The key NAZI propaganda film was the 1935 masterpiece, titled "Triumph of the Will". But what exactly was "the Will" in that title?
FRIENDLY WARNING:
I am wanting this thread to touch on the issue of the basis of fascism in history. That topic has no consensus among historians, but I would be glad to hear your personal opinions on the matter. I have recently been finding enormously surprising connections between the philosophy of Hegel, and Schopenhauer's writings on freedom, and the idea in "general german culture" of a zeitgeist.
.^(This is a vast oversimplification for the sake of brevity), but German political philosophy apparently was steeped in some sort of idea that individual persons have no free will, but are actors in a larger historical movement, shaped and molded by a collective will.
In addition, this question may exceed history, and might be better asked to philosophers.
Your thoughts...?
The word is rooted in Nietzschean philosophy, namely his concept of "The Will to Power", which you can find summarized here, and very roughly is the drive to overcome and reach one's full potential.
Now, as to why the Nazi's would latch onto these ideas, we need to look to Nietzsche's sister. Whether Friedrich was an anti-semite, German nationalist, or would have approved of Nazism is a debated topic, but many experts (most notably Walter Kaufmann) will soundly state that his works were co-opted, and the Nazi interpretation is not a fair one. They will instead point to his sister, who (along with her husband) was a deeply avowed anti-Semite, German nationalist, and in her old age, Nazi supporter. After he decended into madness, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche became the master of his affairs, advanced her own views as being the proper understanding of his work, and in 1901, after he had died, used his note for an abandoned work to publish "The Will to Power", which she claimed to be his master work, the culmination of his philosophy. Never mind that he had actually abandoned the draft, and reworked it two dozen times after. To quote Kaufmann:
The two most common forms of the Nietzsche legend can thus be traced to his sister. [....] and by bringing to her interpretation of her brother's work the heritage of her late husband [a prominent anti-semite whose ideology Nietzsche has excoriated on many occasions], she prepared the way for the belief that Nietzsche was a proto-Nazi.
So thats the sum of it. The Triumph of the Will is a reference to the misunderstanding of Nietzschean philosophy, a nod to his concept of the "will to power", and the belief that the Nazis were accomplishing it.
I'll finish this with a brief quotation from Nietzsche, which is taken from his notes for a preface to one of the drafts of the Will to Power, and needless to say was not included by his sister.
That is is written in German is untimely, to say the least: I wish I had written it in French so that it might not appear to be a confirmation of the aspirations of the German Reich.
Sources
The Will to Power by Nietzsche, Trans. and Intro. by Walter Kaufmann
The Portable Nietzsche by Nietzsche, Trans. by Walter Kaufmann
Comment on translation issues. You might be worried that the German title lost something in translation to english.
Triumph des Willens
The word 'des' there is the genitive singular of the word 'the' in english. So the translation to "Triumph of the Will" is correct, and an incorrect translation would be "Triumph of Will". If that were the case, my question wouldn't make sense, as the title would refer to some purely political yearning that triumphed.