The sun rose over the spires of Berlin like a golden standard unfurled to announce the future.
From every corner of the earth they came, envoys, athletes, journalists, industrialists, monarchs, and presidents, descendants of old empires and heads of new republics alike, all drawn to the heart of the Reich not merely for sport, but to witness what the world had become in Bruno von Zehntner's image.
The 1934 Summer Olympics had returned to Berlin with grandeur far surpassing that of 1918, which itself had been a miracle after the early conclusion of the Great War.
But now, sixteen years later, the city had grown into something else entirely: a metropolis not of soot and smog, but of crystal towers, luminous thoroughfares, and classical might resurrected.
From above, foreign pilots marveled as their planes descended toward Tempelhof Aerodrome, now expanded into a true continental air hub.
