Nazi neoclassicism was the official architectural style of the Third Reich (1933–1945) — a deliberate instrumentalisation of stripped classical forms to project power, permanence, and racial ideology. Albert Speer, Hitler's chief architect, developed a monumental vocabulary of colonnades, massive stone facades, and symmetrical axes designed to dwarf the individual and glorify the state.
The surviving examples — the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, the Nuremberg Rally Grounds, the Olympic Stadium — are studied not for aesthetic merit but as evidence of how architecture can serve totalitarian power. Their preservation raises ongoing questions about how societies memorialise, repurpose, or confront the built legacy of authoritarian regimes.
