Adolf Hitler's 50th Birthday

The 50th birthday of Adolf Hitler on 20 April 1939 was celebrated as a national holiday throughout Nazi Germany and other parts of the world. Gifts and telegrams of congratulations were received from all over Germany and allied countries, although the Western Allies ignored the event diplomatically. The birthday celebration saw, amongst other events, the largest military parade in the history of the Third Reich, with army, air force, navy and SS units, numbering almost 50,000 in total, marching through the streets of Berlin in Hitler's honor.

On 18 April 1939, the government of Nazi Germany declared that their Führer Adolf Hitler's birthday (20 April) to be a national holiday. Festivities took place in all municipalities throughout the country, as well as in the Free City of Danzig. The British historian Ian Kershaw comments that the events organised in Berlin by the Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels were "an astonishing extravaganza of the Führer cult. The lavish outpourings of adulation and sycophancy surpassed those of any previous Führer Birthdays."

Festivities began in the afternoon on the day before his birthday, when Hitler rode in the lead car of a motorcade of fifty white limousines along architect Albert Speer's newly completed East-West Axis, the planned central boulevard for Welthauptstadt Germania, which was to be the new capital after the planned victory in World War II. Hitler, anticipating that Speer would give a speech, was amused when he evaded this by briefly announcing that the work should speak for itself. The next event was a torchlit procession of appointments from all over Germany, which Hitler reviewed from a balcony in the Reich Chancellery. Then, at midnight, Hitler's courtiers congratulated him and presented him with gifts, including, "Statues, bronze casts, Meissen porcelain, oil-paintings, tapestries, rare coins, antique weapons, and a mass of other presents, many of them kitsch. Hitler admired some, made fun of others, and ignored most."

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