decars1-4, Exercise 1: The motorway idea before 1933

Model answer (check the details):

1. The AVUS in Berlin, planned before the First World War and opened in the early 1920s, was a long, crossing-free road for testing and racing and showed what such a road could be.
2. HAFRABA, founded in the mid-1920s, was an association planning a motor-only road from Hamburg through Frankfurt to Basel. It had backers and plans although it lacked funds.
3. The Cologne to Bonn road, opened on 6 August 1932 by Konrad Adenauer, was about 20 km of separated carriageways with no level crossings: in effect Germany's first motorway.

Also: foreign precedents existed, such as the Long Island Motor Parkway (1908) and the Italian road to Varese (1924).

Conclusion: the idea, the planning body and an operating road all existed before 1933. What changed after the Nazi takeover was the political will, the scale, the use of state money and compulsion, and the propaganda.