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Getting up early can be a pain.

At least when you're usually up until two or three in the morning.

Like Adolf Hitler.

No wonder that the “Führer and Reich Chancellor” looks rather pinched in many of the pictures of his 50th birthday on April 20, 1939.

The parades, captured in countless photos and moving images in black and white as well as in color, with which the Reich capital Berlin celebrated the then extremely popular dictator on this Thursday are remembered.

The journalist and historian Armin Fuhrer has analyzed the planning and instrumentalisation of “Führer’s Birthday” and describes the “perfidious propaganda of the Nazi regime with April 20th” in a book that is well worth reading.

The first item on the program took place at eight o'clock in the morning: a serenade for the NSDAP chief, performed by the music corps of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler.

And because the musicians had come to the garden of the Reich Chancellery, where the windows of the “Fuehrer's apartment” opened, the jubilee had to be booted and spurred on.

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True to his custom, Hitler had sat with old loyal followers the evening before and "chatted".

Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary: “Talked to the Führer for a long time.

Midnight.

We all wish him a happy birthday. ”And he added,“ Late to bed. ”That could easily mean two o'clock or later.

Congratulations from the Pope

In any case, getting up the following morning was not easy for the Propaganda Minister.

He noted: “In the morning, in all freshness, it starts on Wilhelmplatz.

The people congratulate.

In the most touching way.

It's moving. ”Thousands of Berliners and visitors to the city crowded the spacious, cordoned-off streets in the government district and were naturally loud.

The diplomatic program began at 9:20 sharp with the congratulations of the doyen of the ambassadors accredited in Berlin, Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo.

The fact that the representative of the Catholic Church was the first to convey the congratulations of his head of state to Hitler, who hates the church, Pope Pius XII, who had only been in office for six weeks, was due to traditional traditions.

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Otherwise, there were no significant visitors.

The highest-ranking congratulator was Emil Hacha, the President of Bohemia and Moravia, of the western part of the former Czechoslovakia, which was occupied by the armed forces in violation of international law in mid-March 1939 and downgraded to a "protectorate".

A meaningless politician who came into office after the Munich Agreement as a stopgap for the exiled President Edvard Beneš.

With Hacha came the "Reich Protector", the former Reich Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath, who was deposed by Hitler - an additional humiliation.

After the two representatives of the “Protectorate”, the next international guest was the Slovak Prime Minister Jozef Tiso - also in office by Hitler's grace.

There were no other foreign well-wishers outside the diplomatic corps: a clear gesture in view of the situation in Europe that Germany had deliberately escalated.

A German stage

The New Reich Chancellery, commissioned by Hitler to impress "smaller potentates", became a largely German stage at the first really big event.

Now the members of the long since completely insignificant Reich Cabinet, which had met for the last time more than a year earlier, and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the armed forces congratulated.

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In any case, the Wehrmacht played the main role on “Führer's birthday”.

It was still cool;

most of the trees were still bare.

But the sun was shining.

Good prerequisites for the actual goal of the festival, to demonstrate Germany's new strength before the eyes of the world.

At 10.15 a.m. Hitler's open Mercedes rolled out of the Reich Chancellery and drove, with a stopover at the city command, to the grandstand in front of the Technical University in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

Here, on the edge of the recently completed east-west axis, the dictator wanted to take down the parade of his armed forces.

Massive parade

Several hundred thousand people lined the Charlottenburger Chaussee - certainly not, as Armin Fuhrer rightly states, a million.

This is what the Linzer “Tagespost” had claimed in its exuberant article and has since appeared in many descriptions of the “Führer birthday”.

But there is no question that Hitler, had an assassin killed him that day, would have gone down in German history as the greatest figure of all time.

The parade lasted almost five hours, in which, according to Fuhrer's research, 40,000 soldiers and 1,500 officers took part, plus 600 tanks, 40 heavy artillery pieces and countless other weapons.

Safety was guaranteed by the regular police, 25,000 SA men and more than 15,000 members of the National Socialist Motorist Corps.

The SS, the elite of the uniformed Nazis, were present around Hitler with 600 men.

Goebbels was jubilant.

“A brilliant picture of German power and strength.” He registered “storms of applause” and was pleased: “The Fiihrer is celebrated by the people in a way that no mortal person has ever been celebrated.

So that's how we stand.

The goddess of victory shines in the glaring sunlight.

A wonderful omen. "

Cheers for cannons

Apparently this assessment was even correct;

this is supported by the memory of US correspondent Wiliam L. Shirer.

He admitted that the parade, "the most important display of German military power to date", had had an impact on him.

When an over-heavy artillery, pulled by five tugs, passed the crowd, the German spectators first took their breath away, then the people applauded enthusiastically.

Shirer asked himself helplessly: "How could you applaud inanimate things like cannons and tanks?"

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The international correspondents were, along with the German onlookers, the most important addressees of the parade.

The important British newspapers reported, in some cases with reports on the front page.

However, "not in the breadth of what the 'Völkischer Beobachter' made its readers who could not verify the truthfulness believe," writes Fuhrer aptly.

Beyond April 20, 1939, his book also describes the festivities for earlier and later birthdays.

Right up to the last on April 20, 1945, which took place in the ruins of the New Reich Chancellery.

It started at 5 p.m. because Hitler, according to his habit, did not wake up until 2 p.m.

Getting up early just wasn't his thing.

This article was first published in 2014.