Roads Before 1933

German Cars & the Autobahn

Course 1 · Chapter 4 · Road Plans and the Autobahn Before 1933

A common belief holds that the Autobahn was conceived and begun by the Nazi government after 1933. The documents show a longer story: plans for roads reserved for motor traffic were being made in the 1920s, a test track already existed in Berlin, Italy and the United States had built early motor roads, and a Cologne to Bonn road, opened in 1932, was in effect Germany's first motorway. This chapter sets out that earlier history. It is the background needed to judge the claims of Chapter 5. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Roads for Cars Only

The problem

Ordinary roads were shared by pedestrians, carts, bicycles and, increasingly, cars, and were not built for speed. Engineers and motoring clubs argued that cars needed their own roads without crossings and without slow traffic (check the origins of the idea).

Foreign precedents

The Long Island Motor Parkway in New York opened in 1908 as a private toll road for cars, and American parkways such as the Bronx River Parkway followed in the 1920s (check). In Italy the road from Milan to the lakes near Varese, opened in 1924, is often called the first motorway (check).

The railway question

Germany already had a dense railway network, and railway interests and many officials doubted that a large new road system was needed or affordable, especially in the poor years of the 1920s (check).

The AVUS

What it was. The AVUS (Automobil-Verkehrs- und Übungs-Strasse) in Berlin was a road for testing and racing, with two long straights joined at each end (check the layout).
Dates. It was planned before the First World War, delayed by the war and opened in the early 1920s, with its first race in 1921 (check).
Why it matters. It was a closed track and not a public road, but it showed engineers what a long, crossing-free road for high speeds could be like. It was later used as a section of the public motorway network (check).

HAFRABA

Point (check each)	Note
The name	An abbreviation for a north-south road project: Hamburg, Frankfurt, Basel, the cities the road would link.
The body	An association founded in the mid-1920s to plan and promote a motor-only road from the Hanseatic cities to Frankfurt and on to Basel in Switzerland.
Who	Businessmen, engineers and motoring and cycling interests, with support from some officials.
The problem	The plan needed large funds that the Weimar state and its regions did not have, and it met resistance from railway interests and from budget cuts after 1929.
The legacy	After 1933 the Nazi government took up the idea and the planning, which is why the question of who "built" the Autobahn is disputed (Chapter 5).

Cologne to Bonn, 1932

The first motorway, and its opening A road of about 20 kilometres between Cologne and Bonn, with separated carriageways and no level crossings, was opened on 6 August 1932 (check the date and length). The ceremony was performed by Konrad Adenauer, then Lord Mayor of Cologne and later the first Chancellor of West Germany (check). It was officially classed as a country road, not as a "motorway" in the later sense, and the name Autobahn was not yet in general use (check). Stories circulate about what Adenauer said or thought of the road at the opening, and none is cited here because I could not confirm a source for any of them (check the city archive of Cologne and contemporary newspapers). What is clear is that a crossing-free motor road was open in Germany before the Nazi takeover.

Why This History Matters

Continuity. The idea, the planning body and an operating road all pre-date 1933.
Change. What changed after 1933 was the political will, the use of state funds and compulsion, the scale and the propaganda (Chapter 5).
The habit of attributing everything to one regime. It makes a better story but a poorer history, and the right approach is to give each actor the credit documents support.

A British comparison Britain built its first motorway very late. The Preston bypass opened in 1958, and the M1 followed in 1959 (check), almost three decades after Cologne to Bonn. Planners in Britain had also discussed motor-only roads in the 1930s, but wartime and cost delayed them, a reminder that having a plan and building a road are different things.

Check the details Dates, lengths, names and the classification of the early roads are from general knowledge and differ between sources, and motorway history is full of "first" claims. Verify with road-history sources and documents, and treat any remark attributed to a politician as unverified unless a source is given.

Exercises

Exercise 1

List three developments before 1933 that show the idea of the motorway was not new when the Nazis took power.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Explain why HAFRABA did not build its road in the Weimar years, and what happened to its plans afterwards.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Suppose a book says a politician made a striking remark at the opening of the Cologne to Bonn road. Describe how you would treat the quotation, and what evidence would let you cite it.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

AVUS: Berlin test and race track, opened in the early 1920s (check)
HAFRABA: a plan for a Hamburg, Frankfurt, Basel motor road (check)
Precedents: Long Island 1908, Italy 1924 (check)
Cologne to Bonn: opened 6 August 1932 by Adenauer (check)
The caution: unsourced remarks and "first" claims