MovieChat Forums > Leni Riefenstahl Discussion > A nazi,but also a pioneer

A nazi,but also a pioneer


She was basically the first important woman director. And i have to say she was an interesting person and a brlliant director. Sadly she was also evil.

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How was she evil?

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I dont know she just supported nazism in various way

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Many people in Germany in those years not doing so?

Also, at that point, it was still a political movement. It's quite a shitty political movement, but I doubt most supporters like her had an idea of how truly awful it was.

Also, she was in showbiz, don't expect her to be Einstein, she just went where the wind was blowing and made a career out of it.

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Yeah i think OP was just trying to dont look like a nazi supporter. But then you had to be all finicky about it.

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No it wasn't "just a movement" at that point. Shed denied the night of the long knives happened and said it was all a lie. as a war corespondent She also had seen in first person the mass murder of jews by the 14th army (in Konskie in Poland), after seeing this she continued to support hitler and the nazis..

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I dont know she just supported nazism in various way

Nazism was originally German nationalism. It went crazy, mostly because of a Hitler's personal vendetta with Jews, but that doesn't make an ideology evil or its supporters evil by definition. Actually, the majority of Jews themselves supported Zionism, which was basically Jew nationalism. Should they be labeled as evil too?

The same time you had Hitler in Germany, you had Stalin in the Soviet Union. Does that means that every leftist back then should be labeled as evil too?

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Yeah read the answer i made to the other user

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lol wtf was this comment. Yes wanting to mass murder and press a group is evil. the fact i gotta explain this to conservatives...

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German nationalism was not about mass murdering. That's post-war propaganda.

Be aware that even when Hitler had absolute power, and he had jailed the opposition in his own party, and they were in the middle of a war (which gives the chancellor even more power), even then he couldn't give the "final solution" order openly and officially.

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uhhh ohhhhh. next up "the gas chambers never happened either!"""

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Why do you think they didn't exist? Or are you trying to assign to me words I haven't said?

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Hitler was right wing though. Stalin was left. They were both pretty close to centre as well.

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I just looked her up on Wikipedia. The two Nazi propaganda films she is known for are rated pretty high on IMDb.

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Yes she was a brilliant director

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I won't watch them if they're Nazi propaganda though.

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You can watch them, it's not a crime to learn about anything.
I don't think they will convince you to join their ranks, don't worry.

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No, I mean if it's propaganda, what's the point? It's obviously not an accurately told story.

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OP is incorrect. She wasn't a Nazi. She was a filmmaker. Yes, she happened to be there in the 1930s and she made films of the Nazis....everything else in Germany was wiped out. Triumph of the Will yes, was a propaganda film. She like many was brainwashed by Hitler, however when WW2 began and she witnessed executions she turned against the regime:
https://twitter.com/roger_moorhouse/status/1139880791486414848
Just not far enough....we saw what happened to most who turned against them: Rommel, von Stauffenberg, etc.

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From wikipedia:


Riefenstahl said she was fascinated by the Nazis, but also politically naive, remaining ignorant about war crimes.[62] Throughout 1945 to 1948, she was held by various Allied-controlled prison camps across Germany.[62] She was also under house arrest for a period of time.[62] She was tried four times by postwar authorities for denazification and eventually found to be a "fellow traveller" (Mitläufer) who sympathised with the Nazis.[62] She won more than fifty libel cases against people accusing her of having previous knowledge regarding the Nazi party.[13]


It's sounds like she wasn't a full out Nazi, but did agree with a lot of their views.

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Yes, she is guilty by association, but not directly. It's complicated. But she's considered to be one of the most important directors of the century. A full biopic has never been done; maybe someday. One kind of similar situation was with the philosopher Heidegger. Considered one of the greats of the century, he was pro-Hitler..at first. Then he rode it out in Germany while the vast majority of his peers left. OMG, I just had a eureka moment. I can write a script about both of them. A full length movie about them in the '30s and '40s: Leni and Martin. Even though I don't think the two ever met, I'll juxtapose the two storylines!

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Do it. A movie set in an alternate universe.

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In one of her films "Tiefland" or "Lowlands" in English, she was alleged to have forcibly conscripted some Romani (gypsies) from a nearby concentration camp as extras.
Later on she would go on to deny any knowledge of them being sent to Aushwitz.
However German documentary film maker Nina Gladitz made the claim in her documentary about her (Time of Darkness and Silence), that contrary to what she said, she in fact was very well aware of the eventual fate of the gypsies.
For more info here's a link to an article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/18/artsandhumanities.germany


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the literally was there when the 14th army massacred jews in Poland and photographed being shocked by it. but sure she "didn't know"

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jews_in_Poland#World_War_II_and_the_destruction_of_Polish_Jewry_(1939–45)
"The number of Jews in Poland on 1 September 1939, amounted to about 3,474,000 people.[...] During the September Campaign some 20,000 Jewish civilians and 32,216 Jewish soldiers were killed"

50,000 deaths, most of them soldiers, from a 3.5M population is not a massacre. It's a reasonable number during a war invasion.

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"When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Riefenstahl was photographed in Poland wearing a military uniform and a pistol on her belt in the company of German soldiers; she had gone to Poland as a war correspondent.[44][18] On 12 September, she was in the town of Końskie when 30 civilians were executed in retaliation for an alleged attack on German soldiers.[45] According to her memoir, Riefenstahl tried to intervene but a furious German soldier held her at gunpoint and threatened to shoot her on the spot.[18] She said she did not realize the victims were Jews.[18] Photographs of a potentially distraught Riefenstahl survive from that day.[18] Nevertheless, by 5 October 1939, Riefenstahl was back in occupied Poland filming Hitler's victory parade in Warsaw"

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So what? the German soldiers were attacked by some group of locals, and they retaliated against the locals. That's how things are during a war. Nothing out of ordinary there.

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Conservatives out here justifying war crimes loL. on my other post about "the rat line" and operation paperclip" I have another conservative telling me "so what they were just following orders"

you guys are truly disgusting individuals

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That's not a "war crime". That's the usual stuff during a war.

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https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2338

you might be retarded

"she fainted when witnessing the random killing of two dozen Jews summoned to dig graves on September 12, 1939"

Yep just the usual summoning random civilians to execute them.. def not a war crime.

have you been tested for retardation?

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I repeat: that kind of stuff is usual during wars. And worse. Insulting me doesn't change that.

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and yet its still a war crime. And no the allies when attacked didn't often round up random people and murder them.

Not saying it has never happened. DOesnt change that that is a war crime.

But again keep making excuses for the nazis and war crimes.

You are truly a disgusting scumbag.

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Of course the allies did! But the winners write History.

The allies actually killed massacred thousands of German, and I'm not talking about deaths in battles. I'm talking about murdering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Losses

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SO we agree Both are war crimes.

LOL you re so fucking stupid its painful. But again keep making excuses for literal nazis and war crimes.

You are clearly a disgusting human. seems like you need a few L's in your name so everyone can see what you are outright.

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Don't assign words to me.

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KluKLux seems more fitting for a disgusting person like yourself.

move along you rat. Make sure you tell your family "today I first defended a nazi propagandist. then I defended the germans saying there didn't actually know about the holocaust, then guess what? I told the guy that murdering bunch of civilians wasn't a war crime!"

im sure they will be real proud of you

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The funny thing is that you're completely emotional to the point of losing your mind and drooling hate in your comments. And it's easy to see that your primary feeling is disgust.

You're actually the same kind of psychological profile than Hitler:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBu6xI1iUM0

You have that kind of profile which has primary feelings of disgust and is highly emotional, the kind of psychological profile that eventually justifies murdering without problems when he has the chance.







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when losing call the other person "emotional". next up "you just dont have an open mind"

what did I say that wasn't accurate? you literally did all that I wrote.

"The kind of profile that have primary feelings of disgust and is highly emotional, the ones that easily justify murdering."

hahahahahah self projecting on me now. This is literally what you did you scumbag.

go away. your are scum

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Your now quote "You have that kind of profile which has primary feelings of disgust and is highly emotional, the kind of psychological profile that eventually justifies murdering without problems when he has the chance."

Your quotes before

"So what? the German soldiers were attacked by some group of locals, and they retaliated against the locals. That's how things are during a war. Nothing out of ordinary there."

"I repeat: that kind of stuff is usual during wars."


also love how you've abandoned the other discussion we had. You know you were proven wrong and can address them. You re such pathetic coward and scumbag

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Reception and criticism[edit]
The New Orleans panel[edit]
After the publication of Bacque's book, a panel of eight historians gathered for a symposium in the Eisenhower Center for American Studies[38] at the University of New Orleans from December 7–8, 1990 to review Bacque's work.[39] In the introduction to a book later published containing each panellists' papers, Steven E. Ambrose noted that Bacque is a Canadian novelist with no previous historical research or writing experience. His introduction concludes that "Other Losses is seriously—nay, spectacularly—flawed in its most fundamental aspects."[39][40] (Ambrose's own work has also been criticized for longtime patterns of plagiarism and inaccuracies.) The panel comments that, among its many problems, Other Losses:[39]
misuses documents
misreads documents
ignores contrary evidence
employs a statistical methodology that is hopelessly compromised
made no attempt to see the evidence he has gathered in relation to the broader situation
made no attempt to perform any comparative context
puts words into the mouths of the subjects of his oral history
ignores a readily available and absolutely critical source that decisively dealt with his central accusation
As a consequence of those and other shortcomings, the book "makes charges that are demonstrably absurd."

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"r Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation or about the column "other losses." Mr Bacque's "missing million" were old men and young boys in the Volkssturm (People's Militia) released without formal discharge and transfers of POWs to other allies control areas. Maj. Ruediger Overmans of the German Office of Military History in Freiburg who wrote the final volume of the official German history of the war estimated that the total death by all causes of German prisoners in American hands could not have been greater than 56,000 approximately 1% of the over 5,000,000 German POWs in Allied hands exclusive of the Soviets. Eisenhower's calculations as to how many people he would be required to feed in occupied Germany in 1945-46 were too low and he had been asking for more food shipments since February 1945. He had badly underestimated the number of German soldiers surrendering to the Western Allies; more than five million, instead of the anticipated three million as German soldiers crossed the Elbe River to escape the Russians. So too with German civilians—about 13 million altogether crossing the Elbe to escape the Russians, and the number of slave laborers and displaced persons liberated was almost 8 million instead of the 5 million expected. In short, Eisenhower faced shortages even before he learned that there were at least 17 million more people to feed in Germany than he had expected not to mention all of the other countries in war-ravaged Europe, the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. All Europe went on rations for the next three years, including Britain, until the food crisis was over.[41]"

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"filming at the Babelsberg Studios near Berlin began 18 months later in April 1942.[49] This time Sinti and Roma people from the Marzahn detention camp near Berlin were compelled to work as extras.[49] Almost to the end of her life, despite overwhelming evidence that the concentration camp occupants had been forced to work on the movie unpaid, Riefenstahl continued to maintain all the film extras survived and that she had met several of them after the war.The German court ruled largely in favour of Gladitz, declaring that Riefenstahl had known the extras were from a concentration camp, but they also agreed that Riefenstahl had not been informed the Romani would be sent to Auschwitz after filming was completed"

You might be retarded

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anyone who wasn't willing to put a blind eye to it and decide to ignore it due to their own benefit. Could put two and two together. from the open persecution to jews, to the night of the long knives to their roundup.

it was pretty obvious. But she cared more about her career.

again another disgusting nazi while you sit here and make excuses.

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Do you know that the Night of the Long Knives wasn't only about jews? Political adversaries were murdered too, included political adversaries inside the German nationalism.

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Did you know this doesnt matter? and my point still stands?

that it was glaringly obvious to everyone. And that she turned a blind eye for her own benefit.

again you are a sad scumbag making excuses for nazis. that's about right for a conservative though

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No. Your point doesn't stand. Your point is that the murdering was planned by the whole German nationalism instead of the small group holding the power.

If that was true, Hitler wouldn't have needed to control his own party to the point of jailing and killing those who opposed him, nationalists included.

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No my point is that there was soo much glaring evidence of the horrible constant treatment and shipment of jews. This is without getting into the millions of germans who played their part. To see that the holocaust was happening.

"If that was true, Hitler wouldn't have needed to control his own party to the point of jailing and killing those who opposed him, nationalists included."

NO not fucking at all you fucking retard. Honestly where do you make these logical leaps? "Hitler had to maintain control so this proves he didn't have Germany controlled like the Borg"

Honestly where do you make this shit up from? Are you really this astonishingly stupid?

THAT PROVES MY ENTIRE POINT. Many germans saw the horrible acts of the nazis and decided to stand up. They didn't need to have news paper articles in Germany saying "the holocaust has now been implemented". They decided not to turn a blind eye, not to ignore the evidence and act.

You proved my point you fucking idiot

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This alone proves your re possibly the dumbest person on this board.

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Most films are not accurate nor objective.
The point of most film is beyond agreeing with their message.

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"if it's propaganda, what's the point?"

To see brilliant cinema, and historical documentation. You don't have to shave your head and get a swastika tattoo.

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Triumph of the Will is an important piece of documentary film history and also features some great cinematography. I watched it and don't regret doing so. I'd love to see a fully-restored HD version.

She also made another film called Olympia about one of the Olympic games (1932 maybe?). I haven't seen it but it's also an important film in the history of documentary filmmaking.

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I've heard Triumph of the Will is her masterpiece.

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It's certainly the one she's best known for but Olympia is not far behind.

Like I said, I'd like to see restored versions of those two films. When I watched Triumph of the Will, it was impressive but the physical film itself was clearly pretty ragged.

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You liked her up? Hey! This guys a Nazi too! LET’S GETTIM!

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I know you're joking but I wanted to see information on how she was regarded in the German film industry given her association with those guys.

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Too late to cancel her. LOL

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Just because she was a German nationalist makes her an evil person? Are Israeli nationalists all evil too then? Also known as Zionists.

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Do you think they are evil?

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I don't care about them.

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