Soldiers of the new Wehrmacht, 1937

A young soldier in a steel helmet, the braided cord of a marksmanship lanyard across his chest, stands motionless at his post while a boy grins into the camera beside him. From low down, a column of infantry with shouldered rifles marches past a great dome and a palace façade crowned with statues. Then a bank of white smoke rolls across the vast field of the Nuremberg rally grounds, soldiers running through it until a tank emerges near the spectators.

Conscription, reintroduced in March 1935, brought a whole generation of young men into uniform for two years. The army that had been limited to 100,000 men by the Treaty of Versailles was growing toward a force of more than thirty divisions.