The Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg

The Nazi Party Rallies, held annually from 1933 to 1938 at a specially designed site in Nuremberg, were carefully planned propaganda events. Marching contingents, parades, memorial events for the dead, and displays by the armed forces were intended to demonstrate strength and communal spirit. These were not democratic party gatherings that would have made any room for working on issues, holding debates, or exchanging ideas.

The Nazi Party Rallies pursued two primary propaganda objectives. First, they presented the orderly, ideologically aligned "community of the People." At the same time, they staged Adolf Hitler as the "Führer," the leader to whom this "community" unanimously and obediently submitted. The National Socialists applied discoveries from studies of mass psychology in designing the architecture and the events themselves.

A Recreation Zone Destroyed – Building the Nazi Party Rally Grounds

According to Albert Speer's designs, an area measuring 11 square kilometers would be built up with imposing, monumental structures, all of them designed for mass events. Each area of the grounds would be used by a different organization on a different day. But most of the structures were never finished, because construction was suspended when war was declared in 1939. The workers were needed more urgently at the front and in the armaments industry.

Before the National Socialists began their construction work, the grounds around the Dutzendteich Lake were a popular recreational area. People could linger at restaurants, swim in the lake, visit the zoo, and from 1928 onward, attend events at the stadium and other sports facilities on the other side of the lake. Following the Bavarian State Exhibition of 1906, the remaining structures and areas became a site for a wide variety of political demonstrations and festivals.

From 1933 onward, the National Socialists' construction work increasingly destroyed the idyllic atmosphere around the Dutzendteich Lake. A beacon tower was blown up, part of the lake was filled in and graded, and the zoo was torn down. Besides the construction on the grounds themselves, there was also heavy investment in the city's infrastructure. Up to a million attendees at each year's Party Rally also benefited the food service industry, hotels, and retailers.

Photographers like Heinrich Hoffmann and the film maker Leni Riefenstahl, who shot the "Triumph of the Will" propaganda film in Nuremberg in 1934, put themselves at the service of the Nazi regime. They staged pictures so as to perfectly achieve the regime's propaganda objectives. Even today, these photographs of the events shape the way we see these rallies. They are portrayals of an ideal rally, imbued with nothing but enthusiasm, discipline and perfect execution. But the reality was rather different.

More about the "Triumph of the Will" propaganda film

Children were supposed to be raised in the service of Nazi ideology from a very young age. In Hitler Youth, they learned the importance of camaraderie, duty and physical fitness – as they also demonstrated at the "Hitler Youth Day" in Nuremberg. They held marches, swore loyalty oaths, sang songs and enthusiastically cheered Hitler's speech.

In addition to the panoply of uniforms, marching in step and orderly mass gatherings, the war games of the party's paramilitary force, the Sturmabteilung(SA), made the Nazi Party Rallies into a show of power. Demonstrations of running hurdles with a weapon in hand, swimming in uniform, and throwing hand grenades were intended to show off the Reich's military strength. The propaganda pictures almost never show that the Rally Grounds were actually nothing but one big construction site the whole time.

Something that never shows up in the official pictures of the Nazi Party Rallies is the trash and lack of discipline. That was why private photography was discouraged, especially during the formal marches. Yet trash-strewn accommodations, drunken Party leaders, and unabashed public urination at the edges of the event areas are recorded in many police records and internal documents. But as a rule, published reports and pictures conveyed only positive impressions.

It was a very deliberately planned gesture when the U.S. Army held a victory parade on the Zeppelin Field on April 22, 1945, and then blew up the gilt swastika above the center of the main grandstand. The takeover was also reflected in the big blue "Soldiers' Field" sign that could soon be read left and right of the podium from which Hitler had once delivered his speeches. Annual military parades and displays of armaments by the Americans continued to recall their victory over National Socialist Germany into the 1960s.

Finding a practical use for the Zeppelin Field provoked little controversy for twenty years, but blowing up the colonnades on the Zeppelin Grandstand in 1967 sparked vehement debate. The official reason for removing the colonnades was that they had fallen into disrepair. But some members of the public viewed it as an attempt to sweep a painful piece of history under the carpet. Opposition came from very diverse directions. The Nuremberg Motor Sports Club was worried about its seats in the grandstand; the National Democratic Party of Germany, which had members in the City Council at the time, wanted the site preserved as testimony to what it considered a "great era."

Picture credit: Stadtarchiv Nürnberg

Repossessed by Democracy – A Place for Leisure and Recreation

As they already were in the 1930s and even before, the Nazi Party Rally Grounds are again a heavily frequented destination for excursions – and a popular photo opportunity. Besides the desire to document one's own presence at the site, there is often an intent to use the Nazi structures as an extraordinary setting, whether for fashion or wedding photos, or for video clips. Another aspect of dealing with this area, besides understanding its history, is taking back possession of the site for a democratic society. Many Nuremberg residents have come to view the Rally Grounds merely as an important recreational area. Leisure use has helped demystify the site and repossess it in a democratic spirit.