GERMANIA-SPEER: Welthauptstadt Germania 1960

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Welthauptstadt Germania 1960

The renewal project Welthauptstadt Germania will have monolithic, gargantuan structures of epic scale that celebrates total victory of the Nazi regime. Some projects, such as the creation of a great East-West city axis, which included broadening Charlottenburger Chaussee (today Straße des 17. Juni) and placing the Berlin victory column in the centre, far away from the Reichstag, where it originally stood, were successfully completed. Others, however, such as the creation of the Große Halle (Great Hall), had to be shelved owing to the beginning of war.

The Man in the High Castle TV Series

Berlin is the capital of the Greater Nazi Reich. After WW2 with the bombing of Germany stopped Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer were able to put their designs of Welthauptstadt Germania to become reality.

Berlin is where all orders to Nazi bases and occupied countries are followed without question and is where the high command of the Third Reich is based.

Berlin, 1960

No comments:

Post a Comment

ALBERT SPEER

I was sometimes shocked but in the same way I was enthused about the possibilities he saw in the field of new buildings and it was a mania in any case and, as I see nowadays, it was an expression of the whole system of his schemes. But in the time when I was working for him I thought those buildings are just matching the political era which was coming with Hitler, with his successes in which were still to be due.

It shouldn't be forgotten that to be in the middle of a powerful group, a very powerful man admired by people, is so tempting that it's very difficult to get away. Thinking back to my time when I was at the height of planning those huge buildings, of course it was a chance to be one of the well known, even in the history of arts, and this was a chance no young man would willingly destroy. And afterwards when I was a minister, the sweetness of power also was tasting very good to me. Certainly all power corrupts and certainly in Hitler's circle the power was [of an] extraordinary scale, so the corruption was much larger than [it] is normally.

Finance Minister's Nightmare

"If the Finance Minister could realize what a source of income to the state my buildings will be in fifty years! Remember what happened with Ludwig II. Everyone said he was mad because of the cost of his palaces. But today? Most tourists go to upper Bavaria solely to see them. The entrance fees alone have long since paid for the building costs. Don't you agree? The whole world will come to Berlin to see our buildings. All we need to do is tell the Americans how much the Great Hall cost. Maybe we'll exaggerate a bit and say a billion and a half instead of a billion. Then they'll be wild to see the most expensive building in the world."

Adolf Hitler

(Quoted in Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich", Chapter 10.)