Archival Possession

I am forever baffled by people who claim to understand politics, yet have never seen Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens (AKA Triumph of the Will in the USA).

It's understandable that people don't want to/can't see this documentary (it's banned in Germany) of a 1934 Nazi rally at Nuremberg, (featuring Adolf Hitler himself)...but any serious student of history or self-made political analyst cannot IMHO say that they fully understand the powerful nature of political speech without ever having seen this movie (or, God-forbid, having experienced Hitler's Germany--or some other dictatorship--first-hand).

It's genuinely scary stuff, so I'm not recommending it for all audiences. But if you ever wondered why grandpa yells at the TV when Fox News comes on, you owe it to yourself to understand the dark nature of political propaganda embodied in Triumph des Willens.