Buildings were festooned with enormous flags and Nazi insignia.
Immaculately dressed soldiers, holding flags and torchlights, goose-stepped through the streets.
Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis delivered rousing speeches, and there were magnificent fireworks displays.
Unfortunately for the Fuher, the stadium could not be completed in time for the 1933 rally.
But Albert Speer was a resourceful person.
Speer borrowed from the Luftwaffe 152 powerful anti-aircraft searchlights and placed them pointing skywards at intervals of 12 meters.
The Flak Searchlights Speer used were very powerful devices.
The 152 searchlights that Speer used for the Cathedral actually represented most of the countrys entire stockpile.
The Cathedral of Light became the characteristic element of all future party rallies until 1938.
The 1939 rally was cancelled at the last moment when Germany invaded Poland igniting the Second World War.
A German 150cm searchlight displayed at the Luftwaffenmuseum Berlin-Gatow.
Photo credit:Denis Apel/Wikimedia
Adolf Hitler oversees the assembly, 1937.
Looking up into the “cathedral of light” over the rally.
