How Hitler Would Have Rebuilt Berlin

[Jim O]

Monday, Mar. 24, 2008
By Stephanie Kirchner/Berlin


It's one of those spine-chilling what-ifs. What if Hitler and his helpers had been successful in their aggressive striving for world power? A new exhibition in Berlin attempts to answer this question in part by looking at the devastating architectural consequences Hitler's success would have had for the German capital.

In close collaboration with his confidant and architect of choice, Albert Speer, Hitler sought to cast his megalomania in concrete by radically re-shaping the city's center. His dystopian World Capital Germania, in the Fuehrer's own words, would "only be comparable with ancient Egypt, Babylon or Rome. What is London, what is Paris by comparison!"

The plans included the construction of two main boulevards, 120 meters (131 yards) wide and running cross-shaped through the city, lined with a number of gigantic buildings, halls, squares and triumphal arcs.

"If the plans had been realized," says spokesman Sascha Keil, "Berlin's historical center would have forever been destroyed."

The building that best illustrates Hitler's megalomania is the so-called Volkshalle (People's Hall). Around 320 meters (350 yards) in height and covered with a giant dome, it would have been the largest domed building in the world — able to accommodate 180,000 people at once. A 3-D model of Germania, originally made for the film The Downfall, a German movie about Hitler's last days, makes its dimensions visible. The Brandenburg Gate and even the Parliamentary Building look insignificantly tiny next to the enormous proportions of the People's Hall. According to Keil, however, the building's size would have led to certain problems: "With all 180,000 seats occupied, the condensed breath of the people would have accumulated in the dome and caused a rainfall"...

Full story: How Hitler Would Have Rebuilt Berlin - TIME