#Some of those German civilians probably deserved it. There were a lot of Nazis in Nazi Germany after all.

[redeyedroid]

CW for war, bombing, and descriptions of horror.

Valentine's night is the anniversary of one of the most controversial events of the Second World War, the bombing of Dresden. The Combined Bombing Offensive itself is profoundly controversial, the morality of it debated and questioned for nearly 80 years now.

Dresden is a lightning rod to both the far left and right, though for different reasons. The left use it to accuse the arch imperialist, Winston Churchill of being a war criminal. Neo-Nazis use it to say that Germany was innocent and German civilians were the real victims of genocide. And there are others beyond these people, who remember because they either know the full story, or don't, because they know something awful happened that should be commemorated and we should do everything we can to prevent anything like it happening again.

This is footage of a raid on Pforzheim that took place shortly after the attack on Dresden. A small town in southwest Germany, very little of pre-war Pforzheim remains, because the RAF destroyed 83% of the town that night, and killed a quarter of it's population in ways identical to what happened in Dresden. The tactics and manner of the raid were the same. But Dresden is widely remembered and Pforzheim is not.

And this is because Josef Goebbels intended for Dresden to be.

The Nazi propaganda apparatus made Dresden world famous, inflating the death toll and it's effects, to portray Germany as the victim of Allied aggression. Holocaust denier, anti-semite and goat-fucking piece of shit, David Irving repeated Nazi lies (and added a few of his own) when he wrote about the raid in the 60s. Kurt Vonnegut, who was in the city that night and survived the raid, used Irving's account as source material when writing Slaughterhouse Five.

The myths have taken root while the truth is as horrific, if not worse.

Dresden and Pforzheim were stops on a long line that began with Zeppelins in 1915 and went through towns and cities including Guernica, Rotterdam, Coventry, Hamburg and Tokyo before ending at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Airpower was a novel concept in The Great War, the technology undeveloped. The Germans bombed the UK, killing 1,414 civilians, and - less well known - the British dropped 660 tons of bombs on Germany. Bombing was largely ineffective, in strategic terms, achieving little, but heralded an era where the aeroplane would dominate.

Between the wars, influential theorists like Giulio Douhet predict the destruction of civilisations, entire wars decided by countries being bombed into dust, their populations giving up en masse under a rain of bombs. These ideas are very seductive to interwar generals and air marshals, starved for funding and relevance, and give rise to a generation of proponents eager, when they get the chance, to win a war with air power alone.

The Germans try and, their air force not designed, equipped or led for the task, fail. The Blitz will kill thousands of British civilians and cause great suffering, but does not bring about the collapse of the UK's economy, nor break the morale and will to resist of it's people.

(This gives rise to a strange and awful exceptionalism. When it is pointed out that bombing had not broken Britain's population, and expecting it to do so to Germany's was a shaky idea, this will be dismissed. The British are made of sterner stuff than the German, you see; and, if it hasn't worked so far, this is merely a case of not enough bombs having been dropped and shows the need for vast numbers more to be dropped.)

It will be the British and Americans that truly attempt to bomb their enemies into submission.

The strategies differ. The Americans prefer to fight in daylight, concentrating attacks against industrial and transportation targets, claiming a precision to their attacks that doesn't exist in practice. They use close formation as defence, their bombers equipped with large numbers of machine guns to fight back against German interceptors. Later, they use escort fighters to engage the Germans and, in huge air battles in late 1943 and early 1944, they break the Luftwaffe's ability to contest the air.

The RAF operates differently. Bomber Command flies by night, and targets population centres. Navigating to target is a problem. They struggle to drop bombs within 5 miles of the target and it is only with the coming of large, four-engined bombers and a new leader in Arthur Harris that the campaign coheres in 1942 and 1943.

Harris is a demagogue, steadfastly refusing to allocate his aircraft to tasks he sees as distractions from the main effort of destroying German cities. He will fight the navy, who want him to bomb German U-Boat bases and who need long-range aircraft to patrol the Atlantic. He will argue against bombing the U-Boat's bases in France. His crews will call him 'Butch'. Not out of affection, but for his seeming indifference to the appalling losses they suffer. It is short for 'Butcher'. But he is a very effective administrator and moulds a new, highly destructive force that will lay waste to Germany.

They study the construction of German buildings, calculate the correct mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs and determine how best to make cities burn. Their bombers carry 4,000lb blast bombs nicknamed cookies and small incendiary bombs. The cookies devastate buildings and roads, creating craters, rubble and huge obstacles that hinder rescue and fire-fighting. But that is not their main purpose. The shock wave from their explosions blow out doors and windows in a large area, creating airflow for fires. The RAF drop 68,000 cookies on Germany and 3 million phosphorous incendiaries, because phosphorous cannot be extinguished by water. Bullet-shaped, they punch through roofs, into attics, offices, shops and homes, setting fire to whatever they can, wherever they land.

In the footage of the Pforzheim raid, you can see the flashes of high explosive bombs detonating, the fires caused by incendiaries, and 55 seconds in you can see clusters of target indicators falling slowly into the inferno.

The British employ fireworks companies to develop slow-burning flares of different colours and intensities. They use these target indicators to mark where bombers are to drop bombs. They identify a phenomenon known as creepback - the natural tendancy of bomber crews to drop bombs slightly short so they can get the hell out and go home - and factor it into their planning, setting aiming points beyond the part of a city they want bombed, allowing creepback to sweep the whole city instead. Mass destruction becomes a scientific pursuit.

Master Bombers are introduced, senior airmen who orbit cities at altitudes above the bomber stream and direct the bombing. At Dresden, the Master Bomber will see the primary target overwhelmed with flame and direct bombers onto new parts of the city to burn as much of the city as possible.

The RAF fly diversions, spoofing attacks against cities far away from the real targets. They fly nuisance raids on nights when the main force is resting. They fly precision attacks against specific targets - famously on a night in May 1943 two dams in the Ruhr valley are breached by bouncing bombs. Harris does not like such missions and lends them little support, though he will take credit.

It is euphemistically called area bombing, the attacks against cities a campaign of 'dehousing' when what it is is an attempt to kill German civilians, the workers that keep the economy functioning and their families.

A thousand bombers are sent to Cologne in May 1942, but it is Operation Gomorrah, a week-long campaign against Hamburg a year later that realises the potential of area bombing.

Atmospheric conditions are good, the deployment of a new invention called window - strips of aluminium foil that disrupts radar - renders German defences ineffective, and the introduction of H2S - the world's first ground-mapping radar, and which picks up Hamburg's geography very well - means that bombing is very accurate. Gomorrah is a great success for Bomber Command.

The fourth raid of the week, on 27th July 1943, will see fires combine and burn so intensely a column of superheated air will rush skywards. This sucks in air at ground level, feeding the flames. Winds reach 150mph. Fires burn at 800 degrees celsius and reach 300m into the heavens. 8 square miles of Hamburg is devastated in one of the first documented firestorms of the war. It will become the aim of the RAF to do this on every raid to every city they attack. What happens to Dresden and Pforzheim will not be accidental.

40,000 people die in Hamburg that week. Most are buried in mass graves, their bodies unidentified, testament to the horrific ways they are killed.

Some will die in explosions, their bodies torn to pieces, or are left seemingly untouched, their internal organs pulverised. Others are trapped or crushed under collapsing buildings. They are gassed by the fumes caused by detonations, or suffocated as fires suck the air from their shelters. They burn alive, their bodies reduced to ash. They boil and roast as the firestorm takes hold. Oil and fuel from storage tanks spreads across the harbour and waterways and ignites, preventing escape. The charred corpses of adults shrink to the size of small children. The tar on the streets melts, trapping fleeing civilians who then die, stuck to roads as the city burns around them.

Later in the year, the Allies, thinking forward to the invasion of Normandy and seeing air supremacy as a prerequisite to success, will issue the POINTBLANK directive, aiming their airforces at German aircraft manufacture and industry. The USAAF lose 585 men in a single raid on the ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt and Regensburg in August 1943.

Harris pays lip service to POINTBLANK, continuing to bomb German cities. He embarks on a long campaign against Berlin that winter, deviating occasionally to attack other targets. Berlin, modern, with wide streets, massive ferroconcrete flak towers and sophisticated air defences, resists the assault and doesn't burn. On 31st March 1944, the RAF suffers it's worst day of the war, losing 96 bombers and 691 men on a raid against Nuremberg.

Bombing switches to targets in support of the invasion, both before and after D-Day. Harris will be brought in line and reluctantly sends Bomber Command against targets throughout France. Thousands of French civilians perish under American and British bombs.

Later, as the war in Europe enters it's final phases, the bombers switch back to attacking targets in Germany. They destroy what remains of the German oil industry, and then do the same to it's transport network, crippling it's economy beyond salvage. The intensity and scale of the attacks defy imagination. The Allies drop more bombs on German-occupied Europe in 1945 than they do from 1939 to 1943.

And they attack Dresden.

The Red Army is closing in on Germany's borders and Dresden is a transport hub, shuttling troops and supplies from west to east. It's industries are critical. And it is untouched. It has not been bombed. The rumour is that Winston Churchill has family living there and has ordered the RAF to leave it alone. It's leadership is incompetent and has not prepared for a raid or built large public shelters. It's defences have been stripped, anti-aircraft guns sent to the front or other cities. The RAF only lose 6 bombers, 3 of which are hit by bombs from other aircraft.

The RAF hit neither Dresden's rail yards, nor it's industries, which are concentrated in the suburbs. It targets the old town, densely packed with narrow streets, and it burns. A firestorm rapidly overwhelms it's emergency services and consumes the city. Maybe 25,000 die. Maybe more. USAAF bombers attack the city the following day, hampering rescue efforts. Some of the Americans get lost and bomb Prague instead.

10 days later, the RAF bomb Pforzheim, killing 17,600 people.

In March, the USAAF creates a firestorm in Tokyo. At least 90,000 Japanese die. High-level attacks over Japan are ineffective because the jetstream prevents accurate formation bombing. So the Americans use low-level attacks using napalm incendiary bombs. Bombers return from Tokyo with their aluminium fuselages blackened by smoke. Some bombers, caught in turbulence created by the firestorm, crash.

Japanese cities, their housing traditionally made of wood, are turned to ash and cinder. US bombers drop so many incendiaries on Japan that operations are temporarily suspended because they run out of supplies. Then, in August, they drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Later, one of the justifications offered for the nuclear strikes - and one that dismisses the long-term effects of radiation - will be that they were much less bad than what was already being done to Japan's cities.

55,573 Bomber Command aircrew and around 600,000 German civilians were killed in the campaign to destroy Germany from the air. It was undoubtedly effective. The German economy was dealt massive, decisive blows from which it could not survive and prosper. The lost production, the resources devoted to repairing and restructuring industry, and to defending Germany from the bombers marked a definitive success for the Allies. 30% of German artillery production was devoted to anti-aircraft weaponry. It's aircraft production became so decentralised that the wings, fuselages and cockpits of aircraft would be constructed in different locations and brought to another to be assembled. Complexes were built into tunnels under mountains to protect from attack. Large detachments of workers were organised to repair factories and help industry recover from raids.

But while the bomber's contribution went a long way to winning the war, it remains a war-winning failure. Just like the British before them, German morale did not break. Armies had to conquer the Nazi realm. The navy had to maintain control of the oceans. Air power did not win the war alone.

The bombing campaign can be argued from a position of necessity. Britain had no other way of engaging with Nazi Germany on mainland Europe from May 1940 until mid-1943. This was intolerable to those running the war, both in Britain and abroad. For political, military and economic reasons, Germany had to be bombed.

The morality and ethics of it is a much harder thing grapple with. Wars escalate and radicalise and warp the worldviews of those involved. They are snowglobes of horror and atrocity. Choices that seemed unthinkable at the beginning became obvious and logical the longer the war went on. The lives of enemy civilians mattered far less than the lives of Allied servicemen and women, and amid the escalating evils and devastation perpetrated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan the arguments of ruthless men like Harris and the USAAF's Curtis LeMay appeared reasonable. The scale of death and destruction got exponentially larger as technology developed and militaries learnt and became more efficient. Pre-war moralities were abandoned in favour of a victory that had to be total. Bombing shortened the war. It is unknowable if that led to fewer people dying. Or, even if it did, whether that made it the right thing to do in the circumstances.

It is a terrible and grotesque thing to deliberately go out night after night to kill as many civilians as possible in the unproven belief that it will bring about victory. Had the RAF concentrated against industrial and transportation targets, it would likely have had a greater effect on the course of the war and killed far fewer civilians. What was done sits very uneasily with me.

To my mind any moral justification rests on one thing. When, twelve weeks after Dresden, Germany surrendered, the bombing stopped. If the Allies had lost, the killing would have only just started.

Further reading:

[aesariwritessometimes]

BNHA 314, Lady Nagant and war crimes, the take of history nerd.

This text will contain a discussion of war crimes, human experimentation, and genocide. Please, if you find such topics uncomfortable and upsetting, don't read.

When I was twelve years old, I visited what remains of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp complexes in Oświecim, Poland. I heard about the utter torture people of various nations had to go through. I walked through the cells in which people were starved. I saw names long gone written upon the thousand of thousands of luggage left behind. I saw shoes, belonging to men, women, and children alike. I saw where those alive slept, the pits in which you wouldn't hold a dog, much less a human. I saw the walls against which people were slaughtered.

I looked at what remains of the endless list of names of people who died to the Third Reich's death machine.

Arbeit macht frei, says the slogan atop of the gates, Work sets you free.

Our guide told us the nazis used to smile and add, Durch Krematorium Nummer drei. Through the Crematorium Number three.

The Auschwitz Museum is not all of the testimony of the pain the people suffered under Nazi Germany, but it's the symbol. I can talk much more about it, about the horror of living in Nazi-occupied Poland, about the terror the Jews come through, about the evil residing in the hearts of men but I can never describe it all. You can't really describe the horror of those times.

During the Nuremberg Trial, the war criminals responsible for it all, one after another, claimed they did it all because they were told to.

This argument didn't hold.

In 1942 Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, was ordered to execute the war prisoners in Africa. Supposedly, he burned Hitler's orders. Nothing happened to him. He was never punished by the nazi regime for disobeying their leader.

Most of the war criminals on the Nuremberg Trial were sentenced to death. Society decided that the excuse of being ordered to do something meant nothing.

The year is 2021. The leaks of the BNHA 314 chapter are out. I feel... complicated.

I did it because I was ordered to.

It could mean nothing. Just coincidence, right?

But.

The name of the character who said it is mocking me. Lady Nagant is badass; she is the female villain character I was waiting for. She is powerful, she is interesting, she has such potential.

But.

Her name.

People pointed it up already. Rifle Mosin-Nagant, one most famously used by both Simo Häyhä, the White Death, and Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the Lady Death. It seems so badass and cool at the first glance but I always felt somewhat iffy about it. She is named after a weapon, and yes, a weapon is not responsible for committing the crimes, it's always the people.

But for me, this weapon screams the Soviet Union and they didn't use it only in wars. Soviets committed unspeakable crimes, the ones for which they were never punished. They slaughtered people, they starved people, they committed genocide. Soviet Regime was not better than the nazis.

Deportations. Massacres. Gulags. All of it is not as widely discussed but I always felt there was a good, macabre example of how cruel they could be.

There is a book in Polish I read for my literature classes, The Another World by Gustaw Herling-Grudzieński. It talks about the author's memories of living in a Soviet gulag, in starvation and cold, working in inhuman conditions. What heinous crime did he commit to ending up on the end of the world?

You see, Mr. Herling-Grudzieński was wearing the army's boots. And yeah, his name sounded somewhat German. That's all. Only those boots and last name for years of painful labor, starvation, and death.

Am reaching with all of it? Probably. But emotions are not logical. It feels wrong for me to call a character after a weapon that committed genocide but maybe it's just me. After all, I know I'm biased, I was listening to all those things since I was a little girl.

I just don't like the connotation of Lady Nagant's name and those words. Even more, because we see people threatening her while something like that never happened in reality. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her? Are we supposed to forgive her and Hawks?

And that, for me goes further: Are we supposed to forgive war criminals now because of orders? Is that what he is trying to say? What is your manga about now, Mr. Horikoshi?

Because I can't. I will not. Too many people suffered because of them. Too many people died.

My thinking does sound like reaching and overinterpretation, but then, I remember the last straw of it all, something I really can't forgive because of how malicious it felt.

When Ujiko's real name was revealed as Maruta Shiga in reference to the human experimentation on the Chinese civilian population by Imperial Division 731, I didn't understand what exactly it means. I don't speak Japanese. But then, oh, god, I learned.

Japanese war crimes, compared to those committed by nazis, are controversial topics. Most of them were swept under the rug by the politics of that time. I wish I could not judge those people for the choices they made. I wish I could say I'm not utterly disgusted by how the perpetrators of those crimes were never truly punished. I can't. Like said, I'm very biased about the subject, I feel strongly about all of it.

I'm not Chinese, though, I can't even imagine how they feel about all of it.

I never learned about what the Japanese did in school, I had to uncover the depravity of Imperial Japan myself. Is it wrong? Absolutely yes. Does the educational system suck? Yes. The thing is, people just try and try to keep those heinous crimes under this stupid rug and I'm ashamed of that, I'm ashamed of myself, and most of all, I'm ashamed of what Horikoshi did as a human being.

I learned that the only country in which nazi is treated as a hero in China. Why? Because even he was so disgusted by what the Japanese did. Because he actually tried to protect the Chinese people.

A nazi.

What does it say?

What did the Imperial Division 731 did, though? Human experimentation, as I mentioned earlier. They infected people with viruses, they tested flamethrowers and weapons on them, they poisoned people, they vivisected humans. They were not better than their western allies, nazis which people are so afraid to speak of.

What happened to them? They exchanged their freedom and lives for the results of their experiments. They were never punished.

I'm going to be cruel: Horikoshi and all of the Jump deserved the backlash they got, their apologies mean nothing. How the hell they let it through in the first place? How the fuck all those editors, all of the staff, saw it and nobody cared? Nobody thought oh, that's a bad idea, let's change it? If they didn't know, it doesn't help either! It only confirms the stereotype of Japanese people not knowing and not caring about the crimes they committed.

Hot take: In some way, calling him that is just as bad as if he was named after Mengele.

All of the people who suffered under the Japanese regime deserved better than being a footnote, a simple reference in Japanese manga of all things. Those were the people we are talking about, for fuck's sake, people who went through hell and never saw justice.

That's... my take on all of it.

All of my words are pretty emotional but the subject is very emotional; it's hard not to feel in such a way when you know what happened. The sheer lack of respect BNHA holds toward the people who suffered through those awful things is astounding.

I always had problems with BNHA, okay? I disagreed about a lot of things Horikoshi did, but I always kept quiet, not wanting to speak up because there were some things I loved.

But it makes me so angry, how the author does things like that. If they did it one time, it could be an accident. Two times would be dangerous. But three? Three creates a habit.

Please, stop that, Mr. Horikoshi.

Your manga is about heroes and their corrupted society. It's action shounen, not a dark story about the war which still haunts people. It's not about our rotten world and making all of those references is disrespectful toward the victims. Stop playing with history like that.

TLDR; Soviets bad. Nazis bad. Imperial Japan bad. Hori, stop this pls, and let me see Dabi already.

[paulriedelposts]

Third Reich artists: Leni Riefenstahl

The Third Reich artists, like Leni Riefenstahl, played an important role in spreading Nazi propaganda. All artistic branches were culturally valuable. Some of them flourished during Hitler's regime, and one of them was Leni Riefenstahl.

Who was Leni Riefenstahl?

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German dancer,  actress, film director, photographer, and writer. In the early days of her career, during the Weimar period (from 1919 till 1933), she was one of the few female film directors. She directed in 1932 her own film The Blue Light (Das Blaue Licht). In the 1930s, she directed her first propaganda films: Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) and Olympia. These two films were technically innovative and some of the most effective propaganda films during the period. They brought her worldwide acclaim and attention. Even years later George Lucas used some of her monumental techniques. However, most of her works, especially the film Triumph of the Will, negatively affected her reputation after the war. Being involved with the Nazis greatly damaged her career; she was also a friend with Hitler as well. Hitler and Riefenstahl also collaborated on a few Nazi movies. Some people claimed that her visions played a key role in the Holocaust. The police arrested her after the war and released soon after because they classified her as a Nazi sympathizer. They hadn't had enough proof to accuse her of being associated with any war crimes. She strongly denied that she had known something about the Holocaust. Aside from directing, Riefenstahl also pursued a photography and writing career. Later in her life, she wrote a few books about the Nuba people, as well as her autobiography.

Childhood

Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born in Berlin on August  22, 1902. Since her early childhood, she loved art and started to write poetry and paint. She was interested in swimming and gymnastics so she decided to join school clubs. Aside from her interests in arts and gymnastics, Riefenstahl's love for ballet and dancing seemed to be the greatest. It took her to the Grimm-Reiter Dance School in Berlin, the place where she achieved brilliant results.  Riefenstahl became one of the best students at the school.

Early years

After having attended some dancing academies, Riefenstahl became famous for her unique dancing skills. As a dancer, she got a chance to travel all around Europe. Her dancing career did not last long, unfortunately. After a few foot injuries, she had knee surgery which hugely affected her dancing career. In 1924, while on her way for a regular check-up, she saw a poster for a film. The film was The Mountain of Destiny (Der Berg des Schicksals), which inspired her to pursue a film-making career. She spent lots of time in cinemas, watching movies and attending film shows. After she met Arnold Fanck, the man who directed Der Berg des Schicksals, she started her acting career. He featured her in one of his films after witnessing her acting skills and learning that she admired his work.

Leni Riefenstahls acting career

Arnold Fanck gave her a role in his 1926 film, The Holy Mountain (Der Heilige Berg). Riefenstahl took roles in several other films and learned editing techniques and acting from Fanck. It was one of Fanck's films that brought her fame in many other countries.   The movie was The White Hell of Piz Palü (Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü) in 1929. A few years later, in 1932, Riefenstahl produced and directed her own film, The Blue Light (Das Blaue Licht). Béla Balázs and Carl Mayer were her co-writers. Even though not well-received, the film won the Silver Medal at the Venice Film Festival. Riefenstahl blamed critics, mostly Jewish ones, for their criticism. The film saw its second release in  1938 when Sokal and Balázs, both Jewish, didn't get their credits. Many believe that this happened at Riefenstahl's behest. In the Blue Light, Riefenstahl plays the role of an innocent peasant girl. The villagers hate the girl, believing she's diabolic and they cast her out. She gets protection from a glowing mountain grotto. Leni Riefenstahl once stated that she had received many invitations to move to Hollywood and make films there, which she refused.  In 1933 though, she appeared in other Arnold Fanck's films, which were German- USA co-productions. She filmed S.O.S Iceberg, the only English language role film she ever had. She wanted to live and work in Germany.  Upon seeing the movie the Blue Light, Hitler became interested in her. He was convinced she portrayed the perfect German woman and wanted to meet her instantly.

Directing propaganda movies

Before she got a chance to meet Hitler in person, she heard him speak at a rally in 1932. His talent for giving public speeches fascinated her. Riefenstahl captivated Hitler as well as she fitted his ideal od Aryan woman.  After they met, she got an offer to direct The Victory of Faith (Der Sieg des Glaubens). This was a propaganda film about the fifth Nuremberg Rally in 1933. Triumph of the Will The second propaganda film she got a chance to direct was Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens). This was another film about the party rally in Nuremberg in 1934. Many believe this is one of the greatest propaganda films in history. The motion picture of the film was an innovative and epic work of propaganda film-making. Riefenstahl became internationally popular and recognized. According to Riefenstahl, she agreed to film Triumph as the last one for the party. Lowlands Riefenstahl then continued to direct a film based on Eugen d'Albert's opera, Lowlands (Tiefland). She received the production funding and shot the film between 1940 and 1944. It was a black and white film, considered to be the third most expensive films of the Third Reich. For this film, Riefenstahl employed Romani from internment camps for extras. Unfortunately, the way people treated them on set was inhumane. After shooting the film, those Romani ended up in Auschwitz. In one of her interviews, she denied any attempt to create Nazi propaganda. She told to be appalled that Nazis used Triumph of the Will for such purposes. Olympia in 1935, Hitler invited her again to film the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. She accepted, believing the International Olympic Committee commissioned the film funding.  The truth was that The Third Reich secretly funded the film. This film was Olympia, an immensely successful film for its aesthetic and technical achievements. Riefenstahl was one of the first filmmakers who used tracking shots while filming a documentary. To follow the movements of athletes, she placed a camera on rails. She also took slow-motion shots, panoramic aerial shots, underwater diving shots, high and low shooting angles. These shots were pretty unheard of at the time. Her work on this film influenced modern sports photography.

Leni Riefenstahl visiting  the USA 

Riefenstahl visited the USA to secure the commercial release of the movie Olympia. At the time, Hitler was one of the greatest men and she defended him fiercely. Little did she know then about the brutality he had been preparing.  While she was in New York City, Kristallnacht took place in Germany. Again she defended Hitler and his actions. She carried out her mission in the USA. Olympia played at the Chicago Engineers Club and it received great appraisals.  She met with many great names in America: Walt Disney, Louis B. Mayer, Henry Ford, and others. She had a chance to live and work in Hollywood, but she preferred to stay in Germany. 

World War II

The Nazi's violence during WWII shook her confidence in the party.  Following German troops for film-making, she saw the execution of Polish civilians. The very same day she witnessed such violence, she left the set to meet Hitler. She made an appeal against such actions. However, she did not object to filming the triumph parade in Warsaw a few weeks later. 

After the war

After the war,  Riefenstahl tried to separate herself from the Third Reich regime. She stated how she only created work and it happened that the Nazis commissioned it. For her, it didn't mean she worked for them and their purposes. She was never a member of the party, but only their sympathizer during their early years. This association with the Nazis made it difficult for her to regain position in cinematic communities in Europe, especially Germany. Riefenstahl chose still photography. In the 1970s published an illustrated volume on the Nuba people, the primitive tribe of Sudan.  Later in her life, she became interested in underwater cinematography. Years that followed after the end of the war were isolation years. She lived in Munich, where she died of cancer on September 8th, 2003, at the age of 101. Her burial site is in Munich at Munich Waldfriedhof. People will probably remember her more as Hitler’s favorite film director, and not a great artist. And she was one indeed, the first female film director with international acclaim. Not well known for her work, she does deserve more attention.  Just like many other artists during the Third Reich, she was manipulated and used to advertise its propaganda. They weren’t all aware of how it would end. They did what they did best, create work that would live long after they’re all gone. The work that tells the story of their time.

More about Leni Riefenstahl?

If you are interested in booking my Third Reich tour, be sure you’ll get a chance to come near to the manipulation of folk and artists in those dark years. There are plenty of sites that exhibit the great works of art, the Third Reich art. There are places that witness the mistakes of our past.  Visiting concentration camps, in my opinion, honors the Nazis and their propaganda. What we can do is to see works of art as they tell more about the whole society. These works tell about mistakes, good deeds, and they can help us learn.  We don’t need more discrimination, more hatred. What we seek is love and peace for everyone, no matter their race, sexuality, or religion.

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