Posted by
Cassandra on Sunday, February 15, 2009 9:14:39 AM
On display tonight is a full length National Socialist gem, a propaganda film directed by German artist and photographer,
Leni Riefenstahl featuring the 1934 Nazi rally at Nurnberg.
Like
Hitler's blueprint for war "Mein Kampf" the classic may well be on the
index of some countries in Europe, but it proves that censoring and
suppression is a mistake:
"Triumph des Willens" - or "Triumph of the Will" - is a revelation as well as an education.
First
we need to keep in mind that Corporal Hitler was elected into power
just a year earlier, in 1933 on a narrative of restoring to its former
glory the Fatherland, home to the victims, the German People.
They
saw themselves as the victims first of all of greedy, selfish,
materialistic Anglo-Saxon liberal Capitalism. The defeat in World War I
for which the Jewry, Communists and other subversives were blamed in a
Sorelian myth (
the Dolchstoß Legend) was another contribution to the self image of underdog. The harsh terms of the
Versailles Treaty did the rest for the narrative of victimhood.
World
War I had been wholesale slaughter and the Versailles Treaty was no
joke. Can you blame a people, a leader or a party for fostering and
furthering the ideal to right that wrong? Many Germans, other Europeans
and Americans thought not.
Sir Winston Churchill wrote in his Nobel Prize winning
"Memoirs of the Second World War": "
"I
had no national prejudices against Hitler at the time. I knew little of
his doctrine or record and nothing of his character. I admire men who
stand up for their country in defeat, even though I am on the other
side. He had a perfect right to be a patriotic German if he chose. I
always wanted England, Germany and France to be friends."
On
the ideological level we find in the title of the movie a somewhat
curious statement: the triumph of will, but whose will? Corporal
Hitler's? No, its a notion that can be traced back to the collectivist
philosophers
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
and Diderot, whose ideal society can best be summed up as a theofascist
tribe, having replaced the role of the sovereign ruler with the
community's. That entity was thought of as having a will of its own -
the 'common will' - to whom all drones have a duty to answer and submit.
Corporal Hitler, the National Socialist Party and all that happened as a result, suddenly doesn't seem that enigmatic anymore!
For
whatever reason, today we don't speak of 'will' so much anymore. In
Postmodern times it's all about subjectivity, personal taste and "if it
pleases us". So, ways are found that do please us. And when that's the
case we may suddenly find it in our hearts that "Yes, we can". The
pragmatism is the same though: we do whatever we want, because it's Us!
Finally,
we can now witness for ourselves the curious observation made
frequently by historians: the pounding rhetoric - not just of
victimhood - but also of peace and concord from the man we now know to
have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the last
century.
Here's one of Riefenstahl's master pieces,
"Triumph of the Will".
- Filed on Articles in
"History Compiled" -