The
National-Socialist Congress had become an annual session of a giant parliament
composed of a million and a half representatives of the people, coming from the
most varied regions. Politically, it was the most “colossal” (as the Germans
say) expression of democracy that had ever been organized anywhere in the
world. Such an event had never before been seen, and nothing like it would ever
afterward be seen again. The Nuremberg Congress was a unique phenomenon in the
political history of Europe.
by
SS Gen. Leon Degrelle
Every year in the month of September Nuremberg became
the Mecca of National Socialism. In 1921 it was only a handful of militants
following a virtually unknown Adolf Hitler who met there. In 1933 they came in
a crowd of 400,000. In 1937 they were a million and a half. From every point of
view, these gatherings were astounding.
Just
to transport these million and a half deputies of the nation, a fantastic
amount of railroad equipment had to be mobilized: 4,000 special trains, tens of
thousands of railroad cars lined up like ants on dozens of kilometers of track.
Then that immense host of people had to be received, to be given directions and
to be fed.
All
the hotels of Nuremberg together could hardly shelter a hundredth part of the
participants. And so entire towns of thousands of tents were erected to shelter
these crowds that were equivalent in number to a hundred divisions of infantry.
They
would need not just a roof, but also hundreds of mobile kitchens, sanitary
facilities, first aid stations and information booths, and thousands of Red
Cross nurses. And all that provided with mathematical precision. Every one of
these human ants had to be able to find his tent, his cot and his food by
knowing exactly at every minute where he had to go, how he was to get there and
for what purpose.
Arriving
from the most faraway villages of the Reich, often knowing nothing of the town
of Nuremberg, the million and a half participants couldn’t turn around without knowing
the exact geographic point and the exact hour where and when, for example, a
youth would find the Grand Army of Youth, a woman her women’s organizations,
the militant his SA column, or the worker his professional organization or his
section of the Labor Front.
Only
German discipline, the German genius for organization, could keep this gigantic
conglomeration of human beings from becoming entangled in impossible disorder.
Year after year there would be more participants attending. And year after year
the arrival, the stay, the departure of this fantastic migration would be more
flawless.
Moving
two or three army corps took a Gen. Gamelin two or three weeks of
shilly-shallying. Here, in just a few hours, the equivalent of the whole French
peacetime army was got under way. A formidable lesson for future military
operations.
The
proof was given and repeated each year that it was perfectly possible to
transport a million and a half soldiers in a matter of hours without the
slightest hitch; that the railroads were capable of moving the entire German
army from one end of the country to the other on schedule to within a quarter
of an hour. Where else had a maneuver like that ever been organized and
performed with such mathematical success?
On
the return, just as on the arrival, the hundreds of divisions of civilians were
lodged and fed. Their participation was orchestrated. We can look at photos of
the period, study each sequence of the admirable film Triumph of the Will
produced by Leni Riefenstahl in 1934: each human formation is perfectly
aligned, each avenue is clear, like a stream. Not even a stray dog in the empty
space. Not a single lamp that isn’t burning.
The
ceremonies unfolded with more majesty than at Saint Peter’s in Rome.
Hitler
comes forward, absolutely alone, on a paved avenue more than a hundred yards
wide, amid 30,000 flags like flames, between a million and half men and women
holding their breath.
Writes
French historian Benoist-Méchin:
Nothing
has been omitted to obtain the desired effect, a parade of a hundred thousand
SA, pounding the pavements of the town for five hours, a forest of standards in
which the blood-red emblems and the eagles of the party dominate, deafening
fanfares, salvos of artillery, torchlight tattoos uncoiling their serpent of
fire between the illuminated facades of the medieval town, batteries of
searchlights aimed skyward, weaving a vault of light above the Luitpoldshain
amphitheater: everything contributes to create an impression of ordered power
from which the most skeptical visitors return astounded. It is impossible to
resist this swirl of colors and songs and light whose intensity no report, no
film will ever reproduce. For nearly a week the crowd has been swimming,
rolling in a tidal wave of emotion.
This
Frenchman is not the only one to describe that emotion. Many others have done
it. And the agreement of these foreign witnesses is eloquent. What struck them
the most were the preoccupation with, the concern for, the unalterable rites,
and the almost religious aspect of the succession of the ceremonies.
For
Hitler, who entered Nuremberg to the ringing of all the bells of the town, the
basis of all faith was dogma. And dogma by nature is immutable and eternal.
Truth can never change its face. To touch it up would be to detract from the
mystery, to bring it in question. Everything in the history of National
Socialism would be marked not only by the concern for greatness but by the
supreme immutability of the gestures which sanctify the ideal, the conviction, the
bond, the gift.
Every
detail had been fixed forever. The speaker’s platform, atop 30 granite steps,
rose up like a warship. It stood out against a background of bright light. It
was crowned with oak leaves surrounding a hooked cross worked with gold. The
stadium, where a million and a half faithful supporters breathlessly waited,
was as vast as a metropolis. The grandstands themselves could hold 150,000
guests.
During
the course of the week, the covered auditorium harbored by turns the youth, the
women, the country people, and the factory workers, the SS and the SA. Hitler
spoke before them 15 to 20 times during those days.
The
stadium itself was gigantic, surrounded by columns three times as tall as those
of the Acropolis. The columns were surmounted by eagles of granite and joined
together by tens of thousands of flaming banners with swastikas turning in
their solar disks. Streams of blue vapor rose from tall basins.
Hitler
had even invented an entirely new form of architecture that was made not of stone
but of light. He’d had hundreds of air defense beacons installed on the four
sides of the giant site. Their beams of light rose up very high and very
straight in the night like the pillars of an unreal cathedral. It was quite a
fabulous imaginary construction, worthy of Zeus, master of light and of the
night of the heavens. Then, like a prophet, Hitler came forward.
Here
is how Robert Brasillach, the most inspired French poet of the century,
describes Hitler upon his podium:
Here’s
the man now standing upon the rostrum. Then the flags unfurl. No singing, no
rolling of the drums. A most extraordinary silence reigns when, from the edge
of the stadium, before each of the spaces separating the brown shirt groups,
the first ranks of standard-bearers emerge. The only light is that of the
cathedral, blue and unreal, above which one sees butterflies spiraling:
airplanes perhaps or simply dust. But a spotlight beam has alighted on the
flags, emphasizing the red mass of them and following them as they advance.
Are
they advancing? One wishes rather to say that they flow. That they flow like
the flow of crimson lava, irresistibly, in an enormous gliding rush, to fill
the gaps prepared in advance in the brown granite. Their majestic advance lasts
nearly 20 minutes. And it is only when they are close to us that we hear the
muffled sound of their tread. Up to the minute when they come to a halt at the
feet of the standing chancellor, silence has prevailed. A supernatural and
unearthly silence, like the silence for astronomers of something seen on
another planet. Beneath the blue-streaked vault reaching to the clouds, the
broad red streams of lava are now grown still. I do not believe I have ever in
my life seen a more prodigious spectacle.
That
prodigious spectacle was not born of chance, but from the mind of an organizer
and an artist of genius.
Each
day had its special program devoted to a quite distinct sector of the public.
Another Frenchman, the historian André Brissaud, who is aggressive and often
unjust when he speaks of Hitler, has also described one of these ceremonies
which he calls [a] “Hitler service”:
Under
the blazing sun 52,000 young men of the Labor Service present their shovels in
a virile offertory. Then, when they resume their at-ease position, one of their
leaders, facing them at the foot of the tribune, snaps:
“Where
do you come from, comrade?”
A
voice from that host of brown shirts responds:
“From
Thueringen.”
“Where
do you come from, comrade?”
“From
Hessen.”
“Where
do you come from, comrade?”
“From
Schlesien.”
Then
come the traditional questions:
“Are
you ready to bring fertility to German soil?”
Fifty-two
thousand young men respond with a single voice:
“We
are ready.”
“Are
you ready to make every sacrifice for the Reich?
“We
are ready.”
This
singular and impressive spoken chorus lasts nearly 20 minutes.
Afterward
the 52,000 men in brown, with much fervor and gravity, sing their song of
militants and other things as well.
The
drum rolls.
Silence
is established. They meditate. They evoke the dead, the soul of the party and
of the nation as one.
Finally
the Fuehrer speaks, bringing the collective emotion to a white heat.
Transported by passion, his nostrils quivering, his eyes flashing, Hitler is
the Nazi faith. The violence, the fierce energy, the triumph of the will. His
voice, broadcast by loudspeakers, takes on a superhuman dimension. A hypnotic
phenomenon takes place-gigantic, stupefying.
Another
day it was the ceremonial of the cult of the “flag of the blood” (Blutfahne),
the standard that was soaked with the blood of Hitler’s companions on November
11, 1923, the day after the Munich putsch, when the Bavarian police killed
seven of the National Socialists around the young Fuehrer. The new flags
received the consecration of the “flag of the martyrs” at the foot of the
monument commemorating them.
The
German author Joaquim Fest, a notorious anti-Nazi, has described this ceremony:
Finally,
starting from the “Luitpoldshain” accompanied by two disciples keeping their
proper distance, Hitler marched to the monument, taking the wide ribbon of
concrete (now called the “Avenue of the Fuehrer”) between several hundred
thousand men of the SA and the SS lined up in stately array. While the flags
were lowered, Hitler was motionless, deeply immersed in his thoughts, like a
heraldic figure.
Citing
an official account, Fest adds:
The
beams of 150 gigantic searchlights pierced the overcast sky of a gray-black
night. High in the air, on the surface of the clouds, the shafts of light came
together to form the figure of a square. . . . The image is gripping. . . .
Stirred by a light wind, the flags framing the stands tremble slightly in the
sparkling light. The main speaker’s platform comes into view in a blaze of
light. . . . To the right and to the left, flames shoot out of immense cups
supported by pillars. From the opposite stands, on command, a flood of more
than 30,000 flags pours toward the center, the tips of the staffs and the
fringes of silver glittering in the illumination of the searchlights.
As
always, Hitler was the first victim of this production made of light, of
crowds, of symmetry and of “life’s tragic awareness.” It was precisely in these
orations made before the “first militants” and after the minute of silence
observed in honor of the dead that Hitler frequently found his speech marked by
a sort of exaltation and rapture: on these occasions and in a few extraordinary
words, he has celebrated a sort of mystic communion before the spotlights sweep
down on the center of the stage, and the flags, the uniforms and the musical
instruments come ablaze in flashes of red, silver and gold.
A
newspaper, the Niederelbischen Tageblatt, has preserved some of these
invocations. [Note: this paragraph is lined out in the original French text. We
put it back in because we find the unguided leap to the following paragraphs
confusing without it-Ed.] Hitler exclaimed:
I
have always had the feeling that for as long as the gift of life is granted a
man, he must retain his nostalgia for those with whom he has fashioned his
life. What would my life be without you? That you have found me and believe in
me has given your life a new significance and imposed new duties on you. And
that I have found you, that alone has made my life and my struggle possible.
And
this:
How
could we not feel in this hour the miracle that has brought us together? You
heard a man’s voice in the past, and it struck your heart, it awakened you, and
you have followed that voice. You have followed it for years without even
having seen the man who had that voice. You have only heard a voice, and you
have followed it.
The
tone of the speeches had messianic echoes. Hitler added:
We
all meet here again, and the miracle of this meeting fills our souls. Not every
one of you can see me, and I cannot see each of you, but I feel you and you
feel me. Is it not faith in our people that has made big men of us from small,
rich from poor; and that, discouraged and faltering though we were, has made
brave and valiant men of us?
At
the end of a week it was time for the parting of this million and a half men
and women who had renewed their vows as if they had been Crusaders, or members
of a religious order.
Once
again it is the French poet Robert Brasillach who evokes this hour of
departure:
Deutschland
Ueber Alles is sung and the Horst Wessel Lied soaring with the spirit of
comrades killed by the Red Front and by the reactionaries-and the song of the
soldiers of the war:
“I
had a comrade,
“A
better one I’ll never have. . . .”
Then
still other songs, composed for the congress, which harmonize easily with the
fresh night, the gravity of the hour, the many beautiful and melancholy voices,
and with all the musical enchantment without which Germany can conceive
nothing, neither religion nor fatherland, nor war, nor politics, nor sacrifice.
Brissaud
adds: “Then there is the interminable torchlight tattoo through the streets of
Nuremberg. Groups of the SA, of the Hitler Youth, or of the SS march tirelessly
by, lighted only by the gleam of their torches.”
Like
everyone else, some of the most prominent persons of distinction from abroad
were seized by the popular wave.
The
entire diplomatic corps was invited by Hitler and put up in the Nuremberg
station itself in two sumptuous special trains provided with club cars, dining
cars, sleeping cars, bathrooms and even hairdressing salons.
The
French ambassador, François-Poncet, even spoke to the Congress of 1937. He
would sum up his feelings almost with dread:
During
those eight days, Nuremberg was a town given over completely to joy, an
enchanted town, almost a town that escaped from reality. That atmosphere,
combined with the beauty of the spectacles and the magnificent hospitality,
greatly impressed the foreigners. It created an impression very difficult to
resist. When they went back home, they were captivated and won over.
The
ambassador/interpreter Paul Schmidt, commissioned to escort the rich and
famous, has described the sensation:
On
the day when Hitler made his grand triumphal promenade at Nuremberg, I happened
to be in a open car with the most important French and English guests, only a
few meters behind the dictator’s car. . . . We could thus observe him from very
close up and also especially the crowds cheering him from both sides of the road.
The
procession, triumphal in the true sense of the word, took more than an hour to
make its way through the old town. The impression produced by these masses of
people cheering Hitler as though in ecstasy was extraordinarily powerful. Once
again I noted with what an expression of devotion, with what biblical trust,
the people gazed on Hitler, seeming to be under a magic spell. The thousands
and thousands of spectators all along the route were as though seized by a
collective rapture at the sight of him. They held out their arms and saluted
him with rousing shouts. Moving along for an hour in the middle of this
frenzied outburst was a real physical ordeal, which left us exhausted at the
end of the trip. All power of moral resistance seemed paralyzed; we almost had
the feeling of having to restrain ourselves to keep from joining in with the
general ecstasy. . . . I could see that the English and the French often had
tears in their eyes from the effects of the inner emotions caused by all they
were seeing and hearing. Even journalists as blasé as Jules Sauerwein of Le
Matin and Ward Price of The Daily Mail, who were in my car, were literally
groggy when we arrived at the end of the route.
The
American journalist Richard Helms, special envoy of the United Press, who
managed to get to the Nuremberg palace, where Hitler was receiving his guests
at the end of the festivities, would make this droll comment: “When I got there
myself, I was suffering from megalomania. I decided that I must be nine feet
tall even though the cheers had not been addressed to me.”
Benoist-Méchin
concluded:
When
all is said and done, what we saw at Nuremberg was no longer the party; it was
the entire German nation offering itself the spectacle of its own rediscovered
power. . . . What was forged here was a mystique powerful enough to triumph
over individual feelings and cast them in the crucible of a single faith.
At
the end of four years of stubborn struggle, Hitler had thus transformed his
people.
He
had made a unity of them, hard as steel.
Even
the army would be welded to that unity henceforth: the Wehrmacht spent eight
days at Nuremberg fraternizing with the people, parading jointly with them with
their new tanks, their new cannon and above all with their new spirit.
Hauled
out of the wreckage of 1918, Germany at year’s end in 1937 had a greater
solidarity than ever before in her history. The first stage of the Hitler
revolution was now completed.
From
the Nuremberg stadium Hitler gazed down at his vibrant people. He had completed
their political unification: no longer were there either states or parties
locked in petty rivalry; their social unification: the classes, formerly
rivals, now formed just one team; their military unification: there was now
just one armed force, built for all, open to all. Still to be achieved was the
racial and geographical unification.
Beyond
the border to the southeast stood 10 million Germans of Austria and the
Sudetens, already conquered politically, and waiting impatiently for their
church bells to sound the German hour.
Hitler,
creator of the Greater Reich, was moving toward them in the full assurance of
their unanimity, his eyes fixed on the destiny to be subdued.
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