Welthauptstadt Germania
Welthauptstadt ("World Capital")
Germania was the name
Adolf Hitler gave to the projected renewal of the German capital
Berlin, part of his vision for the future of
Germany after the proposed victory in
World War II.
Albert Speer, "the first architect of the
Third Reich", produced many of the plans for the rebuilt city, only a few of which were realized. The location of Germania was never officially decided upon despite several options being considered.
Some projects, such as the creation of a great city axis, which included broadening
Unter den Linden and placing the
Siegessäule in the center, far away from the
Reichstag, where it originally stood, succeeded. Others, however, such as the creation of the
Große Halle (Great Dome), had to be shelved due to the beginning of war.
The first step in these plans was the
Olympic Stadium for the
1936 Summer Olympics. Speer also designed a new Chancellery, which included a vast hall designed to be twice as long as the
Hall of Mirrors in the
Palace of Versailles. Hitler wanted him to build a third, even larger Chancellery, although it was never begun. The second Chancellery was destroyed by the
Soviet army in
1945.
Almost none of the other buildings planned for Berlin were ever built. Berlin was to be reorganized along a central three-mile long avenue. At the north end, Speer planned to build an enormous
domed building, the
Volkshalle (
people's hall), based on
St. Peter's Basilica in
Rome. The dome of the building would have been impractically large; it would be over seven hundred feet (200 meters) high and eight hundred feet (250 meters) in diameter, sixteen times larger than the dome of St. Peter's. At the southern end of the avenue would be an
arch based on the
Arc de Triomphe in
Paris, but again, much larger; it would be almost four hundred feet (100 meters) high, and the Arc de Triomphe would have been able to fit inside its opening. The outbreak of
World War II in
1939 caused the decision to postpone construction until after the war, to save strategic materials.
A few so-called
exploration buildings (
Schwerbelastungskörper, literal translation: Heavy load-bearing body) still exist, basically extremely heavy blocks of concrete, used by the architects to test how much weight the ground was able to carry.
Robert Harris, author of the
1992 alternate history novel
Fatherland, posits that Hitler's and Speer's vision of rebuilt and monumental Berlin would have been realized by
1964. Other researchers into the logistics of Hitler's Welthaupstadt have claimed that, owing to both the sheer amount of marble required and Berlin's marshy foundations, Germania would have sunk into the ground within a few years.
*
Nazi architecture*
Volkshalle
