Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.

In the fifties a group of men attempted to ascend the highest peak on earth. In the same year, as the first ascent of Mount Everest succeeded, the German climber Hermann Buhl single-handedly managed to make the first successful ascent of Nanga Parbat. Cameraman Hans Ertl joined the expedition which took place under the toughest conditions and with his camera created a stunning documentary.

In the fifties a group of men attempted to ascend the highest peak on earth. In the same year, as the first ascent of Mount Everest succeeded, the German climber Hermann Buhl single-handedly managed to make the first successful ascent of Nanga Parbat. Cameraman Hans Ertl joined the expedition which took place under the toughest conditions and with his camera created a stunning documentary.

The armed forces of the Third Reich, particularly the German army, are presented as an efficient system of bodies and machines at the seventh Nazi Party Rally that occurred in Nuremberg in 1935.

"Faith and Beauty" - The BDM-Werk Glaube und Schönheit (German for BDM Faith and Beauty Society) was founded in 1938 to serve as a tie-in between the work of the League of German Girls (BDM) and that of the National Socialist Women's League. Membership was voluntary and open to girls aged 17 to 21. A Nazi propaganda film.

"Götterdämmerung 1945: The last 10 weeks of the Third Reich" - from the battle of the Ardennes till the end. Die Deutsche Wochenschau (The German Weekly Review) was the title of the unified newsreel series released in the cinemas of Nazi Germany from 1940 until the end of World War II.

Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.