Nuremberg rallies

The Nuremberg rallies (German: Reichsparteitag (German pronunciation^ⓘ), meaning 'Reich Party Congress') were a series of celebratory events coordinated by the Nazi Party and held in the German city of Nuremberg from 1923 to 1938. The first nationwide party convention took place in Munich in January 1923, but the location was shifted to Nuremberg that September. The rallies usually occurred in late August or September, lasting several days to a week. They played a central role in Nazi propaganda, using mass parades, "military rituals", speeches, concerts, and varied stagecraft methods to project the image of a strong and united Germany under Nazi leadership.

The rallies became a national event following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and were thereafter held annually. Once the Nazi dictatorship was firmly established, party propagandists began filming the rallies for a national, and international, audience. Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl produced several films, including Triumph of the Will (1934) and The Victory of Faith (1933), at the rally grounds in Nuremberg. The 1938 rally celebrated the Anschluss—Germany's annexation of Austria—which occurred earlier that year.

The planned 1939 rally was cancelled due to Germany's invasion of Poland. Scheduled to begin on 2 September, this rally was ironically called the Reichsparteitag des Friedens, or "Rally of Peace". The regime never held another rally, as Germany prioritized its efforts in the Second World War. By March 1940, construction at the rally grounds had "almost halted", although prisoners of war continued work as late as 1943, being housed in barracks originally "erected for rally participants".

The first Nazi "Party Day" was held in 1920 by the "National Socialist German Workers' Association", the precursor of the Brownshirts. Early party rallies occurred in 1923 at Munich, and in 1926 at Weimar. At the 1926 rally, Hitler was able to hold "both the general parade as well as the consecration of the flags" at Weimar, where he spoke about the meaning of the Nazi flag as "some three hundred" of the banners were displayed on stage behind him.

The rallies were not a "decision-making body", and Hitler did not allow their "parliamentarization". Rather, their purpose was to "instill the Hitler myth deeply into the hearts of the faithful", with "rituals", "fireworks", and "invocations surrounding the flag" all playing a part. Nuremberg was "designed from the start as a place for show and spectacle", and not for "debates" over the party's policy. Hitler himself declared that the rallies should be a "clear and understandable demonstration of the will and the youthful strength" of the party, while Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said that the rallies changed a participant "from a little worm into part of a large dragon".

From 1927 onward, party rallies took place exclusively in Nuremberg. The party chose Nuremberg because of its "rich history", as the "city had been the diet of the Holy Roman Empire" in the medieval era. The Nazis also began calling it "the most German of German cities". Diehard anti-Semite Julius Streicher, who published the militant Der Stürmer newspaper, also led the Nuremberg regional party, and the city had been a "hotbed of Nazi support" during the movement's rise to power. Lastly, the Luitpoldhain park gave Nuremberg the "advantage of a large open space for mass gatherings".

Hitler chose architect Albert Speer to improve the rally complex and, in the summer of 1933, Speer "reshaped Nuremberg" to make it "suitable for hosting what was now the party in power". In 1934, he enlarged the Zeppelin Field structures and built them in stone, specifically pink and white granite. In Speer's own words, he designed a "mighty flight of stairs topped and enclosed by a long colonnade, flanked on both ends by stone abutments. Undoubtedly it was influenced by the Pergamum altar". Hitler agreed with Speer's plan, and the finished stadium had a capacity of hundreds of thousands of people. Speer also used lighting to highlight the architecture—and present Hitler in an impressive way—with "130 aircraft searchlights" arranged around and above the stadium. Speer's so-called "Cathedral of Light", or Lichtdom, was a key feature of the event, and has been described as the "single most dramatic moment of the Nazi Party rallies". The Flak Searchlight-34 and -37 models used for the effect were developed in the 1930s, and had "an output of 990 million candelas".

Rallies opened with Richard Wagner's 1868 opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, performed by the Berlin State Opera, and ceremonies included a parade where district party flags were touched to the Blutfahne, the flag used during the failed Beer Hall Putsch coup attempt of 1923. The rally ended with a speech from Hitler. Spotlights focused on the "place where Hitler entered the arena", and music played from "multiple bands, orchestras, and loudspeakers" as he approached the podium. Hitler's speeches at Nuremberg have been described, like his other speeches, as "less about meaningful content and more about creating a dramatic impact using a mishmash of stereotypes, rhetorical devices, and emotionally-charged language".