The Reich Labour Service on the Zeppelin Field, 1937

The whole Zeppelin Field is filled with blocks of men in ruler-straight rows reaching to the long white colonnade of the grandstand with its wreathed swastika. Columns in caps, packs on their backs, goose-step across the sand with spades carried like rifles, past a playing band and a stone plinth bearing the emblem of the service. Between commands thousands sit in close rows on the field, talking, laughing and raising their canteens. Adolf Hitler stands beside the driver of a large open touring car, in brown party jacket and peaked cap, his arm stiffly outstretched; the car moves slowly along the blocks and stops at a pennant among saluting leaders.

The Labour Service roll call was a fixed day of every rally. Since the law of June 1935 every young German man owed half a year of labour service before military service, draining moors, building roads and bringing in the harvest. Konstantin Hierl had his men parade past Hitler in the army's ceremonial step, and the spade, drilled and presented like a weapon, showed what this service was meant to prepare them for.