At Hitler's Picnic - Madeleine Johnson

In 1945, an American GI picked 112 glass slides from the wreckage of the Nazi party headquarters in Wetzlar Germany. They turned out to be an amateur slideshow of the 1934 Nazi party rally at Nuremberg, the world’s most famous propaganda event and icon of totalitarianism, from Hollywood’s The Lion King to North Korea’s Hermit Kingdom. At Hitler’s Picnic shows people experiencing the real rally, not the glamor fest captured by Leni Riefenstahl's camera in Triumph of the Will. The images and essays of At Hitler’s Picnic uncover what lies behind the images, including the logistical lessons applied to the Third Reich’s invasions and deportations, the now-forgotten party officials, “Little Hitlers”, whose rank and file really ran the Third Reich. It also illustrates the symbolic power and changing role of Nuremberg itself; from ideological heart of the Third Reich to the altar for expiating its crimes in the famous trials.