Leni Reifenstahl, "Hitler's filmmaker," remains one of the most controversial figures of the twentieth century. Susan Sontag, one of her severest critics, said that Triumph of the Will and Olympia, Leni's most noted films, "may be the two greatest documentaries ever made." Others see her story as an object lesson about opportunism: the story of an ambitious narcissist and unrepentant Nazi sympathizer whose glorification of Hitler and the Third Reich helped pave the way to the horrors of World Was II and the Holocaust. Bach lets the facts speak for themselves-including many newly uncovered-and the facts are rarely kind to Reifenstahl. We see Reifenstahl at the age 100 as someone who could face the cameras to announce that, as a member of Greenpeace, she mourned the fates of sea creatures that die in transport from their native habitats to the aquariums of the world, but who could not express remorse for the millions of Jews, gypsies, and others murdered by the Third Reich and the Fuhrer she elevated to myth. Even if she were still alive, with the publication of this books the armor of the lie would have protected her no longer.

Steve Bach is the author of two biographies, Dietrich: Life Times of Moss Hart as well as a best seller about his time in the movie business, Final Cut. He teaches at Columbia University and Bennington College.