Adolf Hitler hosted his first formal Christmas party with the NSDAP at the Bürgerbräukeller in December of 1921, with 4000 of his early supporters gathered in attendance to celebrate together and to hear his speech. As the crowd assembled around the Christmas tree, they sang Christmas carols and nationalist hymns, exchanged gifts and made charitable donations to the working class attendees at the speech. Hitler firmly established an ongoing tradition of giving a “yuletide speech” at the party’s annual “German Christmas Celebration”, usually given on Christmas Eve among his most loyal supporters.

After coming to power in 1933, National Socialist ideologues sought to rework Germany’s long-held Christmas traditions and renamed the holiday Julfest, with an emphases placed on the “rebirth of the sun” and renewed Winter solstice rituals, claiming that the Christian elements of the holiday had been superimposed upon ancient Germanic traditions. Images of Santa Claus were also revamped to depict the Norse god Odin as the “Solstice man”. During the height of the movement, an attempt was made to remove the association of the coming of Jesus and replace it with the coming of Hitler, referred to in rewritten Christmas hymns as the “Savior Führer”.

This extremely popular Christmas postcard featuring Adolf Hitler enjoying the festive lights on his Christmas tree was first printed in 1939 and remained in heavy circulation all throughout the war years.

In 1933 the National Socialist People’s Welfare (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt) organization, which was originally established in 1931 as a small Nazi Party-affiliated charity, inaugurated the very first Winter Relief of the German People (Winterhilfswerk). The Winterhilfswerk became an annual drive to collect charity for the poor in order to provide them with heating and food over the course of the winter months. Goebbels saw tremendous propaganda potential in the new Winter charity program that launched in Berlin and was soon expanded across the country.

The following 6 color photographs were captured by Hugo Jaeger on 24 December 1938. In Munich, Hitler had delivered a speech at the Christmas party of the “Old Fighters” in the Löwenbräukeller. Hitler then went on to visit the Bruckmann family in Leopoldstraße 10/III, who expressed disapproval of his persecution of the Jews. Hugo Bruckmann’s personal influence on Hitler to some extent had reduced the political interference within the cultural sphere. For example, the attempt to ban Jewish books from libraries was successfully opposed by Bruckmann. Elsa Bruckmann, born Princess Cantacuzène of Romania, was the Munich publisher of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. She held the “Salon Bruckmann” and made it her mission to introduce Adolf Hitler to leading industrialists. The Bruckmanns joined the Nazi Party in 1932, but their membership was back-dated to 1925 with honorary membership numbers 91 (Elsa) and 92 (Hugo). In their guestbook, Hitler had written that this was his happiest Christmas.