The Nazi who refused to die

by Sudhanva Deshpande

Leni Riefenstahl, poster-girl of the Third Reich, is dead. Some 
would say about time too. She was 101.

When one thinks of the propaganda machinery of the Third Reich, 
one thinks automatically of the stunning spectacle of thousands 
marching in perfect unison at Nuremberg under the gigantic 
swastikas, and the image of the Fuhrer rising majestically over 
the crowds of delirious followers. This image achieved its most 
perfect expression in the films Triumph des Willens 
(Triumph of the Will) and Olympi (on the 1936 
Olympics) by Leni Riefenstahl.

In 1933, Eugen Hadamovsky wrote: "All the power one has, even 
more than one has, must be demonstrated. One hundred speeches, 
five hundred newspaper articles, radio talks, films, and plays 
are unable to produce the same effect as a procession of gigantic 
masses of people taking place with discipline and active 
participation." Hadamovsky, unsurprisingly, went on to become the 
National Broadcasting Director of the Third Reich.

The power of the regime was in demonstration of it, and people 
like Leni Riefenstahl demonstrated it better than anyone.

Triumph of the Will is ostensibly a documentary, but as is 
by now well known, it freely changes the sequence of events, 
juxtaposes discrete shots as if they happened simultaneously and 
in the same locale, and, most importantly, many of the sequences 
are not spontaneous, but carefully orchestrated and rehearsed. 
Indeed, Leni Riefenstahl herself wrote how "the preparations for 
the Party Convention were made in connection with the 
preparations for the camera work".

The apparatus of filming that Riefenstahl conducted was, in that 
pre-computer and mobile phone era, awesome. She used thirty 
cameras, sixteen principal cameramen with an assistant each, four 
complete sound recording tracks, 120 assistants, and several 
hundred thousand feet of raw stock. All this was used to craft a 
film that starred one superstar and half a million extras.

Adulation

The superstar himself, every bit a demagogue, thrived on the 
adulation of gigantic crowds. Riefenstahl filmed him alone, in 
solitary splendour, often from below, so that he loomed over the 
frame, with the sky and the clouds forming a grand backdrop. The 
crowds, on the other hand, were usually filmed in multitudes; 
even when individual faces were shot, the impression created was 
that of mass frenzy or mass discipline.

The collective will was expressed through the iron will of one 
man, the destiny of a people and a nation was actualised through 
the triumph of his will. Every participant in these spectacles 
was expected to turn, as Goebbels famously put it, "from a little 
worm into part of a large dragon".

In that moment of sheer performance, when all those involved are 
ensconced in the circle of magic, everything else is forgotten — 
the terror of the Gestapo, the concentration camps, the 
extermination of six million Jews, the killing of Communists, the 
persecution of gypsies, all that melts away into nothingness and 
the only reality remains the fiction of the "pure" Aryan-German 
race and its divine right to rule the world via the "thousand 
year Reich".

Neo-liberal philosophers of post-Communist times would do well to 
remember that the End of History idea has some rather unsavoury 
antecedents.

Fiction

No actor, however, ever fully believes in the fiction he or she 
performs, and I sometimes wonder how it is with men like Adolph 
Hitler.

Nietzsche, in his 1878 text Human, All Too Human wrote: 
"Even when in deepest distress, the actor ultimately cannot cease 
to think of the impression he and the whole scenic effect is 
making. If someone obstinately and for a long time wants to 
APPEAR something it is in the end hard for him to BE anything 
else.".

Great deceivers

With all the great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurrence to 
which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception, with 
all its preparations, its enthralling voice and gesture, in the 
midst of the scenery designed to give effect, they are overcome 
by BELIEF IN THEMSELVES. It is this which then speaks so 
miraculously and compellingly to those who surround them.

"The founders of religion are distinguished from these great 
deceivers by the fact that they never emerge from this state of 
self-deception: or very rarely experience for once that moment of 
clarity when doubt overcomes them. Self-deception has to exist if 
a grand EFFECT is to be produced. For men to believe in the truth 
of that which is plainly strongly believed." (Emphases in 
original).

Nietzsche, then, tells us two things. One, that "founders of 
religions" are more than "great deceivers". While the latter have 
moments of self-doubt, the former never ever emerge from the 
state of self-deception. Two, for "belief in themselves" to 
become possible, a great deal of preparation is required, 
including "the scenery designed to give it effect". The scenery, 
then, is as much for the actor himself as it is for the 
spectator.

One such master of creating scenery was the architect Albert 
Speer, who constructed a "cathedral of light" for the 1936 
Nuremberg rally by aiming 130 aircraft lights vertically upwards 
into the night sky.

In his own words: "The actual effect far surpassed anything I 
imagined. The hundred and thirty sharply defined beams, placed 
around the field at intervals of forty feet, were visible to a 
height of twenty to twenty-five thousand feet, after which they 
merged into a general glow".

"The feeling was of a vast room, with the beams serving as mighty 
pillars of infinitely high outer walls. Now and then the clouds 
move through this wreath of lights, bringing an element of 
surprise to the image. I imagine that this 'cathedral of light' 
was the first luminescent architecture of this type, and for me 
it remains not only my most beautiful architectural concept but, 
after its fashion, the only one which survived the passage of 
time."

Hypnotising craft

Leni Riefenstahl was the other such master. Her films will also, 
whether we like it not, survive the passage of time for their 
stunning power and hypnotising craft.

Her life, though, poses some uncomfortable questions. The Nazi 
regime was intensely patriarchal, and believed that the role of 
women was to be good healthy mothers producing strong Aryan male 
children.

Leni Riefenstahl was one of the handful of women who won for 
themselves high praise in the public sphere, excelling in a 
medium that was then almost exclusively male dominated. Does that 
make her something of a feminist, or was she a mere instrument of 
patriarchal domination? How do we look at the triumph of her will 
in the face of the undoubted male domination she faced?

Speer, who later became director of war industries in the 1940's, 
was convicted of war crimes and served 20 years. Leni Riefenstahl 
was arrested more than once as the war wound down, but eventually 
not convicted. She always claimed she was just being a 
professional carrying out her duties. Is she Mephistopheles, out 
to buy our soul, or is she Faust, having sold hers?

Complicit

How complicit do we believe people like her to be in the crimes 
committed by regimes they served, and served so outstandingly? Is 
the act of creating consent for a genocidal regime any less 
criminal than carrying out other duties of state?

Leni Riefenstahl pioneered the technique of filming charismatic 
leaders, frenzied crowds, symbols and icons of empire, marching 
soldiers, and powerful athletes. Each and every one of her 
techniques, made more seductive still by modern technology, 
enters our drawing rooms on a daily basis today. We only have to 
open our eyes to the incessant spell that the advertisers of 
global brands and propagandists of modern empires cast on us to 
see that the legacy of Leni Riefenstahl is far from dead, even 
though she finally is.

* * *

People's Democracy newspaper of the Communist Party of 
India (Marxist)