Wreaths and a parade at the Neue Wache, Berlin 1937

A crowd of men, women and boys lines Unter den Linden behind a man in the spiked helmet of the old imperial army. Officers in greatcoats, a civilian in a top hat carrying a great wreath of lilies and a tall man in a Pickelhaube cross the square before the Opera; a Wehrmacht band with drums and Schellenbaum marches past the Old Library, rank after rank of steel-helmeted infantry goose-step by, and a file with fixed bayonets halts beside the sentry between the Doric columns of the Neue Wache, where men in spiked helmets stand guard beside a soldier in field grey.

Schinkel's guardhouse of 1818 had become the memorial to the dead of the World War in 1931. The occasion of this ceremony is not recorded; the old uniforms beside the new showed the Wehrmacht, restored by conscription in 1935, as heir to the army of 1914.