Germania: Building Hitler's Mega City

this video is brought to you by surfshark safety security online are crucially important and you can protect yourself online with surf shark more about them in just a bit [Music] it was the dream of a Madman an attempt to build a towering City in the marshlands of Central Europe that could rival Rome Mecca or Kiev at their heights a grand city forged in Marble that could house up to 15 million members of the so-called Master race a city known to history as Germania the brainchild of Adolf Hitler Germania was the Pinnacle of megalomania overseen by the Nazi architect Adolf Speer it would have dwarfed any place known to man from its sweeping seven kilometer Avenue of Splendor to the gigantic Volks Hall to the triumphal Arch designed to carry the names of Germany's War dead it was simply the largest building project of the Third Reich and it was also doomed to failure intended to be built atop recently demolished Central Berlin Germania never made it off the drawing board as the war ate into Spears budget the fuhrer's mega City receded from reality until it was nothing more than fever dream a fantasy project that could never be brought to life today we're examining that fantasy and taking a look at the traces that still remain [Music] as the first decade of the 20th century steamed towards its conclusion the capital of the German Empire was experiencing a problem no not one connected to the massive war that was now just years away from devastating Europe but a problem much more mundane much less anxiety shredding to think about Berlin you see was running out of space at the moment the Prussian city became the nerve center of the new Empire in 1871 it had been home to over half a million people a number that was slowly growing the city authorities had tried to prepare for this slow growth by building a whole lot of densely packed housing but it turned out their assumption that growth would remain slow was wildly misplaced by 1905 those 500 000 or so inhabitants a ballooned to over 2 million and while that was great in the sense that it displayed the city's importance it was less great in terms of the infrastructure to put it mildly Berlin's infrastructure sucked there was no Railway or Road running north to south which meant a whole network of alternative Rail lines sprawled across the city center slicing through roads and creating brutal traffic problems so dysfunctional was the result that it made a mockery of German claims to efficiency in 1909 the city tried remedy it by throwing an international competition to redesign Berlin over the next few years proposals were submitted and accepted even as the world around Berlin changed even as the first World War began to [ __ ] the state's ability to do anything as late as 1917 the architect Martin macklow was able to unveil a plan that didn't just improve Transit but also covered the remodeled capital in bombastic monuments monuments extolling an imperial power that was at that exact moment being bled dry in Europe's trenches naturally mackler's plan didn't survive the transition from the German Empire to the Weimar Republic so he kept on working on it until 1919. but while the plan itself didn't survive parts of it would a few details here and there the crumbled fragments of its Monumental Vision resurfacing in the dreams of another man a young Austrian artist by the name of Adolf Hitler although it's debated it seems Hitler was at least vaguely aware of nachla's vision for Berlin and he seems to have approved of it the mid-1920s saw the former painter turned beer hall revolutionary turning his mind toward a reconstruction of Berlin one that would take bakla's Imperial bombast and turn it up to 11 as early as 1925 Hitler was producing sketches of monuments that would later form the core of the Germania project the grandest being his vision of a triumphal Arch to rival the one in Paris but while the arced Triumph was commissioned by Napoleon to celebrate one of his greatest victories Hitler's Arch would instead commemorate a catastrophe inscribed with the names of all 1.8 million Germans who died in World War One it would stand as a deliberate rebuke to the city around it and rebuking Berlin was what Hitler was all about as the seat of power of the Weimar Republic 1920s Berlin was everything Hitler hated the nerve center of a liberal system where men cavaltered in Smoky gay clubs where Marxist held a power base and Away galleries were filled with degenerate art perhaps more importantly it was also home to a quarter of Germany's Jewish population while Hitler may have dreamed of creating a capital to rival Constantinople his monuments were just intended to project German power they were also to be a visual assault on the people living in Berlin that Nazism detested so much tragically many of those people would soon find themselves swept up in this Petty tyrant's dream foreign it's a testament to just how fixated on Germania Hitler was that planning began as early as 1933. at a time when most new dictators would be consolidating power killing Rivals and generally being ruthless [ __ ] Hitler was doing all of that plus plotting Berlin's transformation the first meetings on what would become Germania were held that very year just eight months after the Nazis came to power they weren't very detailed just discussions on building that new north-south axis the city so badly needed but the fact that they happened at all is revealing as are Hitler's contemporary musings on constructing a great hall of some kind yet it would take the rise of a second man to make the Germania plans a reality best remember today for his role overseeing armaments and Munitions for the Nazi war machine Albert Speer in the mid-1930s was a rising star of the party an architect not even 30 but already destined for great things it was spear who transform a patch of Nuremberg into a huge Nazi rally ground who'd dreamed up the Cathedral of light the intimidating customer framing party displays with hundreds of searchlights pointed straight up into the air while Hitler was cautiously judging designs for a new Imperial Bank in Central Berlin spear was cooking up plans for the enormous deutsches Stadium intended to become a permanent home for the Olympic Games so perhaps it was only natural that in 1936 the fuhrer I would call the architecting for a private meeting there he gave spear the project of a lifetime he wanted him to completely rebuild Berlin by now the vision that had been percolating in Hitler's head for over a decade had become grander than ever no longer would the dictator be happy with just a north-south axis and some great big monuments oh no he wanted spear to do for Berlin what Houseman had done for Napoleon III's Paris knock it all down and build it afresh but while housemen had created a Paris of Boulevard's Courtyards and light streaming in spear was to turn Berlin into fascism's marble mirror the center would be torn down all those housing blocks constructed at the dawn of the German Empire would vanish beneath the wheels of bulldozers in their place spear was to follow Hitler's Skechers build not just giant archers and great halls but everything needed to connect them a vast world of grandeur all of it extolling Germany's Newfound might so even the most casual Observer would be awed of course not everyone would be thrilled with these plans many of the demolitions had to be kept secret and the mayor of Berlin himself a Nazi protested the damage that would be done to his City come 1937 though that mayor had been swept aside spear had been promoted to General building inspector of the Reich Capital with new and unchecked powers that November work began in the forests west of Berlin on a new military academy one that would be paired with a hospital and would soon be named Adolf Hitler University elsewhere templehof airport was on the Reconstruction in the city itself a new East-West Road Extension was being added to meet up with the planned north-south axis but if someone actually got built that's the Intriguing part of Germania rather it's the Mad gigantic structures that never got off the page The Monuments they were at the very heart of Hitler's Vision so let's take a look at them shall we all right we'll get back to our video just a second but first here's a word from today's excellent video sponsor surf shark surfshark wants you to get the absolute most out of your internet experience which is why it provides two fundamental 21st century Services Superior security and additional online options first of all security there's all sorts of weirdos out there on the internet but with surfshark public Wi-Fi doesn't have to be scary surfshark offers military-grade encryption and even multi-op Security Options so that your IP could be secured from any connection in the world whether you're traveling the world or just traveling to Starbucks worried about geofences or government censorship well don't be 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relation whatsoever to Berlin's immediate needs or future requirements unlike the competition back in 1909 the point wasn't to make the capital more livable or functional but rather to stroke the egos of high-ranking Nazis and that meant making everything as big and as overwhelming as 1930s engineering would allow the heart of all of this I would be the north-south road now transformed into a Boulevard running 38 kilometers or an American 23 miles but the most spectacular section would cover the seven kilometers from the South Station known as the street of splendors it would be a 120 meter nearly 400 feet wide sweep lined with imposing government buildings beginning immediately outside the South Station itself a shining monster some 400 meters wide it was intended to open with a plaza one kilometer in length watched over over by decorative artillery pieces supposedly this would bring to mind the Avenue of sphinxes of blocks or but it's likely most visitors would have been too busy staring in ore to think of ancient Egypt that's because dominating the view of everyone exiting the station intended as the main link from the airport would be the arch Hitler first sketched back in 1925. standing three times taller than the outer trip so 150 meters or really bloody tall and Imperial it would have made any of modern Berlin's biggest buildings look like a child's Lego set remarkably it wouldn't have even been the biggest object beyond the arch towering over it the Vauxhall or people's Hall was intended to provide a fittingly bombastic ending to The Boulevard if you've watched man in the High Castle that is the massive domed building that cropped up loads from season to onwards if you haven't watched it just picture a really really big dome like Saint Paul's Cathedral in London or Saint Peter's Basilica in home got that image good now imagine a far bigger far more fascist version one that would be to your Dome building what a swastika wearing King Kong is to your average macaque a nearly 300 meter stall the Vauxhall would have only been a hair shorter than New York's Chrysler Building but the Chrysler Building is a simple Tower rather than Rising straight up the Vauxhall would be a dome which meant one with a colossal radius of 250 meters now if you're struggling with the metric there just imagine how big a dome would be needed to rise to the height of the Chrysler Building in metric or imperial it would be insane that Insanity would have continued on the inside during mass speeches 180 000 people would have crammed into this giant vanity project so many that their combined breathing would have given the enormous Hall its own weather system in such a vast space Hitler himself would have appeared just as a DOT yet only for a guy so otherwise vain this doesn't seem to have bothered him that much instead dead spear claimed the fuhrer focused on his future greatness on how civilization centuries from now would look on the Vauxhall with the same wonder that we reserve for the pantheon in Rome of course the city's designs weren't just a series of buildings ever increasing in height they were also intended to cater towards the city with an exploding population sources differ but the consensus seems to be that Hitler intended anywhere between 8 million and 15 million Germans to come and live in his fascist Utopia that meant a significant part of the construction had to be new apartments to house the influx of loyal subjects spear included some 160 000 new units and his plans arranged beyond the Vauxhall Plaza more importantly he also included room for extra growth with an East-West and north-south road now dividing the city Berlin was split into four as more and more of the master race flocked there the intention was to grow the city outwards long Roads connecting these axes and ever increasing spiral radiating out into the countryside eventually three new airports would ensure every part of the city was connected to the world a world Hitler was sure would soon be under Nazi domination fittingly for such a grandiose project the cost was astronomical six billion reich's marks something in the order of 150 billion US dollars today though because Germany was run by a lunatic it all had to be finished by 1950. at least that was the plan in the end though almost nothing would actually get built but what did would leave scars on Berlin that still haven't healed if you go to Berlin today the most distinctive remnant of Germania isn't some crumbling hall or even the overgrown foundations of one of the great monuments look it's a massive concrete cylinder in templehof a solid chunk of mass that's the height of a four-story building and so dense it's effectively impossible to demolish known in English because the German is an extremely long and unpronounceable word the heavy load-bearing body it's the closest spear ever got to starting work on Hitler's dreams for a triumphal Arch from the earliest days of the Germania project it was clear we're going to be serious engineering challenges Berlin you see is built on Marshland and extremely heavy buildings built on Marshland tend to have issues with subsidence hence the need for the heavy load-bearing body designed to match the weight of a single pillar on the gigantic Arch the huge concrete plug was installed over seven months in 1941 using French pows as slave labor with a diameter of 11 meters or 36 feet the cylinder clocked in at a staggering 12 650 tons that's equivalent to 22 Airbus A380 aircraft 1000 route Master double decker buses or over 86 000 Shaquille o'neals all stacked atop one another in a bizarre human pyramid the point is it was massive and remember this was meant to simulate just one of the Arch's four pillars Spears calculation was that the heavy load-bearing body would definitely sink into the soft soil he just didn't know how much it was six centimeters or less the arch would be good to be built in the end its anchored 19 centimeters now some people like to claim this means Germania could have never been built that it was doomed from the start and people pretended it wasn't just to keep Hitler happy but that's not the case highly qualified Engineers worked on the project and it's thought nothing in the plans was beyond the capabilities of mid-20th century technology what the sinking cylinder did mean was that Speer would have to spend even more money on massive ground stabilization work before the actual work began not that the Nazis cared though the plan was always to pay for Germania using loot plundered from newly conquered territories that 6 billion reichs marks figure we quoted earlier Hitler never intended that to fall on German taxpayers but on the polls and the Czechs and the French and all of Europe's other unfortunates in the end though the money for the city was never needed aside from the heavy load-bearing body the only significant building to be finished was the new right Chancery far less Grand in its design than the arch or the Vauxhall the new Chancery was still a monster constructed on Hitler's orders in a single year although planning began in 1935 it required four thousand men working around the clock to complete on time and included ridiculous features like an office for Hitler so vast even Putin and his absurd table would look pathetic and Tiny inside it of course nothing actually remains of it the site of the fury bunker it was badly damaged in 1945 with the ruins then destroyed in the aftermath so it couldn't become a Neo-Nazi Shrine no if you want to see additional evidence of Germania today there are only two survivors a street and the tunnels the street in question is the East-West Road Extension running to the Brandenburg gate still lined with Street lamps designed by spear the tunnels meanwhile are three unfinished roadlings under what is now teargarten park intended to divert north-south traffic onto the East-West Road they were instead never used of course it isn't just what was actually built the remains of Germania but also what was destroyed to make way for it in the years he worked on Hitler's dream spear oversaw the demolition of 150 000 homes since only 2 new apartments were ever built those who were evicted needed new places to stay this being the Third Reich they were handed the apartments of Jewish families who themselves removed ghettos or to concentration camps in this Grim way the building of Germania helped contribute to the Holocaust but it wasn't the only suffering associated with it much of the building work was done by slave labor at the start this meant the city police rounding up gypsies Beggars and homosexual men to be worked to death making bricks for spear later prisoners of War would make up the bulk of those toiling and dying for a city that would never be built Germania itself may have remained a pipe dream but the pain and misery it inflicted were all too horribly real foreign spear wouldn't start on the heavy load-bearing body until 1941 the Germania dream Always by then already dead killed by the outbreak of war that diverted so many funds and so much Manpower elsewhere of course no one realized at the time that invading Poland had sounded the city's death now come fall 1941 Hitler was still confident that his Vauxhall and triumphal Arch would be built as German tanks rolled Eastward killing millions in Ukraine and Belarus in their March towards Moscow Hitler was waxing lyrical about how Germania would look in 2000 years time according to spear the fuhrer liked amuse how Taurus would stand before the ruins and feel or like a German version of the broken statue in Percy Shelley's poem was amandias but ozamandius is really about the impermanence of greatness how time will erase even the biggest achievements and the most terrible tyrants and germania's erasia would be complete before another two years have passed the collapse of the German efforts on the Eastern Front was the end Hitler's dreams for Berlin as the USSR began to turn the tide the idea that money and materials could be expended on a grandiose construction project became unsustainable while it's likely Hitler hoped to revive his plans right up to the moments he did the decent thing and shot himself any chance of it becoming a reality Advantage long ago and that was that was a very good thing today Berlin is a modern city spotted with green spaces and very little of its historical housing stock remaining mostly that's thanks to Allied bombing reducing much of it to Rubble but it's also due to Spears sweeping demolition program despite this Berlin as we know it is a livable City one that may not be beautiful but it's certainly a pleasant place to spend time yet in some parallel universe not too distant from our own that's not the case recent studies of Germania plans have shown that had it been built Hitler's Mega City would have been as soul-crushing to live in as a world in which the Nazi regime survived a nightmare for pedestrians it would have forced people to walk long stretches underground to get anywhere at all a nightmare for cars it would have been devoid of traffic control methods leading to constant jams while The Monuments may have been impressive this would not have been a city for living in but rather a monument to power and to Folly to the ego of a man who cared about nothing more than making himself seem important in that way if no other Germania May at least have been useful as a pitting Epitaph to the sick mind but created it a mind that like Germania itself has thankfully been left on the trash heap of History [Music] thank you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 500,517

Keywords: germania documentary, germania city, adolf hitler (military commander), world war ii (military conflict), berlin (german state), germania, military, adolf hitler, architecture (industry), germany, blueprints, world war 2, architecture, hitler

Id: a8PIU1YIk9Y

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 22 2022