Not every enthusiastic rally participant believed in the misanthropic world view. Not every deprecating remark spelled opposition to the Nazis. First-hand reports and personal memories played an important role for Nuremberg rally-goers and also for those who stayed at home. Testimonies in the form of letters, reports, diary entries and private photo albums reveal a wide variety of reactions to the rallies:

Auguste, 50 years old at the time, travelled from Heppenheim to Nuremberg to attend the 1938 rally and wrote a letter to her children: "If I just tell you the plain facts, you won't be able to visualise what it was like. The atmosphere, the enthusiasm radiated by the crowds of people. Young and old, Austrians, Sudeten Germans, people from all over the Reich, stood side by side, all waiting with the same patience."

In a letter to relatives, Charlotte, a 19-year-old Red Cross helper from Nuremberg, wrote of the turmoil in the city: "The parade ground of the 100,000 was an absolute dump. Cigarette packets, chocolate bar wrappers, broken bottles, rags, etc. Piles of rubbish were swept together and ceremoniously burned."

In a contemporary-witness interview in 1997, Arno told of his rally experiences as a 10-year-old from Nuremberg: "We youngsters went from one synagogue to the other, chopping and changing. Pushing through the crowds prayer book in hand was quite an adventure, because we knew for sure that all hell would be let loose if we were caught with a Jewish prayer book under our arm."

Reinhold, 17 years old, from Bonn, was allowed to travel to Nuremberg for the 1937 rally as a member of the Reich Labour Service. In a contemporary-witness interview, he emphasised: "I would have cried if I hadn't been allowed to go along."