German American Bund Joy Through Sports advertisement poster

Poster depicting Leni Riefenstahl ascending a mountain slope on skis, to promote the German American Bund’s “Joy Through Sports” program. The German American Bund was an organization of ethnic Germans living in the United States that expressed an admiration of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930’s, prior to US involvement in WWII. The Bund was founded to promote Nazism and US policies for Germany’s benefit. They organized demonstrations, maintained youth camps to instill Nazi ideals in children, and published magazines, brochures and other propaganda. Nazi German ideology placed great importance on the health and physical fitness of “Aryan” citizens. To facilitate this position, the regime sponsored sporting events and athletic activities through Nazi youth groups and the “Strength through Joy” program. As the poster says, the Bund’s “Joy Through Sports” program also propagated physical fitness ideals, and used the image of Leni Reifenstahl skiing to take advantage of an existing German tradition of outdoor recreation. The image of Leni skiing was originally taken by Hungarian-Jewish photographer, Martin Munkácsi, around 1931. The image was later featured on the February 17, 1936, cover of “Time” magazine and was likely already familiar to American audiences. Leni Riefenstahl was a German actress, filmmaker, and photographer. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, she starred in several mountaineering films that featured skiing, and the image was likely taken during production of one of the films. After viewing the 1932 film, “The Blue Light,” which Leni wrote and directed, Adolf Hitler had her direct several propaganda films, and the two had a friendly relationship.