![]() Only the well off or powerful in Germany could afford automobiles. By December 1941, when wartime needs brought construction to a halt, Germany had completed 2,400 miles (3,860 km), with another 1,550 miles (2,500 km) under construction.Īs many American visitors had noted during the 1930's, the autobahn was built before the country had enough motor vehicles to justify the expense. The 14-mile expressway between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, which opened on May 19, 1935, was the first section completed under Hitler. Hitler's autobahn construction began in September 1933 under the direction of chief engineer Fritz Todt. ![]() "We are setting up a program," he said later that year, "the execution of which we do not want to leave to posterity." When Adolph Hitler assumed power as Chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, he took the program over, claiming it for his own. Construction of the first segment (Cologne-Bonn) began in 1929 and was dedicated by Mayor Konrad Adenauer of Cologne on August 6, 1932. ![]() Plans for the autobahn date to the 1920's. ![]() The following is an expanded version of material in "The Man Who Changed America."Īlthough the 1919 convoy shaped Eisenhower's views, his perspective would be supplemented years later by his observations of the German autobahn network of freeways.
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