Everyone's busy debating past White House renovations; a distraction bad actors want!
But Trump's new ballroom more closely mirrors Hitler's Reich Chancellery: scale/timing/symbolism echo a dark legacy, not traditional American architecture.
What are we really looking at? 🧵👇
Built in record time by his architect Albert Speer, Hitler’s New Reich Chancellery was a monumental space made to impress/intimidate. Its ballroom was richly decorated w/ marble & fine woods. It was a grand diplomatic reception area symbolizing Nazi power.
That ballroom and a grand reception hall were added to the Chancellery by architects Paul Troost & Leonhard Gall in 1935.
Lavish & vast, they were used mainly for official state events, and were part of the larger complex with military and underground bunkers beneath.
While the Old Reich Chancellery remained Hitler's residence, beneath the New's ballroom lay the Führerbunker, a super fortified underground complex built for air raids in which Hitler and his inner circle took final refuge starting in January 1945.
The overall construction was funded by totalitarian control over resources, public expenditures, & exploitation policies characteristic of the Nazi regime; was part of the broader strategy to stimulate the economy & showcase power, regardless of economic hardship faced by Germans
Hitler's construction cost: ~90m Reichsmarks in the 1930s (approx. $340m USD today). The luxurious construction contrasted sharply w/ daily struggles and hunger. This led to mixed public opinion despite heavy written & visual propaganda extolling the virtues of Nazi architecture.
This complex article is relevant because it deeply analyzes Speer's design of the New Reich Chancellery and its ideological/aesthetic purposes, as well as other details about Hitler's intentions.
Nazi architecture's fundamental nature is a form of political theater.
Also, note:
Hitler was also obsessed with the whole "arch" thing like Trump, and set his architect Albert Speer to build one for him.
The Vorbunker below the ballroom became the Nazis' final command center. Hitler married Eva Braun in there, then suicided a couple days later as Soviet troops closed in on Berlin. Goebbels and his family also died there. The bunker is highly symbolic of the end of the darkest era
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