A stroll through the forest brings one to the Zeppelin Field - this is where
Hitler addressed the party faithful. For safety reasons, the huge columns on the
300-meter long podium had to be removed during the 1960s, but there is still
enough left of the stage to instantly recognize it for what it is. The field
could accommodate 100,000 people with seating space for 60,000 on the tribunes.
Access to the main stage area is open at all times, but the further parts are
closed off. These fields are nowadays used for various purposes ranging from soccer to pop concerts. This area is also close to the
modern Franken football stadium and lots of beer bottles and broken glass from
the previous night’s victory celebrations still littered the area during our
visit.
The areas is physically very big--viewing just the three main sights, which
are still more or less in the original 1930s guise, took more than an hour.
Further down the Great Road was to be the German Stadium. It was to sit 400,000
people, but by 1945 only the excavations had been done, which subsequently was
flooded to form the Silbermeer (Silver Lake). The small hill to the side was
formed by rubble removed from the city of Nuremberg after the war.
At the south end of the Great Road was the March fields, which would have
served as a training and demonstration field for the Army. It was never
completed, and the parts that were, were blown up in the 1960s. Behind it was the
camping ground, which served as a prisoner-of-war camp during the war.
Hundreds of thousands of visitors attended the party rallies and it was a
logistical nightmare. Some of the priceless comments of visitors are on display in the
Dokumentationzentrum and range from complaints about congestion at the toilet
area to observations that although Der Führer’s speech was broadcasted
live, most bars preferred to play popular music and these were better attended
than those broadcasting the speech!
In total eight rallies were held in Nuremberg ranging from five to eight days
each. The one in 1934 was immortalized in Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film
Triumph of the Will and 1935 will forever be remembered for the passing of the Nuremberg Laws, which legitimized the segregation of Jews, de facto in
practice since the Nazis came to power in 1933. The rally organized for 2 - 11 September
1939 was cancelled at short notice at the end of August. It was to have been
entitled "Party Rally of Peace" - even a man who believed (and proved) that if
you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it, realized 48 hours after
invading Poland would leave the timing a bit short!
The tram stop in front of the Documentation Center is the most convenient for the main sights, but there are several other train stations for visitors who care
to walk further to the lesser sights.