Doomed to Fail - Ep 181: Hitler's Favorite Film Maker - Leni Riefenstahl

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

We mentioned Leni in Episode 117 when we discussed the Berlin Olympics in 1936. She is the director who created the 'Olympia' film, breaking barriers as a woman and adding invaluable skills to the craft of filmmaking. Leni also denied and denied and denied that she was a part of the Nazi Propaganda Machine --- and she got to live to 101!! Today, we'll talk about how there is literally no way she didn't know (if you can go over Goebbels's head right to Hitler, you don't NOT know what is going on). Plus, her over half a century of denial of her responsibility in how her vision of the N*zis helped create a mass alibi for the German people post-war. Leni would say "Of what am I guilty??" When she died (in 2003!!!), Irene Runge, head of Berlin's Jewish Cultural Center said"You have to take responsibility for your past. She didn't. That is what people will remember about her." Sources: Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl - Stephen Bachhttps://www.amazon.com/Leni-Life-Work-Riefenstahl/dp/0375404007Aljazeera - Hitler’s favourite filmmaker is deadhttps://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/9/9/hitlers-favourite-filmmaker-is-deadThe Guardian - Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favourite film propagandist, dies at 101https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/10/film.germanyLeni Riefenstahl - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/sep/10/guardianobituaries.germanyNY Times - Leni Riefenstahl, Filmmaker and Nazi Propagandist, Dies at 101https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/09/obituaries/leni-riefenstahl-filmmaker-and-nazi-propagandist-dies-at-101.htmlJonny Buchardt - Auftritt Karneval Köln 1973https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_SwFHtgJCQLeni Riefenstahl with the 14th Army Corps in Poland (September 1939)https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2338May 9, 1933: Helen Keller Writes to German Studentshttps://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/helen-keller-writes-to-germans/ Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson Case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your life. And we are back on fully awake.

Your eyes are so wide there. I'm trying to stay awake. I feel like I forgot about the time change. Is this one supposed to fuck me up? Because yes, I feel like I woke up earlier than I wanted to. Right? I think you're supposed to wake up late.

than you wanted to because it went forward in time right but like if I woke up at nine but it was really eight I did not wake up at eight you know I mean yeah I'm gonna just like pass out when it's still daytime sometime today so yeah I had the same experience I actually woke probably five o'clock in the morning and then just like stayed away for like two hours and then I fell asleep and then woke immediately after that and that's why I'd take a nap I love that yeah um yeah yeah midday naps for the best the best the best um cool hi farz hi everyone welcome to doom to fail we bring you history's most notorious disasters twice a week and i'm taylor joined by farce and we're talking women's history

this month and uh yeah and i guess i guess nazis we're not see women history um who would have thought who would have thought um but yes i am also talking nazis and oh god um okay hold on um and i I'm going to fight with my Google Doc. Google Doc, calm down. I love the Google Doc document tabs. Do you use them? I don't. It's my favorite thing.

I actually put in a feature request for this years ago because I really wanted it. So I have like a tab for my outline and a tab for my sources and a tab for my raw notes and a tab of stuff I wanted to mention at the end of the episode. Like it's just I love it. Google makes such intuitive products. Like it's just like exactly what I wanted. Yeah. I don't know if that's always true. Remember the Google Wave?

Remember that? It was like a workflow thing. It was really weird. Anyway. Do you remember Google Plus? What the hell happened to that? I think it just, who cared? No one cared anymore.

It's fair. There were just so many, but I do remember it. Right. Right. So, anyway, hello. We are also talking Nazis and women Nazis today. I'm going to talk about Lenny Riefenstall. Do you remember her?

Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, she was a photographer. Yes, she's a director. She directed the movie Olympia that we talked about. That's right. fourland olympics yep um so i read a book called lenny the life and work of lenny reef andstall by stephenbach and i also have a bunch of other little sources that i will share and i want to

start with her death because i mentioned this i think when i talked about her about the olympics that like this bitch got to live to be 101 Taylor, not to correct you in mansplain here, but it's pronounced Laney, not Lenny. Is it? Yeah, I know it's L-E-I-L-E-N-I, but it's actually Laney.

How do you know that? Let's just say I have experience with that name. Okay, well, I'm going to say Lenny because that's what I'm already re-doing. Go with your heart. So she died at 101 in 2002, which I think is bullshit.

She got to live as long as she did. when she died some of these some of the headlines from around the world Al Jazeera's headline was Hitler's favorite filmmaker is dead the guardians was Lenny Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite film propagandist dies at 101 and the New York Times was Lenny Riefenstall filmmaker and Nazi propagandist dies at 101 so she's certainly not separated from the fact that she is a Nazi propaganda person and like the Nazi propaganda person when she died Irene Runga

who is the head of Berlin's Jewish cultural center said quote you have to take responsibility for your past she didn't that is what people will remember about her

so we know this wasn't someone that was like forced to do it or whatever like okay no absolutely not absolutely not so we're going to talk about she's an artist

and no one's denying that she's a good artist and that she worked very hard because she did and her movies are are very visually stunning. But she wanted to be praised for her artistry, but take no responsibility for the message of her of her work. She is very calculating with what she remembers and what she shares. There's a lot of footage of her, obviously, like from Nazi Germany and from much, much

later. And so she's very calculating with her image. And she lies a lot. Like she lies about her age. She lies about her connections. She lies about meetings she went to. And there's, like proof that she lied about those things but she lies with like a lot of conviction so if you talk to her you'd be like oh a little old lady who she's like oh i didn't know anything was happening but i don't believe her from every little old lady or man could be a potential nazi so never let regard down exactly exactly so and also this i'm glad that we talked had our conversation in the last episode because is what i brought up as well because a lot of them said you know i was just following orders and you know this is just i was just kind of going along with the flow and again we didn't

arrest the entire country of Germany after the after World War II. But there was like a process of the denastification of Germany that is something that is like culturally fascinating that we're not going to talk about today. But there is something and I think this connects. There's a comedian named Johnny Buchart and at the Outriff Carnival in Cologne. So like a a show in Cologne in 1973. This is on YouTube and I'll share it. So it's 1973. So we're like however many years after World War II has ended. He's doing this like repeat joke while he's in front of like a bunch of people. And the people that are in the audience are like a little bit older. And he does like when you do a big like cheers in German, if you're at like a beer garden, you go zig, zig, zig,

zig, zig, zig, hok. And then you hold your beer in the air. You were talking about you. You do that. And then he does, then he does, um, he does another one. He's like, like, another like repeat and repeat. And then he does the Zeke and they all do Hile, all of them. And it's 1973. And they all like gasp, but they like, it's like a little memory. Yeah. They're like programming to do it. And he was like, oh, I see people have a lot of old comrades in this, in this audience. And I think he was like, canceled hard after that because Germany was like, you're not supposed to do that. But it was like still in there, you know. Wait, he didn't prompt them. He wasn't trying to get them to say, Gail. Yes, he was. Okay. He absolutely prompted them. Okay.

He knew they were doing it. He prompted them, you know? But it's interesting because you're like, it doesn't, like, these people had to continue to exist their lives, you know, even after everything happened. And a lot of, yes, a lot of them were like passive observers, but Lenny Reeveshaw was not. And something else that they said in the book that I read that I thought was really interesting is, A lot of the mass alibi that people would use after this was over was Lenny's work. They would be like, I was charmed by Triumph of the Will. I was charmed by Olympia.

I thought this was charming. And that was the person that Lenny was telling people about, you know? I get it. I mean, if I found out that, you know, Stephen Spielberg after Jurassic Park wanted me to do some evil shit, I'd do it just because he's that talented. That's fair. I'd be like, can't hang out with the animal or octonic dinosaurs? It'd be so fun. So, Lenny was a willing participant, and she would have been a Nazi forever, had the Nazis won.

But she would never say that her films are propaganda. She would never apologize for any of the murders that she was involved in. She would just deny, deny, deny, deny, deny. And, like, she's a person who could go over Gerbils' back and talk directly to Hitler to get what she wanted. you can't say those things and also say I didn't know what was going on and I'm completely innocent, you know? They just say it can't be both.

It's also rumored that like other artists at the same time. So I'm going to go back in the second to talk about German cinema. Have you seen Metropolis or M? Any of Fritz Lang's movies? No. M is really good.

It's like a murder mystery kind of, you know? It's a serial killer. Guy with the eyes. What's his name? It's so good. Whatever. So Gerbels had asked Fritz Lang to be head of the UFA, which was the German film company, and Fritz Lang left the next day because he was like, no. He left Germany. He's like, she's going to go down and going to get bad, you know. So other filmmakers were able to leave. Lenny could have done that, but she did not. She would say often, quote, of what am I guilty? So never taking responsibility for what her work kind of instilled in folks. So, okay, let's talk about her life. Her name was Helena? Bertha Amelie Lenny Riefenstall, born on August 22nd, 1902, in a shitty part of Berlin.

So a part of Berlin that is definitely not there anymore, but it was just like crappy time in apartments, crappy kind of growing up. She had one younger brother named Heinz. Her father wanted her to follow him into business and like be a businesswoman, but she wanted to be a dancer. So her mom would sneak her into dance lessons and have her do like more art stuff. she would love the theater she did some films in the 20s where she's naked because it was like the genre was like

ancient Rome in movies but like silent German films right so I'm like a lot of nudity she this is the beginning of German cinema where we get some great stuff like last October we watched the cabinet of Dr. Calgary

which was great and like Petropolis the original Nosferatu like all that like cool German cinema is happening in like the early 1900s and like in the 20s like post between wars and the between war time and there's also some of her contemporaries who were actors like Lenny started off as who were who did get to the United States like Marlena Dietrich you know so there's like a very famous German women who left Germany to go to Hollywood and became successful but that was not not her she did a she was a dancer she like did a dance

show kind of on her own that she fell into when someone else got injured, she kind of took their spot and she did a little bit of traveling. She did this kind of weird interpretive dance that people either loved or hated. It was kind of in the middle of that. But she only did it for a few months and then she got injured and she wasn't able to do that to dance anymore professionally. And she's still pretty young at this point. She started thinking about doing movies and she started like seeing more movies. She was in a film that is lost. Some of the film is lost, you know, which just like doesn't exist anymore, but there was one where people were doing exercises that she was a part of. So it was like, this like very German calisthenics

thing. That feels German. Yeah, it feels very German. And when I read that in the book, I was like, oh, that sounds exactly like Olympia. Because I don't know if you'll remember, Olympia, which we'll talk about later, her Olympics movie starts off, like, of like people in ancient Greece, like throwing the discus, you know, so it's these like beautiful hot bods. with barely any clothes on, being sportsmen. You just see what I'm doing with my hot body. That's exactly how you do it. Like, oh, totally, you're like a Greek sculpture right now.

It's too bad. This is an audio medium, otherwise we've gotten out. So I was like, oh, that sounds like Olympia. And the next sentence was she would deny that this, that this was had anything to do with Olympia. And I'm like, yeah, bitch. It's like obviously the same thing. But like, whatever. You can say like, I was inspired, but she didn't.

But she wouldn't say that later. She also loved mountain movies. so this was like a new a new thing obviously movies are brand new so like these actually do sound very very difficult to make and it's it took a lot for her to make them but there was a movie called mountain of destiny that she um really loved it was shot on location in the alps like in the cold like not on a sound stage where like you would like throw asbestos that people pretending it to be snow like literally in the snow in in the mountains she liked mountain of destiny so much she like faggles her way into meeting the director, Arnold Fank, and she said that he said he wrote a film for her right away, and he said, no, I had a script, I just gave it to her, like, whatever. So she made it sound.

Yeah, myth building, exactly. So she did another movie called The White Hell of Pitts-Paloo, which is the mountain, about a honeymoaning couple. She plays the wife, and they meet a man who is a doctor whose wife had died in an avalanche. The doctor wants to go out and find his wife's body. and they go with him and they also get like stuck in the snow and this was like really fucking hard work you can see how like they're acting they're cold you know like there's snow in their hair she got a from her time

in the mountain she got a lifelong bladder infection and I wrote good but she so that was like they're not acting they're actually cold hungry starving exactly it actually wasn't avalanche yeah like they actually like their fingers are almost frozen off like it's actually

bad and then later people to that point, people started to care about it less when they've realized that you could emulate it on a sound stage. You didn't have to do that. Some people were less impressed. They're like, oh, it must be a sound stage. And she's like, no, I was really on this fucking mountain, you guys. They're like, man. Yeah. Not impressed. So she was doing that.

But then she was like, I'm sure that I can do this on my own. Like, I don't need a director. I can direct and I can act and I can do everything, which is cool because she's a woman during this time and one of the first, like, really famous women directors and she gets funding for a film in 1932 called the blue light so she like wrote and directed this film and starred in it and it was about um a poor girl who is like hated by villagers and finds her solace and like a blue grotto like a place in like a cave she played the girl even though she was like 30 so people were a little bit like okay she was like a 15 year old but um had mixed reviews, it won a silver medal at the Venice Film Festival, which was started during Mussolini's regime in Italy.

It got bad reviews from the, quote, liberal newspapers, and by liberal, we mean Jewish. And she said, after her reviews came out, like the really far right papers loved it. Hitler loved it. But she said about the liberal bad reviews that she was getting, she said, once Hitler is in charge, we don't have these problems. anymore you know she was right yeah because they were no longer able to give her bad reviews right um yeah and she but she obviously knew it two jewish people were like the top billing people who helped her make it when she re-released it in 1938 she just deleted their names so like she knew enough to say like you know the reason i'm getting bad reviews is because you know the

jews are against me personally it's probably what you was that that she re-released it in 1938 but She originally released it in 1932. And the Nuremberg laws were 34. I think so. So, yeah, if she released it after that, of course, she didn't say the name is off of it. Yeah. So now, exactly. So I'm going to talk about some of the stuff that you just talked about.

Hitler is in charge now. He became chancellor in January 30th, 1933. Concentration camps are going to be up in like six weeks. Like, it all happens really fast. President Hindenberg dies on August 2nd, 1934. And that's when Hitler combined the offices and just expected never to have an election again. So she's trying to live her life under this new regime, still thinking that she is an artist, you know, being like, oh, I'm an artist and just kind of ignoring the politics. But she's not ignoring the politics. She's saying that she did and that she didn't know what happened. But like people have memories and have written down seeing her on a train, reading Mind Kampf and fucking loving it. Like writing in the margins, being like, this is the best book I've ever read, saying things like, you guys will see, Hitler is totally right in this book. He's so right. He's such a genius, you know? Yeah. And books are being burned at this time.

And this is like an interesting side note that I, oh, that I wanted to talk about with you is one of the first books that were burned were books by Helen Keller because of her socialism. Isn't that interesting? I guess that makes sense. So she wrote a book to like German students in general who were burning books. She wrote a letter to them on May 9th, 1933. and Helen said quote History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas

tyrants have tried to do that often before and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them and then she also said quote do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here and that was in 1933 so like also the you

yeah so like you were saying last episode like the US government is going to pretend they didn't know what FDR is going to pretend he didn't know but people knew if Helen Keller fucking knew she can't see her here here she knew in 1933 well i was going off of the last podcast uh joseph bengala episode where they were like normal germans who were like working in berlin going into office buildings and like doing normal life like their point was like those people aren't like looped in on like

what's happening in auschwitz like in poland and so um probably i mean i assume that was the case but apparently if she wrote that in 1933 then probably not so yeah and i don't think she means like full-on concentration camps but she does mean like the you know no businesses all that stuff you know there was concentration camps in 33 yeah i think it was they were like starting you know really yeah started in in six weeks is what i read you can you can get up yeah you look it up so lennie was getting excited about this she loved mine comp so she obviously wanted to meet hitler That was, like, her next step. She saw him speak.

1933 was Dowell. Yeah. It happened real fast. Well, that was for, so the camps had different purposes. One of them were just, like, holding camps, and then there was, like, the extra. The final solution part of it was much later, yeah. Yeah. But actually, let me talk.

I'm going to talk about that because that's a thing that gets her off from really being in trouble is that difference between the type of camp. So I'll talk about that in a second. So she saw Hitler speak in 1932, and in her memoir, that she wrote in like the 1980s. She said, quote, I had an almost apocalyptic vision that I was never able to forget.

It seemed as if the earth's surface were spreading out in front of me like a hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet of water, so powerful that it touched the sky and shook the earth. That's about her seeing Hitler speak

and how like incredible she found him. Her dad became an official member of the Nazi party like we're talking about, but Lenny never did. She didn't really have to though because she was like in all the rooms and around. everyone she did though have to submit the paperwork showing her heritage that you had to do to be able to like have these jobs and it's probable that her maternal grandmother was Jewish but lenny

lied on her papers yeah I mean because she wouldn't have been able to do anything that he did if she had a maternal I would I would have been like yeah I'm like Austro-Hungarian like of course yeah so since Hitler had seen the blue light he thought it was a great example of Aryan womanhood, whatever that means. And he gave her the commission to make a movie called Der Sieg de Sklobens, which means the victory of faith, and which is the 1933 Nuremberg rally, which is like the fifth Nazi rally that was like in Nuremberg,

like a really big deal. So she got to, got to tape it. It's an hour-long propaganda film. It's the first one where they had like the stage design to have like the huge eagle, you know, and like really like make it make this. the set design imposing for like this rally. You know, there's a, there's a ton of people in their, they're not as uniforms.

They're all very excited. And she premiered her, her movie in Berlin on December 1st, 1933. So this film is interesting because it showcases Hitler's close relationship with Ernst Rome, who was head of the essay at the time. They're standing next to each other in the film a lot. They're kind of whispering to each other. They're talking.

They were like, they works together a ton. In 1934, during the night of the long knives where Hitler killed a bunch of his like internal enemies I think you mentioned maybe last episode I mean like I was part of it yeah Rome was killed and he was killed potentially because he was like

very clearly gay like very out as a gay man and he was at his hotel and Hitler and his other guys like stormed the hotel Hitler woke Rome up and said you're being arrested for treason even though the treason was not real they just like wanted him out of there

so they ended up you know but all the people that were like with Rome there ended up being killed they gave Rome the option to kill himself and he said quote if I am to be killed but Adolf do it himself

so they shot him he didn't choose to take his own life Hitler didn't do it no got it no someone else did so because of that because the film

the victory of faith was showcasing that relationship between Hitler and Rome then the Hitler didn't want anybody to see it anymore so he had all the copies destroyed We have it because Lenny had her own copy sent to the UK to be hidden there.

And they also found a copy in the Eastern and film archives in the late 1980s. But otherwise you wouldn't have it. But she sent her own copy of the film to friends in the UK to keep it safe. Interesting. Interesting that she would be like do something that Hiller didn't want to happen. Well, I guess it's, yeah, okay, that's her movie. right because she's like i'm an artist what do i know yeah exactly it's her thing so now her and her and hitler are like friends like gerbils who obviously is like the minister of propaganda he hates her

they like don't they like get in fights all the time she says it's because he tries to like put advances on her and like have an affair with her because he despite despite looking like a rat-faced piece of shit he still is very popular and has a bunch of affairs gerbils and but Lenny said no to Grubles and that she said that's why he hates her but in his journals that came out in like the 70s and 80s he was like I like her it's fine

so like maybe she like exaggerated that relationship as well but we'll never really know but Grubles himself was very much like I'm the minister propaganda we are making propaganda like we are doing this to change dupils binds like that was he wasn't like not saying that and Lenny was like I'm an artist I'm making art but we see her if you see her photos, like she's in pictures with Himmler, with Hess, like with all of the, with Hitler, with garbles.

Like, she knew everybody. She was up there in, like, the top rooms. So, she decided to make the next film that Hitler had her, like, commissioned for, which is the one that is really famous, which is the triumph of the will. So that's, like, his, like, huge, huge propaganda film. It was another rally in Nuremberg. She was like, oh, no, I can't do it, but then she did it because she got paid a shit ton of money to do it. And she filmed 61 hours of footage. There were over a million Nazis there. She edited it down into one hour and 10 minutes.

And it's called the greatest propaganda film of all time, which I think it should be. It's like really incredible. If you're just judging it for the artistry, which is like nearly impossible, like it's really captivated. Yeah. Like it's, you know, big, wide shots of the, of the crowd. There's a shot of Hitler coming down.

airplane there's like you know obviously like if you've seen like the videos of him doing like his like really big speeches like a lot of them are from triumph of the will yeah and so it is the film that is the mass alibi film that I said earlier people would be like we saw this and we were like in you know like it's part of the reason we're just going along to get along we were following orders like we saw this happen and a lot of it is because of the image that Lenny helped create when she did this. So in 1993, in 1993, there was a documentary about her called The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Lenny Ravenstall, and she denied any attempts to create Nazi propaganda, and she was disgusted

that Triumph of the Bull was used that way. And you're like, girl, that's what it was. Yeah, she's trying to find any part that can even remotely be plausible deniability. And I know she's lying because she's lying. lying liar, but also because she wrote a letter to Hitler after the movie was made and said, quote, the film's impact as German propaganda is greater than I could have imagined, and your image, my fear, is always applauded. Jeez.

Yeah. So during this film, for the next, for, I guess during like the entire Third Reich regime, she's trying to make a movie called Teethland, which is sort of her passion project. It's based after an opera that was famous in Germany, and she found, funding in Spain, but it got canceled, and it was finally filmed in the 40s, and it was released in 1954. When it was released, it was the Guinness Book of World Records film for the longest production time for a film, which I feel like you could have passed if you had an idea about it at the beginning of World War II, and then, like, you finish it after. I feel like that

doesn't count as a production, but whatever. So she cast herself as the female lead, and she was 40 with a lover who was 23, and she at least had, she was like, that was a little weird, that was a little embarrassing. She said that? Yeah, she said that because she definitely was like too old to put that part. But it wasn't just her in the film. She needed extras. So they filmed it in a place, I think I held it in Poland, where she pulled from the local Romani people. And she picked children and adults of Roma and Sinti background who were in Nazi collection camps.

So that's the word collection versus concentration. So in a collection camp, it's actually just like a war camp, like there's no expectation. that people are going to be like mass murdered they are just in there to like be prisoners of war so she pulled people out of this camp to be extras in her in her movie she would say that she didn't know that they were going to be killed later eventually like she didn't know that was a thing and that it wasn't forced labor even though it definitely was because it's like you have to do this or go to this like camp this like terrible prison camp and she would she lived in like this fantasy world where she would telling people, telling these extras, like, they could be stars and they can go to

Hollywood and, like, doing this stuff to them. And then, like, immediately after the film's done, they go back to this collection camp. You know, like, nothing good is going to happen. A lot of them were sent to Auschwitz and died there. Like, that is in the thing. She insisted afterwards that she saw every single one of those extras after the war, but that isn't true because we know they died. You know, a lot of them died. So she was tried for this because, she had, you know, worked with people and, like, sent them directly to, to the camp after she worked, after they, like, worked on her film, which was, like, forced labor, all those things. And she got off because of that word collection versus concentration. So there was a documentary made about her in 1982 by a woman named Nina Galefitz, and she said that Lenny knew they were going to be killed.

But because they didn't go to a concentration camp, they went to a collection camp, they couldn't, prove that she knew that that was going to happen so lenny sued and that movie was never shown anywhere like they just like that that she killed that movie um nina the director could have recut it but she didn't she didn't have like the budget to do it she just didn't and she just like left it because she was like i think lenny knew and i think that she knew this is going to happen um in 2002 a roma group which like the roma romani people are like the gypsy people of that area um and she in 2002 a roma group sued her for denying the extermination of the Romani and she was forced to apologize because she's going to have like tons of lawsuits about how involved or not she was. She's a hundred years old

during this during this one and she loses and she says quote I regret that Sinti and Roma had to suffer during the period of national socialism. It is known today that many of them were murdered in concentration camps just like not an apology. Right. You know. Um so Tifland is in constant production, and she's doing more work for the Nazis, and the stuff she made was obviously being financed by the Reich. Like, she pretends that she didn't know that. She's the only person in Germany not to know that. She's like, oh, where do you think the National Film Association gets his money from in Nazi Germany, from the government, which is Nazis? And she's not stupid, you know? So if she's like, oh, I had no idea that was being funded by Nazis, like, no,

I don't believe you. So the next thing she does is the Olympic. which is the 1936 Olympic movie, which is also really groundbreaking for film. And I feel like, did you ever watch any clips? I mean, it was a long time ago. I saw clips. But yeah, but like, you know,

those Jesse Owens jumping clips was cool. I mean, like pretty much any World War II documentary, you've seen Olympia as part of it. Yeah, exactly. And like a lot of it, she was like the first, one of the first people to put cameras on rails to like move them along. And a lot of it is like stuff that is, you know, really still used

in sports photography and stuff. So like, that was happening. and it won more Venice Film Festival Awards and you know people really like enjoyed enjoyed that film as well but it was also very much Nazi propaganda which because we've we've seen that I mean know that she went to America for like a trip she went right before Crystal Noct which is the night that like they destroyed all the Jewish businesses in in Germany and while she was in America I guess so she had a meeting with. Ford. Henry Ford. Henry Ford. And also Walt Disney. So he showed her

Fantasia. So I think the Walt Disney one is like a work meeting. Yeah. Because you're on the same business. Henry Ford was like, what's up?

What's up? Yeah, exactly. So in 1939, she was back in Germany. She was a war correspondent. There is a photo that I want to put a pin in about her of her being

upset. at this time so there's something she's in poland i saw this yeah yeah so okay so i want to put a pin in that photo because in in poland there is a massacre where a bunch of jews are killed and that photo was like she reacts to seeing their bodies and she looks very upset um part of the what happened before that is she was filming something and there were people in this in the shot and she said get rid of the jews and they like so they took them and killed them so she's saying that she didn't know they were jewish and she didn't know that was going to happen. And in this picture where she looks really upset.

So put a pin in that. I won't come back to it later. So in 1940, when Hitler stormed Paris, she sent him a telegram that was, quote, with indescribable joy, deeply moved and filled with burning gratitude, we share with you, my feurer, you're in Germany's greatest victory,

entry of German troops into Paris. You exceed anything human imagination has a power to conceive, achieving deeds without parallel in the history of mankind, how can we ever thank you? Like, you don't have to be that. It's a little over the top.

Yeah, it's a lot. So Grobel's also probably hated her because she was spending so much of the money, of the money on her films and on her war correspondence and all the things that she was doing. Hitler said, oh, Grubel said,

it's impossible to work with this wild woman because she was, like, exhausting to him. At some point, she does have a personal life, brother dies at the oaths front she gets married and divorced she's a lot of lovers you know like like you'd expect from someone like this um she so when the war so the war ends she's like not there like with hitler and gribles like in the bunker at the very very end um did you ever watch a downfall a downfall's great it's so good i was thinking i think everything about it all week because like

the parts were like eva brown is like having the party you know while berlin is like burning Was it Goble Grubel's wife that killed the kids? Yeah. That part, that was like the most insane. I talked about before. I just was like, I know that Frau Grubles is a bad person, but holy shit, you know. Yeah, it's like next level. Yeah.

So, so she wasn't there when they all, when they all killed themselves and all of them died. So she was arrested. So she was with friends, like other, I think like an old, an old boyfriend and his wife. she was in their apartments and when the war ended the wife said get out of her you nazi bitch like she couldn't fucking wait to say that yeah she was holding on to that one for a minute yeah she had thought that for years i was just very excited to say you know get out of here um she ended up being arrested by a an american named bud schulberg and budd is the person who wrote on the waterfront and won an academy award for that he was a chemica famous american

director and writer um but he was in the navy and he arrested her and he said quote she gave me the usual song and dance. She said, of course, you know, I'm really so misunderstood. I'm not political. You're like, you can't not be political. She said over and over again that she had no idea. She was in different types of prison camps from 1945 to 1948 and eventually on house arrest. So she was like waiting to stand trial for her films. She was tried four times for her Nazi sympathies, but was never charged. So she was never accused of anything officially under the law. She would win over 50 libel cases. against her, which to me shows that she's, like, smart and, like, knows the law and knows

those semantics. Yeah, that's what I was going to, there's this category of, like, humans I'm learning, unfortunately, I'm learning more and more about, which is, like, they just know exactly which way to go when it comes to legal stuff to avoid certain pitfalls. And they just succeed off how cunning and stink like they are. Yeah, exactly. So she said later that her biggest regret in life was meeting Hitler. She said, quote, it was the biggest catastrophe of my life until the day I die, people will keep saying Lenny is a Nazi, and I'll keep saying, but what did she do?

You know, like, her films weren't enough to get her in jail. She's like, I didn't do anything wrong, you know, when her films were just, obviously, this, like, propaganda machine. So she obviously lives for a very long time. She keeps making movies. Time for the Will is going to be banned in Germany. It might still be banned. Like you still, you can watch it obviously for a very long time. she re-edits it for release elsewhere.

So I think even like, I don't know what to, you can probably see both versions, but there's a version that's like less Nazi and one that is more Nazi. And even like the fact that she was able to do that shows that she knew it. You know what I mean? I think she owns the rights to it

or state owns the rights to it. Yeah. Probably. She traveled to Africa and she made a photography book about the Nuba tribe in Sudan. So she had photos of them. like naked like doing very similar to triumph to Olympia but it was with Africans and you know she was accused in that of like the still continuing the fascist aesthetic of like the you know the the the perfect body that court sort of thing so it was at the best it was exploitative she photographed people over the world like Mick Jagger Sigfried and Roy obviously like she knew them because I mean I say that I say that just because I feel like all German people knew Sycfrey and Roy personally um let's not we're not not Nazis. No, but I wonder if their parents were. Probably. Probably, actually.

Well, I mean, also, when you say, like, Michael Schumacher, remember, you were like, what were his parents during the, doing during the four days? It's like, oh, because there was a, yeah, because what it was, like, there was literally one of the most famous people in the world, and there's nothing about his parents. Exactly. You're like, they can't be good. Exactly. So, she was a guest of honor at the 1970s, six, six. Olympics in Montreal. She also made some films underwater that you can see. So she filmed a coral and stuff underwater. She had a partner who was like her lover and her cameraman. He was 40 years younger than her. They met when she was 60 and he was 20 and they spent a long time together. So the film that she wrote, one critic called them a screensaver, which maybe laugh because it kind of looks like a screensaver. But it's like underwater things. She also lied about her age to be able to do this scuba die. So she said she was like in her 80s and she said that she was younger. She could get the certification.

And at some point, someone in where in Latham's quarterly, I don't know what that is, but a writer said that her deep sea diving offered her an escape, which was, quote, a metaphor for the flight from responsibility since the piece, the past ceases to exist for a little while under the silence of the ocean, you know, so it's like, she didn't happen. So it's 1993. I cannot believe she's still alive. there's a film about her called The Wonderful Horrible Life of Lenny Riefichdahl that I mentioned

and there's a director his name is Mueller he agrees to do a documentary about her but a lot of people are mad at him like a lot of people turn this down she definitely tried to make films under a pseudonym and other directors like they didn't want to work with her obviously you know and so finally this guy Mueller does make this documentary about her

and he ends up being a three hour long documentary but while they're filming it she has like moments of like terrible anger like if things aren't perfect she like yelled at everyone just like go back to her dressing room to calm down and there we can assume that like she was like that a lot really you know nazia temper tantrums yes exactly exactly later she goes back to sudan so when she's like 99 years old she goes back to sudan to meet with the people that she had met the first time she went. So it was like 40 years later. And I want to pull that pin out of that picture of her crying when she said that she saw those bodies from 1939. Because when she's back

in Sudan, she's with another director who is filming her reuniting with this Nuba tribe of people. And a lot of the people aren't the same people that were there when she was there because it's been 40 years. So she finally finds like an old member of the tribe. And she sees them and she's like, I remember them. And then she starts crying. and she's like, I remember all of this, and she, like, gets really excited and, like, does these things. And she looks, and the director was not filming that.

And she throws a tantrum, and then she does it again. She does the crying again. She does all of the emotions again. And, like, she's 99 years old, but she's, like, sharp enough to do that, you know? Damn. Which makes me not believe her other stuff. Yeah.

Even this. So, so, so, so this is crazy. After that, they had to leave Sudan. Obviously, because Sudan's in the middle of a war constantly, and they had to leave Sudan. in a hurry and a helicopter and the helicopter got shot down. She was in a helicopter crash at the age of 99 and she survived. Like, the devil works hard sometimes.

Yeah, no kidding. So she had some broken ribs, but like she didn't die. She was on morphine for the rest of her life, but I mean, she's 99 years old. You can have morphine every day of 99. Yeah, I'm definitely going to start chain smoking cigarettes and doing heroin when I'm 99 years old. 100%. 100%. We'll do it together.

Yeah. So she dies just after what her. her 101st birthday on September 8th, 2003, in Germany. After her death, there's another doc that came out last year called Riefenstall that I haven't been able to see. It's only in German. I couldn't find it, but I do want to see that. Jody Foster was supposed to play her in a film. She was writing and directing in the 90s, and Lenny was like, no, it should be Sharon Stone.

But that movie didn't pan out, unfortunately. So I think the last thing that I have to say is a quote from film journalist Sandra Smith from The Independent. And she said, quote, opinions will be divided between those who see her as a young, talented, and ambitious woman caught up in the tide of events which she did not fully understand. And those who believe her to be cold and opportunist propagandist in a Nazi by association, which is where I land. Yeah. I mean, I can see why if you are in the in-group and it's your decade to shine, you're like, I'll sacrifice by morals, 10 years of morals for 100,1 years of, I don't know, that sweet Nazi money? Yeah. Oh, no, I'm sure she also had like gold hidden somewhere, you know.

Yeah, probably ripped out of people's teeth or mouths. Yeah, exactly. Are we going to cover any women that aren't horrible? Yes, I have a really good one next week. I do. I have two, Helen Keller was not horrible, and I have two other. Okay, fine. I have two, I have one.

I have another World War II story next week that is great that I bet you haven't heard. So I'm excited. All right. Yeah. Moving forward to it. Yeah. Sweet. Well, thanks for sharing.

Fun that we both covered Nazis this time. Yeah. Look at us. That rarely happens, but luckily we don't overlap beyond that. sweet anything else Taylor I do I have something from Nadine she was she said she was yelling at us out loud while she's listening to us because of course Helen Keller knew socialism if she died in 1968 the Russian Chinese and Cuban revolutions had all happened by then and it was well into the Cold War so I feel like we said that she maybe didn't hadn't seen socialism but she did and also she said but Mark Twain probably didn't because he died in 1910 so thank you Nadine for back into that. And then also, I have terrible news from Morgan. She sent me a voice message.

You know how I said Matt Groening is the founder of the Simpsons? Did you say that? I thought you said he's like a writer or something, but it may he said he was a founder. Founder writer. That's not the word that we're looking at. So it's spelled, oh my God, why? I can't go on the internet anymore.

It's not working. I can't type. Oh, this is the worst. Matt Groening Spell G-R-O-E-N-I-N-G But it's pronounced Matt greening

I thought it was graining Either way, it should be groaning Because it's the O over the thing And she said Gaining or what did you say? Graining Either way

It's not the way it's written I know I also told you that This woman's name is not Lenny And you're like I'm pretty sure You love It is I just listen to a whole audio book about her

It is Lenny okay all right well I mean the people can have the name spelled the same and pronounce differently that is probably probably true is this the horrible news you're speaking of that you learned that his name is not broaning yeah okay thank you for clarifying that nadine thank you that was Morgan thank you Morgan sorry

yeah so that's it that's my news but thank you everyone for engaging and emailing us again if you want a free sticker send me your email or mailing address, doomed to fail pod at gmail.com. If you email mail you'll you back. If you want to send it, if you want us to eventually send it via email, just write to us and let us know and we can come and put like an NFT for

Doom to Fail and we can send it to you digitally to your wallet. I have no idea I'd do any of these things, and I don't know what most of the words that I said mean. NFT is just like a screenshot that costs a million dollars for some reason. So we can do a screenshot over a sticker whenever you want. Those are free. I think it's technically just a money laundering apparatus.

a vehicle but i think so too i think so too um yeah so well taylor thank you for sharing um again right to us is doing to philpotta g1.com falls on the socials please sell your friends your family partners whatever you got going on uh tell them about us so we can grow expand and become unbelievably wealthy and rich and successful and famous perfect perfect pitch thanks Thank you, everyone.