Английская Википедия:Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday
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Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday was celebrated as a national holiday throughout Nazi Germany on 20 April 1939. Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels made sure the events organised in Berlin were a lavish spectacle focusing on Hitler. The festivities included a military parade with some 40,000 to 50,000 German troops taking part, along with 162 Luftwaffe airplanes flying overhead. The parade was intended in part as a warning to the Western powers of Nazi Germany's military capabilities. The parade lasted for more than four hours, with 20,000 official guests, along with several hundred thousand spectators being present.
Celebrations
On 18 April 1939, the government of Nazi Germany declared that their Führer Adolf Hitler's birthday (20 April) was to be a national holiday.Шаблон:Sfn Festivities took place in all municipalities throughout the country as well as in the Free City of Danzig. The British historian Ian Kershaw comments that the events organised in Berlin by the Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels were "an astonishing extravaganza of the Führer cult. The lavish outpourings of adulation and sycophancy surpassed those of any previous Führer Birthdays".Шаблон:Sfn
Festivities began in the afternoon on the day before his birthday, when Hitler rode in the lead car of a motorcade of fifty white limousines along architect Albert Speer's newly-completed East-West Axis, the central boulevard for planned Welthauptstadt Germania, which was to be the new name for a renovated Berlin after the victory in World War II.Шаблон:Sfn Hitler, anticipating that Speer would give a speech, was amused when he evaded that by briefly announcing that the work should speak for itself.Шаблон:Sfn The next event was a torch-lit procession of delegations from all over Germany, which Hitler reviewed from a balcony in the Reich Chancellery.Шаблон:Sfn Then, at midnight, Hitler's courtiers congratulated him and presented him with gifts, including "statues, bronze casts, Meissen porcelain, oil-paintings, tapestries, rare coins, antique weapons, and a mass of other presents, many of them kitsch. Hitler admired some, made fun of others, and ignored most".Шаблон:Sfn
Speer presented Hitler with a scale model of the gigantic triumphal arch planned for the rebuilding of Berlin,Шаблон:Sfn and Hitler's pilot, Hans Baur, gave him a model of the "Führer plane", a four-engined Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor that went into service later that year as Hitler's official airplane.Шаблон:Sfn
Military parade
A key part of the birthday celebrations was the large demonstration of Nazi Germany's military capabilities. The display was intended in part as a warning to the Western powers.Шаблон:Sfn The parade, which lasted for more than four hours, included 12 companies of the Luftwaffe, 12 companies of the army, and 12 companies of the navy and units of the Schutzstaffel (SS). In total, 40,000 to 50,000 German troops took part.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn 162 warplanes flew over Berlin.Шаблон:Sfn The grandstand comprised 20,000 official guests,Шаблон:Sfn and the parade was watched by several hundred thousand spectators.Шаблон:Sfn Features of the parade were large long-range air-defence artillery guns, emphasis on motorized artillery and development of air-defence units.Шаблон:Sfn Joseph Goebbels declared in a broadcast address to the German people:
Military leaders throughout the country gave addresses to their troops to celebrate the occasion. Some, such as Major General (later Generalfeldmarschall) Erich von Manstein, were especially effusive in their praise for their supreme commander.Шаблон:Sfn Official guests representing 23 countries took part in the celebrations. Papal Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo, Slovak State President Jozef Tiso, the heads of the branches of Nazi Germany's armed forces and mayors of German cities offered birthday congratulations at the chancellery.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Hitler and the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, exchanged telegrams that assuring each other that the friendship between Germany and the Kingdom of Italy, both of which were ruled by fascist regimes, could not be disturbed by their enemies.Шаблон:Sfn The ambassadors of the United Kingdom, France and the United States were not present at the parade since they had been withdrawn after Germany had occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938.Шаблон:Sfn The US was represented at the troop review by the chargé d'affaires, Raymond H. Geist.Шаблон:Sfn US President Franklin Roosevelt did not congratulate Hitler on his birthday, in accordance with his practice of not sending birthday greetings to anyone but ruling monarchs.Шаблон:Sfn British King George VI dispatched a message of congratulation to Hitler, but the strained relations between the two countries made his advisors consider whether he should ignore the birthday altogether.Шаблон:Sfn
There was no Polish representation at the parade.Шаблон:Sfn
Commemoration
A luxury edition of Hitler's political manifesto and autobiography, Mein Kampf, was published in 1939 in honour of his 50th birthday and was known as the Jubiläumsausgabe ("Anniversary Issue"). It came in both dark blue and sharp red boards with a gold sword on the cover.Шаблон:Sfn The German author and photographer Heinrich Hoffmann wrote a book about Hitler's 50th birthday, Ein Volk ehrt seinen Führer ("A Nation Honours its Leader"). The composer Шаблон:Interlanguage link wrote a hymn for the occasion.Шаблон:Sfn A film of the birthday celebration, Hitlers 50. Geburtstag ("Hitler's 50th Birthday"), is regarded as an important example of Nazi propaganda and was subsequently shown to packed audiences at Youth Film Hours, which were held on Sundays.Шаблон:Sfn
Birthday gifts
The Free City of Danzig made Hitler an honorary citizen of the city as a birthday gift. Hitler received the citizenship papers from the hands of Albert Forster, the city's Nazi leader.Шаблон:Sfn Political and military tension between Germany and Poland was heightened at the time, and Time reported the possibility of Danzig being returned to Germany.Шаблон:Sfn Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, had the Eagle's Nest constructed as the Nazi Party's birthday gift. Hitler, however, did not like the location, as he had a fear of heights.Шаблон:Sfn Because of his indigestion, Hitler did not drink alcohol and so a Munich brewery created a special batch of low-alcohol beer for his birthday. The brew then became a regular order.Шаблон:Sfn
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