From the iconic Brandenburg Gate to the tranquility of the Tiergarten , modern - day Berlin is certainly not short of attraction . Germany ’s capital letter is also peppered with clue to a tumultuous and sometimes riotous past . During one of its darkest episode , as the Nazis arise to power and the world hurtle towards globular conflict once more , Adolf Hitlerwas drawing up plan to turn this city into a mega - capital worthy of his vision for a Germanic Modern human race order .
Hitler’s vision
Historians have suggested that Hitler ’s dreaming for Berlin went back far further than his political ascendence . There are mentions ofrebuilding Germanyin his book , Mein Kampf , which he set forth writing in 1924 while in prison for his office in anattempted insurrectionagainst the Weimar Republic .
However , the conception of transform Berlin into a megacity really got hold up in 1936 , when the then Chancellor of Germany began discussions with architectAlbert Speer . Albert Speer was challenging and an enthusiastic assistant of the Nazi party , and promptly enamour Hitler ’s attention . He was charged with the design of primal events like the Nuremberg Rallies , as well as the Chancellor ’s more aspirational construction projection .
A city to rival all others
Hitler ideate a new Berlin , a megacity that drew inspiration from all of the most telling buildings and monument in Europe . Hitler and Speer essentially contrive to supersize them , with the pièce de résistance being a 99,000 - hearty - time ( 1,065,627 - solid - foot)Grand Hall , found on the domed stadium of St Peter ’s Basilica in Vatican City and the Pantheon in Rome .
Viewers of the television set adjustment of Philip K. Dick’sThe Man in the High Castlewill have an idea of the scale of the overhaul that they were planning , but this original model also demonstrates how the novel capital might have looked .
It ’s usually believe that Hitler identify his fantastic city Welthauptstadt Germania – “ World Capital ” Germania . However , historian Gerlot Schaulinski explained to theGuardianthat this is actually a misconception : “ The name only come forth after the publication of Speer ’s 1969 memoirs , Inside the Third Reich , and is actually based on everyday remarks made , we believe , just doubly by Hitler in conversation with a close circle of familiarity . ”
The reimagined Berlin would have been centered around the Grand Hall, and the broad avenue leading to it from the planned Triumphal Arch.Image credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146III-373 viaWikimedia Commons(CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)
Whether or not the Führer was inclined to give the project such a grandiose name , it ’s clear from the surviving models that there was piffling limit to his aspiration .
Speer ’s plans also left no room for circumstance of the indigence of the citizens of Berlin . The emphasis was on theatre and grandeur , not livability . Thousands were give the sack to make elbow room for building projects – for a city that , commemorate , never actually ended up being built – and tens of thousands of residential homes would have been place to neutralize to make room for jumbo new structures .
Even the wide-cut boulevard , like the Strasse des 17 . Juni which run from the Brandenburg Gate west through the Tiergarten , would have been ano - go zonefor footer , who would have been forced to give way to motor traffic and instead traverse the city underground .
The Strasse des 17. Juni, looking towards the Victory Column. This monument was moved from its original position, and the base was modified to raise it higher at Hitler’s insistence.Image credit: Phillip Kraskoff/Shutterstock.com
There ’s a darker side to all this construction fever : The construction of Germania is inextricably connect to the Holocaust and the horror of the density inner circle .
Prisoners of the camps – as well as prisoners of warfare , beggars , Roma , and homo – round up on the streets of Berlin were used as slave task to provide building material . Jewish Berliners were evicted from their house to make way for the proposed construction work , even before the Nazis began to point this community direct for removal to the ghettos and , eventually , the concentration camp .
When Albert Speer was eventuallyconvicted of war crimesat the Nuremberg Trials in the immediate aftermath of World War Two , he still denied any knowledge of the planned genocide of Judaic multitude .
The Schwerbelastungskörper stands 14 meters (46 feet) above the ground, but it’s sunk so much that 18 meters (59 feet) of it are now submerged.Image credit: Dieter Brügmann viaWikimedia Commons(CC BY-SA 3.0)
The legacy of Germania
While very little of the design for Germania were ever substantiate , there is a bequest of the construction project that visitor can still see today . TheSchwerbelastungskörperis a massive concrete piston chamber , weigh a whopping 12,650 tonne , which was work up to examine whether the swampy grunge of Berlin would be able to take for the weight of the project Triumphal Arch that would suffice as a memorial to Germany ’s First World War casualties .
The experimentation with the piston chamber actually picture that the archway would have come a cropper , were it ever built – the soil in the area simply could not nurture such a complex body part . However , it ’s not light whether that would actually have dissuaded a megalomaniac Chancellor in the adhesive friction of a building fury .
This is , after all , a military personnel who famouslysaid , " Berlin will be comparable as a world capital only toEgypt , Babylon or Rome . "
