Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

Hitler was seldom out of the public eye in 1937. No opportunity was missed to drive home to the German public an apparently endless array of scarcely credible ‘achievements’ at home and the glories of his major ‘triumphs’ in foreign policy. Flushed with success and certain of the adulation of the masses, he wanted to be seen. The bonds between the Führer and the people — the cement of the regime, and dependent upon recurring success and achievement — were thereby reinforced. And for Hitler the ecstasy of his mass audiences provided each time a new injection of the drug to feed his egomania.

A constant round of engagements ensured that he was ever visible. By 1937 the Nazi calendar, revolving around Hitler’s major speeches and appearance at parades and rallies, was well established, the rituals firmly in place. A speech to the Reichstag on 30 January (the anniversary of his appointment as Chancellor), speeches to the Party’s ‘Old Fighters’ on 24 February (the anniversary of the promulgation of the 1920 Party Programme) and 8 November (the anniversary of the 1923 putsch), taking the salute at big military parades on his birthday on 20 April, a speech at the huge gathering (estimated at 1,200,000 in 1937) in Berlin’s Lustgarten on the ‘National Day of Celebration of the German People’ (1 May), and, of course, the week of the Reich Party Rally at Nuremberg in the first half of September all formed fixed points of the year. Other public appearances in 1937 included: the opening of the International Car Exhibition in Berlin on 20 February, next day laying a wreath at the Berlin cenotaph and reviewing troops on ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’, the launch of the ‘Strength Through Joy’ ship Wilhelm Gustloff

(intended as a cruise-ship for German workers) on 5 May, the opening of the Reich Food Estate’s Agricultural Exhibition in Munich on 30 May, a speech to 200,000 people at the Gau Party Rally of the Bayerische Ostmark (Bavarian Eastern Marches) in Regensburg on 6 June, and to a further mass rally of the Gau Unterfranken (Lower Franconia) on 27 June, a speech at the festive opening of the ‘House of German Art’ (the imposing new art gallery designed by one of Hitler’s early favourite architects, Paul Ludwig Troost) in Munich on 19 July, an address to half a million attending the Festival of the League of German Singers in Breslau on 1 August, five days of Mussolini’s state visit to Germany between 25 and 29 September, speeches in early October at the harvest festival on the Bückeberg, near Hanover, and in Berlin at the opening of the ‘Winter Aid’ campaign (the annual collection, initially established in 1933 to help the unemployed over the winter months), a speech to the Party faithful in Augsburg on 21 November, and a speech at the laying of the foundation stone of the Military Technical Faculty of Berlin’s Technical University on 27 November. In all, Hitler held some twenty-six major speeches during the course of the year (thirteen alone at the Nuremberg Rally), apart from lesser addresses, and appearances at parades and other meetings where he did not speak.¹⁹⁸

As always, the effect of his speeches depended heavily upon the atmosphere in which they were held. The content was repetitive and monotonous. The themes were the familiar ones. Past achievements were lauded, grandiose future plans proclaimed, the horrors and menace of Bolshevism emphasized. But there was no conflict between propaganda and ideology. Hitler believed what he was saying.