Rearmament: airships, aircraft, tanks and gliders, 1937

A mason kneels on a scaffold pointing a stone wall beneath a row of flags, and a colliery winding tower and smoking chimneys rise over a town. In a vast hangar workers clamber over the ring girders of an airship; mechanics fit a radial engine and wipe down a corrugated tail fin painted with a swastika; formations of aircraft cross a cloudy sky; two columns of light tanks converge on a bare field; and on a sandy slope a launch crew hauls the rope for a training glider.

In March 1935 Hitler threw off the Versailles limits, announcing the Luftwaffe and conscription. Hermann Göring's Four-Year Plan of 1936 set out to make Germany ready for war within four years, and the tanks and bombers shown here were the first fruits of that effort.