Interior detail of the New Reichschancellery building (1939)

The Mable Gallery of the New Reichschancellery building (1939)

The groundplan of the New Reichschancellery building clearly shows the spatial scaffolding of the whole: a representative axis running from Wilhelm Platz to Hermann-Göring-Straße along which everything falls into place in a self-evident way.

A long gallery served exclusively as a transit room, the light filtering through nineteen tall windows set deeply in marble niches creating a wonderful alternating light and dark pattern. Hitler loved the long walk that state guests and diplomats would have to take before reaching his reception room. “On the long corridor from the entrance to the reception hall, they’ll learn something about the grandeur of the German Reich,” he noted.

The Mosaic Hall of the New Reichschancellery building (1939)

The mighty Mosaic Hall radiated “festival red” from its floors and walls. The huge mosaic surfaces were tastefully divided by almost invisible bands of marble. Marble plates with lighter mosaic dividers covered the floor. A richly structed ledge fled off the upper walls and supported an apparently weightless translucent ceilling. Heavy Roman-style door niches were set into the narrow sides of the room. Between identical sets of double red pillars at the far end of the Mosaic Hall was a bold, deep niche housing two tall mahogany doors. The door niche was framed by a heavy gray-green marble casing and over it stood a golden eagle.

Hitler’s Office in the New Reichschancellery building (1939)

Hitler’s office was accessed through the Marble Gallery. A center door of five entered directly into the Office of the Führer. Hitler was very pleased with his office and especially with the inlay on his deks showing a sword half-drawn from its sheath. “When diplomats sitting in front of me at this desk see that, they will learn to shiver and shake,” he said.

Thirty-four columns were grouped around the periphery of the Zeppelinfeld (1938)

Upon reviewing the initial design for the Zeppelinfeld, part of the Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg, Speer felt that an impressive redesign was necessary to achieve the required effect. His product, as observed in Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda masterpiece, Triumph of the Will, was based on ancient Doric architecture, magnified to an enormous scale and capable of holding over two hundred and fourty thousand people.

Photograph from Werner Rittich, Architektur und Bauplastik der Gegenwart (1938)

The Pfeilerhalle, or Hall of Pillars, on one side of the Zeppelinhaupttribüne (1938)

“The Führer’s buildings use hand-hewn natural stone. Natural stone and Nordic bricks are our most durable building materials. Although they are more expensive in the short term, in the long term they are the most economical. Durability is always the most important principle. The buildings of our Führer will speak of the greatness of our age to future millennia. As the eternal buildings of the movement rise in the various cities of Germany, they will be buildings of which people can be proud. They will know that these buildings belong to everyone, and therefore to each individual.”

From Albert Speer, “Die Bauten des Führers,” Adolf Hitler. Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers (1936); photograph from Werner Rittich, Architektur und Bauplastik der Gegenwart (1938)

Rear view of the main tribune of the Zeppelinfeld, the Zeppelinhaupttribüne (1938)

At Nuremberg, Speer developped his theory of “ruin value”, which held that all buildings were to be constructed so that they would make aesthetically pleasing ruins thousands of years in the future. In practice, this theory manifested itself in Hitler’s marked preference for monumental stone construction, rather than the use of steel frames and ferroconcrete. Not once did the idea that his buildings would ultimately perish worry Hitler, though it scandalised his entourage.

From Alexander Scobie, Hitler’s State Architecture: The Impact of Classical Antiquity (1990); photograph from Werner Rittich, Architektur und Bauplastik der Gegenwart (1938)

Rear view of the main tribune of the Zeppelinfeld, the Zeppelinhaupttribüne (1938)

Photograph from Werner Rittich, Architektur und Bauplastik der Gegenwart (1938)

Detail of the main tribune of the Zeppelinfeld, the Zeppelinhaupttribüne (1938)

Columns at either end of the Zeppelintribüne mounted cauldrons which were lit during nighttime gatherings.

Photograph from Werner Rittich, Architektur und Bauplastik der Gegenwart (1938)

View of the Zeppelinfeld at night

For the 1934 Nazi Party Rally at Nuremberg, Speer had the rally grounds surrounded with one-hundred-and-thirty anti-aircraft searchlights, creating a “Lichtdom” (“cathedral of light”) that inspired a sense of mystery and meaning to the gathered crowd. (The phrase if often mistakingly attributed to British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson, whom in fact referred to the sight as a “cathedral of ice.”)

Photograph of the Germania maquette

In Hitler’s vision, the city of Berlin was to be transformed in a capital of the world, Germania, and he charged Speer with leading this renewal. He produced many plans of which only a few were realised. The creation of a great city axis, which included broadening Unter den Linden and placing the Siegessäule in the center, far away from the Reichstag building, where it originally stood, succeeded. At the north end of this three-mile long avenue was to be erected an enormous domed building, based upon St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Over seven hundred feet in height and eight hundred feet in diameter, sixteen times as large as the dome of the St Peter’s, the building would have stood impossibly tall, overshadowing the length of the city axis.

Photograph of the Germania maquette

Hitler’s aspirations to world domination, already evident from architectural and decorative featured of the new Reichschancellery, are even more clearly expressed here. External symbols suggest that the domed hall was where Hitler as Herr der Welt would appear before his Herrenvolk: on top of the dome’s lantern was an eagle grasping in its claws not the usual swastika but the globe of the Earth. The vast dome, on which it rested, as with Hadrian’s Pantheon, symbolically represented the vault of the sky spanning Hitler’s world empire. The globe on the dome’s lantern was enhanced and emphasized by two monumental sculptured by Arno Breker, each 15 metres high, which flanked the north façade of the building: at its west end Atlas supporting the heavens, at its east end Tellus supporting the Earth. Both mythological figured were, according to Speer, chosen by Hitler himself, whom Speer said believed “that as centuries passed, his huge domes assembly hall would acquire great holy significance and become a hallowed shrine as important to National Socialism as St. Peter’s in Rome is to Roman Catholicism. Such cultism was at the root of the entire plan.”