Festivities began in the afternoon on the day before his birthday, when Hitler rode in the lead car of a motorcade of fifty white limousines along architect Albert Speer's newly completed East-West Axis, the planned central boulevard for Welthauptstadt Germania, which was to be the new capital after the planned victory in World War II.[1] Hitler, anticipating that Speer would give a speech, was amused when he evaded this by briefly announcing that the work should speak for itself.[2] The next event was a torchlit procession of delegations from all over Germany, which Hitler reviewed from a balcony in the Reich Chancellery.[1] Then, at midnight, Hitler's courtiers congratulated him and presented him with gifts, including "statues, bronze casts, Meissen porcelain, oil-paintings, tapestries, rare coins, antique weapons, and a mass of other presents, many of them kitsch.