Infrastructure and Spatial Planning

Under the National Socialist dictatorship, building and planning measures produced a large number of buildings for industry and war, which in turn led to a modernisation of the economy and of spatial planning. Three distinct periods can be differentiated – 1933–37: the beginning of construction of the autobahn and the building of barracks; 1937–41: the construction of new cities and armaments complexes, of military fortifications; 1941–45: the racist reorganisation in the east (Ostraum). All these activities were usually based on sectoral spatial plans and led to a larger restructuring of the steadily expanding German territory. Starting in 1933, responsibility for the construction of the autobahn resided with Fritz Todt, Inspector General for German Roadways (Generalinspektor für das deutsche Straßenwesen), who had already been working on this topic in the 1920s. In 1934, after the necessary land had been acquired in advance, construction began on barracks and administrative buildings for the Wehrmacht on an unprecedented scale. This building activity was facilitated by the use of innovative production methods based on standardised construction plans and floor plans. Todt also played a decisive role in Germany’s armament effort. Throughout the Reich territories, his Organisation Todt built armaments factories and fortification complexes such as the Siegfried Line. In the process, new means of production were put into practice, such as the assembly line production employed in a Bremen submarine dockyard (uncompleted). During the war, the organisation expanded into the occupied countries and oversaw projects such as the building of the Atlantic Wall, the Reichsstraße 50 in Norway and Thoroughfare IV (Durchgangsstraße IV) through Ukraine. The founding of two larger new cities – Wolfsburg, the "City of the ‘Strength through Joy’ Car" (Stadt des KdF-Wagens), and Watenstedt-Salzgitter, the "City of the Hermann Göring Works" – also served the wartime economy. For both of these cities, extensive plans were developed that remained largely on paper: After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, increasing numbers of foreign men and women were conscripted into forced labour for the armaments industry, which necessitated, first and foremost, the construction of what amounted to a landscape of camps in these two new cities. The Master Plan East (Generalplan Ost) for the occupied eastern territories contained the institutionalised spatial planning formulated in 1935 for the entire Reich and soon became the most important instrument in the colonisation of those regions. Not only did this plan detail the reorganisation of "settlement and economic affairs" in the east, it was also the foundation for the forced labour, expropriation, enslavement, resettlement and extermination of the largely Slavic population.

Compiled by Elke Pahl-Weber with Harald Bodenschatz, using the research findings of Christine Beese, Christoph Bernhardt, Christiane Post and Andreas Putz; Christopher Kopper; Angelika Königseder; Alexa Stiller and Karl Kegler; Mario Wenzel

Translated from the German by Peter Rigney