The bloodbath of World War II is over.
Millions have lost their lives.
Nazi Germany now rules the world.
A group of prisoners are marched down the long boulevard that runs through the middle
of the new capital of the Nazi Empire.
Hitler is just a speck on the steps of the largest domed building ever constructed.
To the right of the prisoners are massive concrete structures that loom like watchtowers
over the causeway.
To the right are almost identical structures that house leaders of the New World Order.
It takes hours to walk down the main thoroughfare towards the man who will sentence them to
death.
These prisoners have found themselves in Germania, Hitler's newly built mega city and capital
of the world.
Thankfully the Nazis did not win World War II and Hitler’s dream of a city containing
gigantic concrete buildings to celebrate his government and ideologies was never completed.
Unfortunately for many during World War II the city had been started and thousands lost
their lives because of it.
Germania was dreamt up by the mind of Hitler, so you know everything we are about to show
you is going to be crazy.
Adolf Hitler started mapping and planning Germania as early as 1926.
This is over a decade before World War II started.
His obsession with creating a master race and controlling the world was nothing new
when he launched his war to conquer Europe.
Accounts suggest that Hitler always disliked Berlin as a city.
He thought of it as dirty and disorganized.
It was filled with too many leftwing progressives.
People who wanted equality and peace, and there was no room for these ideologies in
Hitler’s future.
He promised to fix the city once he had secured power in Germany.
Hitler may have dreamt up the idea of Germania, but the head architect for the project was
Albert Speer.
Speer might have been as deranged as Hitler.
They became good friends and spent a lot of time planning and designing Germania together.
Apparently Hitler got along well with people who were as crazy as he was.
For many years their plans were kept secret.
This may have been because many members of the Nazi party thought that Germania was not
feasible, and made their leader look slightly obsessed.
Hitler described his world capital to be comparable to the cities of ancient Egypt, Babylon, and
Rome.
He had big dreams for Germania and he would do anything to make them a reality.
The first step was the demolition of Berlin.
Hitler needed to tear down tens of thousands of houses and buildings so that he could build
his dream capital.
It did not seem to bother him that a war was going on.
Luckily for Hitler, he had some help with the demolition of Berlin.
Allied air strikes destroyed large parts of the city.
Speer liked to point out that the Allies were helping greatly with the planning efforts
of Germania.
Again, Speer was a little crazy.
All too happy to help, the allies continued bombing Berlin into rubble.
In order to make Germania a reality Hitler and Speer needed to change the actual landscape
of Berlin.
Germania was planned to have massive buildings all on the same level of land.
Unfortunately, Berlin is not located on a flat plane, and therefore the topography of
the landscape needed to be changed.
Where the largest arch of Germania was supposed to be built, the land needed to be raised
by 14 meters.
To put that in perspective the Nazis needed to raise the ground by a height of two giraffes
standing on top of one another.
That is a lot of land to create.
Reshaping the Earth was not the only insane feat of engineering that Germania would undertake.
The city itself needed to be centered around a grand thoroughfare that would be called
the North-South Avenue.
It would be around 4.3 miles long and lined by massive theaters, shops, and government
buildings.
In the middle of the North-South Avenue would be a massive arch.
It would be named the Triumphal Arch and would tower over the Arch de Triomphe in Paris.
In fact, the Triumphal Arch was planned to be so large that it’s French predecessor
would be able to fit underneath it.
Everything needed to be grandiose so that military marches and parades with thousands
of soldiers and tanks could traverse the city.
The main causeway was not to be used by pedestrians, and so plans to create underground walkways
and roads were drafted.
Hitler could not have the common folk crowding up his massive avenue.
Above ground the streets would be lined with statues and monuments to celebrate the Nazi
party.
Below ground would be a series of barren tunnels.
People would only use the tunnels to get from one spot above ground, to another spot above
ground, without creating visible congestion.
Basically Hitler wanted to turn the attractive living spaces of Berlin into monuments of
order.
Attractiveness would always come second to efficiency in Germania.
If that sounds crazy, you’ve seen nothing yet.
When architects and urban planners look back at the plans for Germania one thing is clear.
Hitler’s world capital would have been a nightmare for people to live in.
Getting anywhere would be a difficult route of above and below ground roads.
Also, keeping with character, Speer did not believe in traffic lights or trams, so the
roadways would be complete chaos.
It is unclear what the procedure would have been if an underground accident happened.
Knowing Hitler and Speer the solution would probably be to collapse the tunnel with the
accident and victims inside it and just build a new one.
But with the rabble trapped underground, Hitler could build the most beautiful structure of
Germania.
The crowning jewel of Hitler’s Germania would be the Great Hall.
The massive domed structure was inspired by the Pantheon in Rome.
It’s dome would be 16 times higher than Saint Peter’s Basilica, which was the world’s
tallest dome at the time.
The plan was to make the dome of the Great Hall 950 feet high.
The hall itself would be able to accommodate over 150,000 people.
Presumably all of which would come to hear Hitler speak.
The grandiose nature of Germania and the Great Hall makes you wonder if Hitler was compensating
for something.
Adolf Hitler had a dream to make Germania the new capital of the world.
Albert Speer helped design the city.
But how was it to be built?
Who was going to build it?
This is where things get very dark.
Although it should come as no surprise when talking about one of the most evil men in
history.
Hitler being the megalomaniac that he was, had very little regard for human life that
was not Arian.
Even with World War II raging on all fronts he began destroying parts of Berlin to begin
construction on Germania.
To do this Hitler killed thousands of innocent civilians.
Even with a war going on all around him that killed millions, Hitler was busy at home killing
his own people.
Sometimes you have to wonder if there was any humanity left in Hitler.
What comes next might suggest the answer is no.
The Nazi regime began systematically kicking Berlin citizens out of their home to start
construction on Germania.
This began in 1939 as World War II started.
German citizens who were removed from their homes were often given the houses that once
belonged to Jewish families.
Jewish people had been moved earlier to more cramped accommodations in run down parts of
the cities.
These later became known as ghettos and then evolved into concentration camps.
This brings up an important point.
Hitler’s dream of having Germania be his world capital played a key role in enabling
the Nazi party to carry out the Holocaust.
In preparations for the construction of Germania, the Nazis had systematically gathered up Jewish
families and moved them into areas where they could easily be controlled and eventually
killed.
Germania was to be built using the blood and lives of the Jewish people.
Albert Speer would use the SS to ensure that the Nazi’s had enough slave laborers to
begin construction of Germania.
Speer pushed for more and more Jewish people to be rounded up and sent to labor camps,
so that materials could be produced faster and he could begin construction of the mega
city.
His plan to secure as many Jewish people as possible for slave labor was so ambitious
that even his own father told him he was crazy.
His father was right, but nobody had seen real crazy yet.
The path that would lead to the building of Germania was the path that led to the beginnings
of the Holocaust.
Obviously for this atrocious part of human history Hitler is to blame, but Speer and
the building of Germania played a crucial role as well.
If Germania had ever been finished it would have been a monumental testament to the genocide
of millions of Jewish people.
In order to gather the materials necessary to build Germania, enormous granite and marble
quarries were created.
The structures in Germania were to be made of concrete, but adorned and embellished by
granite and marble.
This would give buildings the look of ancient Rome.
When examining the locations of quarries around Berlin and comparing them to the locations
of concentration camps, they line up almost perfectly.
You can probably guess who was being used to mine and shape the marble and granite for
Germania.
The Nazis used the Jews in the concentration camps to produce the materials that would
build the city of Hitler’s dreams.
Though the Jewish people were affected the most by the building of Germania, but no one
was safe from Hitler’s and Speer’s mega city.
The need for labor to construct their monstrosity of a city was so great that the Nazis began
rounding up any male beggar, tramp, or Gypsie that was fit to work.
Once the war started, Hitler had another influx of slave laborers for building Germania.
Prisoners of war were shipped into Berlin to work in the quarries and construction sites.
At its height the POW workforce in Berlin was as high as 130,000 people.
Although, this number fluctuated since death from being overworked and accidents were common
during the construction of Germania.
Was Hitler’s dream of building Germania possible though?
In a word, yes.
Architects and engineers that look back at the plans and designs for Germania agree that
all of the buildings were technically feasible.
The engineers and building experts of the Nazi party had the technical knowhow to build
the massive structures that Hitler wanted.
Germany also had the resources and labor needed to demolish and rebuild Berlin into Germania.
So why didn’t the project get completed, or at least further along?
Some of the reasons you may be able to guess, others might surprise you.
In a somewhat ironic way, the war that fueled Hitler’s desire to build Germania ultimately
got in the way of that dream becoming a reality.
The close relationship between Hitler and Speer led to the Fuhrer appointing his close
friend as the Minister of Armaments and War Production.
This meant that Speer’s attention was shifted away from constructing Germania and to more
pressing matters that would support the war effort.
The plan was that after Germany secured victory, the building of Germania would resume.
Thankfully this did not happen.
There was no doubt in Hitler’s mind that he would win the war.
He expected that once he controlled vast quantities of lands and people, there would be an endless
supply of materials and labor to construct Germania to all his specifications.
This thought process was made evident by the lack of discussion around the monetary cost
of building Germania.
It was just assumed that the newly conquered territories would provide all of the materials
and slave labor free of charge.
Once everyone was incorporated into the Nazi empire, Hitler and Speer could do whatever
they wanted with them.
It never even occurred to the duo that they would have to pay for labor or materials.
It was all supposed to come from winning the war.
Would Germania have been an impressive architectural sight?
Sure, if you could get past the deaths of millions and homicidal ideologies of the Nazi
party.
But the world is grateful that it never came to that.
Germania was a mega city dreamt up by an insane dictator, and although it was never completed,
tens of thousands of lives were lost solely because its construction started.
If you want to learn about more things that might have happened if Germany won World War
II check out our video What If Hitler Had Won?
Or if you want to go the other direction watch What If Hitler Never Existed?