Visiting the Site of the Nazi Party Rallies

This morning we made plans to visit some sites made famous by Hitler. We took a bus to the edges of town to visit the Nuremberg site of Hitler’s political rallies. This area was under construction when Hitler arrived with his plans to take over the world. He took over the area and made big plans to finish the buildings and huge gathering areas.

Here is where the bus let us off–outside the colosseum that is still unfinished. There is a Interim Exhibit called “Nuremberg –Site of the Party Rallies, Staging, Experience and Violence” in a large exhibit hall of the Documentation Center. We spent a couple of hours there, reading and learning (on our phones) about the history of the Nazi Party here on on these grounds. A permanent exhibit is scheduled to open in late 2024.

Here’s a map of the grounds by the ticket office:

This is the hall with the Interim Exhibit:

There were lots of pieces of information, news and artifacts to look at and read, while we listened to words on our smartphones.

This piece of information about the inflation crisis was especially interesting to me because I heard Grandpa Rudolf talk about it so often.

Grandma and Grandpa married in 1929 and left Germany during this time.

Grandpa described how people would use wheelbarrows to carry their almost-worthless bills.

After the Exhibit Hall, we walked over to the colosseum, surprised to find it totally unfinished on the inside. This place is TWICE as big as the Colosseum in Rome!

During the war, there simply wasn’t enough money or manpower to finish building it. This was the plan:

I was amazed to find it constructed of small bricks.

Then we started on the 90 minute walk around a lake area that was also once a construction site, later filled in with rubble and then filled with water. Today’s Nuremberg is trying to make this a family friendly destination spot with water sports and recreational areas.

As you walk around the lakes, there are 23 large information panels explaining the history of the place and what happened where.

The view back at the colosseum:

This is the Great Street, or parade route for Hitler’s marching troops and displays of equipment. Today it’s used as a parking lot for events held here.

You can read about the Great Street here–it was 60 meters wide and the plan was to make it almost 2 km long (only 1500 meters were finished), connecting it (symbolically) with the Palace in Nuremberg.

There used to be a zoo where the Great Street was designed to go. They relocated the zoo. Here’s what the plan looked like:

This Great Street is made up of black and gray granite slabs and was intended to be a parade road for the Wehrmacht and the central axis of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds. The construction work was finished in 1939 but the road was never used as a parade road, due to the breakout of the Second World War.