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Still, while her documentaries continue to be studied in some film schools, Ms. Riefenstahl remained trapped in the shadow of her association with Hitler. Her repeated attempts to find financing for a new film always ended in failure, while public screenings of her movies and exhibitions of her photographs invariably prompted protests. As recently as last year, she was briefly investigated in Germany for purported race-hatred crimes.

She nonetheless worked hard to shed her image as the Nazi regime's most persuasive propagandist. After the war, she spent 20 years in relative isolation, living in her mother's apartment in Munich. Then, in the late 1960's, perhaps out of frustration, she reinvented herself as a photographer and, within a decade, she had made her name in a new visual art form.

A tiny woman of great physical courage and fierce determination, she next took up scuba diving, claiming to be only 51 - when she was actually 20 years older - in order to obtain a diving license. Two collections of her underwater photographs, "Coral Gardens" and "Wonders Under Water," were published in the United States and she continued diving in the Maldives until she was in her late 90's.

Last year, to coincide with her 100th birthday, she released her first movie in almost half a century, a 45-minute documentary of marine life called "Impressions Under Water."

But it was her photography that stirred most controversy. Inspired by George Rodger's famous image of a muscular Nuba wrestler carried on the shoulders of another fighter, she made several trips to southern Sudan to photograph the Nuba. She worked alone at first, then later with Horst Kettner, 42 years her junior, who became her companion and lived with her until her death. (In March 2000, while making a return visit to the Nuba, the 97-year-old Ms. Riefenstahl was severely injured in a helicopter accident in Sudan. She was flown back to a hospital in Munich.)

Her first Sudan book, "Last of the Nuba," published in the United States in 1974, won her recognition as a photographer and to some extent rehabilitated her as an artist. But while even in Germany it became acceptable to praise Ms. Riefenstahl as the most important female movie director ever, both her role in celebrating the Third Reich and what the critic Susan Sontag described as the "fascist esthetics" of her work also came under new scrutiny.

Writing in The New York Review of Books in 1975, Ms. Sontag said there was a common "esthetic" running through what she called Ms. Riefenstahl's "triptych of fascist visuals" - her early work as an actress in Arnold Fanck's "mountain films," her two principal documentaries and her photographs of the Nuba.

"The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets," Ms. Sontag wrote. "Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, `virile' posing."

In the early 1990's, when Ms. Riefenstahl was more than 90, she once again found herself at the center of heated debate when she was the subject of a three-hour documentary, "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl," by the German filmmaker Ray Müller. Coincidentally, she also published her own 669-page autobiography, "Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir."

In the book, she was able to give her version of her life. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, John Simon said the memoir did not contain "a single unspellbinding page." He raised the question about the veracity of her accounts of everything from her private meetings with Hitler to her life with the Nuba. But he concluded, "The book must, in the main, be true; it is far too weird for fiction."

In the documentary, while Mr. Müller allowed her to talk at fascinating length about her filmmaking techniques, he also questioned her memory, notably her claim to have had few dealings with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister. At the end of the documentary, Mr. Müller also tried to provoke her into admitting guilt for her past.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked, clearly surprised. "Where is my guilt? I can regret. I can regret that I made the party film, `Triumph of the Will,' in 1934. But I cannot regret that I lived in that time. No anti-Semitic word has ever crossed my lips. I was never anti-Semitic. I did not join the party. So where then is my guilt? You tell me. I have thrown no atomic bombs. I have never betrayed anyone. What am I guilty of?"

It was evidently a well-rehearsed response. In an interview with The New York Times last year, she said: "I didn't do any harm to anyone. What have I ever done? I never intended any harm to anyone."

Certainly, in her final years, she never shied from the limelight.

In 1997, when a Hamburg gallery held the first exhibition of her work in postwar Germany, Ms. Riefenstahl agreed to be interviewed by major German news weeklies, even though she knew much of the questioning would be hostile.

That same year, ignoring protests, she traveled to Los Angeles to receive a lifetime achievement award from Cinecon, a group that restores old movies. In 2001 she visited St. Petersburg, where her films were shown in a documentary festival.

Whether out of vanity or naïveté, Ms. Riefenstahl may well have believed that her artistic independence was never compromised, that she did not "sell" her talents to the Nazis who financed "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia." Yet, shaped by the profound romanticism of 19th-century German culture, her monumental vision of beauty fitted perfectly into the National Socialist ideology.

Born into a comfortable Berlin home on Aug. 22, 1902, Helene Berta Amalie Riefenstahl grew up loving nature and the outdoor life. Her mother encouraged her artistic flair, and although her father, a businessman, was opposed to her working on the stage, she began dancing in an Isadora Duncan-like free style at the age of 16 and soon found work - and considerable recognition - in Berlin theaters.

In 1924, her life changed direction. Recovering from an injury at 22, Ms. Riefenstahl was profoundly affected by seeing Fanck's movie, "Mountain of Destiny," and promptly sought out the director. Entranced by the striking young dancer, Fanck cast her in his next seven mountain films, among them "The Holy Mountain," "The White Hell of Piz Palu" and "S O S Iceberg."

These films gave her the image of a romantic heroine in the Wagnerian cast, in harmony with nature and bent on fighting evil. Her often dangerous roles - she climbed rock faces barefoot and was once almost swept away by an avalanche provoked by Fanck - also showed her to be fearless. In 1932, she directed her first movie, "The Blue Light," another mountain film, in which she appeared as a warm-hearted peasant girl. (The names of her Jewish co-writer, Bela Balázs, and the film's Jewish producer, Harry Sokal, were removed from the credits when "The Blue Light" was reissued in 1938.)

It was also around this time, a year before Hitler's rise to power, that she first heard the Nazi leader speak at a rally. "I heard his voice: `Fellow Germans'," she recalled in her autobiography. "That very same instant I had an almost apocalyptic vision that I was never able to forget. It seemed as if the earth's surface were spreading out before 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. I felt paralyzed."

She subsequently wrote to Hitler, noting that "I must confess that I was so impressed by you and by the enthusiasm of the spectators that I would like to meet you personally." Her popularity as an actress made the request seem reasonable; Hitler's appreciation of her role in "The Blue Light" made the encounter possible.

In the years that followed, she met frequently with the Nazi leader. She always stridently denied that they were lovers although, recalling one meeting, she later wrote, "That evening I felt that Hitler desired me as a woman." At their first meeting in 1932, though, she said she was most struck by his informality and she quoted him as telling her, "Once we come to power, you must make my films."

In her autobiography, she said she told him that she could not make films on commission. Yet, the next year, with Hitler now Chancellor, she made "Victory of the Faith," a documentary about a Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg. She was not happy with the film and the following year she tried again, this time with ample time, money and equipment. The result was "Triumph of the Will."

The film, which took almost two years to edit from 250 miles of raw footage, included such innovative techniques as moving cameras, including one on a tiny elevator attached to a flagpole behind the speaker's podium that provided sweeping panoramic views; the use of telephoto lenses to create a foreshortening effect (for example, when filming a parade of Nazi flags); frequent close-ups of wide-eyed party faithful, and heroic poses of Hitler shot from well below eye-level. The film also used "real sound" but was not accompanied by a commentary.

The film won Ms. Riefenstahl assorted German prizes and, although she again pledged to make no more party films, she then made an 18-minute documentary, "Day of Freedom: Our Army," about the Wehrmacht in 1935. Soon afterward, she was commissioned by the German Olympic Committee to record the 1936 Berlin Olympics. To the end of her life she insisted that "Olympia" was not an official film, but ample evidence exists to suggest it was indirectly financed by Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry.

Still, she made extraordinary use of the 170-member team of cameramen and technicians that she assembled. To evoke the early Greek Olympics in the first part of the documentary, "Festival of the Nations," she filmed near-naked athletes in assorted heroic poses. During the training period, she also filmed close-ups of oarsmen, marathon runners and swimmers that she edited into the final version. When the games began, she had to cover 136 events because, she recalled, "we never knew when a world record would be broken."

And, once again, both her filming and editing techniques broke new ground. To capture the drama of the pole vault and long-jump events, she had holes dug beside the sandpit where the athletes landed.

In the high-diving event, which dominated the second part of the film, "Festival of Beauty," she used four cameras, including one underwater, to capture the movement of divers from all angles. Then, in the editing room, she turned the divers into graceful birds.

"Olympia" was not blatantly propagandistic. Notably, it showed Jesse Owens' moments of victory, while Hitler was seen for only 15 seconds on the single occasion he visited the Olympic stadium. Although the film was widely praised, its reception in 1938 was muted by Europe's gradual slide toward war. She was also met with hostility when she took the film to the United States in November 1938.

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Ms. Riefenstahl went to the front as a war correspondent, but she claimed that she soon left in disgust at Wehrmacht brutalities. Yet the next year, when Germany occupied France, she sent a telegram to Hitler congratulating him on seizing Paris. "Everyone thought the war was over," she later explained, "and in that spirit I sent the cable to Hitler."

During the war, she continued to see Hitler sporadically but turned her attention back to filmmaking. Several projects fell through, but in 1944 she was able to complete filming of "Tiefland," or "Lowlands," an adaptation of the Eugene d'Albert operetta in which she also played the role of a Spanish Gypsy dancer. The film was shot in the Tyrol, and its extras included Gypsies interned in a nearby concentration camp.

After the war, Ms. Riefenstahl insisted she had not known that the Gypsies were being detained before their deportation to Nazi death camps. However, when in April 2002 she repeated the claim that none of the Gypsies had died, a German Gypsy Association, Rom, started legal action against her, arguing that at least half the extras were later killed.

On her 100th birthday, the Frankfurt prosecutor's office opened an investigation into charges that she had denied the Holocaust, but the case was dropped two months later for lack of evidence and because of her advanced age.

Ms. Riefenstahl said she saw Hitler for the last time in March 1944 when she visited him in Kitzbuhel, Austria, to introduce her new husband, an army officer called Peter Jacob. She later wrote that Hitler had aged considerably and his hands trembled, but "he still cast the same magical spell as before."

Ms. Riefenstahl's only marriage lasted little longer than her numerous passionate affairs during her time as an actress and filmmaker. At the end of the war, she was detained for almost four years for "de-Nazification," first by the American authorities and then by French forces. She was found to be a Nazi "sympathizer," but she was not banned from working and was finally able to release "Tiefland" in 1954. But her movie career was over.

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Leni Riefenstahl, Filmmaker and Nazi Propagandist, Dies at 101

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Still, while her documentaries continue to be studied in some film schools, Ms. Riefenstahl remained trapped in the shadow of her association with Hitler. Her repeated attempts to find financing for a new film always ended in failure, while public screenings of her movies and exhibitions of her photographs invariably prompted protests.

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A night at the garden

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Q&A with Filmmaker Marshall Curry

Q: How did you discover this event?
A: A friend of mine told me about it last year, and I couldn't believe that I'd never heard of it. When I found out it had been filmed, I asked an archival researcher, Rich Remsberg, to see what he could find. It turned out that short clips had been used in history documentaries before, but no one seemed to have collected together all of the scraps of footage - there was some at the National Archives, some at UCLA's archive, some at other places. So he gathered it, and I edited it together into a short narrative. When Charlottesville happened, it began to feel urgent. So I sent it over to Laura Poitras and Charlotte Cook at Field of Vision and said, "Have you ever heard of this event? Would you be interested in supporting the film?" And they jumped on board.

Q: What struck you about the footage?
A: The first thing that struck me was that an event like this could happen in the heart of New York City, a city that was diverse, modern, and progressive even in 1939. The second thing that struck me was the way these American Nazis used the symbols of America to sell an ideology that a few years later hundreds of thousands of Americans would die fighting against.

It really illustrated that the tactics of demagogues have been the same throughout the ages. They attack the press, using sarcasm and humor. They tell their followers that they are the true Americans (or Germans or Spartans or...). And they encourage their followers to "take their country back" from whatever minority group has ruined it.

Q: Why do you think that most Americans have never heard of this group or this event?
A: The footage is so powerful, it seems amazing that it isn't a stock part of every high school history class. But I think the rally has slipped out of our collective memory in part because it's scary and embarrassing. It tells a story about our country that we'd prefer to forget. We'd like to think that when Nazism rose up, all Americans were instantly appalled. But while the vast majority of Americans were appalled by the Nazis, there was also a significant group of Americans who were sympathetic to their white supremacist, anti-Semitic message. When you see 20,000 Americans gathering in Madison Square Garden, you can be sure that many times that were passively supportive.

In a part of Fritz Kuhn's speech that isn't in the film, he applauds Father Coughlin, whose radio shows praising Hitler and Mussolini reached audiences of 30 million Americans. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh expressed anti-Semitic beliefs. And press magnate William Randolph Hearst declared, "Whenever you hear a prominent American called a fascist, you can usually make up your mind that the man is simply a loyal citizen who stands for Americanism." (In a small ironic twist, we licensed some of the Bund footage from the Hearst collection at UCLA.)

These were ideas that, if not universally accepted, were at least considered legitimate points of view. But two years after this rally, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the U.S. And at that point this sort of philosophy became unacceptable. When the Nazis began killing American soldiers, we started erasing the fact that any Americans had ever shared their philosophy.

In the end, America pulled away from the cliff, but this rally is a reminder that things didn't have to work out that way. If Roosevelt weren't President, if Japan hadn't attacked, is it possible we would have skated through without joining the war? And if Nazis hadn't killed American soldiers, is it possible that their philosophy wouldn't have become so taboo here?

Q: Who was the guy who ran out on stage during the rally?
A: He was a 26-year-old plumber's helper from Brooklyn named Isadore Greenbaum. When he ran on stage to protest, he was beaten up and had his pants ripped off as he was thrown from the stage. He was also arrested for disorderly conduct and fined $25.

There was a debate at the time over whether the Bund should be allowed to have a rally, which - like so many things about the event - seems eerily contemporary. Greenbaum explained to the judge the day after the rally, "I went down to the Garden without any intention of interrupting. But being that they talked so much against my religion and there was so much persecution I lost my head, and I felt it was my duty to talk." The Magistrate asked him, "Don't you realize that innocent people might have been killed?" And Greenbaum replied, "Do you realize that plenty of Jewish people might be killed with their persecution up there?" ( New York Times, 2/22/39).

But in The New York Times, the American Jewish Committee argued that although the Bund was "completely anti-American and anti-Democratic... because we believe that the basic rights of free speech and free assembly must never be tampered with in the United States, we are opposed to any action to prevent the Bund from airing its views." Mayor LaGuardia, for his part, ridiculed the event as an "exhibition of international cooties," and said he believed in exposing cooties to the sunlight. Here is a terrific article on Greenbaum from the Washington Post.

Q: What happened to this group after this rally?
A: The German American Bund, who held the rally, had a significant presence in the 1930s, with youth camps and training camps in New Jersey, upstate New York, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and a huge march down East 86 th Street in Manhattan. But their mainstream appeal was reduced by their leaders' German accents and culture.

As Halford E. Luccock famously said, "When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled 'made in Germany'; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism.'" The group's leader Fritz Kuhn was eventually arrested for embezzling Bund funds and sent to prison and stripped of his citizenship. After the war, he was deported to West Germany where he died a few years later. The Bund disbanded soon after the start of World War II, but the people who had supported it remained.

Q: How did you decide on the editing approach?
A: At first I thought I'd make a traditional documentary - with an historian explaining the background of the group. But when I started cutting the footage together, I realized there was real power in just watching it unfold, without explanation. When most people watch it, at first they are puzzled: "What is this?" They see George Washington and American flags and hear the Pledge of Allegiance (notably, before the phrase "Under God" was added in 1954), but then they see swastikas and people giving the Nazi salute, and it's really unsettling. So I decided to keep it pure and cinematic and unmediated - as if you are there, watching, and wrestling with what you are seeing. I wanted it to be more provocative than didactic - an icy splash of history tossed into the discussion we are having about white supremacy right now.

Q: What do you want the audience to take away from the film?
A: The film doesn't have narration or interviews to clearly underline the takeaways, but I think most audiences will find lots to chew on. To me, the most striking and upsetting part of the film is not the anti-Semitism of the main speaker or even the violence of his storm-troopers. What bothers me more is the reaction of the crowd. Twenty-thousand New Yorkers who loved their kids and were probably nice to their neighbors, came home from work that day, dressed up in suits and skirts, and went out to cheer and laugh and sing as a speaker dehumanized people who would be murdered by the millions in the next few years.

This point is less an indictment of bad things that Americans have done in the past than it is a cautionary tale about the bad things that we might do in the future. When the protester is being beaten up there's a little boy in the crowd who I zoomed on in the edit. You can see him rub his hands together, doing an excited little dance, unable to contain the giddy excitement that comes from being part of a mob. And when the protester is finally thrown off stage, there's a long slow pan across the crowd that is laughing, clapping, cheering, like they're at a World Wrestling Federation match.

We'd like to believe that there are sharp lines between good people and bad people. But I think most humans have dark passions inside us, waiting to be stirred up by a demagogue who is funny and mean, who can convince us that decency is for the weak, that democracy is naïve, and that kindness and respect for others are just ridiculous political correctness. Events like this should remind us not to be complacent - that the things we care about have to be nurtured and defended regularly - because even seemingly good people have the potential to do hideous things.

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Q&A with Filmmaker Marshall Curry Q: How did you discover this event? A: A friend of mine told me about it last year, and I couldn't believe that I'd never heard of it. When I found out it had been filmed, I asked an archival researcher, Rich Remsberg, to see what he could find.

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Marty Glickman speaking about his experiences

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Marty Glickman speaking about his experiences

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Jewish Athletes — Marty Glickman & Sam Stoller

A controversial move at the Games was the benching of two American Jewish runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. Both had trained for the 4x100-meter relay, but on the day before the event, they were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, the team's two fastest sprinters. Various reasons were given for the change. The coaches claimed they needed their fastest runners to win the race. Glickman has said that Coach Dean Cromwell and Avery Brundage were motivated by antisemitism and the desire to spare the Führer the embarrassing sight of two American Jews on the winning podium. Stoller did not believe antisemitism was involved, but the 21-year-old described the incident in his diary as the "most humiliating episode" in his life.

—USHMM #14545A/UPI/Bettmann/CORBIS

—USHMM #21725/Courtesy of Marty Glickman

Marty Glickman speaking about his experiences

Transcript:

﻿In the entire history of the modern Olympic Games, now going into its 100th year, no fit American track and field performer has ever not competed in the Olympic Games except for Sam Stoller and me - the only 2 Jews on the 1936 team.

I was always aware of the fact that I am a Jew, never unaware of it, under virtually all circumstances. Even in the high school competitions, and certainly at college and for the Olympic team, I wanted to show that a Jew could do just as well as any other individual no matter what his race, creed, or color, and perhaps even better.

The Olympic stadium itself is a very impressive place. It was particularly impressive then, filled with 120,000 people. When Hitler walked into the Stadium, stands would rise, and you'd hear it in unison, "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," all together, this huge sound reverberating through the stadium.

Everyone seemed to be in uniform. As for banners and flags, they were all over the place, dominated by the swastika. The swastika was all over. On virtually every other banner we saw, there was a swastika. But this was 1936, this was before we really got to know what the swastika truly meant.

There was antisemitism in Germany. I knew that. And there was antisemitism in America. In New York City, I was also aware of the fact that there were certain places I was not welcome. You went into a hotel, for example, and you'd see a small sign where you registered which read "Restricted clientele," which meant, in effect, no Jews or Blacks allowed.

The event I was supposed to run, the 400-meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400-meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.

We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18-year-old kid and I said "Coach, you can't hide world-class sprinters." At which point, Jesse spoke up and said "Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it," said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said "You'll do as you're told." And in those days, Black athletes did as they were told, and Jesse was quiet after that.

Watching the final the following day, I see Metcalfe passing runners down the back stretch, he ran the second leg, and [I thought] "that should be me out there. That should be me. That's me out there." I as an 18-year-old, just out of my freshman year, I vowed that come 1940 I'd win it all. I'd win the 100, the 200, I'd run on the relay. I was going to be 22 in 1940. I was a good athlete, I knew that, and 4 years hence I was going to be out there again. Of course, 1940 never came. There was a war on. 1944 never came.

Transcript:

﻿In the entire history of the modern Olympic Games, now going into its 100th year, no fit American track and field performer has ever not competed in the Olympic Games except for Sam Stoller and me - the only 2 Jews on the 1936 team.

I was always aware of the fact that I am a Jew, never unaware of it, under virtually all circumstances. Even in the high school competitions, and certainly at college and for the Olympic team, I wanted to show that a Jew could do just as well as any other individual no matter what his race, creed, or color, and perhaps even better.

The Olympic stadium itself is a very impressive place. It was particularly impressive then, filled with 120,000 people. When Hitler walked into the Stadium, stands would rise, and you'd hear it in unison, "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," all together, this huge sound reverberating through the stadium.

Everyone seemed to be in uniform. As for banners and flags, they were all over the place, dominated by the swastika. The swastika was all over. On virtually every other banner we saw, there was a swastika. But this was 1936, this was before we really got to know what the swastika truly meant.

There was antisemitism in Germany. I knew that. And there was antisemitism in America. In New York City, I was also aware of the fact that there were certain places I was not welcome. You went into a hotel, for example, and you'd see a small sign where you registered which read "Restricted clientele," which meant, in effect, no Jews or Blacks allowed.

The event I was supposed to run, the 400-meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400-meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.

We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18-year-old kid and I said "Coach, you can't hide world-class sprinters." At which point, Jesse spoke up and said "Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it," said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said "You'll do as you're told." And in those days, Black athletes did as they were told, and Jesse was quiet after that.

Watching the final the following day, I see Metcalfe passing runners down the back stretch, he ran the second leg, and [I thought] "that should be me out there. That should be me. That's me out there." I as an 18-year-old, just out of my freshman year, I vowed that come 1940 I'd win it all. I'd win the 100, the 200, I'd run on the relay. I was going to be 22 in 1940. I was a good athlete, I knew that, and 4 years hence I was going to be out there again. Of course, 1940 never came. There was a war on. 1944 never came.

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The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936 | Jewish Athletes - Marty Glickman & Sam Stoller

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Jewish Athletes - Marty Glickman & Sam Stoller A controversial move at the Games was the benching of two American Jewish runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. Both had trained for the 4x100-meter relay, but on the day before the event, they were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, the team's two fastest sprinters.

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The signing of the treaty of Versailles [Via]
Millions perished and countless cities razed to ground and mankind witnessed the war and conflict in a design that was previously unknown to humanity, the First World War changed the way people perceived war and death. There are still conflicting theories as to what actually triggered the war and what could have prevented this greatest tragedy in human history, but there are no two opinions about the fact that WWI paved the way for another equally devastating Second World War in just a couple of decades.

Historians suggest that although the circumstances that led to the First World War were monumentally ambiguous due to the involvement of almost all the Empires of the worlds, however the way it was ended was pretty much controllable.

The treaty of Versailles that officially ended the First World War, brought celebrations and jubilation across Allied Europe but wreaked psychological havoc on the defeated nations. The most prominent nation that was humiliated to the core according to some historians was Germany. The famously known 'clause of guilt' article 231 of the treaty, brought shame and humiliation to the Germans by forcing Germany to accept the full responsibility of initiating the war. World leaders feared that Germany could regain its military might and economic stability in no less than a decade and could potentially start another world war. To counter this fear or paranoia, world leaders put huge war debts on Germany along with strict restriction on the number of troops and acquisition of weapons.

It was not the so called 'Final Solution' or call for the mythical 'Third Reich' that gave Nazi party the edge and boost in German politics, rather it was this humiliation and disgust brought on German people by the treaty of Versailles that led to the rise of Nazi party.

Hitler championed the restoration of German honor and glory, something that massively resonated with the common Germans. It was pretty obvious that Germany was not solely responsible for all the death and destruction during the First World War, but it was singled out and punished rather harshly to make a point. But this decision proved to be a monumental mistake on part of the world leaders and led to another war with much more gruesome consequences for the future of humanity, the Business Insider reports.

It took Germany 92 years to pay back the war debt imposed on her by the world leaders. Modern Germany is clearly leading the European Union with an upright stature anxd a visible dominance. It is hard to believe that less than a hundred years ago this nation was humiliated to the core and many intellectuals thought that Germans could never stand up on their feet for centuries, clearly they were wrong.

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Treaty of Versailles ended World War I only to trigger WWII

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The signing of the treaty of Versailles [Via] Millions perished and countless cities razed to ground and mankind witnessed the war and conflict in a design that was previously unknown to humanity, the First World War changed the way people perceived war and death.

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Larry Snyder

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The head track coach at Ohio State University from 1932 until 1965, Lawrence "Larry" Snyder coached some of the greatest track athletes in history, including Hall of Famers Jesse Owens, Dave Albritton, Glenn Davis and Mal Whitfield. Snyder was a pilot instructor in World War I and did some stunt flying in the early 1920s before enrolling at Ohio State.

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Leni Riefenstahl: Olympia - Festival of Nations (1936)

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Yes, the true story behind the Race movie reveals that in addition to setting or tying national records in the long jump and the 100- and 200-yard dashes at East Technical High School in Cleveland, Owens was also a standout in college at Ohio State University. There, he became known as "The Buckeye Bullet." While competing at the 1935 Big 10 Championships, he broke world records in the long jump, the 220-yard dash, the 220-yard low hurdles, and tied a previous record in the 100-yard dash. As a junior, he won all 42 events he competed in, including four events at the NCAA Championships, four at the Big 10 Championships, and three at the Olympic Trials. -Cleveland.com

The Race movie true story confirms that Jesse Owens (left) was a standout athlete in high school and college. Actor Stephan James (right) portrays Owens in the 2016 movie.

Did Jesse Owens really pick cotton as a boy?

Yes. Born in Oakville Alabama on September 12, 1913 to a sharecropper father, Jesse Owens was picking a hundred pounds of cotton a day by age seven, helping his family put food on the table. While fact-checking the Race movie, we learned that when Jesse was 9 years old, his family took part in the Great Migration, which saw 1.5 million African Americans bid farewell to the segregated South in search of more opportunities and a better life in the North. The Owens family headed to Ohio. -Biography.com

How did James Cleveland Owens get the nickname "Jesse"?

After James Cleveland Owens' family moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was 9 years old, a new teacher gave him the nickname Jesse. His Southern accent caused her to misinterpret him when he said "J.C.", which was his family's nickname for him. -Cleveland.com

Did Coach Larry Snyder really allow black athletes to run for him?

Yes. At a time when the majority of the country still didn't permit black athletes to participate in university sports, Ohio State's Larry Snyder (portrayed by Jason Sudeikis) allowed black athletes to run for him. By comparison, Ohio State's football team didn't allow black athletes to participate (a locker room scene in the movie shows a football player telling Owens and teammate Dave Albritton that they have to wait to shower until the football team is done). Snyder's decision not only helped black athletes like Owens find success, it also proved beneficial to his own career as well. It paved the way for more opportunities for Snyder, including coaching athletes who together won a total of eight Olympic gold medals and set 14 world records. Snyder was eventually inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame. Like in the film, Larry Snyder taught Owens how to block out the crowd and keep his focus on the race. -HuffingtonPost.com

Left: The real Jesse Owens and Coach Larry Snyder pose during Owen's college years at Ohio State. Right: Jason Sudeikis and Stephan James portray Snyder and Owens in the Race movie.

Did Jesse Owens really cheat on Ruth Solomon?

Yes. Jesse cheated on Ruth, with whom he shared a daughter at the time. As in the Race movie, the two eventually reconciled and were married on July 5, 1935. -RollingStone.com

Did the U.S. Olympic Committee want to pull out of the 1936 Games in Berlin?

Yes. In the years prior to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the Nazi Party had threatened to ban ethnicities from participating in the Games, especially Jewish athletes. After a number of countries threatened to boycott the Games over Germany's anti-Semitism, Hitler relented and agreed to let ethnicities participate. Yet, he did criticize the U.S. for including black athletes on its Olympic roster. When the Nazi regime got wind that the International Olympic Committee delegates were privately meeting to discuss whether to change their decision to hold the Games in Berlin, the regime promised that Jewish athletes would be permitted to compete on German Olympic teams. The U.S. Olympic Committee publicly accepted the invitation to go to the Games in September of 1934.

Did the NAACP really request that Owens boycott the 1936 Olympics in Berlin?

Yes. In researching the Race true story, we learned that Jesse Owens had pressure from both sides. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wanted him to boycott the Games in order to send a message to the world regarding Adolf Hitler's policies toward people of color. Others felt that Owens emerging victorious at the Games would send an even louder message. Of course, the latter would only be true if Owens dominated. Fortunately, he did. Owens became the most successful athlete at the Games, crushing Hitler's views on Aryan supremacy. -TIME.com

The real Jesse Owens (left) was asked by the NAACP to boycott the 1936 Games in Berlin, believing it was the best way to take a stand against Hitler's racism. Owens proved them wrong.

Did the U.S. Olympic Team really take a ship overseas to the Games?

Yes. Fact-checking the Jesse Owens Race movie confirmed that they indeed took a ship. The year was 1936 and trans-Atlantic flights were still uncommon (commercial aviation would not see a surge until after WWII, fueled in part by the planes manufactured during the war). Crossing the Atlantic Ocean by ship was still the norm at that point. Like in the Race movie, all but the black athletes got first class cabins on the S.S. Manhattan. -HuffingtonPost.com

Did Owens really wear German-made track shoes to win gold in Berlin?

Yes. The Jesse Owens true story confirms that, like in the movie, he wore track shoes that were handmade by Adi Dassler, the founder of Adidas.

Did Jesse Owens really become friends with German athlete Luz Long?

Yes. The Race true story reveals that during Jesse Owens' and Luz Long's intense long jump battle (a moment depicted in the movie) the two became friends. Long is indeed noted for giving Owens advice during the qualifying round. After fouling on his first two attempts, Owens was nearly out of the competition when Long advised him to jump from a few inches back to play it safe. The German government certainly didn't approve of their bond, as it contradicted the government's desire for Germany to disassociate from other races that they viewed were inferior (or eradicate them altogether). "It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler," recalled Owens. "You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment." Long died fighting for the German Army in WWII on July 14, 1943. Owens never saw him again after the Olympics. -ESPN.com

The real Luz Long and Jesse Owens (bottom) indeed became friends at the Olympics. David Kross and Stephan James portray Long and Owens in the Race movie (top).

Did the German crowd in the stadium really cheer for Jesse Owens?

Yes. "Whenever Jesse Owens appeared, the stadium erupted. There was absolute excitement," says David Clay Large, author of The Nazi Games. "They were ready and willing to see a performance of absolute supremacy, and they loved that, and they began shouting his name, 'Jesse! Jesse! Jesse!' as he began his preparations to compete." -Race Movie 'Who is Jesse' Featurette

Did Joseph Goebbels really persuade Avery Brundage to bench two Jewish athletes on the U.S. 4x100-meter relay team?

In the Race movie, American Jewish runners Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller are benched after German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat) threatens to expose his business deal with Olympic Committee member Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons). In real life, Brundage's construction company didn't get the contract to build a new German embassy in Washington until 1938, long after the Olympics were over (it was never built due to the war).

The two Jewish-American runners, Glickman and Stoller, were replaced by the team's two fastest sprinters, Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. A number of reasons were given for the switch. Marty Glickman believed that Avery Brundage and Coach Dean Cromwell were motivated by anti-Semitism (like in the movie), while Sam Stoller didn't think anti-Semitism was a factor. In the least, both men were deeply disappointed that they didn't get to participate. -United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

How many medals did Jesse Owens win at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games and in what events?

The real Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. He won gold in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, the long jump, and the 4-by-100 meter relay. He set three world records and tied another in under an hour of competing at the games. -TIME.com

Jesse Owens (left) became the most successful athlete at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

Which country won the most medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin?

During our investigation into the Jesse Owens true story, we learned that Germany, the host country, won the most medals at the Games, accumulating a total of 89. The United States came in second, winning 56 medals. However, the fact that Jesse Owens was the most successful athlete at the Games was a glaring contradiction to Hitler's views regarding Aryan supremacy. Of the United States 11 gold medals, six of them were won by black athletes ( four by Owens).

Did Hitler really storm out of the stadium after Owens won the 100-meter event?

While fact-checking Race, we learned that Hitler reportedly did leave the stadium after the 100-meter event, which Owens won. Whether he "stormed" out is debatable. Various press reports indicate that he congratulated Owens on the victory. We do know that Owens was never formally invited to meet Hitler. Owens stated himself that he wasn't invited to shake hands with the German dictator. -Biography.com

Long jump gold medalist Jesse Owens (top left) stands on the podium next to friend and silver medalist Luz Long of Germany. Actors David Kross and Stephan James recreate the moment for the movie (bottom).

Was Jesse Owens really snubbed by Adolf Hitler?

No, at least not according to various press outlets, which reported that Adolf Hitler gave Jesse Owens the Nazi salute when the two crossed paths. The Race movie chose to depict Hitler giving Owens the cold shoulder, which many people believed and is still debated. The movie's interpretation certainly makes for better drama. Owens himself has stated that it was actually President Franklin D. Roosevelt who slighted him. The U.S. President never acknowledged Owen's achievements in Berlin or invited him to the White House, when such an invitation was common for Olympic champions. "I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler," said Owens, "but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either." His achievements weren't formally recognized until 1976, when President Gerald Ford awarded him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. -HuffingtonPost.com

What happened to Jesse Owens following his success in Berlin?

In researching the Race true story, we learned that following his success at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the Amateur Athletic Union had arranged a post-Olympic tour of Europe for Owens to participate in. Owens found himself under financial strain while on the often unpredictable Olympic tour and instead decided to return home to his wife and try his luck in Hollywood. He hoped to capitalize on his fame much like Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller did after medaling in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics. Unlike Weissmuller, who found fame starring in the Tarzan movies, Owen's skin color undoubtedly affected his job prospects in a country that was still separated by segregation. He only managed to find limited success on the vaudeville circuit. The decision to try to capitalize on his triumphs as an athlete put him at odds with the athletic union, who stripped him of his amateur status.

"After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite," Owens commented, "but no one was going to offer me a job." -HistoryNet.com

With limited opportunities and a wife and three daughters to support, Owens did things like running against racehorses and working at gas stations. "What was I supposed to do?" Owens said later. "I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals." He staged a series of post-Olympic comebacks, some successful, some not. He eventually moved to Chicago and traveled the country as an inspirational speaker. He spent much of his spare time working with disadvantaged youth. Over the years, he wasn't untouched by controversy. At times, he was called an "Uncle Tom" for refusing to take a more disruptive stance against racism. However, in the end, Owens is held in no less esteem than fellow race pioneers like Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis. All took enormous strides against racism via defining moments that helped to encourage a change in the cultural landscape. -NYTimes.com

Minnie Ruth Solomon and Jesse Owens met in high school when he was 15 and she was 13. Their first daughter, Gloria, was born in 1932. Stephan James and Shanice Banton portray Jesse and Ruth in the movie (bottom).

Was Jesse Owen's family involved in the making of the Race movie?

Yes. Jesse Owens daughter, Marlene Owens Rankin, says that the family had final script approval and actually rejected certain scenes to make sure the film was accurate. "We were involved from the very beginning," Marlene told TMZ. "We had script approval, by our request, and we were even on location in Berlin for a little while. ... Our focus was to make sure history wasn't rewritten and that they stuck to the facts." She says that she understood that a bit of creative licensing was necessary.

Have any other feature-length movies been made about Jesse Owens?

No. Race is the first feature-length film to be made about Jesse Owens. A TV mini-series titled The Jesse Owens Story aired in 1984.

Jesse Owens Interviews & Related "Race" Movie Videos

Chase the Jesse Owens true story further by watching the interviews, documentaries, and other videos below.

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Race Movie vs True Story of Jesse Owens, Fact-Checking Race

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Yes, the true story behind the Race movie reveals that in addition to setting or tying national records in the long jump and the 100- and 200-yard dashes at East Technical High School in Cleveland, Owens was also a standout in college at Ohio State University. There, he became known as "The Buckeye Bullet."

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The German film director and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, who has died aged 101, will be remembered for two innovative, visually eloquent and lavishly funded documentaries, Triumph of the Will (1935) and the two-part Olympia (1938).

The former, a monumental, hypnotic account of the massive 1934 Nazi party rally in Nuremberg which glorified Nazi pageantry and deified Adolf Hitler, earned her a place in film history and the status of a post-war pariah.

She was the first female film director to attract international acclaim, but her career was curtailed by public, industry and official antipathy owing to her status as "Hitler's favourite film-maker".

Both Triumph of The Will and Olympia are permeated by Riefenstahl's intense feeling for the expressive power of bodies in motion, whether they be marching Nazis or high divers.

Born in Berlin, Riefenstahl achieved fame as a "free" dancer in the style of Isadora Duncan, touring Europe by the age of 22 and gaining employment with Max Reinhardt.

Her film ambitions were prompted by "father of the mountain film" Arnold Fanck's 1924 Mountain of Fate, starring the Tyrolean outdoors hero Luis Trencker. The "mountain film" genre's use of cinematic technique - filters, special film stock, slow motion - to endow magnificent natural scenery with dramatic stature - provided her with key elements of her towering visual style and fostered her technical skill.

She made contact with Trencker. He later became her lover and, in 1946, her antagonist when he published a fake intimate diary purportedly by Hitler's mistress Eva Braun. This claimed that Riefenstahl had also been Hitler's mistress- an allegation she furiously denied but which pursued her for life.

But it was Fanck, a geologist, adventurer and technical perfectionist, who became her film mentor, writing The Holy Mountain as her film debut. This film, opens with Riefenstahl's performance of a dance of the sea on a rocky outcrop in Heligoland amidst crashing waves. According to her memoirs, this was what made Hitler an admirer. It was later to prompt Siegfried Kracauer to discern, in its "idolatry of glaciers and rocks", a proto-Nazi irrationalism where modern viewers are likely to see only kitsch.

More mountain films followed including a starring role in the genre's finest and most successful entry, The White Hell of Piz Palü (1929), co-directed by Fanck and G W Pabst.

Fanck had surrounded himself with the best cameramen available - the Freiburg school, including Hans "The Snowflea" Schneeburger, another of Riefenstahl's lovers. Many of them would work for her after she began directing with The Blue Light in 1932.

Riefenstahl would frequently invoke The Blue Light as evidence of the non-political nature of her talent. A fairytale starring the director as an outcast young woman luring young men to their deaths with her secret cave of blue crystals in the Tyrolean mountains, it was co-written by the leftwing Jewish intellectual and theorist Béla Bàlazs. After the war, she would conceive of the outcast heroine's loss of her "magic cavern" as a metaphor for her own disenfranchisement as a film-maker.

Riefenstahl had the first of her numerous meetings with Hitler when she was summoned to a resort near Wilmershaven while she was en route to Greenland to star in Fanck's SOS Eisberg (1933), which was made simultaneously in an American version by Tay Garnett. She had, by her own account, been "mesmerised" by his oratory at a Nazi meeting at the Berlin Sportpalast some months earlier, prompting her to write an admiring letter requesting a meeting.

In 1933, when the Nazis had consolidated their grip on power with the March elections and begun their official anti-semitic campaigns with boycotts of Jewish businesses and the introduction of the Aryan clause, which banned Jews from working in the film industry, Hitler commissioned her to make Victory Of Faith, a record of the 1933 Nazi Party rally.

Rediscovered in the early 1980s, this precursor to Triumph Of The Will reveals a clumsiness, both in the construction of the film and in the Nazi's staging of the rally, highlighting the achievements of the later film.

In Triumph of the Will, feature-film techniques - including rhythmic montage to Herbert Windt's Wagnerian score - produce moments of extraordinary cinematic power. Its immediate purpose was to demonstrate a united monolithic Nazi party in the wake of Hitler's 1934 murder of Ernst Röhm and his SA streetfighters.

In its cinematic mastery, though, it renders the event and the film indivisible. It remains the most vivid proof of the German Marxist critic Walter Benjamin's contention that "fascism is the aestheticisation of politics". How much was later staged or reshot became a hot issue in debates about its value as a film or its status as either documentary or propaganda.

Riefenstahl suggested, somewhat naively, that its lack of a voiceover disqualified it from being propaganda, but when the historian Erwin Leiser intercut sequences from the film with harrowing concentration camp footage in his 1960 documentary Mein Kampf, she sued the producers over breach of copyright.

Her undoubted masterpiece, the two-part Olympia (Festival Of Nations/ Festival Of Beauty) was commissioned by the International Olympic Committee but funded by the Nazis to foster the image of a modern, powerful Germany abroad. With a vast budget, the greatest technicians of the day, state-of-the-art equipment, unprecedented access to the sporting events in the Berlin Olympia stadium and an artistic brief, Riefenstahl produced a lavish hymn to sporting prowess and physical beauty and strength.

Conceiving of the athletes in a prologue as classical divine messengers, Riefenstahl's mythologising imagery - at its most lucidly effective in the marathon and high-diving sections - extended, uncomfortably for the Nazi's racist ideology - to the great American black athlete Jesse Owens. Owens broke 11 Olympic records and the Nazi leader could neither bear to shake hands or be photographed with him.

After Riefenstahl had spent nearly two years editing 250 miles of raw footage, it was premiered with Hitler as guest of honour on his 49th birthday in 1938. Riefenstahl toured with Olympia, following its success at the Venice Biennale, throughout Europe then to the United States, where she was accompanied by, among others, her old friend Ernst Jaeger. He was ex-editor of the influential Film-Kurier and had lost this post when he had defied an order by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to divorce his Jewish wife.

They arrived in the US in the immediate aftermath of the November 1938 Kristallnacht, "the night of the broken glass" when Nazi youths murdered and brutalised Jews throughout Germany.

Riefenstahl was met with hostility - only Hal Roach and Walt Disney publicly received her. Jaeger stayed behind in the US to pen a series of articles for the Hollywood Tribune accusing her of having been not only a mistress to Hitler and Goebbels - with whom she professed to have a relationship of mutual hatred, although none of this appears in Goebbels' journals - but also to Hermann Goering. This character assassination was, for Riefenstahl, a taste of things to come.

During the war, Riefenstahl became, briefly, a war correspondent. She witnessed the massacre of Polish civilians by German soldiers in the town of Konskie and a German soldier's snapshot of her horrified reaction was later used in a counter-productive blackmail attempt.

Retreating to Spain to pick up an old project - the opera film Tiefland (Lowlands) - Riefenstahl devoted the rest of the war to this troubled project. It remained unfinished in 1945 when she was arrested at her chalet in Kitzbühel in the Tyrol by US soldiers, including the screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who had been involved in organising the pre-war Hollywood protests against her. Schulberg echoed Jaeger's condemnation, dubbing her contemptuously "the Nazi pin-up girl".

Riefenstahl had never been a Nazi party member and was cleared of active involvement by a de-Nazification tribunal, although, after three years house arrest, she was declared a Mitläufer or fellow traveller, which disbarred her from ever seeking public office.

Cherished film projects - notably her version of Penthesilia - were never completed, but Riefenstahl managed to rescue her mistreated Tiefland footage from the French authorities. Jean Cocteau much admired Tiefland, comparing its imagery to Breughel, and insisted it be shown at the 1954 Cannes film festival of which he was president.

In the postwar film world those interested in Riefenstahl's work divided into apologists or detractors. In 1960, the National Film Theatre invited Riefenstahl to give a lecture, its then controller Stanley Reed declaring that "Satan himself is welcome at the NFT if he makes good pictures" but the invitation was hurriedly withdrawn.

In the 1960s, Riefenstahl discovered Africa and reinvented herself as a still photographer. When her project about the slave trade, Black Freight, was stillborn, and after recovering from a serious car accident, she sought out the Nuba tribe in southern Sudan.

The Nuba were, in the 1960s, cut off from the outside world and they fascinated Riefenstahl with their athletic bodies and developed artistic practices: the Nuba consider their bodies the highest form of art, their faces a blank canvas for elaborate painted masks.

At the age of 60, Riefenstahl lived with the Nuba for six months and the relationship produced 3,000 metres of (unseen) film footage and two successful and accomplished books of photographs, The Last of The Nuba (1974), followed in 1976 by People of Kau. In the 1990s, she added Leni Riefenstahl's Africa and Vanishing Africa.

The Last of The Nuba occasioned Susan Sontag's famous 1974 essay Fascinating Fascism. This attacked Riefenstahl for a perceived continuity of her "fascist aesthetic"- of her obsession with strength, youth and beauty - across her career.

Riefenstahl photographed the ill-fated 1972 Munich Olympics for the Sunday Times as well as a spread featuring Mick and Bianca Jagger, but she remained a difficult figure for Germans. She was an unwelcome reminder of a past, which many, who continued to thrive in less visible sectors than the film industry (and less visibly within that industry), had disavowed.

Riefenstahl successfully took the filmmaker Nina Gladitz to court for suggesting in a documentary that she had promised the Gypsy extras from concentration camps who worked on Tiefland their freedom, when many later died in the camps. This was the most damaging post-war accusation against her.

A major revival of interest in Riefenstahl occurred in the early 1990s. International stars flocked to her 90th birthday party, Helmut Newton photographed her for Vanity Fair, her long-awaited 1987 memoirs were translated into English as The Sieve of Time, and Ray Müller's documentary TheWonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Rienstahl featured a lengthy, intensive interview with the defiantly unapologetic nonagenarian.

Despite taking refuge in underwater photography with her companion Horst Kettner (Riefenstahl, remarkably, took up diving in her 70s), she remained a magnet for controversy to the last. The first German commercial exhibition of her photographs in Hamburg in 1997 drew fierce protests as did a retrospective of her films at the Filmmuseum in Potsdam in 1998.

The final controversy occurred in 2000 when Riefenstahl revisited the Nuba. Since 1985, the tribe has been in armed struggle with the Arab-orientated Islamic government in Khartoum, which has been accused of conducting genocide. Riefenstahl agreed to visit only those areas controlled by the Sudanese government, thus attracting the criticism that she was acting as a figleaf for a repressive regime.

Interest in Leni Riefenstahl's life and works shows no sign of abating. Both Madonna and Jodie Foster had vied for the rights to Riefenstahl's memoirs since the early 1990s. Foster is now set to produce, direct and star in a Riefenstahl biopic.

One wonders what lessons the film will draw from a life, whose greatest achievements survive time's sieve by pre-empting the gigantism of the Hollywood megabuck movie, the mythic use of the camera in sports coverage and even the primacy of the "image" in politics. The films remain as a challenge to historians and cinephiles alike, posing difficult questions about the relationship between the 20th century's greatest tragedy and its most powerful art form.

· Leni (Hélène Bertha Amelia) Riefenstahl, film-maker, born August 22 1902; died September 8 2003
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The German film director and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, who has died aged 101, will be remembered for two innovative, visually eloquent and lavishly funded documentaries, Triumph of the Will (1935) and the two-part Olympia (1938).

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Jewish Athletes — Marty Glickman & Sam Stoller

A controversial move at the Games was the benching of two American Jewish runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. Both had trained for the 4x100-meter relay, but on the day before the event, they were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, the team's two fastest sprinters. Various reasons were given for the change. The coaches claimed they needed their fastest runners to win the race. Glickman has said that Coach Dean Cromwell and Avery Brundage were motivated by antisemitism and the desire to spare the Führer the embarrassing sight of two American Jews on the winning podium. Stoller did not believe antisemitism was involved, but the 21-year-old described the incident in his diary as the "most humiliating episode" in his life.

—USHMM #14545A/UPI/Bettmann/CORBIS

—USHMM #21725/Courtesy of Marty Glickman

Marty Glickman speaking about his experiences

Transcript:

﻿In the entire history of the modern Olympic Games, now going into its 100th year, no fit American track and field performer has ever not competed in the Olympic Games except for Sam Stoller and me - the only 2 Jews on the 1936 team.

I was always aware of the fact that I am a Jew, never unaware of it, under virtually all circumstances. Even in the high school competitions, and certainly at college and for the Olympic team, I wanted to show that a Jew could do just as well as any other individual no matter what his race, creed, or color, and perhaps even better.

The Olympic stadium itself is a very impressive place. It was particularly impressive then, filled with 120,000 people. When Hitler walked into the Stadium, stands would rise, and you'd hear it in unison, "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," all together, this huge sound reverberating through the stadium.

Everyone seemed to be in uniform. As for banners and flags, they were all over the place, dominated by the swastika. The swastika was all over. On virtually every other banner we saw, there was a swastika. But this was 1936, this was before we really got to know what the swastika truly meant.

There was antisemitism in Germany. I knew that. And there was antisemitism in America. In New York City, I was also aware of the fact that there were certain places I was not welcome. You went into a hotel, for example, and you'd see a small sign where you registered which read "Restricted clientele," which meant, in effect, no Jews or Blacks allowed.

The event I was supposed to run, the 400-meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400-meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.

We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18-year-old kid and I said "Coach, you can't hide world-class sprinters." At which point, Jesse spoke up and said "Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it," said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said "You'll do as you're told." And in those days, Black athletes did as they were told, and Jesse was quiet after that.

Watching the final the following day, I see Metcalfe passing runners down the back stretch, he ran the second leg, and [I thought] "that should be me out there. That should be me. That's me out there." I as an 18-year-old, just out of my freshman year, I vowed that come 1940 I'd win it all. I'd win the 100, the 200, I'd run on the relay. I was going to be 22 in 1940. I was a good athlete, I knew that, and 4 years hence I was going to be out there again. Of course, 1940 never came. There was a war on. 1944 never came.

Transcript:

﻿In the entire history of the modern Olympic Games, now going into its 100th year, no fit American track and field performer has ever not competed in the Olympic Games except for Sam Stoller and me - the only 2 Jews on the 1936 team.

I was always aware of the fact that I am a Jew, never unaware of it, under virtually all circumstances. Even in the high school competitions, and certainly at college and for the Olympic team, I wanted to show that a Jew could do just as well as any other individual no matter what his race, creed, or color, and perhaps even better.

The Olympic stadium itself is a very impressive place. It was particularly impressive then, filled with 120,000 people. When Hitler walked into the Stadium, stands would rise, and you'd hear it in unison, "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," all together, this huge sound reverberating through the stadium.

Everyone seemed to be in uniform. As for banners and flags, they were all over the place, dominated by the swastika. The swastika was all over. On virtually every other banner we saw, there was a swastika. But this was 1936, this was before we really got to know what the swastika truly meant.

There was antisemitism in Germany. I knew that. And there was antisemitism in America. In New York City, I was also aware of the fact that there were certain places I was not welcome. You went into a hotel, for example, and you'd see a small sign where you registered which read "Restricted clientele," which meant, in effect, no Jews or Blacks allowed.

The event I was supposed to run, the 400-meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400-meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.

We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18-year-old kid and I said "Coach, you can't hide world-class sprinters." At which point, Jesse spoke up and said "Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it," said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said "You'll do as you're told." And in those days, Black athletes did as they were told, and Jesse was quiet after that.

Watching the final the following day, I see Metcalfe passing runners down the back stretch, he ran the second leg, and [I thought] "that should be me out there. That should be me. That's me out there." I as an 18-year-old, just out of my freshman year, I vowed that come 1940 I'd win it all. I'd win the 100, the 200, I'd run on the relay. I was going to be 22 in 1940. I was a good athlete, I knew that, and 4 years hence I was going to be out there again. Of course, 1940 never came. There was a war on. 1944 never came.

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The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936 | Jewish Athletes - Marty Glickman & Sam Stoller

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Jewish Athletes - Marty Glickman & Sam Stoller A controversial move at the Games was the benching of two American Jewish runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. Both had trained for the 4x100-meter relay, but on the day before the event, they were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, the team's two fastest sprinters.

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Black U.S. Olympians Won In Nazi Germany Only To Be Overlooked At Home

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Black U.S. Olympians Won In Nazi Germany Only To Be Overlooked At Home

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Eighty years ago this month, the United States competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games in Nazi Germany, with 18 African-American athletes part of the U.S. squad.

Track star Jesse Owens, one of the greatest Olympians of all time, won four gold medals. What the 17 other African-American Olympians did in Berlin, though, has largely been forgotten - and so too has their rough return home to racial segregation.

"Determination! That's what it takes," one of the athletes, John Woodruff, said during a 1996 oral history interview for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "A lot of fire in the stomach!"

Woodruff won the gold medal in the 800-meter race - and he did it in Adolf Hitler's Germany.

"There was very definitely a special feeling in winning the gold medal and being a black man," Woodruff said. "We destroyed his master-race theory whenever we [started] winning those gold medals."

Cornelius Johnson won the top spot on the medal stand in the high jump. Dave Albritton won silver.

Another medalist was one of Jackie Robinson's older brothers, Mack, who won silver in the 200-meter dash. Future U.S. Rep. Ralph Metcalfe brought home two medals of his own - a silver in the 100 meters and a gold in the 4x100-meter relay.

In all, the 18 African-Americans, including Owens, won 14 medals - eight of them gold. That was a quarter of the 56 medals won by the entire U.S. team.

Unlike Woodruff and the other African-American medalists, though, two Jewish athletes on the U.S. team did not get a shot at winning any medals. Runners Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were benched at the last minute and replaced with Owens and Metcalfe in the men's 4x100-meter relay.

A similar move took place in 1932, when Tidye Pickett and Louise Stokes became the first black women to qualify for the U.S. team but were later replaced with white runners.

Pickett and Stokes were eager to finally compete four years later in Berlin. Pickett did run in the hurdles, but she broke her foot during a semifinal race. Stokes was replaced again with a white teammate.

"I think [Stokes] could've been the first black woman to bring home a gold medal for America," says Deborah Riley Draper, who wrote, directed and produced a new documentary called Olympic Pride, American Prejudice.

The film includes another story of disappointment: African-American boxer Howell King, who was sent home from Berlin by the U.S. boxing team manager.

Supposedly, the decision was because of "homesickness," but Draper says King suspected the manager wanted to replace him with a white boxer.

"Howell King himself said, 'I didn't quit! I took a 10-day boat to Berlin. Why would I quit and want to go all the way back to Detroit?' " Draper says.

All of the African-American athletes at the 1936 Olympics should be remembered, Draper says, not just Owens.

"It was easier to tell the story of one African-American because that's an anomaly," Draper says. "But 18, that's a lot for Jim Crow newspapers to want to report on."

The 18 were called " The Black Eagles" by The Pittsburgh Courier, an influential African-American newspaper. In Berlin, they lived in the racially integrated Olympic Village, which was a high point many would never experience again.

"They were Olympic athletes when they were on the medal stand," Draper says. "When they came back home to a segregated America, they came back to being Negroes."

Some entered academia. Others held elected office.

Many struggled to establish stable careers, including Robinson, the silver medalist. He once used his Olympic jacket to keep warm while working as a street sweeper.

Still, according to University of Mississippi historian Charles Ross, all the athletes represented a generation of pioneers who chiseled away at stereotypes.

"You have to have Jesse Owens and the other 17 African-Americans before you can have John Carlos, [Muhammad] Ali, George Foreman," Ross says.

Ross says the 18 African-American Olympians of 1936 understood that their dreams had to be limited. None of them were invited to the White House, or shook the hand of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Months after Owens returned home, he told a crowd, "The president didn't even send me a telegram."

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Black U.S. Olympians Won In Nazi Germany Only To Be Overlooked At Home

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Eighty years ago this month, the United States competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games in Nazi Germany, with 18 African-American athletes part of the U.S. squad. Track star Jesse Owens, one of the greatest Olympians of all time, won four gold medals.

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The history of the civil rights movement is seen mostly through images of the south. In North of Dixie, published by Getty, the historian Mark Speltz focuses on grassroots activists throughout the rest of the US to present a more detailed and complex view of the movement

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North of Dixie: civil rights photography beyond the south

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The history of the civil rights movement is seen mostly through images of the south. In North of Dixie, published by Getty, the historian Mark Speltz focuses on grassroots activists throughout the rest of the US to present a more detailed and complex view of the movement

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Obama rights historical racial wrong for olympic heroes

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Obama rights historical racial wrong for olympic heroes

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Obama also praised Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who were in attendance, for their silent protest at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. The athletes, who won gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter run, each raised a glove-covered fist on the winner's podium while the national anthem played, an act that resulted in their expulsion from the games. Obama said Thursday the controversial move "woke folks up and created greater opportunity for those that followed."

After the 1936 games, Owens gained national attention. The lives of the other athletes, largely forgotten to history, were the focus of Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, a documentary by Deborah Riley Draper released in July. "They were Olympic athletes when they were on the medal stand," Draper told NPR in an interview last month. "When they came back home to a segregated America, they came back to being Negroes."

John Woodruff, who won gold in the 800-meter run, recalled this experience in a 1996 interview published on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website. "It was very definitely a special feeling in winning the gold medal and being a black man. We destroyed his [Hitler's] master race theory, whenever we start winning those gold medals," Woodruff said. "So I was very proud of that achievement and I was very happy, for myself as an individual, for my race, and for my country."

But when he returned to the U.S., Woodruff was reminded of his own country's lack of acceptance of blacks:

After the Olympics, we had a track meet to run at Annapolis, at the Naval Academy. Now here I am, an Olympic champion, and they told the coach that I couldn't run. I couldn't come. So I had to stay home, because of discrimination. That let me know just what the situation was. Things hadn't changed. Things hadn't changed.

Owens later received White House recognition in 1976, when Gerald Ford presented the athlete with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award given to a civilian. Owens died in 1980. His granddaughter Marlene Dorch, who was among the relatives at the White House Thursday, told the AP Obama's recognition would make Owen "so happy."

In his praise for this year's Olympians, Obama began with gymnast Simone Biles, shot putter Michelle Carter, and swimmer Simone Manuel, all of whom are black.

"Imagine what it means for a young girl or a young boy who sees somebody who looks like them doing something and being the best at what they do," he said. "There's no kid in American who can't look at our Olympic team and see themselves somewhere."

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Marina Koren is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

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White House Finally Honors the African-American Athletes of the 1936 Olympics

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Obama also praised Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who were in attendance, for their silent protest at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. The athletes, who won gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter run, each raised a glove-covered fist on the winner's podium while the national anthem played, an act that resulted in their expulsion from the games.

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Stephan James stars as Jesse Owens in "Race." Credit Credit Focus Features

More than any other athlete of his era, Jesse Owens's image on film has determined his fate.

It all began with those few seconds of the 100-meter dash that Leni Riefenstahl enshrined in her film "Olympia, Part 1": the close-up on Owens's face, the white flare of the starting gun, Owens's lurch, and then his upright run past his competitors in 10.3 seconds, and the ever-so-close tight shot of a perturbed Hitler.

Commissioned by the Propaganda Ministry to film the 1936 Berlin games, Riefenstahl was set to showcase the triumph of German athletes as proof of Aryan physical and intellectual superiority over the rest of the world. But Owens, who earned gold in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, the long jump and the 4-by-100-meter relay, became the true star of Riefenstahl's film.

"She did a great job of capturing the essential qualities of his athleticism: speed and grace," Mark Dyreson, who wrote extensively about Owens in his book "Crafting Patriotism: America at the Olympic Games," said in an interview. "Thereafter, people might have beaten his records, but when you think about the world's fastest human, the image of Jesse Owens from 'Olympia' comes to mind. There, he became the iconic sprinter in the most beautiful way."

Since then, however, Owens's icon has endured several trials of its own. Depending on which footage you watch (and of course, in which era), he has been either race hero or race traitor; an American patriot or tax evader; evidence to legitimize racist stereotypes or, as depicted in the new biopic, "Race," starring Stephan James ("Selma"), progenitor of the highest standard that an African-American athlete, artist or even president can achieve today - black excellence.

By the end of the Berlin Olympics, Owens had become the ultimate symbol undermining Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. Seeking to reap the rewards of his heroism, Owens opted to try his luck in Hollywood rather than participate in a post-Olympic tour of Europe that the Amateur Athletic Union had arranged. But, unlike the swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, who medaled at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics and became famous for the Tarzan movies, Owens's job prospects were doubly limited.

"He did make a little bit of money on the vaudeville circuit," Mr. Dyreson said, "but there were no spots for that type of black leading man, like there were for Weissmuller, in the American imagination in the 1930s."

And, because of Owens's fallout with the athletic union, he was stripped of his amateur status. Limited by segregation and his set of skills, Owens also courted new controversies.

"He had a family to come home to, and he did everything he could do to support them," said Owens's granddaughter Gina Hemphill-Strachan. "I think that some of things that he did back then, like working at gas stations and running against racehorses, unfortunately were the only types of things available to him because of the era."

Indeed, said Kenneth Shropshire, a Wharton professor whose specialties include race, sports law and leadership, "no athlete was called an 'Uncle Tom' more than Jesse Owens." This stereotype was heightened when Owens, at the behest of Avery Brundage, president of the United States Olympic Committee in '36 and president of International Olympic Committee in '68, tried to discourage black athletes from protesting American racism at the Mexico City Games. Ignoring Owens's request, the sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith went on to create an Olympic iconography of their own at the medal ceremony: wearing black socks and gloves, they raised their fists in the black power salute.

"But, we will never understand the full story and the price that people like him, Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson, those of the 'greatest generation' paid for their little and big moments of integration," Mr. Shropshire concluded.

This is precisely the story that the 1984 mini-series "The Jesse Owens Story" tried to tell. Starting off with a confrontation between a much older Jesse Owens (Dorian Harewood) and a younger African-American lawyer (Georg Stanford Brown) who accuses Owens of being a race traitor, the film goes on to flesh out Owens's long biography: his Alabama birth, then adolescence in de facto segregation in Cleveland, his meteoric rise at Ohio State and Berlin, and his staging, successful or not, of a series of post-Olympics comebacks. A romantic and fully rehabilitated image of Owens emerged from this film, just in time for the Los Angeles Olympics, where Carl Lewis publicly acknowledged his debt to Owens as he sought to win his own medals.

But documentaries like Bud Greenspan's earlier "Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin" (filmed in 1964) and Laurens Grant's " Jesse Owens" (2012) for PBS's "American Experience" series have been the primary lens through which most Americans could learn about Owens. As a biopic, " Race, " directed by Stephen Hopkins and released in time for the 80th anniversary of the Berlin Games, has the potential for far greater reach, and therefore impact in our collective understanding of Owens for generations to come.

In addition to its portrayal of the complex geopolitics of those games, the movie fixes a spotlight on Owens's athletic discipline - his grit, grace, genius - as he pursues Olympic glory. Through its focused depiction on his triumph (in the face of second-class citizenship at home), the film offers us yet another Owens, one who pursued black excellence as a powerful counterpunch to Hitler's racist logic.

"There is a belief among some African-Americans that to defeat racism, they have to work harder, be smarter, be better," the poet Claudia Rankine wrote in her profile of Serena Williams for The New York Times Magazine in August. "Only after they give 150 percent will white Americans recognize black excellence for what it is."

Ms. Rankine added, "But of course, once recognized, black excellence is then supposed to perform with good manners and forgiveness in the face of any racist slights or attacks."

Black excellence as a status and strategy is double-edged. To challenge the racism of white segregationists and Aryan supremacists, Owens, and his fellow African-American athletes, including Ralph Metcalfe and Mack Robinson, had to dominate every event they entered. By winning, Owens ultimately proved that his participation in the Olympics contributed more to the cause of racial equality than had he boycotted the games, as the N.A.A.C.P. had proposed.

But with the tight focus on Owens's Berlin years in "Race," "you never really get a sense of how fleeting it all was," Mr. Shropshire noted.

That the Holocaust and World War II were right on the horizon, while Jim Crow legally reigned for almost 30 more years after Owens's Olympic victories, proves that one man or one moving image could not stop the tide of history.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section AR, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: How the Events Chased the Man. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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More than any other athlete of his era, Jesse Owens's image on film has determined his fate. It all began with those few seconds of the 100-meter dash that Leni Riefenstahl enshrined in her film "Olympia, Part 1": the close-up on Owens's face, the white flare of the starting gun, Owens's lurch, and then his upright run past his competitors in 10.3 seconds, and the ever-so-close tight shot of a perturbed Hitler.

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Lace your shoes tightly and stretch those calves, because Race is an endurance test. At 134 minutes, very few of them taken at a sprint, director Stephen Hopkins's telling of the Jesse Owens story goes in many circles before the African American track and field star can win those medals and score his PR win against the Nazis.

At first, everything's by the numbers. Young Jesse (Stephan James) arrives at Ohio State University in 1933 and is confronted with racial bigotry. His coach, Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis), senses great raw talent, and that if he focuses and works hard Owens will be unstoppable. Snyder isn't that warm and fuzzy, and Owens isn't too keen on his methods, but once they start winning races they create a bond. Their eyes are on a very specific prize: the 1936 Olympic Games in (record scratch) Berlin.

Cut to New York, where two walking, breathing essays are fighting one another. Jeremiah Mahoney (William Hurt) is one of the American Olympics delegates calling for boycotts. Have you listened to these Nazis? They're terrible! Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons) shrugs off Germany's racial issues. Rounding up Gypsies? Who cares! It's not our place to tell a sovereign nation what to do, and besides, when was the last time any of you nay-voters socialised with a Jew or a Negro?

This is a point Race makes early, often and, for the most part, well. The United States is happy to use Owens to stick it to Hitler, but he'll still have to use the servants' entrance when attending a fancy dinner back home. Race takes it a step too far, however, in pushing its equivalency between 20th-century US racism (which was and remains deadly; no one is denying that) and the dedicated, depraved genocide of Nazi Germany. We do not see anyone killed in this film, just the occasional arrest and signs that say "No dogs or Jews allowed". What we do see (on more than one occasion) is Owens, in Berlin, being treated with respect as the camera holds long enough for a "makes you think" moment. Granted, the extermination camps were still to come, but these faux revelations, in trying for nuance, come off tone deaf.

More sour notes arrive in scenes with two proverbial "good Germans". One is Owens' competitor in the long jump, Carl "Luz" Long, who famously advised him during their competition, and the woman who filmed this encounter of sportsmanship, Leni Riefenstahl. A fascinating figure deserving of her own biopic (and until that time, check out the enormous 1993 documentary, The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl), the brilliant film innovator is played with panache and excitement by Carice van Houten. She strides through the Olympic stadium with her army of 40 cameramen, defying direct orders from Joseph Goebbels. She'll shoot her documentary Olympia based on reality, not just what's good for the party.

It's a good performance, but you keep waiting for a reveal that never comes. Van Houten wears sharp men's clothing but may as well be wearing a halo. Hopkins has decided to draw a parallel between her drive for artistic perfection and Owens' athletic glory, but to dismiss all of Riefenstahl's moral culpability just because she was clever enough to dig a trench for a good camera angle is either an ethical breach or sheer lazy storytelling.

I'll give the producers of Race the benefit of the doubt and say it is the latter, as there is plenty of supporting evidence. (I mean, didn't you wince just reading this film's title?) The shoehorned love story is tedious, everything between Owens and Coach Snyder is rote and the central moral dilemma - the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 's request that Owens not participate - is forgotten right after it's introduced. When the devious Brundage makes a deal to keep US Jews off the relay team, Race's narrative inertia splits in two. Should Owens do the right thing and stick up for his teammates, or should he run one last time and win for everyone? The movie paints itself into a corner (that's what you get with real life, I suppose) but a hogwash pep talk from Snyder doesn't quite cut it when Owens decides to do the arguably selfish thing and nab another medal.

All of this is fascinating stuff, as are the biographical details you'll find about Owens less savoury side on his Wikipedia page, but not in this film. As far as cinematic excitement during the competitions, I'd put Creed or Rush or even McFarland USA ahead of this one. Race eventually crosses the expected finish line, but there are hurdles along the way that can't be overcome.

* Race is released in the US on 19 February
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Race review - Jesse Owens drama finishes out of the medals

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Lace your shoes tightly and stretch those calves, because Race is an endurance test. At 134 minutes, very few of them taken at a sprint, director Stephen Hopkins's telling of the Jesse Owens story goes in many circles before the African American track and field star can win those medals and score his PR win against the Nazis.