An autumn avalanche of books on Hitler and the Third Reich. Always the wonder is that a man who had been a corporal in the First World War rose to have not only the German people in his power, but was able to dictate to the General Staff, who seem to have followed him unquestioningly. Or, at any rate, followed him.
Did anyone speak out and even contradict him to his face? Watching recently on Arte, the Franco-German cultural channel, a film by Leni Riefenstahl brought to mind that she, according to her memoirs, did refuse to follow where he dictated. At first that is. Hitler got his way in the end, except in his amorous advances to her. She had written to him to say she would like to meet him. This before he came to power. Unfortunately she was going away to Greenland in a few days. No trouble said an aide of Hitler who rang next day. She would be brought to the Fuhrer at a seaside resort near Wilhelmshaven from which she was due to sail.
Hitler was on the beach when she arrived and came over, and as they walked he talked enthusiastically of her films and her acting. "Once we come to power", he said, "you must make our films." She told him she couldn't; she could never be a member of his party. Hitler said he would never force anyone to become a member. But, she objected: "If I was a Jew, you wouldn't even speak to me." Said Hitler, according to her book of reminiscences The Sieve of Time, "I wish the people around me would be as uninhibited as you." (Hmm!)
Later, at night, they walked, silently. Then, she writes, he put his arms around me and drew me to him . . . but when he noticed my lack of response, he instantly let go and turned away, saying "How can I love a woman until I have completed my task?" On another occasion Hitler said: "I'm no misogynist: I like having beautiful women around me."
When war broke out, Riefenstahl organised a group to film the invasion of Poland. She saw German soldiers shoot Polish civilians and at a lunch afterwards in Zoppot near the old city of Danzig, sitting at Hitler's left hand, (the Gauleiter's wife was on his right), she told him of this. Hitler swore they would be disciplined. Triumph of the Will (Hitler's own title, she says), the film of the Nuremberg rally, she did not want to do. Hitler told her she would do it, and in emphatic terms. She did it, a triumph indeed for Nazi propaganda, though she claims it was, to her, just a good documentary. The Sieve of Time, Quartet books. 1992.