After the National Socialist Workers' Party came to power in Germany in 1933, the Germans began
to celebrate April 20 as Hitler's Birthday. They would organize parties where the top Nazi
leaders would meet and greet, offer gifts, and wish a long life to their Führer. Public
birthday celebrations, however, were confined to small practices like wearing edelweiss,
Hitler's favorite flower, or organizing small parades in honor of the nazi leader.
The year 1939 was different.
In the prior 11 months, the Nazi regime had added 52,000 square miles of land area to its territory
and claimed authority of over 20 million more people.
They had invaded Austria and parts of Checkoslavia and asserted rights over a dozen more regions,
making it clear of their dictatorial ambitions. At this time when the world was biting nails in
anticipation of another great war, Adolf Hitler was planning to celebrate his 50th birthday.
His Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbel saw this as a perfect opportunity to
orchestrate mass propaganda for the German working class. He would also use this event
to send a warning to Western powers of Nazi Germany's military capabilities.
Consequently, they organized a lavish spectacle,
one of the most expensive and biggest parties ever in Europe. For the first time,
the entire country celebrated the birthday of an individual who was not a monarch and
huge military parades were organized in the honor of a person who wasn't of noble origin.
The accounts of this grand event would send shockwaves around the world,
scaring some, and alerting others.
The celebration would later prove to be the last
big celebration before the downfall of the Nazi Empire at the hands of the Allied Powers.
Planning kicked off weeks before the actual event, during which the entire city of Berlin
was decorated in typical Nazi fashion. Tall pylons with Golden Eagles on top of them
were erected on central boulevards. Ornamental pillars were adorned with flowers, nazi banners,
and lighting that would glow tastefully at night. Commercial and government buildings
hung gigantic portraits of Hitler lined with flowers and complemented them with flood-light.
The area where the Reich chancellery was situated, was a sea of swastika banners.
Various special cultural editions were made during this time,
A special luxury edition of Mein Kampf was printed in honor of Hitler’s birthday.
A prominent German composer, Hans Rehberg, wrote a hymn commemorating Hitler.
Propaganda photos were taken by Heinrich Hofman, one of the
best-known German photographers of the time. The artistic glorification didn’t stop there.
A special biographic movie of Hitler's life was made to commemorate his 50th birthday.
It was played in German theatres for propaganda purposes until 1944.
Hitler didn’t drink alcohol, and for that reason, Munich breweries made special types
of non-alcoholic beers. The most famous one was made by Hofbrau house, one of
the most famous Munich Beer Halls where Hitler frequently held his rallies in the pre-nazi era.
As for the food, the government brought servants and cooks from all over Germany
and ordered 30,000 specially engraved silverware,
among other things, to be used by guests during dinner in the Reichschancelary.
As the preparations near their end, the Nazi government announced a national holiday
on April 20th, 1939, and encouraged ordinary Germans to celebrate the
day to the best of their capabilities. Festivities took place in all municipalities
throughout the country as well as in the conquered regions and satellite cities.
German offices and nazi organizations held celebratory functions in foreign countries too.
To fuel the propaganda, the low-income families were given 20 Reichsmarks on this day,
around 160 US dollars in today's money. All of the shipments that were made on this day
were free of charge and most public enterprises like public transport did not charge their fees.
The main celebrations began a day early, on April 19th in Berlin. Hitler was triumphally
greeted when he entered the city. The idea was to portray him as a Romanesque figure of victory.
Standing in an open car, heading a motorcade of 50 white limousines, he was solemnly driven
7 kilometers along the newly-completed East-West Axis. Thousands of Germans cheered on both sides,
shouting the traditional Nazi slogan. People held German flags, Nazi swastikas, and flaming torches.
Arriving at the Reich Chancellery in the evening, the leader of the Third Reich went to the balcony,
from where he watched a huge torchlight procession,
in which delegations from all regional districts of the National Socialist German Party took part.
In the meantime, guests gradually gathered in the Reich Chancellery building,
ranging from the top leaders of the National Socialist German Party to the people who served
Hitler: secretaries, personal and military adjutants, doctors, drivers, and servants.
Later at night, Hitler's courtiers congratulated him and presented him with gifts. There were so
many different gifts that they occupied 3 rooms and the main hall of the Reich Chancellery.
People from all social strata of German society - from big businessmen
and political elites to peasants - had brought whatever best they could afford.
There were: statues, tapestries, flower vases decorated with swastikas, paintings,
rare coins, manuscripts, first edition works of legendary artists, and various peasant handicrafts
like blankets, pillows, and towels. German housewives knitted baby clothes,
made 6000 pairs of soldier's socks, and got together to bake a six-foot cake.
More militarily minded people gifted pistols, hand grenades, an assortment of knives and daggers,
ancient weapons, and even a living eagle, which the Führer would release
in the Bavarian Mountains. There was also a lot of food:
bread, pretzels, apples, eggs, and so on. In all, the number of gifts exceeded 10,000.
Some of the gifts were impressive to Hitler, while he laughed at others, and ignored most of them.
One of Hitler's closest associates, Heinrich Himmler, presented his boss with a portrait of
the Prussian King Frederick the Great, who was reportedly the Fuhrer's idol. Another closest
associate, Hermann Goering, gave a gold model of the Munich Museum "The House of German Art".
Hitler's pilot, Captain Hans Baur, gave him a model of an aircraft with four Focke-Wulf
200 Condor engines, the so-called "Fuhrer plane". Hitler began
flying this aircraft in the summer of 1939. German gunsmith Fritz Walther presented the
leader of Nazi Germany with a gold-plated .32 caliber pistol with an ivory grip,
floral engraving, and engraved with Hitler's initials. This was one of the gifts that
Hitler held most dear and kept in his safe. The famous German automobile designer Ferdinand
Porsche and the head of the German Labor Front, Robert Ley, presented Hitler with a
Volkswagen Käfer convertible, which would not go into mass production until 1946.
Hitler's favorite architect Albert Speer presented a model of the triumphal arch
that was planned to be built in Berlin after the German victory in World War II.
The most extravagant gift was given by his personal secretary, Martin Borman. The gift was
the “Eagle’s Nest”, an estate in the Bavarian Alps that cost around 200 million dollars (in today's
money) to build. Nazi party paid the money and it took 13 months of construction work - both day and
night - to meet the birthday deadline. 12 workers lost their lives on this treacherous project.
One of the strangest gifts was given by Professor Lutz Heck from the Berlin Zoo.
He, expressing "heartfelt congratulations",
presented Hitler with a 1230-gram ostrich egg so that he would make himself scrambled eggs.
Among all gifts, there was a more symbolic and political one: Albert Forster,
mayor of the Free City of Danzig, a city-state located between Germany and Poland in the north,
awarded Hitler the title of honorary citizen of this city. After 4.5 months,
Danzig will be occupied by the Nazis as a result of the invasion of Poland.
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On April 20th, Hitler's Birthday, Festivities began at 8 am with a serenade by the musicians
of the Nazi leader's bodyguard regiment. Churches adorned with Nazi swastikas rang their bells.
People polished their homefronts, put German flags and swastikas on their houses,
and displayed Hitler's portrait inside their windows.
At 9 a.m., the mayors of the cities and the government of Nazi Germany solemnly congratulated
the Fuhrer on his 50th birthday next to the building of the Reich Chancellery. Diplomats
and representatives from 27 different nations signed the birthday register.
Pope's special representative to Nazi regime,
and the leaders of the two satellite states of Nazi Germany, the Czech President Emil Hacha
and the Slovak President Josef Tiso, also came to congratulate the German dictator.
A congratulatory telegram was sent by the Italian dictator and ally of the German Fuhrer Benito
Mussolini. King George VI also sent a telegram of congratulation to Hitler but it was postponed.
His cabinet was waiting until the last moment to send it because of the relations between Germany
and the United Kingdom which have worsened over the years. France and the United
States did not send congratulations as the relations between the Allies and Germany
has worsened after the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the german claim on Sudetenland.
A huge crowd of what seemed like 10s of thousands of Berliners had collected under the Hiter's
balcony, people trampled over one another to take a glimpse of their favorite leader.
Hitler wholeheartedly accepted the enthusiasm by waving his hands to the crowd.
Having finished accepting congratulations,
the German Fuhrer left the Reich Chancellery for Lustgarten park. On the way, he was greeted
by a seemingly endless queue of about 2 million German people who shouted "Sieg Heil" in unison.
At 11 am, the most important part of the holiday began - a huge military parade,
intended to impress a nervous world with the vastness of Nazi preparedness.
It was attended by 40-50 thousand Wehrmacht troops in full fighting
regalia from all branches of the military. First in the parade were the massed
banners of 200 units of armed forces, then 12 companies of infantry, 12 companies of sailors,
and 12 companies of the air force. Companies of parachutists, engineering
units of railway troops, searchlight companies, detector companies in huge motor trucks filed by.
With them passed the grimmest, most impressive war machines that Nazi Germany could muster—
long-range air-defense artillery that rivaled the British ones, tanks, motorized weapons,
cannons, armored cars, and warplanes. 162 Luftwaffe aircraft flew above Fuhrer's Head,
some of them in Swastika Formation, which newspapers reported: "darkened the berlin sky."
Adolf Hitler sitting on a big chair, with a decorated canopy over his head,
cheerfully approved the marching men with an arm upraised in Nazi Salute. Next to him on
the podium were about 20,000 official guests, including official delegations, diplomats,
and military attaches of foreign countries stationed in Berlin.
Several hundred thousand Berliners also watched the parade.
The parade lasted for about 5 hours, at the end of which, Adolf Hitler,
being in a great mood, signed autographs for several hours and talked with ordinary citizens.
The next day, popular newspapers around the world
published the details of the celebration on their front pages. Special attention
was given to the parade and the quality and quantity of the armament that Hitler displayed.
The event seemed to have succeeded in its objective.
To keep the propaganda alive, German writer Heinrich Hoffmann
wrote a book about the celebration of the anniversary of the Nazi dictator.
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Hitler’s birthday passed and just a few months down the road war broke out.
At the end of this brutal war, Germany would be defeated,
divided between the allies and the Third Reich dissolved. Hitler who received a
million wishes for long life from the german people would commit suicide at the age of 56.
What is interesting is the fate of the presents Hitler received. The ivory-handled gold pistol
was taken from Hitler's Munich apartment upon the end of the war by American soldiers.
One of the soldiers took it to the US and kept it for some time. In 1987 it was sold in auction
for 114,000 dollars to a Canadian collector. The Eagle’s Nest served as Hitler’s holiday
home after 1939. He made 14 documented trips to the palace and spent some personal time there.
It was not damaged during the allied bombing in 1945 and remained almost fully intact. It
was later turned into a tourist attraction. The portrait of Frederick the Great was one
of the dearest presents that Hitler received. It was placed in his room in the bunker under
the Reichchanclery. The portrait was captured by the Soviets after he committed suicide.
It can not be denied that Hitler's Birthday was an efficiently organized celebration that
incorporated almost all echelons of society. It showed the pinnacle of Nazi Germany's power.
In real dictatorial fashion, it remains one of the grandest birthday celebrations in human history.