A ‘Triumph of the Will’? Andrew Marton’s 'Der Dämon des Himalaya' and the National Socialist Need for Heroes

The article explores the appropriation of Andrew (Endré) Marton’s 1935 feature film Der Dämon des Himalaya (Demon of the Himalayas), producedduring Prof Dr Günter Oskar Dyhrenfurth’s Internationale Himalaya Expedition 1934, for National Socialist propagandapurposes in the context of the tragic 1934 German Nanga Parbat expedition. Specifically, it demonstrates – via a detailed analysis of the film’s genesis – the degree to which National Socialist sports and cultural officials would tolerate the work of an ‘un-German’ film production team in order to communicate the exemplary image of the new ‘heroic’ German mountaineer.