The Making of a Bavarian Candidate : Hitler's Boyfriend

The Making of a Bavarian Candidate : Der Sieg des Glaubens (The Victory of Faith) (1933) from Spike EP on Vimeo.

"Der Sieg des Glaubens (English: Victory of Faith) (1933) is the first propaganda film directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Her film recounts the Fifth Party Rally of the Nazi Party, which occurred in Nuremberg from 30 August to 3 September 1933. The film is of great historic interest because it shows Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm on close and intimate terms, before Röhm was shot on the orders of Hitler on the Night of the Long Knives in July 1934. All known copies of the film were destroyed on Hitler's orders, and it was considered lost until a copy turned up in the 1990s in the UK.

The film includes Ernst Röhm, head of the Sturmabteilung and, at the time, the second most powerful man within the Nazi party. In less than a year, in June/July 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives, Röhm and many of his lieutenants were executed under Hitler's orders. Hitler personally roused Röhm from his bed at his lakeside hotel when he arrested him for alleged treason (a trumped up charge prepared by Himmler and Heydrich). 

[NOT TRUE : Heydrich may have procured the charges, but The Coup was at the instigation of the Army, the Reichswer, who demanded the purge of the radical SA Left, Hilter's boyfriend Rohm and the SA homosexual leadership clique] 

"I need you"

Hitler's personal appeal to Ernst Rohem over the telephone, 1931.

Rohem returned from his five-year self-imposed exile in Bolivia to help save Hitler and the rapidly collapsing NSDAP by reorganising and fully integrating the SA under party leadership and discipline for the first time since the Munich Putsch.

All references to Röhm were ordered to be erased from German history, which included the destruction of all known copies of this film. 

The film Triumph des Willens was produced to replace it and follows a similar script which is evident when one sees both films side by side. For example, the city of Nuremberg scenes—down to the shot of a cat that is included in the city driving sequence in both films. There are panning shots across the roofs of the old town, showing the city awakening before the rally starts in earnest. The camera angles and editing that made Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens a ground-breaking film are already demonstrated in Der Sieg des Glaubens. Furthermore, Herbert Windt reused much of the musical score for this film in "Triumph des Willens", which he also scored.