Saluting crowds in the Zeppelin Field grandstand, 1937

Tier upon tier the grandstand is packed to the last seat: young women in white blouses and dark hats, men in the caps of the Labour Service and the SA, SS men in black with the death's head, a Luftwaffe officer, stout party officials with armbands, women in polka-dot dresses. When the columns pass below, a forest of arms rises in the salute beneath the banners and the long colonnade.

The stands of the Zeppelin Field, designed by Albert Speer after the altar of Pergamon, held some seventy thousand spectators. Places in them were distributed through the party and its organisations, and the audience itself was part of the performance.