Hitler before the Reichstag

Press photograph taken in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin during a Reichstag meeting in February 1938. The Kroll Opera House was the official meeting place of the German Reichstag; the pseudo-Parliament of the Third Reich. After the election on 12 November 1933, the National Socialists occupied all seats. The Reichstag only met 12 times between 1933 and 1939.

On 20 February 1938, Hitler gave a three-hour internationally broadcast speech in the Reichstag, praising the work of the National Socialist Party over the past five years in alleviating the “utter German humiliation, of the greatest impotence and unimaginable misery” that followed the Treaty of Versailles. He asserted that a nation reduced to poverty “cries out for the action that will bring salvation, beyond talk and stupid newspaper articles.” The Wehrmacht was ready and well-armed to protect German minorities outside of the Reich and restore German colonies.

Hitler is pictured here at the speaker's desk during this speech. Behind him, seated on the President's stool, is Reichstag president Hermann Goering. A large Nazi emblem with eagle and swastika is featured on the wall behind.