Nuremberg Parade Grounds Great Street (Große Straße) (Nuremberg)

 Second World War 1939-1945, place with historical importance, parade ground

The Nazi's Great Street (Große Straße) was meant as a ceremonial parade route for Nuremberg, site of the epic outdoor party rallies. Early on, rally organizers noticed that military regiments could parade in rank competently, but some of the labor groups and rowdier bands of Brownshirts could be pathetic at drill-marching. (Helping plan one parade rally, Hitler's builder Albert Speer had the idea to move such groups' march-ins to after dark ---thus hiding them from view while preserving the excitement of the mass-crowd effect. The dramatic "Cathedral of Ice" sky-illumination with searchlights in the darkness at the nearby rally ground also grew from this thinking.) Another solution: the stone-inlay grid pattern of two-tone granite blocks laid here upon the Großen Straße: they are guideline markings to help align marching columns. Even the size of the blocks was established with marching in mind: each square block is 1.2 meters ---the length of two average Prussian goose-steps. The stone surfaces are roughened to make a non-skid foot surface. Lore says the stones were quarried with forced labor by concentration camp inmates and that "each block took at least one life." About 1.5 km of surface was completed in 1939 before the outbreak of the Second World War which precluded further use of the area for mass rallies. The site originally was chosen for its geographic proximity to and alignment with key historic sites of the Holy Roman Empire ---a symbolic link between the Nazi regime and the historic First Reich. Just after the war, the Great Street served for a time as a US Army airstrip. Now it is used as a parkway and as a parking lot.