Last Stretch of "Hitler's Motorway" To Be rebuilt

Started by bayonetbrant, October 07, 2013, 03:57:12 PM

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bayonetbrant

Last stretch of Hitler's motorway to disappear

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Built by the Nazi regime as part of a programme to get Germans back to work, the 2.5-mile stretch of the A11 motorway lies to the north-east of Berlin, linking the German capital with the now-Polish city of Szczecin, which, before the war, lay in the Reich and was called Stettin.

The original 82-foot-long slabs of concrete survived the war and the following decades but are now succumbing to the effects of time, the weather and increased traffic between Poland and Germany. Running repairs have kept the road operating for a number of years but now it requires resurfacing.

"The condition of the roadway is unbearable," Frank Gotzmann, director of the nearby town of Gartz, told the newspaper Welt. "Everyone drives very carefully on it. They even drive in the left lane because the right-hand one is very bad.

"Maybe they should make it a World Heritage site," he added, as a joke.

Road signs warn drivers of the damaged surface and the speed is restricted to 60mph, but the road still claims a heavy price in punctures and damaged suspensions.

Although the idea of a network of fast two-lane roads linking major German cities was born during the years of the Weimar Republic, it was Hitler and Nazis that embraced the concept of the "autobahn." Sensing both the propaganda and economic value of motorways, the Third Reich threw itself into constructing them, building over 1,800 miles before the war.

Renovation of the A11 is due to start in 2015.


The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers