This documentary shows how Hitler wanted to be seen

It was a historic evening, Tuesday night. Not because S10 sang through the semifinals of the Eurovision Song Contest, because that’s what the bookmakers had predicted. (They also already know that she will finish ninth in the final.) Well, because on NPO2, it was first about the Delta Works that were completed 25 years ago on NPO2. Our eternal struggle against the water to – after news hour – to go a little further back in the century with The power of the imagepart two of a triptych about the role of photography and film in the ‘making of’ Adolf Hitler.

“It rains every day, I can’t see a single hand in front of my eyes”, sang S10 in her song ‘The depth’, and that gray veil always covers the Delta Works as far as I’m concerned. Gray skies, a lot of grey, gray water, asphalt in between. Could also be a distorted image. In my memory, the big brothers used to be allowed to go with father in the car on their birthday to look at the Hollandse IJsselkering, or the Oosterscheldekering, or I knew a lot about what those things were called or what they were for at all. Apparently it was a boy thing, fine, never mind.

That image has been slightly adjusted, especially after presenter Pieter Jan Hagens overcame his fear of heights and climbed the storm surge barrier at the IJssel via the outside stairs, and from there – “Like this” – had a view of the Netherlands that would have been guaranteed to have flooded in 1953, if Arie Evegroen hadn’t been there. On the night of February 1, 1953, when the sea took over Zeeland and West Brabant, a similar disaster threatened South Holland. There was already a fifteen-meter hole in the dike, there was a threat of collapse, until Evegroen smashed his eighteen-meter barge into the dike and closed the gap.

Hitler in civilian suit

In the first part of The power of the image we saw how between 1921 and 1932 Adolf Hitler is busy becoming Adolf Hilter, future Fuhrer. In front of photographer Heinrich Hoffmann’s Leica camera, he practices poses, hand gestures, the right gaze. Erik Somers and René Kok, image specialists at the NIOD (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation), made a visual biography of Hitler’s becoming. They show how Hitler wanted to be seen: as in the portrait photo from 1923. Dressed in a civilian suit with his self-invented swastika on the lapel, tight center part in the hair, the rehearsed, stern look. But the photo of him leaning against a tree, dressed in lederhosen and white knee-high socks, was rejected and banned by Hitler – he was said to be embarrassed for his spindly legs.

Images of Hitler ended up on postcards, matchboxes, decals, picture books, and in the first reading books for German schoolchildren. We see him overcome his fear of flying by flying to five German cities during the presidential election of 1932, an idea of ​​Joseph Goebbels, his later minister of propaganda. Heinrich Hoffmann, the only photographer allowed to come near him, portrays Hitler mainly as an ordinary person during this period: on the telephone, reading the newspaper, having a picnic.

In part two, Hitler continues to guard his image as an Insta influencer. The photo of him waving to the crowd from the window of the Reich Chancellery? Looks silly, so a balcony is being built on the building and then a new one kanzlei† Television is initially considered unsuitable as a propaganda medium, such a small box for such a great statesman. It has to be a cinema film, and of course the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl comes into the picture, on never-before-seen footage from 2001, in which she says she regrets ever meeting Hitler and that she regrets her famous film. Triumph of the Will†

Next week part three, about the war years. The terror increases, the Führer purposely disappears from view.