With pomp reminiscent of old Imperial Germany, Adolf Hitler, Aggrandizer of the Reich, last week celebrated his 50th birthday. The representatives of conquered nations paid him humble homage. The envoys of fearful satellites rendered respectful tribute. Albert Forster, Nazi No. 1 of the Free City of Danzig, presented a document which made the Fuhrer an honorary citizen of a town he may soon appropriate. Special delegations from Germany's allies were received in special audience.
Meanwhile all diplomats of "friendly" nations (including the U. S. Chargeé d'Affaires) signed the birthday register at the big new Chancellery. His Majesty the King of England sent the Fuhrer the birthday greetings he customarily sends to all rulers. However, the U. S. President, who customarily felicitates only reigning monarchs on birthdays, sent none. Anyhow, since the Fuhrer had not answered the President's request for ten years' peace (TIME, April 24), he owed the President a letter.
Church bells rang from swastika-decorated churches as the day began. The Reich's Cabinet ministers swore anew to their "faith in the word of Adolf Hitler." Nazi Party leaders gathered in the Sportspalast to renew their oaths of loyalty. The 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, in which Corporal Hitler once served, got out a photographic album of the regiment's World War history.
From Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels came a symposium of German movies from 1910 to 1939. Labor Front Leader Dr. Robert Ley presented a Volkswagen, the cheap German-manufactured car not yet available to the public. For the Reichsbank Dr. Walther Funk gave a version of Titian's Venus at the Mirror which official Germany now accepts (although many art critics do not) as one of two authentic originals of this painting.
The common people were represented too. Three rooms and part of the main Chancellery Hall were piled high with presents. Peasants sent their native handiwork. Westphalian women knitted 6,000 pairs of socks for the Fiihrer's soldiers. Housewives got together to bake a six-foot cake. From the more militarily minded came pistols, hand grenades, an assortment of knives and daggers, a live eagle which the Führer will release in the Bavarian Mountains.
The real demonstration came on the streets of Berlin. As the Fuhrer drove from the Chancellery to the Lustgarten on his way to view a military birthday parade in his honor, 2,000,000 heils greeted him. On the new Via Triumphalis, the broad East-West "axis" which Herr Hitler himself ordered cut through the heart of a fast rebuilding capital, the former corporal acted for all the world like an emperor. He wore his usual simple brown Nazi uniform, but on the cap, below a spread eagle, were gilded oak leaves encasing a swastika—the mark of the supreme military commander he is. He sat on a gilded thronelike chair placed on a raised dais covered with red plush. He was protected by a grey canopy decorated with eagles and iron crosses.