Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (96 page)

But the undisputed high point of the National Socialist calendar was the Nuremberg party rally in early September. Hundreds of thousands of functionaries, SA, SS and Labour Service men, Hitler Youth and League of German Girls members gathered each year in the ancient city of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation for the party’s “general roll call.” This painstakingly organised series of events bore hardly any resemblance to a traditional party conference. The rallies were not held to discuss controversial issues—which did not exist anyway in a party ruled by an infallible leader—but rather to glorify the regime and, in particular, the man who headed it. Contemporaries saw the rallies as “the epitome of the Third Reich’s glamour and power.”
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All means available were employed here to visually represent the movement’s capacity for mobilisation, dynamics and solidarity.

The Nazis had initially staged their 1927 and 1929 party rallies in Nuremberg, although the city fathers had not been particularly keen to host the event. For Hitler, the location offered the chance to portray himself as the reviver of the old German Empire in front of an appropriately Romantic, medieval backdrop. From 1930 to 1932, with the Nazis battling for power, no rallies were held, and the decision to revive the spectacle after Hitler became chancellor was taken relatively late. “Nuremberg rally decided,” noted Goebbels in late July 1933. “It will be really big.”
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Much of the four-day celebration seemed a bit improvised—not surprisingly given the lack of preparation time. SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm had a major place at Hitler’s side and accompanied him step for step at the ceremony honouring the dead in Luitpoldhain Park. The next year, after Röhm and his followers had been liquidated, the ceremony changed. The SA no longer enjoyed a central role. Along with the Labour Service, the Reichswehr took part in the rally for the first time, underscoring its status, guaranteed by Hitler, as “the nation’s sole bearer of arms.”
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With the 1934 Nuremberg rally, the event took on its permanent form, except for a few minor amendments made in the following years. The duration was extended from four to first seven and then eight days, and each day had a specific theme. The course of events was by now “so well rehearsed that it proceeds like military mobilisation,” Hess reported about the spectacle in 1937.
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It began with Hitler’s arrival in the city, either by specially chartered train or plane, and the trip to his hotel, the Deutscher Hof. William Shirer, who attended the 1934 rally, was initially unimpressed, writing: “He fumbled his cap with his left hand as he stood in his car acknowledging the delirious welcome with somewhat feeble salutes from his right arm.”
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In the afternoon, Hitler was received by Nuremberg’s mayor, Willy Liebel, in the main town hall ballroom. In 1938, this ceremony had a special note in the form of insignia and jewellery from the Holy Roman Empire that had been brought from Vienna to Nuremberg after the
Anschluss
.
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The first day of the rally concluded with a performance of Wagner’s
Meistersinger von Nürnberg
, usually conducted by the director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler. “A fantastic cast and a great performance,” noted Goebbels in September 1938. “Furtwängler is a musical genius. I sat right behind him and could observe him closely. What a man. The Führer, too, was boundless in his enthusiasm.”
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On the morning of the second day, from the balcony of the Deutscher Hof, which was constantly surrounded by curiosity-seekers, the Nazi leader inspected the Hitler Youth as they marched by with their flags. After that the party congress was opened in the Luitpoldhalle. Hitler and his vassals marched into the auditorium to the strains of the “Badenweiler March,” a Bavarian military march, composed in honour of Germany’s first victory over France in the First World War. One contemporary described the scene as follows: “The hall is decked out in white satin curtains, with the places for the guests of honour, the diplomatic corps, the orchestra and the choir decorated in deep red. A giant swastika surrounded by gold oak clusters on a black background dominates the space.”
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To music by Wagner, hundreds of standards, the “field banners of the movement,” were brought into the hall, first and foremost the “blood banner” from the failed November putsch. For Shirer, the whole ceremony had “something of the mysticism and religious fervor of an Easter or Christmas mass in a great Gothic cathedral.” After opening remarks by Rudolf Hess, who tried to outdo himself year after year in his hymns of praise for Hitler, and the subsequent ceremony in memory of the movement’s “blood witnesses,” Adolf Wagner—the Gauleiter of Munich-Upper Bavaria—read out the “Führer’s proclamation.” As Shirer noted, “Curiously, [he] has a voice and a manner of speaking so like Hitler’s that some of the correspondents who were listening back at the hotel thought it
was
Hitler.”
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The evening featured a “culture conference” in the opera house, which was introduced by Alfred Rosenberg and concluded with a speech by Hitler. As of 1937, this ceremony included the presentation of a “National Prize for Art and Science,” the Nazi Party’s answer to the embarrassing awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the writer Carl von Ossietzky, who was imprisoned in Esterwegen concentration camp.
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The third day began with a march of Labour Service men to the Zeppelin Field. “Standing there in the early-morning sunlight which sparkled on their shiny spades, 50,000 of them, with the first thousand bared above the waist, suddenly made the German spectators go mad with joy when, without warning, they broke into a perfect goose-step,” wrote Shirer, adding: “The goose-step has always seemed to me to be an outlandish exhibition of the human being in his most undignified and stupid state, but I felt for the first time this morning what an inner chord it strikes in the strange soul of the German people.”
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The high point of this event was a call-and-response from the choir, which ended with: “Let the work of our hands succeed / For every cut of the spade we take / Shall be a prayer for Germany.”
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After being addressed by Reich Labour Leader Konstantin Hierl and Hitler, the columns of workers marched through the city past the Deutscher Hof. The ceremony demanded stamina of both Hitler and the members of his entourage. “Four hours of marching,” Goebbels carped. “The sun beating down. Barely endurable.”
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In 1937, with the introduction of a “Day of Community,” the rhythm of marches and roll calls was interrupted by young women and men entertaining spectators at the Zeppelin Field with dances and athletic performances. In the evening, the Nazi political leaders marched by torchlight past the Deutscher Hof. “Watched from the Führer’s balcony,” Goebbels gushed. “A wonderful, colourful spectacle. All the Gaue led by the old Gauleiter.”
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The fifth day commenced with special meetings of the party congress. The main attraction was the march of the political directors onto the Zeppelin Field. Since 1936, this was held in the evening, and Albert Speer had come up with a special idea. The moment that Hitler’s arrival was announced, 130 spotlights positioned around the field were switched on. The beams of light reached up to eight kilometres into the night sky. “Now, in a heartbeat, the spotlights tear through the black sky beyond the ramparts,” an official report on the rally excitedly described the spectacle. “Blue cords of light ascend to the heights. They make their way together, join with one another and form a dome of fluid light above the people’s heads.”
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In his memoirs, Speer called the “dome of light” his loveliest creation, and indeed the clever installation made a lasting impression even on foreign spectators. The British ambassador, Nevile Henderson, compared it to being in the interior of a cathedral made of ice.
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To the sound of fanfares, Hitler, accompanied by Reich Organisational Director Robert Ley, strode through the broad centre aisle to the “Führer stage.” When illuminated, it looked like an oversized altar, and upon it the high priest of the movement celebrated his mass. The elevation of Hitler to a charismatic saint and an enlightened messiah was never as palpable as in the liturgy of this night-time “hour of consecration.” In 1936, Robert Ley called out: “We believe in Our Lord in heaven, who created us, who directs and protects us, and who sent you to us, my Führer, so that you could liberate Germany. That is what we believe, my Führer!”
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The sixth day belonged to the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls. More than 50,000 boys and girls gathered in the morning on the main arena of the old sports stadium to pay tribute to the Führer. “No sooner did the command ‘At ease’ come than a thunderous roar of tens of thousands of voices went up,” the official report from 1938 related. “Everyone was allowed to express what they felt. It was as though the air was vibrating.”
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Three years earlier, at the same site, Hitler had proclaimed his ideals for Germany’s youth: “fast as greyhounds, tough as leather and hard as Krupp-forged steel.”
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Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach swore an oath of loyalty to the Führer on behalf of the entire Hitler Youth, and after a short address by Hitler, Hess administered the oaths to be taken by all young people who aspired to join the party. The ceremony concluded with Hitler, Schirach and Hess walking through the ranks before driving in a car through the stadium, bathing in the applause from the stands.

On the morning of the seventh day, the SA and SS turned out for roll call in the expansive Luitpold Arena. “Heil, my men!” was Hitler’s greeting. “Heil, my Führer!” came the answer from 100,000 throats.
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This ceremony was rather problematic in 1934, since the Night of the Long Knives had taken place only a couple of months beforehand. “There was considerable tension in the stadium and I noticed that Hitler’s own SS bodyguard was drawn up in force in front of him, separating him from the mass of the brown-shirts,” wrote Shirer.
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In subsequent years, the situation relaxed, and the ceremony in the Luitpoldarena, like the other rally events, followed a predetermined ritual. To the sounds of mournful music, and accompanied by SA Chief of Staff Lutze and Reichsführer-SS Himmler a respectful distance behind him, Hitler made his way across the “Street of the Führer” to the memorial monument, where he stood for a long time, silent, before the “blood banner.” It was an image that more than any other symbolised the isolated special position of the charismatic leader among the rows and columns of his followers. Hitler then retraced his steps to the stage, followed by the bearers of the “blood banner.” After an address in which he praised the SA and SS as the “best political fighting troops of the German people,”
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and after the singing of the German national anthem, he consecrated the new standards of party formations by touching them with the “blood banner.” “An almost religious ceremony with a fixed, never-changing tradition,” commented Goebbels.
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This was followed by an hours-long march past the Führer, standing in an open car, on Adolf-Hitler Platz.

The eighth and final day of the rally was dominated by Wehrmacht exercises. It began with a morning reveille and a trio of open-air concerts on Nuremberg’s three largest squares. That afternoon, soldiers demonstrated the state of German armaments on Zeppelin Field in front of jam-packed stands and before the eyes of foreign diplomats and military attachés. “A grandiose picture of our Wehrmacht,” wrote a satisfied Goebbels about the presentation in 1936. “All branches of the military get their due. Marvellous flying formations…tanks, artillery, cavalry…wonderful and a joy to behold.”
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In later years, this military spectacle was supposed to take place on the gigantic, specially designated field at one end of the rally grounds, but like the other grotesquely proportioned construction projects envisioned in Nuremberg, work was halted by the Second World War. The rally came to an end with a programmatic speech by Hitler. Around midnight, the Wehrmacht music corps and marching bands closed the ceremonies with a Grand Tattoo.

The centrepiece of the Nuremberg rallies was always Hitler. He was lead actor, master of ceremonies and high priest all rolled into one. The perfectly drilled choreography was focused exclusively around him. For the four to eight days of the rallies, he was utterly in his element. He held fifteen to twenty addresses, sometimes as many as four in one day. The rallies were the perfect opportunity to indulge his monomaniacal need to speak. He experienced the week-long event in a state of ecstasy, almost intoxication, and there was inevitably a feeling of emptiness when it was over. The day afterwards, he confessed in January 1942, more than three years after the final Nuremberg rally, had always had “something sad like when the decorations are taken down from the Christmas tree.”
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The Nuremberg rally in 1939, which was supposed to be held under the slogan “The Party Conference of Peace,” was cancelled in late August amidst preparations to invade Poland.