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A Gigantic Nazi City That Was Never Built

37 points by rishabhd 10y ago

ocschwar 10y ago
Most of the concentration camps were built around quarries. By the end of the war there was a lot of fresh cut stone in rail depots around Germany waiting to be used. The intent was to use it for these megaprojects. Ever wonder how West Germany rebuilt so quickly and so beautifully?
- rad_gruchalski 10y ago
  Marshall Plan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    Plus education and (business) knowledge that survived the war I find it rather strange that people think that money alone can make a country long-term prosperous.
    - tormeh 10y ago
      To be fair, education requires a lot of money, in teaching and even more so in lost labor.
  - ocschwar 10y ago
    Money is nice. But if you don't have lots of fresh cut stone for your buildings, you spend that money on other materials, as it stretches the money much further to look elsewhere. You might note that American cities use very little stone masonry in construction.
brianwawok 10y ago
The buildings from "The Man in the High Castle" now make a lot more sense... neat they used this for historical accuracy.
rurban 10y ago
To Speer's rescue, the problem was the Berlin main train station too far outside. So he came up with the plan to move it the center, and from there the ministries along the new avenue. Problem was that he had to demolish too many buildings with too many inhabitants. It was not that easy as in Hausmann's Paris who did the same. And planning with Hitler was a nightmare as he constantly interfered and new everything better.
- otempomores 10y ago
  Fuehrefeaturecreep plagued most nazi projects.
DonaldFisk 10y ago
This is about Welthauptstadt Germania, the Nazi plans for Berlin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welthauptstadt_Germania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welthauptstadt_Germania http://www.essential-architecture.com/G-BER/GERMANY/TEN/TEN-NS-10.htm http://www.essential-architecture.com/G-BER/GERMANY/TEN/TEN-...
masklinn 10y ago
It's too bad the article is only drawing and has no picture of the models, because they are in fact utterly inane: http://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/06/the-schwerbelastungskorper-and-hitlers.html http://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/06/the-schwerbelastungskor... And the "load bearing" of the Schwerbelastungskörper (which you can "visit"[0]) was not explained: Berlin is marshy soil, it was unclear whether its grounds could even support the arch without sinking, the concrete cylinder was set up to measure how fast it would sink (it sank 18cm over the duration of the test, the project was deemed feasible if it sank less than 6): http://andberlin.com/2012/05/07/hitlers-folly-schwerbelastungskorper/ http://andberlin.com/2012/05/07/hitlers-folly-schwerbelastun... [0] http://www.schwerbelastungskoerper.de http://www.schwerbelastungskoerper.de
- glenneroo 10y ago
  Warning to others: that first link had some crazy spam that opened a cacophony of external links to various adverts and was on the verge of crashing Chrome for Android before I killed the process.
madengr 10y ago
This must be Berlin as depicted in Amazon's Man in the High Castle. In the 2nd season they show a massive pantheon.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  Yep - as a (very amateur) student of history, when Joe arrived in Berlin and we began to see glimpses of what the city looked like in the 1960s, I was really drawn into the story. Albert Speer published an autobiography, and it's a very interesting read. It's even more interesting when you read other contemporary accounts of the events and people he describes, because it becomes very apparent that Speer whitewashes much of what went on in order to frame himself as less guilty of the crimes that were committed in that era. Whether he did so to deceive others or to deceive himself is an open question.
Bluestrike2 10y ago
Nazi architecture was intimidating and larger-than-life. Which was the point: an individual walking into the Reich Chancellery was meant to feel very, very tiny compared to the state. Dwarfed by the impact of the massive stone, what outside concerns could compare? There was never really any historical basis or long-standing traditions to lend the Nazis a sort of gravitas, much as they might have wanted it. They believed themselves to be "the master race," yet lacked the sort of history to support their conclusions. So they appropriated everything they could get their hands on to suggest otherwise. The swastika was stolen from Hindu culture and used to suggest that its thousands of years of meaning use there were the result of ancient Aryan ancestors. Nietzsche's work was butchered perverted by his horrible excuse for a sister and her husband to support Nazi ideology. Hitler's theory of ruin value, and the idea of a "Thousand-Year Reich" flipped the lack of historical gravitas on its head, borrowing against an ancient future that didn't exist in order to support their ideology in the present. If he could build buildings that made Roman ruins look positively provincial, centuries of awe and inspiration towards them could be leveraged by the Nazis. Difficulties and setbacks in the war could be overshadowed in the minds of the German people by the immense power of his buildings. Architecture, for Hitler, was a weapon: https://thefunambulist.net/architectural-projects/the-funambulist-papers-47-nazi-architecture-as-affective-weapon-by-gaston-gordillo https://thefunambulist.net/architectural-projects/the-funamb... Anyhow, Hitler's idea of a Welthauptstadt Germania betrayed his global ambitions years before the first shot was fired.

37 points by rishabhd 10y ago

Most of the concentration camps were built around quarries. By the end of the war there was a lot of fresh cut stone in rail depots around Germany waiting to be used. The intent was to use it for these megaprojects. Ever wonder how West Germany rebuilt so quickly and so beautifully?

rad_gruchalski 10y ago
Marshall Plan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
- dmichulke 10y ago
  Plus education and (business) knowledge that survived the war I find it rather strange that people think that money alone can make a country long-term prosperous.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    To be fair, education requires a lot of money, in teaching and even more so in lost labor.
- ocschwar 10y ago
  Money is nice. But if you don't have lots of fresh cut stone for your buildings, you spend that money on other materials, as it stretches the money much further to look elsewhere. You might note that American cities use very little stone masonry in construction.

brianwawok 10y ago

The buildings from "The Man in the High Castle" now make a lot more sense... neat they used this for historical accuracy.

rurban 10y ago

To Speer's rescue, the problem was the Berlin main train station too far outside. So he came up with the plan to move it the center, and from there the ministries along the new avenue. Problem was that he had to demolish too many buildings with too many inhabitants. It was not that easy as in Hausmann's Paris who did the same. And planning with Hitler was a nightmare as he constantly interfered and new everything better.

otempomores 10y ago
Fuehrefeaturecreep plagued most nazi projects.

DonaldFisk 10y ago

This is about Welthauptstadt Germania, the Nazi plans for Berlin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welthauptstadt_Germania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welthauptstadt_Germania http://www.essential-architecture.com/G-BER/GERMANY/TEN/TEN-NS-10.htm http://www.essential-architecture.com/G-BER/GERMANY/TEN/TEN-...

masklinn 10y ago

It's too bad the article is only drawing and has no picture of the models, because they are in fact utterly inane: http://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/06/the-schwerbelastungskorper-and-hitlers.html http://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/06/the-schwerbelastungskor... And the "load bearing" of the Schwerbelastungskörper (which you can "visit"[0]) was not explained: Berlin is marshy soil, it was unclear whether its grounds could even support the arch without sinking, the concrete cylinder was set up to measure how fast it would sink (it sank 18cm over the duration of the test, the project was deemed feasible if it sank less than 6): http://andberlin.com/2012/05/07/hitlers-folly-schwerbelastungskorper/ http://andberlin.com/2012/05/07/hitlers-folly-schwerbelastun... [0] http://www.schwerbelastungskoerper.de http://www.schwerbelastungskoerper.de

glenneroo 10y ago
Warning to others: that first link had some crazy spam that opened a cacophony of external links to various adverts and was on the verge of crashing Chrome for Android before I killed the process.

madengr 10y ago

This must be Berlin as depicted in Amazon's Man in the High Castle. In the 2nd season they show a massive pantheon.

LyndsySimon 10y ago
Yep - as a (very amateur) student of history, when Joe arrived in Berlin and we began to see glimpses of what the city looked like in the 1960s, I was really drawn into the story. Albert Speer published an autobiography, and it's a very interesting read. It's even more interesting when you read other contemporary accounts of the events and people he describes, because it becomes very apparent that Speer whitewashes much of what went on in order to frame himself as less guilty of the crimes that were committed in that era. Whether he did so to deceive others or to deceive himself is an open question.

Bluestrike2 10y ago

Nazi architecture was intimidating and larger-than-life. Which was the point: an individual walking into the Reich Chancellery was meant to feel very, very tiny compared to the state. Dwarfed by the impact of the massive stone, what outside concerns could compare? There was never really any historical basis or long-standing traditions to lend the Nazis a sort of gravitas, much as they might have wanted it. They believed themselves to be "the master race," yet lacked the sort of history to support their conclusions. So they appropriated everything they could get their hands on to suggest otherwise. The swastika was stolen from Hindu culture and used to suggest that its thousands of years of meaning use there were the result of ancient Aryan ancestors. Nietzsche's work was butchered perverted by his horrible excuse for a sister and her husband to support Nazi ideology. Hitler's theory of ruin value, and the idea of a "Thousand-Year Reich" flipped the lack of historical gravitas on its head, borrowing against an ancient future that didn't exist in order to support their ideology in the present. If he could build buildings that made Roman ruins look positively provincial, centuries of awe and inspiration towards them could be leveraged by the Nazis. Difficulties and setbacks in the war could be overshadowed in the minds of the German people by the immense power of his buildings. Architecture, for Hitler, was a weapon: https://thefunambulist.net/architectural-projects/the-funambulist-papers-47-nazi-architecture-as-affective-weapon-by-gaston-gordillo https://thefunambulist.net/architectural-projects/the-funamb... Anyhow, Hitler's idea of a Welthauptstadt Germania betrayed his global ambitions years before the first shot was fired.