Surprise! Leni Riefenstahl Was a Nazi

Sept. 4 2024

In the 1930s, Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003) became the foremost director of propaganda films for the Third Reich, best known for her Triumph of the Will. Her work won her the admiration of Hitler and Goebbels, but also of numerous other filmmakers and critics who admired her cinematographic skill. After the war, she insisted that she was an apolitical artist and that she was shocked to find out about the depths of Nazi barbarism. A new documentary by Andres Veiel, based on extensive research into her personal papers, gives the lie to these unconvincing, but widely believed, claims. Kate Connolly writes:

Veiel’s film recounts how she was heaped with praise from the public, in particular after appearing on a late-night chat show in 1976, alongside a former member of the workers’ anti-Nazi resistance movement, Elfriede Kretschmer. Riefenstahl was applauded after talking of the shock she felt on becoming aware, only after the war, of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, and how her “wounds have still not healed,” as Kretschmer looked on in disbelief.

Riefenstahl followed Adolf Hitler to Poland at the start of the Second World War in September 1939, and saw the [massacre of Jews] take place in Końskie, a town in south-central Poland.

The documentary draws on about 30 hours of cassette recordings of postwar telephone conversations with members of the public, including former Nazis, who had called to offer Riefenstahl their moral support in response to what they regarded as attempts to sully her for her close association with the Nazis. One unidentified caller said the “morality, decency, and virtue” of the Nazi era would return, with Riefenstahl responding: “Yes, the German people are predestined for that.”

One letter written by Riefenstahl to a longtime companion openly expresses her unmitigated regret about the end of the Nazi era. In it she talks of her “murdered ideals.”

Read more at Guardian

More about: Film, Holocaust, Nazi Germany

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023