It was 90 years ago today that Adolf Hitler himself picked up a shovel and broke ground for the construction of the Reichsautobahn highway system on 23 September 1933. By the end of the following year construction had begun in eleven major corridors across Germany. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he wanted to show that his government could get things done in a way that the previous Weimar government could not, and building the Autobahn was seen as the perfect symbol of the progress, employment, and prosperity promised by the Nazi regime. Picking up a spade and telling the crowd to “get to work”, all subsequent propaganda referred to the project as the “roads of the Führer” as a way of connecting highway construction to his effective leadership.

Contrary to a common misconception held to this day, the Autobahn was not a Nazi invention. The motorway system was indeed presented to the German public as Hitler’s idea, having claimed that he had sketched out the future network of highways while serving his sentence in Landsberg Prison in 1924. But the first plans for a German motorway date back to before the First World War. The mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, was responsible for the construction of a motorway between Bonn and Cologne that opened in 1932. The term “Autobahn” was even coined by Robert Otzen in 1927, and derives from the name of the most popular transport means in Germany up to this point which was the railway, or ‘Eisenbahn’ in German.

On 23 September 1933, the first 720 unemployed marched to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange where they were ceremonially invested with shovels as Reichsautobahn workers. Accompanied by SA men, they then marched behind Fritz Todt and Jakob Sprenger, the Reichsstatthalter of Hesse, down to the bank of the Main. Following another ceremonial speech, Hitler inaugurated the work on the autobahn system with the first ceremonial shoveling of dirt to form the base of an embankment.

Dr. Todt described the scene in an illustrated album published by Hoffmann in 1935, “again and again his shovel plunged into the mound [of dirt]. This was no symbolic shoveling; this was real construction work!” Two of the workers “sprang … to help him”, and they worked “until the mound had been dealt with in an orderly fashion and … the first drops of sweat were dripping from his brow onto the earth.”

These motorways were to be “the Führer’s roads”, a myth promoted by Todt himself, who coined the phrase and warned close associates not to “in any way [let] the impression arise that I built the autobahns. They are to be reckoned as simply and solely the Führer’s roads.”

Hitler’s goal was to complete 1000 kilometers of the autobahn every year, and he promised that this would drastically reduce the high unemployment rate. Autobahn construction was intended to create at least 600,000 jobs, but there were never more than 120,000 people at work at any given time on the project. The construction was marred by sickness, hunger, forced labor, death, and strikes, with the strike leaders sent to concentration camps. By 1941, only 3,800 kilometers of autobahn had been completed, less than half the projected amount to be constructed by this time.

Adolf Hitler began the second Arbeitsschlacht (labor battle) at the Unterhaching Reichsautobahn construction site near Munich in front of around 10,000 people on 21 March 1934. The Frühjahrsarbeitsschlacht (Spring Labor Battle) opened with an impressively staged prelude to the construction of the Munich-Salzburg motorway, which launched simultaneously at 22 different construction sites along the route of the planned highway. Hitler’s National Socialist government achieved enormous progress in the reduction of unemployment through these Nazi Work-Creation Programs of 1933 and 1934. During his first year in power, Hitler reduced unemployment by one-third, and within eighteen months unemployment had been cut by sixty percent. However, the promise given in Hitler’s speech of attaining 100% employment across Germany was never actually achieved.

Adolf Hitler personally acknowledged and greeted the construction workers who were building the ‘Autobahn’ (motorway) during a parade of the German Labour Front at the Nuremberg Rally on 11 September 1937. Fritz Todt, the General Inspector of German Roadways and founder of the so-called ‘Organisation Todt’ (A Third Reich civil and military engineering group responsible for the construction of the ‘Autobahn’ network), and the head of the German Labour Front, Robert Ley, were also in attendance.

The Berlin Motor Show

One of Hitler’s first public speeches as chancellor was given at the Berlin Motor Show to promote the German automobile industry and the building of the Reichsautobahn. By slashing taxes and regulations on Germany’s automotive industry, to align its growth and development with aviation, to build a nationwide highway system, and to dominate international motorsport. “These momentous tasks are also part of the program for the reconstruction of the German economy!” With these words the new chancellor declared the 1933 International Motor Show open.

The Reichsautobahn was also prominently featured in the 1937 exhibition Gebt mir vier Jahre Zeit (Give Me Four Years) celebrating the first four years of the regime’s achievements. A model of one of the huge pylons of the Mangfall Bridge at Weyarn, a girder bridge designed by German Bestelmeyer that spanned the valley on two double pylons of reinforced concrete, dominated the Reichsautobahn exhibit. Completed in 1936, this bridge served as the model for several subsequent autobahn bridges.

Adolf Hitler in his car at the completion of the 1000th Kilometer of the highway near Breslau on 27 September 1936.

After the annexation of Austria the planned motorway network was expanded to include the Ostmark, and a second ground breaking ceremony for the first Reichsautobahn on formerly Austrian territory took place near Salzburg on 7 April 1938. When work ceased in 1941 because of World War Two, 3,819 kilometers (2,373 miles) had been completed.

The Queralpenstrasse

Another massive road construction project that was initiated under Hitler’s direction was the Queralpenstrasse (German Alpine Road) built in the mid-1930’s. The road runs for 484 kilometers from Lindau on Lake Constance to Schönau am Königssee. Hitler frequently traveled this road and even made a special trip to observe the progress being made along the route on an Easter holiday excursion in April 1936 with Eva Braun. Even to this day, this lofty winding road offers grandiose views as it connects many of the most famous sights across Bavaria.