Ruinair by Paul Kilduff

Author:Paul Kilduff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Austria

Niki Flight AB8374 – Monday @ 8.00am – NUE-VIE

Fare €22 plus taxes, fees and charges €17

Nuremberg is the second city of Bavaria and lies 100 miles north-west of Munich. Half a million residents live here in comfortable suburban bliss. The city’s motto is Stadt der Menschenrechte, the City of Human Rights. I catch a 9 tram from Marktplatz, formerly known as Adolf-Hitler-Platz for a decade or so. They say there’s a programme on British TV every night about Hitler. Check today’s TV listings. There is.

Three miles south from the city centre I alight at the expansive Luitpoldhain. Nuremberg was always an ideal location to host a party. Its distinguished past as part of the Holy Roman Empire lent historical credence to lesser, more contemporary undertakings. It was geographically central within the Third Reich and became a national shrine under the National Socialist German Workers Party. It is deserted today but in the 1930s half a million people would arrive on an annual basis for a Reichsparteitag, a party congress and rally. Each annual rally had a programmatic title relating to recent national events. In 1933 the rally was called the Rally of Victory, followed by the 1934 Rally of Unity and Strength, the 1935 Rally of Freedom, the 1936 Rally of Honour, and so on. All went well on an annual basis until 1939 when the Rally of Peace, due to start on 2 September, was cancelled at short notice because the day before that, Germany had invaded Poland.

I am in the largest open-air museum of Nazi architecture and they didn’t do things by half. Within eleven square kilometres there was a parade arena, a congress hall, a stadium, a two-kilometre-long Great Road, a marching field, barracks and camp. Much of the natural stone underfoot was quarried by slave labour at Flossenbürg and Mauthausen. The parade arena is designed to be impressive and momentous and makes me feel small and insignificant, so I will do what I am told to do by the great leader up there on the steps. I contemplate matters alone. If events had transpired differently, they would still visit once a year.

The principal preoccupations at these week-long rallies were standing about, flag-waving, boot stomping, torchlight parades, wearing of smart uniforms and widespread swearing, mostly of allegiances. The organisational reality was somewhat different, as documented in reports by officials at the time:

‘The torchlight parade of the political leaders was nothing less than a disaster. Most were totally unaware they had marched past the Führer. Pushing people onwards all the time and the non-stop marching we see every year causes total confusion. It was, in plain and simple German – embarrassing.’

‘Experience gained at prior rallies led to the Nuremberg red light district being cordoned off. One couldn’t help noticing the political leaders, who enjoy more freedom of movement at rallies, repeatedly tried to get into these streets despite the latter being conspicuously cordoned off by SS guards day and night.’

‘The public toilets to the right and left of the War Memorial are hopelessly inadequate.

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