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On September 9, 1936, in his opening address to the annual Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, Adolf Hitler declared that the “greatest world danger” was the “revolutionizing of the continent” by “Bolshevik wire pullers” controlled by “an international Jewish revolutionary headquarters in Moscow.” The conflation of Jews and socialists was carried on by other speakers, including Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess. The threat of revolution was invoked as justification for German military aid to the Spanish fascists of Francisco Franco. Hitler also repeated Germany’s demand for colonies and lebensraum in the East, i.e., the Soviet Union. The rally’s main exhibition, held aboard 12 railway carriages, was entitled “World Enemy No.1 – Bolshevism.”
Hitler also announced a new industrial Four-Year Plan and placed Göring in sole charge—“the German economy [would be] henceforth subordinated to one purpose, preparation for war,” according to historian Alan Bullock. Göring had only recently emerged victorious in a power struggle with economics minister Hjalmar Schacht over the allocation of increasingly scarce resources, with Göring’s position prevailing, that the lion’s share go to military rearmament rather than towards consumer goods.
Later on September 11, a mass parade was held in the Führer’s honor, involving 40,000 men from the Labor Service, 60,000 storm troopers, 40,000 SS men, and a further 40,000 Hitler Youth. The 1936 Nuremberg rally was called the “Rally of Honor,” in tribute to the Wehrmacht’s remilitarization of the Rhineland earlier that year in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles.
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