Driving Germany

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Hitler''s autobahn was more than just the pet project of an infrastructure-friendly dictator. It was supposed to revolutionize the transportation sector in Germany, connect the metropoles with the countryside, and encourage motorization. The propaganda machinery of the Third Reich turned the autobahn into a hyped-up icon of the dictatorship. One of the claims was that the roads would reconcile nature and technology. Rather than destroying the environment, they would embellish the landscape. Many historians have taken this claim at face value and concluded that the Nazi regime harbored an inbred love of nature. In this book, the author argues that such conclusions are misleading. Based on rich archival research, the book provides the first scholarly account of the landscape of the autobahn.

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Hitler's autobahn was more than just the pet project of an infrastructure-friendly dictator. It was supposed to revolutionize the transportation sector in Germany, connect the metropoles with the countryside, and encourage motorization. The propaganda machinery of the Third Reich turned the autobahn into a hyped-up icon of the dictatorship. One of the claims was that the roads would reconcile nature and technology. Rather than destroying the environment, they would embellish the landscape. Many historians have taken this claim at face value and concluded that the Nazi regime harbored an inbred love of nature. In this book, the author argues that such conclusions are misleading. Based on rich archival research, the book provides the first scholarly account of the landscape of the autobahn.

Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction: Germany and its Autobahn
A growing overlap: history of technology and environmental history
Transportation history: the system of mobility

Chapter 2. Landscape: the Dual Construction
Physically altered landscapes
Culturally altered landscapes

Chapter 3. The Historical Habitat of Landscape-Friendly Roads
The autobahnen in environmental history
Building technological landscapes on the Rhine and Neckar
Reconciling nature and technology in the interwar period
Alwin Seifert and Fritz Todt: a biographic constellation

Chapter 4. Planning the Autobahn before and after 1933
The failed autobahn project of the interwar period
Building the Nazi autobahn
The place of the autobahn in the Nazi dictatorship
Propagandizing the Reichsautobahn
German Technology (Deutsche Technik) and the Reichsautobahn

Chapter 5. Conflicts over the Harmonious Road
Finding a niche for landscape architects
Searching for a job description
Pitting landscape architects against civil engineers
Marginalizing conservation and spatial planning on the autobahn
Legalizing the exclusion of conservation

Chapter 6. The Myth of the Green Autobahn
Road alignment as a subject of controversy
“One drives faster than I can write”: visual consumption on the Reichsautobahnen
The flora of the Nazi autobahn: contesting native plants
An ideology disintegrates: technology in the crisis of 1937
The value and cost of landscaping
The landscape advocates seek power beyond the autobahn

Chapter 7. Reinterpretations: the West German Autobahn, 1949 to 1970
Autobahnen and the politics of the Bonn Republic
Building a federal highway system
The postwar trust in numbers
“An autobahn is not a hiking path”: roadside plantings as safety devices
Roadside greenery as a bone of public contention

Chapter 8. Conclusion

Bibliography and Sources
Index