# Downfall (2005) and Triumph of the Will (1935) w/ George Dardess | Ep. 50

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Podcast: [Bang-Bang Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/bang-bang-podcast-7028254)
Published: 2025-11-08T18:39:17+00:00
Episode link: https://www.bangbangpod.com/p/downfall-2005-and-triumph-of-the
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/178366123/1e27de7ae301d678cacc3bd338d9caa8.mp3
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Duration seconds: 1251

## Resource

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.bangbangpod.com Van and Lyle are joined by the literary critic George Dardess to talk about Downfall (2004) and its grim mirror, Triumph of the Will (1935). Where Leni Riefenstahl turned the Nazi project into divine spectacle, an ecstatic choreography of power and obedience, Bernd Eichinger and Oliver Hirschbiegel stage its total collapse. The conversation moves from the bunker’s suffocating intimacy to the ruined streets of Berlin, tracing how Downfall strips away the mythic machinery of fascism and leaves only exhaustion, delusion, and death. They linger on the film’s most shattering scenes: Hitler’s tender affection for his dog Blondi, Eva Braun’s manic dances above the bombs, Magda Goebbels forcing cyanide into her children’s mouths, and the “Albert Speer myth” of the good technocrat who resists too late. In contrast to Triumph of the Will ’s mobilized masses (“You are not dead. You are Germany!”) Downfall exposes fascism’s inner logic from purity as self-destruction to discipline as despair. It’s not redemption or sympathy the film offers, but a study in the banality of evil, the smallness that remains when the spectacle ends. Further Reading George’s writings on the Slant Books website “Turning Hitler into Art?” by George Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary by Traudl Junge The Führer Bunker: The Complete Cycle by W.D. Snodgrass “ Fascinating Fascism ” by Susan Sontag The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt Behind the Scenes from the Episode Downfall Trailer

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