It was the brainchild of Albert Speer, who was commissioned by Adolf Hitler to design and organise the Nuremberg Parade Grounds for the annual celebrations. It is still considered amongst Speer's most important works. The idea was disliked by the Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring, because the number of searchlights represented most of Germany's strategic reserve, but Hitler overruled him, suggesting that it was a useful piece of disinformation. "If we use them in such large numbers for a thing like this, other countries will think we're swimming in searchlights."