With his construction of the Nuremberg rally grounds and his staging of the 1934 Party Congress, in which he employed antiaircraft spotlights to create a “Cathedral of Light” around the field, Speer found himself an architectural celebrity, a Nazi Schinkel at age twenty-nine. Unable to tolerate that Speer had worked for Goebbels but not yet for him, Göring hired him to renovate his own palazzo, even though it had just been refurbished. There was no doubt, however, that Speer was Hitler’s man above all. The Führer clearly saw an idealized image of himself in the tall, handsome young architect. He decided in 1936 that Speer must be the one to undertake “the greatest of all plans,” the reconstruction of Berlin. On January 30, 1937, the fourth anniversary of his coming to power, Hitler named Speer General-bauinspektor (General Building Inspector) for the Construction of Berlin. The architect would report directly to the Führer, who promised to clear all obstacles in his path. Hitler also made clear that he would brook no small-mindedness in this endeavor. As he told Speer: “Berlin is a big city, but not a real metropolis. Look at Paris, the most beautiful city in the world. Or even Vienna. Those are cities with grand style. Berlin is nothing but an unregulated accumulation of buildings. We must surpass Paris and Vienna.”
In discussions with Speer over the next months and years, Hitler steadily expanded on his original ideas. In addition to his domed hall and arch of triumph, he envisaged a new city hall modeled on the neogothic pile in Vienna, but “more beautiful than Vienna’s, no doubt about that.” He also demanded a new Chancellery, since the existing building was “fit only for a soap company.” He would, he noted, “be holding extremely important conferences in the near future,” for which he needed “grand halls and salons which will make an impression on people, especially on the smaller dignitaries.” When entering the Chancellery, he explained, “one should have the feeling that one is visiting the master of the world.” He placed the entire VoBstrasse at Speer’s disposal for this project, insisting that it be completed by January 10, 1939. To overcome the municipal administration’s reluctance to help finance this and other Nazi works, he proposed threatening to build an entirely new capital elsewhere, perhaps on the plains of Mecklenberg. “You’ll see how the Berliners come to life at the threat that the national government may move out,” he told Speer.
As Speer and his team took over Hitler’s plans for the reconstruction of Berlin, they scrupulously retained the original concept’s grandiosity while adding some practical ideas of their own, such as the consolidation of Berlin’s railway stations into two northern and southern terminals, and the opening of new urban areas in the east to accommodate the thousands of citizens whose homes in the center were scheduled to be razed. The team planned to construct new airports outside the city to relieve pressure on Tempelhof, which they hoped eventually to convert into an amusement park, like Copenhagen’s Tivoli. In the west, bordering the Olympic grounds, Speer planned a huge new university and medical quarter. Hitler went along with these proposals, but he could not work up much enthusiasm for them. All he wanted to talk about was his representational structures, along with plans for new ministries, showrooms for German industry, luxury hotels, and a grand new opera house. Looking back years later on Hitler’s vision, Speer found it “rather sinister that in the midst of peacetime . . . [the Führer] was planning buildings representative of an imperial glory which could be won only by war.”
This insight should have come earlier, for the most obvious aspect of Hitler’s scheme, aside from its derivative monumentality, was its bellicosity, its intimate connection with the Nazi drive for a new German empire. Ironically, it was just this ambition for a new empire that ultimately made the realization of Hitler’s Germa-nia impossible, since the demands of war required postponement of most of the building projects. Aside from the Neue Reichskanzlei (New Chancellery) and three large Flak bunkers, the only major part of the Germania program to be completed before the war began was an autobahn ring around the city. Perhaps fittingly, this belt would constitute Berlin’s outer line of defenses during the Russian offensive in 1945.
“Tempo, Tempo!”—Berlin Readies for War
While Speer was honing Hitler’s plans for a new imperial capital, Hitler himself was laying the diplomatic and military groundwork for Germany’s future empire. As in the Kaiserreich, Berlin was the focal point of Germany’s quest for world power. It was also the primary arena in which, with the Olympics safely over, the Nazis could reveal more brutally and systematically than ever the domestic dimensions of their ideological agenda.
In September 1937 Mussolini arrived in Berlin on a state visit. He had drifted into his embrace with Hitler following his 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, which had prompted the League of Nations to impose mild sanctions against Italy. Before this contretemps with the West, Mussolini had been a vociferous critic of Hitler, calling the Führer a “horrible sexual degenerate.” He feared that the Führer intended to annex Austria (which he eventually did) and tear the South Tyrol from Italy (which he did not). Mussolini had also resented Hitler for challenging his claim to being the biggest bully on the European block. Now, however, as he celebrated the recently concluded “Rome-Berlin Axis” with his visit to the German capital, the Italian leader was all smiles for his new friends. Berlin, in turn, put on a splendid reception for its guest. The route down which II Duce drove, the “Via Triumphalis,” was decorated with pylons displaying alternately the ax and bundle of fascism and the eagle of the Reich. Along Unter den Linden hundreds of columns capped with eagles towered over the recently planted lime trees. At a monster rally near the Olympic Stadium Hitler praised Mussolini as one of those rare geniuses who “are not made by history but make history themselves.” He promised that the Italian and German nations together would vanquish the Marxist evil. In halting, barely intelligible German, Mussolini replied by thanking Germany for standing by it in its crusade to bring civilization to Ethiopia. The friendship between Germany and Italy, he declared, would soon change the world. “Tomorrow all Europe will be fascist; one hundred fifteen million men will arise, joined together in an unshakable faith.” Just as he said this, a storm erupted and drenched the crowd. France’s ambassador, Andre Francois-Poncet, later commented: “The very elements warned mankind of what evils the meeting of the dictators was to let loose upon it.”
Those evils were not long in coming. In March 1938 Hitler annexed Austria, bringing his native country “home to the Reich.” Mussolini meekly accepted this fait accompli, for which the Führer expressed his eternal gratitude. Next, Hitler began putting pressure on Czechoslovakia, insisting that its westernmost region, the Sudetenland, which harbored many ethnic Germans, be joined to the Reich. When the Western powers, which heretofore had reacted to Hitler’s transgressions against the Versailles system with mild protests, expressed opposition to the proposed dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was furious; war appeared imminent. In Berlin, among other signs of war preparation, an antiaircraft gun was installed on the roof of the I. G. Farben building across from the Hotel Adlon. However, war was averted, at least for a time, by the infamous Munich Conference of September 1938, which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany while “guaranteeing” the sanctity of the rest of Czechoslovakia.