Pre-WW2 Germany – Nazi Ceremony, held at the Feldherrnhalle at Odeonsplatz in Munich.

Nazi Germany had a lot of classical architecture to emulate the ancient Greeks and Romans’ sense of power, immensity, and structured government.

This photo is by Hugo Jaeger. He was the personal photograph for Adolf Hitler from from ’36 to ’45 and did so in color unlike Hitler’s other photographer Heinrich Hoffman who did black and white.

At the end of the war before Hitler died Jaeger ran into some Americans while carrying a suitcase of photos and the was worried about being caught with so many pictures of Hitler. The story goes that they opened the suitcase and found a bottle of booze which the Americans opened and drank with Jaeger while Jaeger slipped the photos out of the suitcase and soon after buried them in glass jars outside of Munich, Germany.

In 1955 Jaeger returned to Munich and dug the jars up to find the photos still safe and preserved. He then stored them in a bank vault until selling them to LIFE Magazine in 1965.

This photo is one of those photos.

Specifically this photo is from an annual ceremony that was the swearing in of the SchutzStaffel (SS) which as we know was the police arm of the Third Reich.

HERE is another picture from that same ceremony but from a reverse angle looking out at the crowd. This was also sold to LIFE magazine and was buried outside of Munich

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