| Original caption: “Nazi Progress – under Dictator Adolf Hitler, who came into power just six years ago, is marked by the impressive new Reich Chancellory. It is designed to represent the “grandeur of Germany” at least in point of size, extending fourteen hundred feet (four hundred and twenty meters) along Vorstraße. Its “long hall,” four hundred and eighty feet (a hundred and forty-five meters) in length and forty feet (twelve meters) wide, is said to be twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Hitler’s desk is at the far end of a room eighty-eight feet (twenty-seven meters) long.” Führer und Reichskanzler (“Leader and Reich Chancellor”) Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) ordered that the Neue Reichskanzlei (“New Chancellery”) be completed in time for the annual diplomatic reception on July 7, 1939. Generalbauinspektor für die Reichshauptstadt (“General Building Inspector for the Capital”) Albert Speer (March 19, 1905 – September 1, 1981) was involved in the construction of the Neue Reichskanzlei even before he was appointed. The New Chancellory must be the most glorious Nazi architecture. The old 1 built in the previous century was, Hitler said, only “fit for a soap company.”) Development began in 1934; land was purchased along the Vorstraße in 1936-1937, under duress from the Jewish Department Store Wertheim. Construction began in January 1938. Construction of a multi-level underground operations center, the Führerbunker and the Vorbunker, began in 1943 in the Garden of the Alte Reichskanzlei (“Old Chancellery”) Garden. That deadline was not met; construction continued throughout he early 1940s until war demands curtailed progress. A huge amount of coal was used, at a time when Berliners had trouble accessing enough for heating, to dry the interior during the Winter of 1938-1939 to try to finish on time. Hitler’s study was opulent, almost 400 square meters (4,300 square feet). The building used Saalburg marble (red limestone) from Thuringia. The Neue Reichskanzlei cost 90,000,000 Reischsmarks, about 550,000,000 United States dollars today. Nevertheless, the reception for the diplomatic corps was held on January 12, 1939. The Völkischer Beobachter predictably sang the praises of the new building. It was described as a superb expression of the increase of Germany’s power and greatness and a symbolic representation of the country’s historical ascendancy. Speer had achieved his goal of giving architectural expression to National Socialist Germany’s achievements and destiny. In finishing, it so rapidly, he bore witness to the know-how and creative genius of the New Germany. Hitler was enthralled, but was still not entirely satisfied. On January 31, 1939, he held a lavish reception for senior officers in the armed forces and their wives. He proudly gave the ladies a guided tour of the building, but having thought things over he decided that the reception hall was altogether too small. He ordered Speer to double its size from 400 to 870 square meters (9,300 square feet). Work soon began, but made slow progress. It was halted in 1943. Hitler found the New Chancellery to be an admirable setting for the intimidation and browbeating of lesser mortals. It was in his new study on March 13, 1939, that the Slovak leader Monsignor Josef Tiso (October 13, 1887 – April 18, 1947) was bullied into breaking away from Czechoslovakia. The following day the Czech President Emil Hácha (July 12, 1872 – June 27, 1945) was obliged to march from the entrance courtyard along the diplomat’s route to Hitler’s office, where he was treated to a ferocious harangue. The strain was too much for him and he fainted. Having been revived by an injection from Hitler’s questionable personal physician Doctor Theodor Morell (July 22, 1886 – May 26, 1948), he signed away his country. Further propagandistic displays were held at the new chancellery. A lavish reception was held there on April 20, 1939, to celebrate the Führer’s 50th birthday. Then on June 7, an audience was given for the Condor Legion, the bombers of Guernica. Speer had done an excellent job in providing the theatrical backdrop for such bombastic scenes, but in practical terms the building was a gigantic white elephant. The staterooms on the bel étage (“noble floor”) were vast spaces that Hitler hardly ever used. Staatssekretäre der Reichskanzlei SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Lammers (May 27, 1879 – January 4, 1962), who ran the Chancellory while Hitler sat on his Bavarian mountaintop, had his office here; but it was neither congenial nor efficient as a workplace. The cabinet never met in the cabinet room – or anywhere else for that matter – but Lammers occasionally used it for conferences with various ministers. There were a 130 small windowless rooms in the cellar, originally designed as storage space, where most of the staff had to work and some had to live. Many of the offices in the administrative wing were left empty. There were a total of 315 offices in the entire building, most of them tiny cramped spaces, due to Speer’s obsession with corridors that were 6 1/2 meters (21 feet) wide, thereby wasting valuable space. With his fascination for technology Speer had installed an air-conditioning system that seldom worked and 2 escalators that needed constant attention. 2 men to service the machinery had to be on permanent duty, artfully using their essential skills to extort wages that were well above the norm. Along with 48 cleaning women and 14 flunkies, this resulted in exorbitant maintenance costs. The building was represented as a masterpiece of German craftsmanship, the work of German artisans who were feted as heroic figures by National Socialist ideologues. They were championed by radicals within the party, whose brand of socialism was little more than a rejection of industrial capitalism, an ingrained hatred of “plutocrats” and a deep suspicion of technology. The radical leadership of this left-wing Nazism had been eliminated in the Röhm Putsch in 1934, but the sentiment lived on within the party and the Sturm Abteilung (SA), to be revived in the later stages of the war. It was an attitude with which Speer initially had some sympathy. The Nazis still had an ambivalent attitude towards technology, so that although it was not rejected it had to be hidden away behind handcrafted objects. Light switches were disguised in marble casings. Light bulbs were designed to look like candles. It was not until he became Minister of Armaments that Speer was able openly to display his fascination with technology. That the New Chancellery was built so quickly was due in large part to the remorseless exploitation of labor. Speer had hoped to have 11-hour shifts per day, but shortages of manpower meant that the men had to work in 12- to 12-hour shifts. As a special privilege, they were given a hot meal in mid-shift. The Völkischer Beobachter shamelessly claimed that the new buildings were designed in part to overcome the problem of unemployment and could thus be seen as a major part of National Socialist welfare policy. From early 1937, there was a shortage of labor that was rapidly becoming a serious problem due to the ambitious projects of the 4-Year Plan that included a staggering rearmament program, and building of the fortifications along the Westwall. As soon as the new chancellery was finished, the workers were made to work on the Westwall or for Speer in Berlin. Weekly newsreels made much of the fact that the Chancellery was built in only 9 months – evidence of the regime’s energy, expertise and resolve – and thereby conveniently overlooking the years of planning and the time it took to demolish an entire city block. Nothing was said about the sacrifices the workers were called upon to make. Construction workers on the New Chancellery site and elsewhere were prone to serious injury as a result of being required to work excessively long hours with inadequate nutrition and rudimentary safety precautions. In order to meet the growing demand for emergency medical services a special hospital was built where workers were hastily patched up and sent back to work as quickly as possible. While Hitler initially preferred other locations like Wolfsschanze Führerhauptquartiere in Rastenburg, East Prussia, or the Berghof, Berchtesgaden, he returned to Berlin and took up residence in the Führerbunker on January 16, 1945. He committed suicide there and his body was burned outside in the Chancellory garden. This stone monument to the Greater German Reich was extravagantly praised in the press and the cinema, but there was very little positive response. Although the building was touted as a representation of the racial community, none of the photographs of the building showed any human beings. Not even Hitler was photographed in his new surroundings. The reason for this is simple. This overwhelming architecture was designed to intimidate and humiliate, a “Sarastro’s castle” where those who entered would be submitted to an ordeal before coming into the presence of the dictator. Had Hitler been photographed sitting behind his Brobdingnagian desk, he would also have been dwarfed and the absurdity of the entire setting would have been exposed. The New Chancellery was a vast, cold, bombastic and empty space, in which nothing was on a human scale. In these hard times there was much comment about the vast amount of money that had been frittered away on it. Few could have imagined that the building would only last for 6 years. All but the exterior walls were destroyed during the Battle of Berlin, while Hitler lived in the Führer Bunker in a corner of the chancellery garden under 4 meters (13 feet) of reinforced concrete. While the Neue Reichskanzlei did not experience significant bomb damage during he war, it was heavily damaged during the Battle of Berlin in late April 1945. The Soviets destroyed the ruins in 1949. After the war there were various rumors about where valuable material from the remains had ended up. Theories ranged from the Humboldt University, the Mohrenstraße U-Bahn metro station or the Soviet war memorials in the Treptower Park, the Tiergarten and the Schönholzer Heide in Pankow. None are true. The Soviets graciously gave the Chancellory’s bronze eagle that decorated the court of honor, captured in the fighting, to the British military authorities. It now rests in the Imperial War Museum. Hitler’s desk and globe are in the Historical Museum in Berlin. Some of the paintings from the Chancellery hang in the Pentagon. Arno Breker’s (July 19, 1900 – February 13, 1991) Naked Man Representing the Party is in the Breker Museum in Nörvenich in the Cologne region. Josef Thorak’s (February 7, 1889 – February 26, 1952) enormous equestrian statues ended up in Soviet Army barracks in the German Democratic Republic. For years the site of Speer’s Chancellery was an empty space in the no man’s land along the Berlin Wall. There is now a nondescript apartment building on the site. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0885.jpg |
| Image Size | 205.06 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1300 x 934 |
| Photographer | Heinrich Hoffmann |
| Photographer Title | Heinrich Hoffmann Presse |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | January 1, 1939 |
| Location | Neue Reichskanzlei |
| City | Berlin |
| State or Province | Berlin |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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