Visual histories are non-verbal representations of the past that help us understand the happenings of a particular event or period in time. Granted, those graphics, drawings, and photographic and cinematic documentation are new compared to their written history counterparts. However, much like the trope of technology concerning human evolution itself, it has proven to present event details in intangible ways that often get left out in written histories. Therefore, this essay will be focusing on the visual medium of cinema and how it has been pivotal to the Nazi Regime.
Hitler came to power in 1933 and took over the reins of the Third Reich and, soon after, World War II. With Hollywood being established in the early 20th century, we also see the Northern American and European continent reasonably familiar with the workings of motion film. However, the newness of this medium of visual art, coupled with the growing possibility of quality entertainment, and not to forget the sheer audience it can reach concerning time, it quickly became indispensable and brimming with the possibilities of innovative techniques.
The essay brings about the nature of films in the Fuhrer’s era, starting with the general trends and common themes of recreational movies made in the Third Reich. Next, the discussion will proceed to Hitler’s preferred film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, a pivotal person capturing the Nazi Reign in the cinematic format. Then, by discussing two of her most significant works, Triumph of the Will and the two-part movie Olympia, the essay will elaborate on the intricacies of the movie and why it is largely believed to have propaganda associated with it through the artist Leni herself has denied it and legally persecuted anyone making such claims. Finally, the essay will also discuss how Susan Sontag notices the trends of the Fascist agenda associated with it and how the visual history of cinema has been an influential medium to achieve many goals and ideologies as a pioneering medium in the early 20th century. 
 As Johannes Von Moltke starts his essay Nazi Cinema Revisited, “As an enduringly popular topic in film history, the study of Nazi cinema now has a history of its own.” 
To understand why there is so much importance associated with Nazi cinema, media from a regime that is dominantly perceived as a dictatorship today, it is essential to establish the pre-existing movies and the notions that Germans primarily consumed for recreation, a few of which Leni has stared in herself. 
Popularly referred to as the Mountain film genre or Bergfilme, by definition, it involves mountaineering and human braving against the enormity of nature. The movies primarily speak of the adventure involved, but the conclusion essentially talks about the protagonist returning a “changed person,” wiser and more enlightened from when they left. Nazis and other nationalists in Germany saw this mountaineering activity as a man’s struggle with nature, a symbolic ideology that spoke of Germany after World War I and their struggle to regain their original status. It also indirectly spoke of the social-Darwinist notion – the survival of the fittest, hinting at the superiority of the Aryan race. 
In Von Moltke’s essay Nazi Cinema Revisited, where his train of discussion is anchored to German movies, he noticed that the German film was dominated by female protagonists, contrary to their western counterparts. A closer look at the book Dietrich’s Ghosts by Erica Carter discusses Marlene Dietrich, Leni’s counterpart in the industry and a very popular actress in early 20th century Germany. We see the aesthetic and cinematic personality of a fictional character under a Fascist government. In the first English language book that reviews the star system of the Third Reich, she talks about institutional trajectories and the recurring personality of the protagonist that the Nazi cinema glorifies. The script and characteristics of the lead role, the training the actors go through to achieve it, and the larger sense of exhibition we see in films of the Third Reich. 
Von Moltke’s essay speaks of Carter’s arguments of Kant’s theorization of the beautiful and the sublime. 
“Carter deftly tracks the reverberations of these concepts in Nazi film theory and practice—showing, for example, how the latter inherited Kant’s notion that “beauty” had the capacity to produce social cohesion, or how the Nazi treatment of the star as “personality” traded on an implicit notion of the völkisch sublime.” 
Both these ideologies were the framework for German movies from the 1920s. Leni Riefenstahl, who began her career as a dancer, very quickly was seen on screens as one of these protagonists. Having stared in almost four films of this genre, starting from The Holy Mountain, she also made a gradual transition into a scriptwriter and director. The latest of her Bergfilme movie, The Blue Light (1932), was directed and acted out by Riefenstahl, bringing Leni to the attention of Adolf Hitler, for it became one of his favorite movies, as the plot featured some of the main ideologies of the Nazi: the perils of greed and materialism represented by sinister foreigners. 
Almost immediately, she was seen in conversation with Hitler and Dr. Joseph Goebbles, the Gauleiter of Berlin and chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. Hitler has ordered Goebbels to give The Victory of Faith project to Riefenstahl, the film on the fifth Nuremberg Rally in 1933. Impressed by her work, he also commissioned her to film the first film of study for this essay - Triumph of the Will, the film on the 1934 party rally in Nuremberg. 
Steven Bach’s book and podcast extensively cover this, stating that Triumph of the Will is easily the most critical and effective propaganda film ever made. When one watches the movie expecting to find markers of a political program or propaganda, a direct call for arms, it is not present in any identifiable way. However, what one can see are pleas for obedience, monologues eliciting patriotism, pleas for unity, an expectation of unwavering, undoubting trust for the leader, and the ultimate willingness to sacrifice for the Fuhrer. 
Many of the techniques in the films are incredibly subtle. Originally feature film, and silent film techniques, no one by Leni had thought to combine these techniques before this, allowing the film to have had such an impact on the people. To draw a comparison, American documentary films of the same time had Franklin D. Roosevelt at the podium, with a camera placed in front of him. He would make his speech in front of the microphone, and all we can see is him, while hearing people applauding at the end of the speech. 
However, in Triumph of the Will, we see Hitler descending from the plane, with cameras placed almost as if a Messiah, a savior, is coming down to earth, descending from the clouds, to meet his people. We notice people in the film eager to see him, even small boys climbing onto the external plumbing pipes and propping themselves carefully to get a good view of him. Steven Bach speculated that we might not even know if the audience’s reaction was for Hitler indeed, for it could have even been for mickey mouse. Nevertheless, the detail that proves the blurred lines of this film between a documentary or propaganda is this: the fact that Leni chose to intercut scenes may have made the film viewer believe that he was truly adored. He further dissects the movie in the conversation, observing how the behind-the-shoulder shots smoothly transition into a shot of him traveling by car through the crowd and making his traditional salute. We do not see a cameraman behind Hitler in the second scene, indicating that it was not shot in real time; instead, it had multiple back-and-forth shots with retakes. This film may have been the first of its kind, but the ultimate decision of perspective, editing, and music make it a fiction movie with a well-thought story about a political group, hence should be termed propaganda. The movie ultimately inflicted a citizenry fear in people, and Hitler was able to capitalize on it. 
Leni Riefenstahl was not too enthusiastic about working on political films and promised to do Triumph of the Will, provided that was the last she worked for the Nazi Party, allowing her to continue with her feature film career. Nevertheless, we see her accept the project for the next revolutionary film in her career, Olympia, as it was offered to her by The International Olympic Committee, a claim we later find to be proven false. 
Bach mentions that prior to the making of Olympia, there has never been a dedicated full-length film of the Olympics. This observation comes as a surprise, as the 1932 Olympics took place in Los Angeles, where we find no videographic data sparing a few newsreels; at a time when Hollywood had already been established and thriving. 
Olympia is a pioneer in various ways, for she anticipates much of modern sports filming, its techniques that had never been thought of before, but more importantly because these techniques go on to become the unsaid handbook for sport journalistic filming. From her choice of setting up her camera angles around the athletics track to the diving styles of the sportspeople or the aerial rowing coverage. Some of what she and her team invented was 60 years ahead of its time. They have been used in the Olympics ever since, and the IOC even extends a formal request to Riefenstahl to buy a copy of the film for their Archives, for it was the best presentation of the Olympic Games ever shown.
Leni had an unlimited budget and almost unlimited time to make this film. Though she had to demand complete creative control over what gets captured and what not to, it still is essential to recognize the privilege she had over any other director in her place. In Hans Barkhausen’s Footnote to the History of Riefenstahl’s Olympia, we get a detailed account of the budgets and deadlines that Leni had to meet, in the sense that there was none, for her budget was 1.5 million reichsmarks, from which a quarter-of-a-million went to Riefenstahl. Moreover, she had a vital card for her argument, that her work had the personal approval of Hitler himself. Thus, with time till 1939, she was given the freedom to produce the film in her own time, a significant factor in play, towards the quality of the output we see.
“Olympia broke the mould of Olympic films in many ways,” writes David Goldblatt in his new book about the Olympics, The Games. “First, Riefenstahl had a degree of active support from the organizers... that no other filmmaker had acquired. She had total access and total control and an immeasurably large crew and budget. Second, in terms of technological and cinematic sophistication, there was no comparison.” 
Riefenstahl started preparations for the shoot in 1935, almost a year ahead. As seen in Barkhausen’s footnotes, the contract was apparent about Riefenstahl having total administrational control over the direction and production of the film. Her team was lodged in a castle in Spandauer Berg, West Berlin, placing her very proximate to most key event venues. They shot an astonishing amount of footage during the athlete training sessions in preparation for the grand event themselves. With cameras on dollies to follow the sportsmen during track events or underwater cameras during the swimming and diving competitions that allow the viewers a perspective even live spectators have not experienced; they managed to capture unusual angles and pre-plan and construct rostrums, moving platforms, and dug pits to ensure they were able to shoot the visuals as required. 
The film begins with the feature shots of the ruins of the Athenian Parthenon and gliding images across the statues there. As the music escalated, the statues were transformed into real-life athletes, throwing the discus. With the change in tempo, we see sequences of rhythmic exercises done by women against an ocean backdrop. This transitions into the flames of an Olympic fire, with an extensive imagery torchbearer sequence across all the countries through until Berlin. The athletic competitions saw camera pits arranged by Riefenstahl, carefully planned at strategic points on the field. There were conflicts with the officials, demanding that many be removed, but the ones she managed to retain yielded valuable footage. She even used a substantial 600-millimeter lens on one of the cameras, the first of its kind. 
The marathon demanded way more intricate planning when compared to the shorter events. The final sequence that goes up to 14 minutes was the most extensive filming of a marathon race until then. Riefenstahl wrote later: “Never before had cameramen been allowed to work so close to the athletes."“There were great struggles before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) finally gave its permission. Even then, there were daily arguments with the competition judges.” “A downright war had to be fought in order to get the shots. But it was worth the fight.” One of the few blatantly visible themes in the movie is the topic of racial difference and supremacy. Though it was just as subtle as the other pursuits, our current sensitivity to such a topic allows us to recognize the organized targeting very easily. An essential value of the Nazis is the preservation of the superior race, the Aryans, the whites. For example, in the German release of the first part of the film, we see the commentator mention “Two Negros competing against the strongest of the white race” during the 800-meter race. The “black runners” – John Woodruff and Phil Edwards – proceed to get addressed as “negro” throughout the race, while their competitor is referred to by name and county. The specific address could have been greatly incentivized due to their outperformance of the coveted white race, for these runners finish the 800-meters in first and third place, respectively.However, the proper focus was on Jesse Owens, the Black-American athlete who took four gold medals home that year. Constantly referred to as the “fastest man in the world,” he solely makes a great impression as a talent by himself, Riefenstahl’s coverage of him doing justice to the monumental nature of such an event. The close-ups of Jesse Owens are still among the most coveted images ever to be captured in Olympic history. Riefenstahl says that her only motive for the movie to have turned out this way was her intent to celebrate the aesthetics of athletic bodies. This proves to be true in name and visuals, reflected in the second movie’s title: Festival of Beauty. However, this unilateral and apolitical still sits with the Nazi’s idea of purity and athleticism as a sign of virility and the superiority of the “Aryan” race.
Her sole focus was on the theatrics of the film and not on the competitive tension of the Games. All the athletes’ slow-motion sequences and extreme close-ups were focused on the aesthetics and not the anticipation or disappointment that many athletes would have experienced. Even her diving shots focus on capturing the divers like a soaring bird or splice the scenes into the movie to make it look like an aerial ballet. One might question why a director with so much meticulous planning might forget the intent of capturing and documenting the elements that surround the game. While Riefenstahl claimed to have done that due to her inclination towards the artistic nature of the event, we come to realize that the film was produced to portray Hitler in a humanized setting, almost as if to say he is safe for the World to view him and relate to him. We see multiple shots of Hitler in his stands from a higher location to communicate his and the Nazi superiority. However, we also see Leni show scenes of him clapping and cheering when German does well, vs. the nervous drumming of his fingers or occasional furrowed eyebrows in case they were not. However, there is no evidence to this statement; if the scenes were not given this much thought, he would seem just like his regular self. Her aesthetics and her fundamental approach to the community were undeniably in line with the Nazi values, which is why we see her having received these projects and sole creative direction and administration rights, regardless of her immediate relation with Hitler and the Nazi Party. She repeatedly claimed to have only no association or cognizance of the activities of the Nazi Party and that she has shown the truth as is and the constant commentary and potential for dialogue replaced with silent visuals and layered with music at best make all her work just plain documentation of history. In contrast, we know that from 1933 and on, one had to sign papers to prove that they were not Jewish, even to be eligible for work. So there were no disguised entities about racial policies for Leni to have missed it. To date, Triumph of the Will is banned in Germany for the power it still has over the people. Today’s Germans want to disassociate themselves from going through all those emotions and feelings again, let alone pass it to the next generation who are devoid of such manipulatory agendas. While one might question what value all these innovative techniques even have, except that these innovative filming ideologies and techniques were taking place for the first time, the answer is that such detail in these movies is precisely how subtle the propaganda of the Fascist government indeed was. It was never approached as a trope of punishment for one’s lack of participation, but rather it was the idea of incentive and glory that people were sold in exchange for one’s participation in the united pursuit of gaining control over their country. Susan Sontag, an American writer, and political activist, wrote Fascinating Fascism, where she discusses Leni’s later work, The Last of the Nuba, or rather the portrayal of Leni Riefenstahl’s authorship. She dissects how the author details on the sleeve of the book and debunks the fallacies in it. She further talks about how the book published by Riefenstahl in 1935 admits to the Nuremberg rally 1934 being set up for the cameras, proving that the Triumph of the Will was not just historical Documentation of reality; it was rather a reality that was constructed to be circulated at large. With evidence that can easily make Leni Riefenstahl an enabler of the Nazi agenda, she was not prosecuted along with the other Nazi Party members or enablers, for these very films that propagated the fascist agenda redeemed her from imprisonment.While Leni Riefenstahl has been very coy and diplomatic about her awareness of the Fascist agenda, there was little to no evidence to prove it. When Leni’s house was sifted through after her death, there was no data prior to 1945, for she was clever to eliminate evidence, much like the male celebrities of the Third Reich. Furthermore, one of the significant points proving her films to be propaganda is why her work is concluded as pure Documentation. Her unbiased representation of the athletes, the nation, and the Games in Olympia were the arguments that exonerated her. Why would she give the black-American athletes significant screen time if she was privy to Hitler’s apparent disdain for anyone but the Aryans? Why did her coverage of the events show enthusiasm for Finnish, Norwegian, Japanese, and Italian athletes when she could have conveniently edited out events that did not have Germans leading the tally? These are some questions that were asked in favor of her argument. With this aesthetic back in popular media in the 1970s, the body-building movement, we see the celebration of the athletic form of the human body as art, rehabilitating Leni Riefenstahl in a larger sense. She was seen continuing with the same approach in The Last of Nuba, where her descriptive narration of the men of the tribe calls them strong and virile, describing their wrestling matches as not a pursuit of materialistic gains, but for the “sacred vitality of the tribe.” Sontag highlights the effect of Fascist art in her essay, which was broadly applicable from the understanding of the Nazi Cinema, is that they had a totalitarian nature to it. The Nazi’s obsession with the superiority of the Aryan race demanded their artists and sculptors to depict the nude without showing any bodily imperfections. The works are sanctimoniously asexual, for they fantasize a humanly unachievable perfection. She compares the fascist ideals of fantasizing the spiritual force that benefits the community over one’s personal desires to the Nuba men who found more merit in wrestling than in the successful pursuit of marriage. Hitler’s expectation of sacrifice and devotion was communicated as the need for the betterment of the community, where a man was to find more satisfaction in contributing his Aryan superiority in war to win back their country. This evidently made the citizens a blind followers of the Fuhrer, considering him God and less to no human. Only while reading Sontag’s piece do we realize that it has been thirty years since a public discussion on the subtle methods of the Nazis were rarely discussed, as our primary sources are before 1940 and the widely acclaimed secondary sources to be in the 1970s. Steven Bach throws clarity on this gap, saying that the availability of Third Reich documents was possible only after the fall of the Soviet Union, documents like volumes of Dr. Goebbel’s diary, in which Leni Riefenstahl is a recurring theme. These documents reveal a lot about why the movies were shot the way they were and the effect of such principles on the 1934 German citizens. The original Olympia was the movie that made Hitler look like he was safe for the World, for it ultimately did communicate the propaganda of the German Socialist Party all too well. Unfortunately, the versions available now were edited before redistribution in the 1960s and 70s, where Leni was asked to cut out the large close-up shots of the swastika banner and the close-ups of Hitler in god-like angles. Nevertheless, many people feel the original, uncut version of the Olympia should be available for historical reasons, mainly to understand the nuances of propaganda filmmaking and equip ourselves to be immune to today’s highly propaganda-influenced videography. Innovations in how the human form can be captured, how sporting events were preserved in documentation formats, how to capture the zeal of the spectators, Leni Riefenstahl’s cinematic instinct has primarily revolutionized the concept of cinematic history, especially with her capacity to portray Hitler as a charismatic leader, almost as a savior, while also presenting a human side to the world viewership. Leni Riefenstahl was a woman who managed to achieve excellence in a system designed for men. There are very few female artistic contributors whose films would be considered one of the 20 Greatest films to be made in the World. Nevertheless, her work is nothing short of diabolical, for having lived in the early 20th century Germany, she chose to focus her talent on building one of the most horrific modern time regimes in history. Using the videographic medium in such subtle and persistent ways, she created and maintained the “Hitler’s Myth” of exploiting beliefs and prejudices; she glorified Nazism. Her films persuaded millions of men and women to accept and desire the Nazi regime, to please their invincible Fuhrer. Her case is a unique example for the World to realize the possibility of excellence and the extent of devastation through media and propaganda.

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