Nazi Architecture - Cult of Victory

Cult of Victory

Both the Nazis and the Romans employed architecture of colossal dimensions to overawe and intimidate. Both cultures were preoccupied with architectural monuments that celebrated or glorified a victory ideology: triumphal arches (the largest in the world would be built on Berlin's north-south axis), columns, trophies, and a cult of pageantry associated with the subjugation of others. As Albert Speer remarked, when it was safe to do so: "The Romans built arches of triumph to celebrate the big victories won by the Roman Empire, while Hitler built them to celebrate victories he had not yet won".

The Nazis planned and built many military trophies and memorials (Gr Mahnmäler), on the eastern borders of the Reich. In the same way, the Romans had built celebratory trophies on the borders of their empire to commemorate victories and warn off would-be attackers. One of the most prominent memorial buildings intended to commemorate Germany's past and anticipated military glory was Wilhelm Kreis's Soldatenhalle. This was to be yet another cult centre to promote the regime's glorification of war, patriotic self-sacrifice and virtutes militares. The main architectural features of this building were overtly Roman. A groin-vaulted crypt (picture) beneath the main barrel-vaulted hall was intended as a pantheon of generals exhibited here in effigy. In addition, it functioned as a herõon, since the bones of Frederick the Great were to be placed in the building.

Flags and insignia played an important part in Nazi ceremonial and in the decoration of buildings. The eagle-topped standards carried by the SA at Nuremberg rallies were reminiscent of Roman legionary standards, the uniformity of which Hitler admired. There can be little doubt that Hitler's state architecture, even when seen today in photographs of architectural models, conveys a sense of "Power and Force" (Gr Macht und Gewalt), which of course Hitler wanted it to embody.

Inevitably, after Hitler's defeat, the colossal dimensions of his buildings tended to be seen, as they were by Speer in his memoirs, as symbols of Hitler's megalomania. This is perhaps a valid view point, but it is also something of an oversimplification, since at the time the buildings were planned and erected, they were valid symbols of Germany's rapidly rising power and expressed the optimism generated by Hitler's spectacular initial victories. The vast public buildings of ancient Rome have rarely been explained as symptoms of imperial megalomania, except perhaps for the Domus Aurea, since Roman imperialism, which generated money and labour necessary for the erection of Rome's monumental buildings, was supremely successful and long-lived. Hitler's architecture is sometimes misjudged because he was building for the future in anticipation of a greatly enlarged Reich. Here it is worth noting that Vitruvius perceived that Augustus was building on a large scale for future greatness. Hitler's optimistic expectations were frustrated and in the aftermath of catastrophe his architectural plans seemed by many to be those of a madman. However difficult it may be to view these plans objectively, it would be a mistake to regard his buildings as either psychologically ineffective or symbolically impotent. This is certainly not the impression given by Speer or Giesler at the time they were articulating Hitler's architectural plans.

Had Hitler achieved all his political and military aims and had his successors consolidated and perhaps even expanded his territorial gains, the art and architecture of Germany would undoubtedly have reflected the sentiment that pervaded much of Rome's art in the Augustan period, that is, a confidently assumed right to dominate others, which Virgil elegantly, if brutally, expressed in Aeneid 6.851-53: "Remember, Roman, to exercise dominion over nations. These will be your skills: to impose culture on peace, to spare the conquered and to war down the proud". This passage, so much in tune with Nazi aspirations is repeatedly referred to in the political literature of Germany at the time.