Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (13 page)

(representative body of the people). But Rudolf Hess was not the only one

who considered the Party rally a plebiscitary event, as Peter Hubert erro-

neously assumes (Hubert 1992, 98). It was above all the
Gauleiter
of Fran-conia, Julius Streicher, who labeled the rally the “first
Reichstag
of the German people in the new Germany”, with which he made reference to Nur-

emberg’s medieval past as a venue for the Holy Roman Empire’s Imperial

Diet.19 Both expressed an already widespread expectation that the NS

regime would introduce new modes of political participation in place of the

old ones. In the case of the Nuremberg Rally, participation extended first

and foremost to members of the SA—the Nazi Party militia—and the

NSDAP, the latter being stylized above all into an elite representing the

entire
Volk
. And already in 1933, observers did in fact notice that the Nuremberg Rally had a function above and beyond that of a Party rally. Rudolf

Kirchner, for example, the special correspondent to the
Frankfurter Zeitung

who was dispatched to Nuremberg, characterized the rally as having an

“overwhelming sense of community”, and reminded his readers of the

many people “who have demanded both a true, social community state

built on the German nation, and a powerful democracy that would lead

them away from party disunity”.20 And, with National Socialism’s inherent

inclination toward the “invention of traditions” (Hobsbawm), the authors

of a semi-official chronicle of the rally concluded that the
Reichsparteitag des
Sieges
(Rally of Victory) “had already become for the first time a
Reichstagung
(Reich Congress) in the true sense of the word in which the entire population participated in hailing the
Führer
” (Streicher 1934, 9). In accordance with the claim that the
Volk
was represented in Nuremberg, organizations that did not genuinely belong to the sphere of the Party, but rather to that

of the state, were increasingly integrated in the following years into the

Parteitagswoche
(Nuremberg Rally Week). Therefore, soon the
Reichswehr
, beginning in 1934, and the
Reichsarbeitsdienst
(State Labor Service), beginning in 1935, were represented by large mass rallies, whereas, conversely,

the significance and strength of the SA fell sharply after the “
Röhm-Putsch”
.

Important, however, is the fact that the regular staging of the Nuremberg

——————

19 Live audio recording in the DRA Wiesbaden, B 004891360. Interestingly, Streicher’s choice of words was changed in the printed edition to
Reichsparteitag
. (Streicher 1934, 38).

20 Rudolf Kirchner, Das Erlebnis von Nürnberg (The Nuremberg Experience),
Frankfurter
Zeitung
, September 6, 1933, 1.

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51

Rallies, as well as that of referenda and
Reichstag
elections, was in no way assured at this time. Thus, Hitler announced at the
Reichsparteitag
in 1933

that, in future, rallies would be held in a two-year-cycle, at least for the time being. In fact, until 1936, the final decision to hold the rally was made as

late as about five weeks before the first day of the event.

This transitional phase reached a high point in the
Reichsparteitag der

Freiheit
(Rally of Freedom) in 1935, when Hitler summoned the delegates

of the Berlin
Reichstag
to a session in Nuremberg. As usual, this was a spontaneous decision that caught those involved by surprise. The immediate cause of Hitler’s decision was the verdict of an American judge who

had refused to punish a perpetrator of an attack on the swastika flag in

New York Harbor as it was not a national flag. Within three days, Hitler

wanted to make use of the Nuremberg rally for the greatest possible

propaganda effect and to announce a new
Reich
flag law. The decision to

adopt the anti-Semitic
Rassengesetze
(Nuremberg Laws) at the same time was even more abrupt and caused great confusion amongst those lawyers responsible for preparing the draft (Gruchmann 1983). The fact that the

Blutschutzgesetz
(Blood Protection Law) and the
Reichsbürgergesetz
(Reich Citizenship Law) had to be drawn up within 48 hours is indicated by the

fact that there were hand-written changes even in the final draft. Further-

more, Hermann Göring was so badly prepared for the
Reichstag
session that the radio station was ordered to fade out his live-broadcast speech.21 The

joint session of
Reichstag
and
Reichsparteitag
, which was designed for public effect, only occurred once, although Göring had actually announced in

1935 that from now on the
Reichstag
would always convene during the

annual Party Rally in Nuremberg.22 This combination of
Reichstag
and

Reichsparteitag
had offered another opportunity of plebiscitary self-staging, but it was rejected since it did not work. The mass rallies, however, were to

have a definite future in the Third Reich.

——————

21 Goebbels’ diary entry of September 15, 1935: “Then Göring read the laws and ‘justified’

them. Almost unbearable. The radio broadcast was stopped.” (Fröhlich 1998-2006).

22 “May it become for all eternity an honorific as well as a binding custom to combine it with future
Reichstagparteitage
(Nuremberg Party Rallies) so that Nuremberg—once a free city of the German Reich—can become the seat of the German
Reichstag
during the climax of the
Reichsparteitage.
” www.reichstagsprotokolle.de/Blatt2_w9)bsb00000142-_00061.html.

52

M A R K U S U R B A N

Establishment and Expansion (1936–1939)

The year of 1936 was a turning point for the National Socialist regime as a

whole, since, following the completion of the domestic consolidation

phase, a “risk zone” in foreign policy had been crossed with the remilitari-

zation of the Rhineland. Moreover, during this year a change of priorities

in the plebiscitary self-staging of the regime took place. In spite of the

great success of the
Reichstag
elections on March 29, 1936, this was to remain the last occasion on which the leadership of the Third Reich called

the people to the polling stations of their own accord. It is difficult to

determine whether Hitler, following the “relative defeat” of 1934, really

doubted the long-term propagandist usefulness of the more traditional

plebiscitary instruments, or whether, in view of the “inevitable 98.9 per

cent” (Evans 2005, 637), dwindling hope for further improvement on past

results was the deciding factor. In any case, it appeared that the Summer

Olympic Games, with their vast numbers of international participants and

visitors, had convinced Hitler that the mass rallies would offer the most

suitable stage from which to deliver the propaganda messages that were by

this time primarily directed at a foreign audience. In contrast to the
Reichstag
elections and the referenda, the mass rallies offered the chance to make the staging of the
Volksgemeinschaft
an experience, and the emotions themselves that were aroused by National Socialism became an object of propa-

ganda. In spite of concerns on the part of the NS functionaries, Hitler

insisted that yet another
Reichsparteitagswoche
(Nuremberg Rally Week)

would take place in Nuremberg in September 1936.23 Coming so soon

after the Olympics, which had been staged at great cost, this
Reichsparteitag
led to the mass rally becoming established definitively. Their further development, up to 1939,24 reveals that the Party rallies were systematically

changed on three levels, with some of the measures taken being traceable

to direct interventions by Hitler.

First, the mass rallies of the participating Nazi-organizations were con-

tinually expanded and their numbers were increased through more and

——————

23 Propaganda Minister Goebbels above all had tried to convince Hitler—who at this time was in a poor state of health—to cancel the
Reichsparteitag
given its close proximity to the Olympic Games. Cf. Goebbels, diary entry of August 7, 1936. (Fröhlich 1998-2006).

24 The
Reichsparteitag des Friedens
(Rally of Peace) of 1939 was finally planned by the organizers and has therefore to be included in the analysis in spite of its abrupt cancellation on the eve of World War II.

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53

more events being on offer, such as the
NS-Kampfspiele
(Competitive

Games), beginning in 1937. As a consequence, the NSDAP
Parteikongress

(Party Conference), which had been a central feature of the early
Reichs-

parteitage
in the 1920s, lost more and more of its significance, and became an outdated relic of the former party character of the NSDAP. Since no

substantive decisions were announced here, and the speakers offered in

large part just the usual ideological phrases, the “delegates” showed little

interest in the individual sessions. Thus, in later years, even 3,000 people

specially selected to occupy empty seats were not sufficient to fill them

(Urban 2007, 130).

Second, a steady militarization of the event took place, which was re-

flected both in the increasing frequency with which participating groups

wore uniforms, and in the ever stricter regulations that all participants

including the leading Party functionaries themselves had to observe.

Third and finally, individual events were deliberately given a sacral at-

mosphere. March-pasts and roll calls by the mass organizations were trans-

formed into ritualized stagings by using music, flags, choral dialogues, and

the employment of biblical vocabulary. For instance, the roll call of the

Politische Leiter
(PO), an organization that was especially unpopular with the people, was moved to the evening hours. After nightfall the use of fire and

Albert Speer’s light architecture evoked an experience very similar to a

church service. Hitler had already explained in
Mein Kampf
that he considered the end of the day to be the time when the individual was most open

to “mass suggestion”.25 Speaking to an audience of approximately 180,000

participants against the backdrop of Speer’s monumental light architecture,

the dictator assumed the role of a kind of intermediary between the terres-