Reichsautobahn

The Reichsautobahn system was the beginning of the German autobahns under the Third Reich. There had been previous plans for controlled-access highways in Germany under the Weimar Republic, and two had been built, but long-distance highways had not been successfully built. 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 "Adolf Hitler's roads" (German: die Straßen Adolf Hitlers) 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 performed the first ceremonial shoveling of dirt on September 23, 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 May 19, 1935, and the first 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) were completed on September 23, 1936. After the annexation of Austria, the planned network was expanded to include the Ostmark, and a second sod-breaking ceremony for the first Reichsautobahn on formerly Austrian territory took place near Salzburg on April 7, 1938. When work ceased in 1941 because of World War II, 3,819.7 kilometers (2,373.5 mi) had been completed.

Two controlled-access highways had been built prior to the Nazi era. The 10 kilometers (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 kilometers (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.

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