Reichsautobahn

The Reichsautobahn system was the beginning of the German autobahns under Nazi Germany. There had been previous plans for controlled-access highways in Germany under the Weimar Republic, and two had been constructed, but work had yet to start on long-distance highways. After previously opposing plans for a highway network, the Nazis embraced them after coming to power and presented the project as Hitler's own idea. They were termed "The Fuehrer's roads" ("German: Straßen des Führers") and presented as a major contribution to the reduction of unemployment. Other reasons for the project included enabling Germans to explore and appreciate their country, and there was a strong aesthetic element to the execution of the project under the Third Reich; military applications, although to a lesser extent than has often been thought; a permanent monument to the Third Reich, often compared to the pyramids; and general promotion of motoring as a modernization that in itself had military applications.

Hitler turned the first sod on 23 September 1933, at Frankfurt, and work officially began simultaneously at multiple sites throughout the Reich the following spring. The first finished stretch, between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, opened on 19 May 1935, and the first 1,000 km (620 mi) were completed on 23 September 1936. After the annexation of Austria, the planned network was expanded to include the Ostmark, and a second soil-breaking ceremony for the first Reichsautobahn on formerly Austrian territory took place near Salzburg on 7 April 1938. When work ceased in 1941 because of World War II, 3,819.7 km (2,373.5 mi) had been completed.

Two controlled-access highways had been built prior to the Nazi era. The 10 km (6.2 mi) long AVUS (short for Automobil-Verkehrs- und Übungsstraße – automobile traffic and practice road) was built in Berlin starting in 1913. The corporation to build it was organized in 1909, and construction continued during World War I using prisoners of war, but it was not completed and officially opened until 1921. This was originally intended as a race track and was used for testing vehicles and road surfaces, but it had many of the characteristics of the later Reichsautobahn and served as a model for Piero Puricelli's 1924 autostrada between Milan and the northern Italian lakes, the first true motorway in the world. In 1929–32, a highway some 20 km (12 mi) long that also resembled the Reichsautobahn except for the lack of a median strip was built between Cologne and Bonn using unemployed labor; on the basis of this, the then Lord Mayor of Cologne and chairman of the provincial committee for autostraßen, Konrad Adenauer, could be credited as having built an autobahn before Hitler. The "Opladen bypass" between Cologne and Düsseldorf was also built in 1931–33. Adenauer also began construction of a ring road encircling Cologne, which was more in accord with demand at the time. According to a 1936–37 traffic survey, the highest road traffic was still around the major cities.

Corporations were also formed and plans drawn up for motorized highways between Mannheim and Heidelberg, between Munich and Berlin via Leipzig, between Munich and Lake Starnberg, between Leipzig and Halle, and between Cologne and Aachen, in addition to plans for networks totaling 15,000 km (9,300 mi) or 22,500 km (14,000 mi) in length. In 1930 the Ministry of Transportation became involved in trying to establish guidelines for the building of a highway network. Most notably, the organization known as HaFraBa or HAFRABA (an acronym for Verein zur Vorbereitung der Autostraße Hamburg–Frankfurt–Basel - Association for the preparation of the motorway Hamburg [later Hansestädte, Hanseatic cities, after Lübeck and Bremen were added] – Frankfurt – Basel), was founded in 1926 at the instigation of Willy Hof [de], who had been inspired by the Italian highways, and projected a north–south highway to be expanded into a network. Detailed engineering specifications were prepared, bound in 70 volumes, and this planning would form the basis of the Reichsautobahn network.

However, HAFRABA was never able to surmount the logistical problems of building a highway through many different jurisdictions, or the funding problems of such a large undertaking. Moreover, legislators condemned it as a luxury project that would benefit only the few wealthy enough to own cars; the Nazi Party was against public spending on highways for this reason, as were the Communists and the Reichsbahn, the German national railroad, which feared highways would take some of its freight business. Even the association of German car manufacturers did not support highway projects; they were concerned that long-distance driving would overtax their vehicles.

After the Nazis came to power at the end of January 1933, their position changed rapidly. Fritz Todt produced a report arguing for the building of highways, Straßenbau und Straßenverwaltung, known as the "Brown Report" (Braune Denkschrift or Brauner Bericht), and in a speech at the Berlin Motor Show on 11 February, Hitler presented it as a necessity and as the future measure of a people, as railroads had been in the past. A law establishing the Reichsautobahn project under that name was passed on 27 June 1933, and the Gesellschaft Reichsautobahnen (Reichsautobahns Association) was founded on 25 August as a subsidiary of the Reichsbahn, thereby removing its objections. Todt was named Generalinspektor für das deutsche Straßenwesen (Inspector-General for the German Road System) on 30 June. HAFRABA and other organizations were folded into the planning arm, known as GEZUVOR (Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung der Reichsautobahn, Society for the Preparation of the Reichsautobahn). The Chairman of the Board of HAFRABA, Dr. Ludwig Landmann, the Mayor of Frankfurt, was Jewish, which provided the Nazis with a reason to take it over. The autobahn was presented to the German public as Hitler's idea: he was represented as having sketched out the future network of highways while in Landsberg Prison in 1924. They were to be "the Führer's roads", a myth promoted by Todt himself, who coined the phrase and warned close associates not to "in any way [let] the impression arise that I built the autobahns. They are to be reckoned as simply and solely the Führer's roads." Hof, an enthusiastic party member, resigned on 22 December 1934; the editor of the HAFRABA magazine, Kurt Kaftan, had caused a political problem by presenting Hof as the originator of the idea, or jointly responsible for it with Hitler. The overlapping responsibilities of the Gesellschaft Reichsautobahnen (in charge of construction) and of Todt's office (in charge of planning but also of all roads in the Reich) exemplified the growth of central authorities in the Third Reich and inevitably led to conflicts, but only on 1 January 1941 was the Gesellschaft Reichsautobahnen removed from the Reichsbahn and placed directly under Todt.

On 5 August 1933, a radio play by Peter Hagen and Hans Jürgen Nierenz, Wir bauen eine Straße ("We are Building a Road"), was broadcast throughout the Reich. On 23 September 1933, the first 720 unemployed marched to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, where they were ceremonially invested with shovels as Reichsautobahn workers, then from there accompanied by SA men, marched behind Todt and Jakob Sprenger, the Reichsstatthalter of Hesse, to the bank of the Main. There after further speeches, Hitler was to inaugurate work on the autobahn system with the first ceremonial shoveling of dirt to form the base of an embankment. However, as Todt described the scene in an illustrated album published in 1935, "again and again his shovel plunged into the mound [of dirt]. This was no symbolic shoveling; this was real construction work!" Two of the workers "sprang ... to help him", and they worked "until the mound had been dealt with in an orderly fashion and ... the first drops of sweat were dripping from his brow onto the earth." The image of Hitler shoveling was used many times in propaganda, including superimposed on the workers' march in Heinrich Hoffmann's poster urging Germans to ratify the Nazi government in the November 1933 Reichstag election. The location was marked with a park and a commemorative stone.

Preparatory work at several sites was done over the following winter, but full-scale construction officially began on 21 March 1934, as the showpiece of the opening of the Arbeitsschlacht ("work battle"), which also included construction of dams and residences and agricultural work. Autobahn work sites had been established at 22 locations, governed by 9 regional work divisions (which became 15 by mid-1934), distributed throughout the Reich for maximum public visibility, and work was ceremonially initiated at 15 of the sites. At Unterhaching, Hitler made a short speech ending with the command, "Fanget an!" ("Begin!") This was broadcast nationwide on the radio, after which his representatives opened work with the first shoveling of dirt at the other 14 locations: Hermann Göring at Finowfurth near Berlin, for example. A monument in the highway median at Unterhaching later commemorated the event: it took the form of a cylinder inscribed with Hitler's command and the date and surmounted by shovels in the manner of weapons on a military monument. 15,000 workers were now engaged; however, at several of the work sites, the men were immediately sent home because mechanized excavations and other preparation had to be done first. According to a Sopade report in April–May 1934, only 6,000 workers on a 67 km (42 mi) stretch between Frankfurt and Heidelberg and 700 on a 7 km (4.3 mi) stretch between Munich and the border were actually active. GEZUVOR presented its 788 volumes of plans to Todt on 1 June 1934.