Nuremberg – Rally Grounds and War Crimes Trials, Privately Explored

Location and Geography

The Nazi Party Rally Grounds lie in the southeast of Nuremberg, directly adjacent to the Dutzendteich – a recreational lake area that the Nazi Party progressively expropriated from 1933 for its prestige project. The original site covered approximately 11 square kilometres. Nuremberg lies at the heart of Franconia, 170 kilometres north of Munich and 220 kilometres south of Frankfurt – easily reached by rail or private vehicle.

Nuremberg as a Stage for Nazi Self-Presentation

Nuremberg was no randomly chosen location. The medieval imperial city was regarded as the home of imperial tradition – with its castle, craft guilds and the aura of German history. Hitler wanted precisely this symbolism for the Nazi Party: from 1927 the party held its congresses in Nuremberg, and from 1933 they became the greatest propaganda spectacles in world history.

Albert Speer designed a complex of gigantic proportions from 1934. The Zeppelin Field with its 360-metre tribune held 150,000 people. The German Stadium – planned as the world's largest, with 405,000 spectator places – was never completed; the construction pit filled with groundwater to become today's Silbersee lake. The Congress Hall, intended to surpass the Roman Colosseum by a third, remained as a vast unfinished shell and is today the most impressive surviving Nazi-era structure in Germany.

Between 1933 and 1938, the annual party rallies were held here – multi-day mass events involving up to a million mobilised participants. Leni Riefenstahl's documentary "Triumph of the Will" (1935) made the images world-famous: endless seas of flags, torchlight processions, Speer's Cathedral of Light from 152 anti-aircraft searchlights.

End of the War and the Nuremberg Trials

On 20 April 1945 – Hitler's 56th birthday – American troops blew the swastika from the Zeppelin Tribune: a gesture that was photographed worldwide and broadcast as a symbol of the regime's end. Nuremberg was by this point largely destroyed.

In November 1945, the main war crimes trials began at Nuremberg's Palace of Justice. 21 leading Nazi perpetrators were indicted before an International Military Tribunal; 12 received death sentences, 7 prison sentences. Hermann Göring evaded execution by suicide on the eve of the proceedings. Courtroom 600, where the trials were held, is today accessible as a memorial – the only place in the world where you can stand in the courtroom of the first international war crimes tribunal.

What Can Be Seen Today

The Documentation Centre Nazi Party Rally Grounds, housed in the northern section of the Congress Hall (opened 2001), offers the most rigorous permanent exhibition on the history of National Socialism in Bavaria. The Congress Hall itself – 270 metres in diameter, 39 metres high, red brick – can be walked around on the outside and conveys the scale of the intended monument more eloquently than any description. The Zeppelin Tribune, after a lengthy and expensive debate about restoration, is partially accessible; its condition mirrors Germany's still-unresolved relationship with Nazi architecture.