ABSTRACT
Exiled from Germany, the philosopher Ernst Bloch observed in 1937 that the Autobahnen, which were constructed with immense propagandistic effort by the Nazi regime, make for "a strange architecture, thousands of kilometres in length, but somewhat flat". He ironically commented on the pathos with which these roads were publicly compared with the monuments of ancient civilisations, with "cathedrals, pyramids", with "the Chinese Wall" or the "Acropolis of the Athenian". The beginning of the construction of the German Autobahnen was staged by the Nazi regime as a spectacle in which Hitler sturdily grabs a shovel and joins the workers: "This was no symbolic cut of the spade that was real earthwork!" Hermann Goring was among those who publicly interpreted the beginning of construction as a result of Hitler's "brilliant idea". When Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union, the construction of highways slowed down and practically stopped in 1942.
