2 discs 120 minutes; price includes VAT. On the 20th of April 1939, one of
the biggest and most elaborate birthday parades to ever be staged in Germany was
about to take place. With the day already declared a national holiday by the
German government two days before, hundreds of thousands of people came from
throughout Germany to the Reich capital to join the celebrations and mark the
50th birthday of Adolf Hitler. With thousands in attendance, including a
selection of prominent figures and over 20,000 official guests, the celebration
was much more than a birthday parade. With war perilously close, Hitler used
this opportunity to show off his military strength and issue a warning to the
western powers.
This DVD shows Berlin preparing itself for Adolf
Hitler’s 50th Birthday parade in 1939 using a selection of rare archive footage,
parts of which have been painstakingly restored and can now be presented in
colour for the first time. Several excerpts used in this documentary were taken
by members of the public which have only just been discovered and are presented
here for the very first time. These eye witness films help to show an extremely
important and personal documentation of the events on that day, five months
before the outbreak of the Second World War.
This extraordinary
event saw the largest ever Military Parade in the history of the German Army and
can now be almost completely reconstructed because of the many positions in
which the films were taken. This special edition two disc set contains over two
hours of footage from the event, as well as film showing the preparations and
the build up. Combined with bonus galleries crammed with rare and unseen
pictures, this DVD documents the event in it’s entirety and should appeal to all
military enthusiasts.
