2. Triumph of the
Will
"I made everything work together in
the rhythm....I was able to establish
that with the same material, edited
differently, the film wouldn't have
worked at all."
Leni Riefenstahl
3. Propaganda for the Nazi Party
• Hitler saw Leni Riefenstahl as a director who could use aesthetics to
produce an image of a strong Germany imbued with Wagnerian motifs of
power and beauty.
• In 1933, he asked Riefenstahl to direct a short film, Der Sieg des
Glaubens (The Victory of Faith), shot at that year's Nuremberg Nazi Party
Rally.
• The film was a template for her more famous work, Triumph des
Willens (Triumph of the Will), shot at the Nuremberg Rally the following
year, in 1934.
• Riefenstahl initially rebuffed Hitler's commission for the film but relented
when she received unlimited resources and full artistic license for the
picture. Triumph of the Will, with its evocative images and innovative film
technique, ranked as an epic work of documentary film-making, and is
widely regarded as one of the most masterful propaganda films ever
5. Triumph of the Will
• The Film -
• (26) Triumph of the Will - Opening Scenes - YouTube
6. The Blue Light
When the German film industry emptied itself of its great talents in the
wake of the advent of Adolph Hitler in 1933, Riefenstahl refused to
join the river of cinematic refugees to France, England, and the U.S..
She would forever after claim to be "apolitical," but her first meeting
with Adolph Hitler, in 1932, was propitious.
7. Fleeing the Nazis for a haven in Hollywood
• Among the talent who left Germany were directors Billy Wilder
(“Sunset Boulevard,” “Some Like It Hot”),
• Fritz Lang (“Fury,” “The Big Heat”),
• Henry Koster (“Harvey”),
• Fred Zinnemann (“High Noon,” “From Here to Eternity”)
• Robert Siodmak (“The Killers”);
• Composers
• Frederick Hollander, Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold;
cinematographer Rudolph Mate; and actors such as Hedy Lamarr and Peter
Lorre. And there were others who left Germany before Hitler took power,
including director Ernst Lubitsch and actress Marlene Dietrich.
9. The Nazi Olympics -1936 Berlin Olympic Games
The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were more than
just a worldwide sporting event, they were a show
of Nazi propaganda, stirring
significant conflict. Despite the exclusionary
principles of the 1936 Games, countries around the
world still agreed to participate.
• As a token gesture to placate international
opinion, German authorities allowed the star
fencer Helene Mayer to represent Germany at
the Olympic Games in Berlin. Mayer was viewed
as a “non-Aryan” because her father was Jewish
.
• She won a silver medal in women's individual
fencing and, like all other medalists for Germany,
gave the Nazi salute on the podium. No other
Jewish athlete competed for Germany in the
Jewish Athletes
As a token gesture to placate international opinion, German authorities allowed the star fencer Helene Mayer to represent Germany at the Olympic Games in Berlin. Mayer was viewed as a “non-Aryan” because her father was Jewish. She won a silver medal in women's
10. The Games Begin
• For two weeks in August
1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi
dictatorship camouflaged its
racist, militaristic character while
hosting the Summer Olympics.
• Softpedaling
its antisemitic agenda and plans
for territorial expansion,
the regime exploited the Games
to bedazzle many foreign
spectators and journalists with
an image of a peaceful, tolerant
Germany.
11. Opening Ceremonies
• The 1936 Olympics were held in a tense,
politically charged atmosphere. The Nazi
Party had risen to power in 1933, two years
after Berlin was awarded the Games, and its
racist policies led to international debate about
a boycott of the Games.
• Fearing a mass boycott, the International
Olympic Committee pressured the German
government and received assurances that
qualified Jewish athletes would be part of the
German team and that the Games would not be
used to promote Nazi ideology.
• Adolf Hitler’s government, however, routinely
failed to deliver on such promises. Only one
athlete of Jewish descent was a member of the
German team
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dyns367ExE
12. Jewish Athletes
• Still, nine athletes who were Jewish or
of Jewish parentage won medals in
the Nazi Olympics, including Mayer
and five Hungarians. Seven Jewish
male athletes from the United
States went to Berlin.
• Like some of the European Jewish
competitors at the Olympics, many of
these young men were pressured by
Jewish organizations to boycott the
Games. These athletes chose to
compete for a variety of reasons. Most
did not fully grasp at the time the
extent and purpose of Nazi
persecution of Jews and other groups.
13. Jewish Athletes
• Thirteen Jews or persons of Jewish descent
won medals in the Nazi Olympics, including six
Hungarians. Many Hungarian Jews shared
their fellow citizens' passion for sport and
viewed participation as a means of
assimilation.
• In the 1930s, however, the antisemitism of the
fascist, pro-Nazi Hungarian government
pervaded some fields of sport.
• Fencing officials openly disdained Jews, even
champion fencers like Kabos. August 13,
1936.
14. Propaganda
• Germany skillfully promoted the Olympics
with colorful posters and magazine spreads.
• Athletic imagery drew a link between Nazi
Germany and ancient Greece, symbolizing
the Nazi racial myth that a superior German
civilization was the rightful heir of an
"Aryan" culture of classical antiquity.
• This vision of classical antiquity emphasized
ideal "Aryan" racial types: heroic, blue-eyed
blonds with finely chiseled features.
16. Jesse Owens • Hitler saw African American track stars
as a threat
Jesse Owens, byname of James Cleveland
Owens, (born September 12, 1913,
Oakville, Alabama, U.S.—died March 31,
1980, Phoenix, Arizona), American track-and-
field athlete who set a world record in
the running broad jump (also called long jump)
that stood for 25 years and who won four gold
medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
His four Olympic victories were a blow to Adolf
Hitler’s intention to use the Games to
demonstrate Aryan superiority.
17. Gold Medal – Sets Gold Medal Olympic Record
Owens became the first American to win
four gold medals in track and field
Owens seized the reins as the star of the 1936
Summer Olympics.
- a gold medal in his first event, the 100-meter dash
- highly publicized victory over German champion Luz
Long in the long jump.
- After setting an Olympic record in the 200-meter dash
en route to a third gold medal,
- Owens put the exclamation point on his showing by
running the opening leg of a record-shattering U.S.
4x100 relay performance.
- He became the first American of any race to win four
gold medals in track and field in a single Olympics.
18. Roosevelt’s reaction to the 1936 Olympians
• Owens returned to a
segregated America where
he had trouble finding
steady work and where,
according to his interviews
in later years, the
president, Franklin
Roosevelt, never sent him
any words of
congratulations or an
invitation to the White
House.
Decades later, Owens was
acknowledged and honored at the White
House. In 1976, President Gerald
Ford presented him with the Presidential
Medal of Freedom.
Marlene Dorch
Granddaughter of
Jesse Owens
19. The United States almost boycotted the 1936
Olympics
Owens nearly didn't get the chance to make
Olympic history. With American decision-makers
aware of Hitler's discriminatory policies against
Jews – but not yet aware of the scope of the
horrors to come – a fierce debate raged about
whether to boycott the 1936 games.
Amateur Athletic Union president Jeremiah
Mahoney argued that participation amounted to
support of the Third Reich, but he was outdone
by the American Olympic Committee head Avery
Brundage, who insisted that the Games were for
the athletes and not the politicians.
Avery Brundage
The boycott movement ultimately failed, following a
heated nationwide debate in the United States.
20. The Boycott Debate in the United States
• Avery Brundage opposed a boycott,
arguing that politics had no place in sport.
He fought to send a US team to the 1936
Olympics, claiming: "The Olympic Games
belong to the athletes and not to the
politicians." He wrote in the AOC's
pamphlet "Fair Play for American Athletes"
that American athletes should not become
involved in the present "Jew-Nazi
altercation."
• As the Olympics controversy heated up in
1935, Brundage alleged the existence of a
"Jewish-Communist conspiracy" to keep the
United States out of the Games.
Jeremiah Mahoney
Judge Jeremiah Mahoney, president of the Amateur
Athletic Union, led efforts to boycott the 1936
Olympics. He pointed out that Germany had
broken Olympic rules forbidding discrimination
based on race and religion. In his view,
participation would indicate an endorsement of
Hitler's Reich.
Mahoney was one of a number of Catholic leaders
supporting a boycott. New York mayor Fiorello La
Guardia, New York governor Al Smith, and
Massachusetts governor James Curley also
opposed sending a team to Berlin. The Catholic
journal The Commonweal (November 8, 1935)
advised boycotting an Olympics that would set the
seal of approval on radically anti-Christian Nazi
doctrines.
21. The Movement to Boycott the Berlin Olympics of 1936
• Debate over participation in the 1936 Olympics
was greatest in the United States, which
traditionally sent one of the largest teams to
the Games. Some athletes believed the best
way to combat Nazi views was to defeat them
in the Olympic arena.
• Supporters of the boycott believed that
participating in the Games would
• The boycott movement ultimately failed,
following a heated nationwide debate in the
United States.represent an endorsement of
Hitler's Reich.
22. • The Boys of 36 –
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanex
perience/films/boys36/
• In 1936, nine young rowers from the
University of Washington
unexpectedly won a gold medal at the
Berlin Olympics in 1936.
Additional Movies
23. The Hitler Youth
The Nazi Party tried to extend its influence over all
aspects of German society. The Hitler Youth and the
League of German Girls were developed as Nazi
Party youth groups to introduce children and
juveniles to Nazi ideology and policy. These youth
groups also prepared Germany’s young people for
war.
- Over the course of the 1930s, the Nazi state
abolished all other youth groups in Germany.
- In 1939, more than 82% of eligible youth (age 10-
18) belonged to the Hitler Youth or its female
equivalent, the League of German Girls.
24. The League of German
Girls
• The League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher
Mädel [BDM]) was the female section of the Hitler
Youth, its role was to indoctrinate girls into the
beliefs and ideals of the Nazi regime.
• The BDM focused on developing girls into women
who were dedicated to Nazism, dutiful
housewives, and whose role within in society was
to become a mother.
• Girls were to grow-up with an unquestioning
understanding of the intended role of women in
the Third Reich.
• BDM members were required to have German
parents, be in good health, and conform to Nazi
racial ideals.
25. The children the Nazis stole in Poland
• During World War II, the Nazis kidnapped tens of thousands of children
and forcibly "Germanized" them.
• Afterward, they were left to grapple with their trauma
alone. Now, a book of Countless Polish children
experienced the same fate:
• The organized child robbery was part of the Nazi racial policy
to turn "racially valuable" children from the annexed parts of
western Poland into Germans.
• The youth welfare offices reported the children whose
appearance they considered "Aryan." Representatives of the
health authorities conducted medical examinations of them,
filtered out the children with "good blood," who were then sent
to a children's home where they were forced to learn German
and their names were Germanized.
• Afterwards, the SS-initiated association Lebensborn took
responsibility of them, handing over younger children to SS
families for adoption, and sending older ones to "German
home schools.“
• Over time, the children became increasingly robbed of their
memories and their identity as they became Germanized.
26. More indoctrination
• “The Devil is the father of the Jew.
• When God created the world,
• He invented other races
• The Indians, the Negroes, the Chinese,
• And also the wicked creature called the Jew
• (From a children’s book).
27. Where was religion during the Holocaust?
Protestant and Catholic
• The largest Protestant church in Germany in the 1930s was the German Evangelical
Church, comprised of 28 regional churches that included the three major theological
traditions that had emerged from the Reformation:
• Lutheran, Reformed, and United. Most of Germany's 40 million
• Baptist churches.
• Historically the German Evangelical Church viewed itself as one of the pillars of
German culture and society, with a theologically grounded tradition of loyalty to the
state.
• The Catholic Church was not as sharply divided by different ideological factions as the
Protestant church.
• Catholic leaders were initially more suspicious of National Socialism than their
Protestant counterparts.
• Nationalism was not as deeply embedded in the German Catholic Church, and the
rabid anti-Catholicism of figures such as Alfred Rosenberg, a leading Nazi ideologue
during the Nazi rise to power, raised early concerns among Catholic leaders in
Germany and at the Vatican.
• In addition, the Catholic Centre Party had been a key coalition governmental partner
in the Weimar Republic during the 1920s and was aligned with both the Social
Democrats and leftist German Democratic Party, pitting it politically against right-
wing parties like the Nazis.
