to record everything that they did in minute detail. How does this propaganda film enable us to see Nazis such as Rudolf Hess in their true light, rather than in the revisionist way Hess used to describe his involvement in the Reich?

After his capture, Hess at first claimed that he couldn't remember anything at all and therefore could not remember anything about his involvement in the creation of the Final Solution. However, when he gave up this tactic, which nobody believed, he then claimed to have been a proud military man whose interests were purely Luftwaffe related, and therefore he had no involvement in the genocide that was taking place in his country.

Fortunately, propaganda such as this film was able to call Hess a liar. He is featured to such a degree in the film that it becomes obvious that Hitler could never have planned and accomplished such a level of evil without him. As deputy Fuhrer, his ideologies were identical to Hitler's own. He is seen to have such a level of kudos within the party that he announces the opening of the rally to the waiting crowds, and his speeches are also featured on the film as well. With everything that took place at the congress shown by Riefenstahl, it was impossible for Hess and his fellow Nazis to claim any kind of ignorance about what they were part of.

This was considered a groundbreaking propaganda film; what are some of the innovations Riefenstahl introduces that make it so successful?

Riefenstahl's innovations were small, sometimes imperceptible, but they made an enormous impact not just on this film but on the way in which propaganda films were made in the future.

The first innovation was in her attitude towards the film. Previously, there were films, and then there were propaganda films, a cross between televised instructional speeches and documentaries. Riefenstahl considered propaganda films to be just another type of movie, and so she worried not only about the content, and the correct framing of it in order to get the message across to the masses, but also the level of entertainment that the film provided. It was easy to attract the attention of the believers and the supporters, but would her propaganda film attract the undecideds, the waverers? She believed that by creating a film that was gripping and attention grabbing, as well as being rousing and inspiring, she would capture both the attention and the loyalty of everyone who saw it.

Another of the techniques Riefenstahl employed was the use of a soundtrack. Most propaganda films did not have a soundtrack; that would almost be like having a musical soundtrack to the news. Riefenstahl, having been both actor and producer, understood the powerful, almost primal, effect that music can have, especially when it is in the background and heard subliminally. Her choice of music was also powerful, using Wagner, who happened to be Hitler's favorite composer, to inspire a sense of warmongering into the crowd. Wagner music is not relaxing or calming in any way, but combative and likely to energize an already over-excited crowd.

Finally, Riefenstahl used a long lens to create the effect of there being more people in the crowd than were actually there. This was vital; it gave the impression that the crowd was almost double the size than it was, and gave filmgoers pause to wonder why they would resist joining a movement that clearly had so much support already. Humans tend by nature to gravitate towards the rest of the group, and the use of the longer lens and the effect that it gave propagazndized in a way that made everyone feel they wanted to be part of a movement of this size.