On 5 September 1934...20 years after the outbreak of the World War...16 years after Germany's Passion...19 months after the beginning of the German Rebirth...Adolf Hitler again flew to Nuremberg to review the assembly of his faithful followers.
The film opens with a title scrawl which sets the historical context. What follows is a chronicle of four days in 1934 during which the Nazi Party Congress was essentially staged for the purpose of filming in Nuremberg, Germany.
I am opening this, our Sixth Party Congress, in respectful remembrance of Field Marshal, and President of the Reich, Von Hindenburg, who has passed into eternity.
Hess, second-in-command to Hitler, convenes the Congress with these words which appear to situate Von Hindenburg as the central figure of its existence. These are the opening words of the opening speech by Hess.
Only when their cloth will have decayed, will humanity looking back, be able to comprehend what you, my Führer, mean to Germany.
Making Mark Antony look like a rank amateur by comparison, it only takes Hess three sentences to reveal that he has come to bury Hindenburg and praise Hitler by transforming the Führer into—quite literally—the embodiment of the Germany national identity.
Truth is the basis on which the power of the press stands and falls.
The head of the state-run Nazi Press makes this assertion without a trace of irony. The ability to make such outlandish assertions with betraying the inherent irony is a fundamental necessity of effective propaganda. In reality, of course, by 1934 the German media was already so fully under the thumb of Hitler than any semblance of truth-telling had nothing to do with journalism.
It may be alright to possess power based upon guns, it is however better and more gratifying to win and also to champion the hearts of the people.
With this statement, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda really outdoes himself, managing to both be truthful and honest and utterly insidiously dishonest simultaneously. Goebbels did recognize and manipulate the power of a propaganda in a way that has been directly replicated in America in the 21st century. At the same time, however, he knew even as he spoke this truth that guns had been, were and most definitely were about to be every bit as effective in winning the hearts and minds of the German people over to the side of brutal fascism.
A people that does not protect its racial purity will perish!
Streicher held a rather abstruse bureaucratic political appointment of the Nazi administrative hierarchy called Gauleiter of Franconia, but his real significance that allowed him to become a player on a stage as large as Triumph of the Will was his notable standing as one of the most ferociously and virulent publishers of anti-Semitic literature in Germany. Hence, his one claim to quotable cinematic fame. It should be noted for posterity that of the 24 defendants put on trial during the first tribunal of Nuremberg Trials that included several of the men seen giving speeches in the film, Streicher tested lowest on the IQ administered to them all.
The German people are happy in the knowledge that the constantly changing leadership has now been replaced by a fixed pole; a force which considers itself the representative of the best blood, and, knowing this, has elevated themselves to the leadership of this Nation and is determined to keep this leadership, to use it to the best advantage and never to relinquish it again.
The references here that Hitler uses in his speech to “fixed pole,” “best blood” and “never to relinquish” all serve as the fundamental theme of the overarching propaganda of the film. Triumph of the Will was created to fire up the German spirit of nationalism and appeal to a sense of superiority undermined by external forces. That broader implication is then connected through the power of associational editing to the singular of Hitler as the one and only person capable of restoring German greatness and, as an essential part of the process of restoration of Germany’s rightful place as a world power, crushing those responsible for not only attempting to taking away Germany’s greatness but for not even having the power to see their inherent genetic superiority.
The Party is Hitler! Hitler, however, is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler!
Following Hitler’s speech, Hess returns to officially bring the Congress to a close by reminding the German people that Hitler—and not they—are Germany.
