Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (14 page)

trial and the celestial spheres. As Cancik (1980) has already shown, Hitler,

by speaking in prayer-like utterances, made the roll call in 1936 a mystical

performance.

The goal of such events was to establish a set of rituals for a national

cult, whereby the individual “Ritual act would take the place of the

theoretical texts” (Mosse 1976, 20). Most modifications of the event were

——————

25 Hitler (1933, 531): “In the morning and even during the day the volitional powers of the people seem to resist with utmost energy the force of an external will and an external opinion. In the evening, on the other hand, they succumb more easily to the domineer-ing power of a strong will. […] The artificially made and yet secretive glow of the Catholic Church, the burning candles, the incense, the incense burner, etc, serves the same purpose”.

54

M A R K U S U R B A N

designed to increase the emotional value on site, where, for one week a

year, the National Socialist utopia of the militarized
Volksgemeinschaft
would be brought to life. The organizers also claimed a representative function

for the week of events, since it was declared a
Gemeinschaftsfest der Nation
(National Community Celebration).26 From here, it was only a small step to

stylizing the emotional characteristics of the
Führer
cult into a kind of plebiscite for the legitimization of National Socialist rule in general.27

The Nazi event managers instrumentalized this function increasingly

for the benefit of those looking on from abroad. Foreign journalists and

special guests of honor were soon courted to an extent that indicated that

they were the main target group of the Nuremberg events. A great amount

of scarce foreign currency reserves was spent on inviting people whom the

National Socialists thought would be able to play important roles in the

future, such as foreign diplomats and opposition politicians, as well as

business leaders and academics. For these special guests, visiting the Nur-

emberg rally was often the culmination of several days spent flying over

the German Reich. And what awaited them in Nuremberg was an emo-

tionally charged masterpiece of propaganda. They were not only greeted

personally by Hitler, but were also driven through the crowd for up to an

hour directly behind the dictator’s car. At this very moment, the peoples’

enthusiasm itself became a visual object of the visit—an effect that no

successful referendum or election could ever achieve.28

A special occasion for the instrumentalization of the Party congress

event presented itself in September 1938, when the
Parteitag Großdeutschland
(Rally of Greater Germany) coincided with the culmination of the Sudeten

crisis. The organizers of the event moved the climax of the rally to the final

day, when Hitler, in his closing speech before the
Parteikongress
, addressed in particular the western democracies and demanded that the right of self-determination of the Sudeten Germans be respected. At that moment—a

mere three weeks before the signing of the Munich Agreement—both the

——————

26 According to Hitler in the
Proklamation zum Parteitag
(Proclamation to the Party Congress) in 1937 (Kerrl 1938, 56).

27 Cf. the description in a code of practice for the administration of justice from 1941:

“Referenda are also a declaration of approval at assemblies, parades etc., especially the participation of the people at the Nuremberg Rallies”. Quoted from Jung (1995, 88).

28 According to Paul Schmidt, chief interpreter for the Foreign Office, “the English and French were sometimes moved to tears over what played out before their eyes”

(Schmidt 1968, 363). Leni Riefenstahl took advantage of this effect for cinematic purposes in a longer sequence in
Triumph of the Will
. Cf. Urban (2007, 211).

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staged mass enthusiasm that had been mounting over a period of seven

days, and the presentation of the military threat,29 must have functioned as

one whole plebiscitary underlining of this demand.

Termination in War

It is highly significant that the instruments of plebiscitary participation in

the National Socialist dictatorship examined above were abandoned with

the outbreak of the Second World War. Hitler would surely have liked to

have continued the mass rallies in the style of the 1930s during the war,

and indeed they were already part of a planned National Socialist post-war

order. However, since such stagings of plebiscitary approval were impossi-

ble for logistical reasons, hardly anyone took exception to the sudden can-

cellation of the short-lived tradition, whose creation had been tremen-

dously expensive. This can be explained by the fact that the war not only

constituted a genuine goal of National Socialist ideology, but was also itself

understood as a plebiscitary action of the nation. For, as Hans Zehrer had

explained in the magazine
Die Tat
(The Deed), shortly after Hitler’s seizure of power, the nation could only manifest itself as a postulated unity of

Volk
and state when both coincided “in warlike or revolutionary

moments” (Zehrer 1933, 98).

Consequently, the line leading from the festivals of celebration of 1933

up to the beginning of the Second World War reveals the numerous stag-

ings of plebiscitary acclamation to be merely intermediary stops. In addi-

tion to the foreign policy messages that were primarily aimed at the west-

ern democracies and of increasing importance for the NS regime from

1936, it was the performative character of the plebiscites that played a

decisive role. Furthermore, apart from demonstrating the unity of the lead-

——————

29 The traditional
Tag der Wehrmacht
(Armed Forces Day), with its ceremonial maneuvers, had taken place on the Zeppelin field on the day before Hitler’s closing speech in the presence of numerous foreign guests of honor. Later, the official
Parteitagschronik
(Convention Chronicle) was to write that one comprehends in view of this demonstration the warning on the day of this convention, “over which the shadow falls in this hour of the yet unredeemed Sudetenland: how tremendously and powerfully the National Socialist armed forces […] will be able to fight, and they will fight if Germany is forced to” (Kerrl 1939, 370). Plebiscitary and military intimidations went hand in hand at this point in time.

56

M A R K U S U R B A N

ership and its followers, they continually functioned as a paramilitary mo-

bilization, and thereby emphasized the character of the National Socialist

worldview as
movement
, one that was oriented towards a permanent state of emergency. In addition, as opposed to traditional referendums, the large

mass rallies had the central advantage that, beyond the concrete messages,

they could make emotions and rituals a part of the stagings, thereby offer-

ing an experience with a high potential for fascination for the immediate

participants.30 Yet the plebiscites remained for the National Socialists a

mere instrument of authority that had to be deployed flexibly, as was illus-

trated by the sudden cancellation of the long-prepared
Reichsparteitag des

Friedens
(Rally of Peace), originally scheduled for the day when Germany invaded Poland.31

During the war, old and new forms of plebiscitary staging were once

more shown to be interchangeable in their function as an instrument of

goal-oriented power politics. Thus, with the swiftly-convened
Reichstag
on September 1, 1939, Hitler once again chose the least-challenging forum for

his first war speech, in which he threatened the Jews with their complete

annihilation. On this day, too, the total arbitrariness of this form of

“pseudo-representation of the people” was revealed, and it became

obvious that it had been retained for purely opportunistic reasons. Since

more than a hundred members of parliament had already entered military

service, Göring randomly filled the empty seats with other Party

functionaries that happened to be present. They, too, were allowed to take

part in the vote and represented, as Göring eagerly proclaimed, “the will of

the German people to make each and every sacrifice for the honor and

future of the nation and the Reich”.32

——————

30 In spite of great financial and logistical efforts the propaganda, as a rule, did not succeed in conveying the true value of the experience by means of the mass media.

31 The
Parteitag
was cancelled on August 26, 1939, the planned date for the invasion of Poland. For this day, the
Reichstagsabgeordneten
(Reichstag deputies) had also already been summoned to Berlin (Hubert, 1992, 231).

32
Reichstag
session of September 1, 1939. www.reichstagsprotokolle.de/Blatt2_n4_bsb-00000613_00050.html.

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