Landscape, Perceptions, and Modernizing Effects

Transcription

11
"THE LANDSCAPE'S CROWN"
Landscape, Perceptions, and Modernizing Effects
of the German Autobahn System, 1934 to 1941
THOMAS ZELLER
S Q.M..E.-QJLT!:I.I'_l!!Q§!J?~I'Pl~xing and re~4i!}g_discussionsof Nazi Germ,my revolve amllnd.J:be_.~ontention that the dictatorship contributed
to the larger process of mode~ization:~therthan ~t;;'n-dlng as a brutal
aberration in the lib;;l modernization of the West, Nazism is increasingly analyzed in terms of modernity, that is, in its tangled relationship
with promoting and realizing ap~stic~umer societ¥amid
rac~~r aDd mass ml'tl'd:eT. The older argument that the Nazis unwillingly helped blur rigid divisions of class, gender, and religion has
been supplemented by the view that Njlzi social policy qu~~<:~tion
aJJy meant to ~uild, in some_~~~~.J!.Jnodern social state. l
The National Socialist regime's supposed concern for the environment also rests on the assumptions of a purposefully modern and modernizing state. According to this view, the Nazis enacted laws and instigated practices that would make them part of the vanguard of
environmental protection. Present historiographical views of an environmentally aware National Socialist regime echo contemporaneous
claims. The first nationwide nature protection law was passed in 1935:
German propaganda claimed that even the erection of thirty-six hundred kilometets of four-lane concrete roads, the autobahn, would not
harm nature. In the eyes of one German historian, this sensitivity to
ecological problems signifies the modernity of Nazi Germany one more
I am indebted co Eve Duffy; Chris Fender, Karen Oslund, and Helmuth Trischler for
comments on various versions of this essay.
218
time. 2 On the other side of the spectrum, another scholar, struck by the
obvious dichotomy of killing millions of people and protecting millions
of trees, was led to conclude, "It is, of course, painful to acknowledge
how ecologically conscientious the most barbaric regime in modern history actually was."3
Were the National Socialists really that conscientious when it came
to protecting the environment? This question is not as simple as it
seems. Still, interpretations of an environmentally friendly Nazi regime
are often based on evidence left behind by the orchestrated propaganda
efforts of the regime, not on archival sources. 4 Therefore, historians
overemphasize intentions and intellectual traditions while overlooking
actual effects and consequences of Nazi environmental policy. To analyze the scope and meaning of these policies more fruitfully, it is helpful
to examine the foundations as well as the specific implementations of
ecologically oriented measures between 1933 and 1945. 5
The example at hand, the National Socialist autobahn, has assumed
mythic proportions (Figure IU). According to contemporary claims,
these roads blended into existing sceneries and highlighted the organic
and harmonic relationship of National Socialist technology to nature.
In this vein, the autobahn was supposed to be unprecedented by any
other work of technology in twentieth-century Germany. The underlying questions of this essay are why these categories were used in this way
and why the Nazis in their modernizing efforts combined a program for
road building with a public display of concern for nature. Professional
groups associated with the Nazi autobahn, namely engineers and landscape architects, contested the meaning and relevance of nature for both
the design of the motorways and their role in the construction process. 6
They brought forward different concepts of German landscape in acrimonious debates. Whereas the landscape architects stressed an emotional approach to understanding and reading landscapes and roadway
design, the engineers promoted a landscape driving experience that was
modern only at first glance. In their altercations over landscape and road
design, both groups also were vying for professional self-assertion. I will
show that the apparent modernity of the Nazi autobahn cannot be separated from its racial rationale.
The program to build an extensive road system was one of the first
and most ambitious plans announced by the newly established Nazi
regime. In fact, the autobahn and its German inauguration have left a
21 9
LANDSCAPE AS PATHWAY
collective memory in Germany. This memory perceives the autobahn
as one of the great achievements of Nazi rule as opposed to the horrible
mass murders committed by Germans during this dictatorship. Twisted
as this logic may be, it is still deeply rooted in some German minds.?
The enduring success of this myth is due largely to the massive propaganda orchestrated by the regime. Nazi propaganda stressed the largely
overblown effects of road building on the labor market; created a vision
of a motorized Germany with affordable cars and an extensive system
of motorways; and ignited a discourse on the beauty of the autobahn,
which appeared as the embodiment of the long-awaited reconciliation
between nature and technology. Since then, the myth that the autobahn
alleviated unemployment has often been refuted. The second propaganda vision, Germany as a country of car owners, extended an older
tradition reaching back to Weimar Germany. In terms of private ownership of cars, Germany was falling behind France and Britain, not to
mention the United States, whose level of motorization would only be
reached in the 1960s in West Germany.8 Hitler grasped the opportunity and promoted a vision of individual mobility for the new regime.
The effort failed, and the envisioned "people's car," the Volkswagen, was
never produced in appreciable numbers before 1945, except for military purposes. 9
Although there turned out to be few cars to make use of them, the
autobahn was still built. German historiography has shown the inconsistency of Nazi transportation policy, pointing to the erection of a
highway system of 3,625 kilometers by the end of 1941. 10 What historians have called the polycratic structure of the National Socialist regime,
FIGURE 11.1 "Speed Along German Reichsautobahnen": poster by Robert Zinner,
c. 1936. In time for the 1936 Olympic Games, this poster aimed at presenting a
peaceful, technologically advanced Germany to the world. Motorists from abroad
were invited to share a sense of speed on the new Reichsautobahnen. Their individual
mobility would include unprecedented, spectacular vistas and experiencing the
~ighway as a modern monumept. Before crossing the bridge, drivers could stop at a
rest area and wonder at the "organic" roadway. There, the pylon bears a swastika
underneath a watchful eagle controlling six cars. The German tourist board
commissioned the artist Robert Zinner to stylize the pile-bridge over the river Saale
between Bavaria and Thuringia and the surrounding scenery. It is remarkable to see
how early the German word Autobahn was internationalized. Courtesy of Persuasive
Images, Stanford, California.
220
with its fragmentation of policies in different and rivalling political
agencies, obviously helped to spur road building on this scale.
Very early Hider established a bureaucratic agency responsible for the
building of the autobahn, the office of the inspector general for German
roads. The inspector general assumed responsibility for the Department
of Transportation and the states. His new powers therefore only aggravated the lack of coordination between differing actors and interests,
such as the still powerful national railway, the Deutsche Reichsbahn; the
Department of Finance, which had a strong interest in the railway's revenues; and the interests of road-building companies. I I 1.:!;e engineer
fritz To~ a former associate of these road-building companies ann
first-generation Nazi, became inspector general in June 1933. Todt was
the first nonlawyer to head a German Reich agency. He had modeled
himselfas a Nazi road expert by laying out a master plan for the German
motorways as early as October 1932.12
The high speed with which the autobahn was completed reflects a
variety of interests and political constellations. It was pardy due to the
plans that had already been made during the Weimar Republic by lobbyists for road building. At. the same time, the Nazi regime want~d to
build the roads as quickly as possible to achieve the desired propaganda
results. The dictatorship fashioned these roads into an icon of German
power and economic strength and its resurgence after the calamities of
the Depression. They were to become a national symbol (Figure 11.2).
The propaganda of the autobahn-building phase was extensive and impossible to escape. Posters, movies, books, magazines, and even theater
plays glorified the peaceful accomplishment of an economically vigorous and organizationally unbeatable Germany. Radio shows left no detail of the building process uncovered. 13
A doser look at this propaganda shows that the mass-media onslaught functioned on different levels: workers and their families were
to be impressed by bombastic radio shows and cigarette collectibles. Educated middle-class audiences, however, who might still be skeptical
about the uncouth new regime were to be won over by the autobahn's
success at uniting nature and technology. This reconciliation of two
hitherto separate worlds had been a prominent theme of German intellectual debates in the 1920S. In a somewhat simplified version of the
argument, conservative German intellectuals feared that industrialization and a market economy would threaten and eventually annihilate
222
FIGURE IL2 Autobahn travel in Germany in the 19305. A car passes the swastika flag
berween the rwo autobahn lanes while rwo motorcyclists exit. This scene is
overshadowed by the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. According to Ihe regime's own
reptesentation, Ihe mountain view, the roadway, and occasional Nazi paraphernalia
were to climax in the ultimate technological symbol of Nazi Germany, the autobahn.
Courtesy of the Deutsches Museum, Munich.
the German soul so deeply embodied in its sacred and sublime nature.
However, this danger of a powerfully modernizing Germany that would
destroy its inner foundation was avoidable. The Heimatschutz movement, after failing as a merely reactionary societal force, turned toward
a more open stance in the face of capitalism. 14 To solve this dilemma,
Germany only had to resort to a non-Western and noncapitalist mode
of production and thus a more benign attitude toward German nature.
This attitude brought forward by conservative intellectuals has been
labeled "reactionary modernism" by historians. The Nazis themselves
were eager to call it Deutsche Technik, or German technology. Accordingly, a new journal by this very name praised the autobahn as the epitome of the new era. 15
Although there was no consistent Nazi ideology of technology
among the varied strands of National Socialist thought, some common
features stand our. 1G Nazi propaganda radicalized an already existing dis223
course and undergirded ir with racist lines of argument. According to
Nazi publications, the main reason that capitalism had been rampant
in its destruction of German nature was that inferior races such as the
Jews had been allowed to playa role in the German economy. Race was
the new keyword for this discourse, and the link between race and nature was essential. Only a healthy German nature could support the
offspring for the rejuvenation of the Aryan race.
As the concept of Deutsche Technik suggests, technology was supposed to perform a key role in this process. Under "materialistic" conditions, technology had been considered an instrument of destruction.
Prophets of the Heimatschutz movement cited countless examples of
how bridges, factories, and hydroelectric plants brutally intruded on
German nature. Against this background of a cold modernism, the vision of a united organic entity of nature and technology was brought
forward. 17 With the advent of the organic, architects and engineers were
to play much more important roles than before. Technology, if only
taken our of its materialistic context and placed into the German organic economy, could now help to enhance natural surroundings. Advocates of the Heimatschutz movement embraced the advent of the Nazi
regime, since it promised to fulfill their organic rhetoric.
..Iodt, as the inspector general for roads, followed this line of argument when he declared
in ]aomry 1934 tbOit th~a!Jtobabn ~hQJ!ld by no
,,--
ft:
means be built like [ailw~s
~~:~~ e~~e.ted decad~he
r~s mostly been ar::ue;dementin landscape. A motorway,
however, is and will be a stre
oo-sHe~"S-a~.A-tegt:aLpaI:t-o.Lthe
Ian scape. German landscape is full of charac r. Therefo , " e motQrways must assume a ermart...charact@l:,':18 In vague terms, Todt asked
for t e new roads n-;t to dominate nature bur to blend into existing
scenery. By the same token, the roads sh~ld give drivers sp ec raCl.ll'1r
~iews of German landscapes.
~ To ensure that this landscape-friendly style would be upheld, ~s
office hired a cadre of landscape architects. In the summer of 1934, Todt
a~ (be Munich Iandsca12e ars;;hitect Alwin Seifen his adMisOLior,
I;mdscape matte~. Seifert selected fifteen colleagues and became the
leader of this group.19 The administration bestowed on them the illustrious title "landscape advocates," a name that suggests a legal dispute
over questions oflandscape design. As Todt defined their task, the landscape advocates would act as Q:1nsultants to the road-building engineer.,s.
;he
~
224
"THE LANDSCAPE'S C":ROWN"
These engineers, however, were employees of the national railway, the
Reichsbahn, and therefore committed to building streets with roughly
the same parameters as were used for railways. EQ.gin.ecrs..hacLtraooiGHally avoi<;kd Cl!rves wherever possible, situated roads on dams, and patd
littfe or no attention to roadside plants.
ConAictS with the landscape architects who were dedicated to blending the roads into existing sceneries were inevitable. These confrontations can be understood only in the context of the hierarchical structure
of Nazi road building. Because of a shortage of skiJled road engineers,
Todt's agency had to resort to the railway's engineers. The national railway was organized into regional headquarters with a central board in
Berlin. The system of the landscape advocates was erected alongside this
structure: every regional headquarters was to be counseled by one landscape architect, with Seifert in Munich serving as the liaison to Todt.
On an everyday level, this structure turned out to be awkward. 20 What
made the system even more confusing to the architects was that their
task was ill defined. Todt had stipulated that the regional offices would
consult the landscape advocates before designing their plans. More often than not, however, the road engineers did not contact the landscape
architectS until after the plans had been rri~de and the machines had
roJled out to start building the roads. This negligence led to a conflict
between Seifert and Todt that was fought out along ideological lines,
and minute technical details of road building became the subject of serious disputes about the "Germanness" of roads.
Th~ first example was [be qllesrjon of Cl!n~. Seifert believed that
only a sweeping autobahn would be appropriate to the values he saw
incorporated in German landscapes. Roads and bridges were to sweep
ele&J.ntly over the vaJle~-Jince a straight line or straight road was••acc0J.:9ing tQ-S9i£&u, IInpaturaJ, "The straight line is of cosmic origin," he
wrote. "It is n;?t from this earth and is not fOIJud jp POltwre No Ijyjgg
thirrg can move itself forward in a straight Ijne "21 In Seifert's eyes, only
nature itSelf could point to the single fitting design of the road. The
landscape advocates had to understand nature's laws in a way that could
not be measured, only felt, and then help design the roads according to
these feelings. What Seifert was effectively asking for was the elevation
of his aesthetic and artistic appreciation of nature into a valid guideline
for road building and the downplaying of a scientific understanding of
nature. For the landscape advocates, nature was the sublime actor and
---
225
humans could only subdue themselves to its will. What is more, these
eternal laws would be legible to human minds only through the design
proposals of the landscape advocates. In this vein of thought, technology had to be modeled according to nature's laws. If there were no
straight lines in nature, then straight motorways were simply inappropriate.
As ~ rrajned..eogiDeer. Iodt disputed these argument
ingly
enough, he used nature 8"S his ~ple as well. In response to
Seifert, Todt wrote, "The car is not a rabbit or a
·.wnP-i-ar~d
i~ liA-tlS
- a e w k of technolo . need of
an appropriate roadway. Rather, the car r
les a dra on fI 0 lllY
ot
in srrai ht lines and
then chan es its direction at different oin ."22 The nature of a manmade technology wou determine its suitabiliry. Still, Todt resorted to
animal analogies and confused his own argument about the human
qualiry of roads with references to nature. At the interstices oflandscape
and technology, both engineers and landscape architects employed ideas
of nature to support their respective intellectual and professional status
in the building of the autobahn and in Nazi sociery. In these efforts, the
compelling normative qualities of nature were the final argument. Sin.ceTodt had the power to define what con .
.
dwa ,
ali nment
n consisted of strai ht s
es sewn toge~ with short bends. The landscape architects ridiculed this as "t$z~,{Figljre IT 3)
Only after five years of road building and the steady admonishments
of the landscape architects did the sweeping autobahn slowly come into
being. Compared to the aesthetic qualities so vividly described by the
landscape advocates, however, the road-building administration was
much more imptessed with the cost-saving effect of roads, which called
for fewer bridges and less costly digging. S»",eping roads followed the
i~herenr landscape patterns and were laid am :uouod rbe mountains
and in the vallers instead of over the moun~ heir sl
. Fur(hermore, t
d en ineers began to prefer. landscape-orienred..roads
Jfecause tbey deemed them safer than straight ones After some .1Intrain.ed German d[illeJ:~ had suffered seri~
.
e1ieved
.rh.at more clJrves 'liould suppress drivers' boredom and thYS..keep.-them
~One ofTodt's first reactions to the increasing number of accidents
on the autobahn had been to hire a dowser with a divining rod, since
226
FIGURE 11.3 The autobahn in Saxony in rhe 1930S. The bulk of the autobahn in Nazi
Germany used design features rhar belied the organic rhetoric of rhe regime. The dam
on which rhis srrerch near Gbrlirz in Saxony was builr is reminiscenr of railway
lines-rhe embankmenr's incline is less sharp, however-and rhe relatively sudden
curve spoke againsr the smooth qualities of rhe roads vividly described in the
propaganda. Roadside planring was kept ro a minimum, since rhe road-building
adminisrrarion declared ir roo costly. In the far distance, a Jone car poinrs to rhe
scarcity of automobiles in Nazi Germany. Srill, huge resources were allocated for rhe
autobahn. Courresy of rhe Deursches Museum, Munich.
Todt suspected underground water lines to be responsible for causing
casualties. Yet, the dowser did not provide an explanation. 23
When declaring the sweeping autobahn appropriate for German
landscapes in 1940, Todt made it clear that these standards had to be
applied solely to Germany. This exclusiveness was intricately linked to
racist perceptions. In a speech given to his inner circle, Todt said he
could not imagine that "we should make much of an effort" to preserve
"remainders of natural beauty" in conquered Poland. Similar conditions
would prevail in occupied Belgium, where a "relatively speedy course"
should be sufficient. 24
The landscape advocates did not fulfill their aims when it came to
the question of sweeping motorways. What is more, some regional units
227
of the road-building administration used their expertise only after the
roads had already been mapped out. In an attempt to prove their usefulness, the landscape architects insisted on planting the appropriate
trees and shrubs alongside the autobahn. One design feature of the conservative landscape architecture before 1933 had been a preference for
indigenous plants for gardens and parks. 25 Seifert declared that on the
open landscape of the autobahn native plants were absolutely necessary.
No "non-German" tree or shrub was allowed to be planted, and in his
view, there existed only one fitting plant for every single spot of German nature.
This notion of a specific and appropriate community of soil and
plants was taken from plant sociology, as the branch of ecology that
examined natural vegetation units was called in Europe. 26 Scientists ascertained that vegetation organized itself into discrete units over time.
Therefore, biologists and ecologists claimed that communities of plants
and soil existed on different hierarchical levels: they started on a primitive stage only to reach a final, static level. In Europe, plant sociologists
were interested in the plant association. In the United States, this association was taken to an organistic extreme. The American biologist Frederick Clements stated that "the unit ofvegetation, the climax formation,
is an organic entity. As an organism, the formation arises, grows, marures, and dies ... The climax formation is the adult organism, the fully
developed community, of which all initial and medial stages are but
stages of development."27 Although the European and American concepts and approaches differed, ecologists on both sides of the Atlantic
believed in the feature of a steady and final community of plants.
The German landscape architects associated with the autobahn did
not stop searching for this adult organism. They radicalized Clements's
organic worldview by emphasizing the Germanness of the fully developed plant community. Se,ifrrt gemanded that the laoQaGape .d.vocates
must not plant "foreign shrubs" such as...!.iliK:. jasmine. park r:o£e£, doJJglas firs, and rhododendro~.sinceall these plants were Q.ot indige!lcous to
G~8 The landscape advocates also expected plant sociology to
help them reestablish plant associations that had vanished from the face
of German landscape as a result of the utilitarianism of the market economy. "It is about time to end a century of aberration in the relationship
between nature and technology," declared Seifert. 29 This usually meant
planting deciduous instead of coniferous trees alongside the autobahn.
228
Coniferous trees had been chosen to grow timber commercially, whereas
the deciduous trees of the 1930S would be selected for their natural
beauty and, more importantly, their appropriateness. The landscape advocates believed that through their efforts, the erection of a new transport system, the autobahn, could lead to the restoration of true German
nature and the revival of original plant communities.
In their quest for the restoration of these older communities, the
landscape architects were willing to resort to scientific methods. Quite
in contrast to their aesthetic and artistic approach to road design and
the question of curves, which bordered on self-centered willfulness, the
men around Seifert embraced the scientifically generated results of plant
ecologists, which led them to one appropriate vegetation association for
every unit. The architects convinced lodt's road-building administration to fund the fledgling discipline of plant sociology. Starting in 1935,
ecologists analyzed the existing plant associations alongside the autobahn, produced maps, and pointed to the "natural" plant community
that would exist without humans' influence on earth. 30
These newly generated results led the landscape architects to plant
many more trees and shrubs than the road-building administration was
willing to pay for. At the end of 1936, in one of the most turbulent
phases of motorway building, inspector general Todt was upset because
the landscape advocates had placed too many plants between the lanes
and alongside the autobahnY Impressions of landscape, wrote Todt,
should be generated by the "open spaces of landscape" and sequences of
these spaces, not by planting trees and shrubs. Therefore, only IO or 20
out ofevery IOO kilometers of roadways should be covered with plants. 32
After summoning all the landscape advocates to his Berlin office, Todt
issued new guidelines for roadside vegetation. He defined its foremost
task as enhancing the driving experience on the aurobahn. T~ drivers
shQ!lld be keEt in al1,alert .state by l~ at yaryiog landscape designs
Therefore, the vegetation had to alternate between sparsely and densely
planted areas. According to Todt, this was more important than blending the autobahn into the surrounding landscape. Thus, the roads
would become, in lodt's words, the "crown of the landscape" opened
up by the autobahn. 3.>
Todt's focus on the driving experience also led him to remain skeptical in the face of the radical revisionism of the landscape advocates.
He met their call for the reintroduction of original German nature with
229
pragmatic caution. He warned that it could take some time before original plant communities were reestablished and added that, therefore, the
planting of autochtonous trees should not be hastened. 34
Besides general skepticism, there was an additional reason for Todt's
hesitancy. The German Reich's expenses for the autobahn had skyrocketed. Instead of spending the estimated 600,000 reichsmark per
kilometer of the four-lane autobahn, the regime paid 900,000 reichsmark per kilometer. This increase was due largely to the speed of the
building process. Since the administration constantly needed to lower
building costs, and roadside vegetation's scope was so obvious, with
planting done at the very last stage of toad building, the trees and shrubs
alongside the autobahn more often than not fell prey to financial constraints. Ornamental trees would not facilitate the regime's preparation
for war. The Nazi regime's total expenses for the landscape friendliness
of the autobahn amounted to 800 reichsmark per kilometer in 1937,
including the landscape advocates' fees and the expenses for trees and
shrubs. Exactly 0.08 percent of the overall costs for the autobahn were
used for the landscape advocates and their tasks. 35
Although the concept of a specifically German technology, Deutsche
1echnik, was shared by both the inspector general's office and the landscape advocates, they differed when it came to the meaning of the landscape of the autobahn. The road-building administration was inclined
to understand landscape as a backdrop for the drivers' experience (Figure 11.4). The various regions of Germany were to be interpreted in a
distinctively different context of speed and space. A new appropriation
of nature from a speeding car could be gained only when spectacular
new vistas were designed for visual consumption. Compared to the
landscape advocates' insistence on subordinating roadway design to nature's eternal laws, the engineers' approach appears to be more modern
at first glance. Yet, the driving experience was to be rooted in and generated for a racial conception of landscape, a restricted version of natural
beauty.
The landscape advocates' efforts were stymied by their structural
weakness within the road-building hierarchy. The technological means
for creating landscape-friendly roads were disputed as well. The landscape advocates' arguments for a sweeping autobahn were first brushed
aside and then acknowledged only after the office of the inspector gen-
230
FIGURE 1[.4 The aurobahn near Salzburg in the 1930S. When G<:rma.n road
engineers planned rhe aurobahn from Munich ro the Ausrrian bordet close to
Salzburg, they relied on the Alpine imagery ro create a monumental vision that would
reflect the highway's aesthetic qualities. This stretch of road seems ro lead directly
roward the Alps and their peaks. Single trees and bushes remained in their respecrive
places as landscape architects tried to embed the highways in the landscape. Courtesy
of the Deutsches Museum, Munich.
eral started to believe in the cost-effectiveness of this design. The architects insisted on the use of indigenous plants, but their radical rhetoric
collided with the pragmatic resistance of the road-building administration. The overarching dilemma of economic constraints, which became
clearer after the completion of each stretch of the autobahn, contributed
to the fact that the landscape advocates became less important on the
inspector general's agenda.
The effects of this huge infrastructure effort of the Nazi regime were
mixed. On the whole, the parameters for road design followed aesthetic
principles loaded with contemporaneous Nazi ideology. Despite the holistic rhetoric, the concern for nature was exclusive rather than inclusive
(Figure 1I,5). Landscape features such as bogs and moors were considered to be mere hindrances, and the administration supported the de-
23 1
velopment of fast and efficient blasting techniques with no signs of
landscape advocates protesting.,6 Visual effects were of the foremost importance, and it is important to note that almost no thoughts were
wasted on the effects of the autobahn on its closest neighbors, the animals. Still, Nazi propaganda created quite successful myths, including
the one of the nature-friendly autobahn.)7 What is more surprising is
that some historians still take the nature friendliness of the Nazi regime
for granted.
Finally, landscape history's now famous remark that nature contains
an extraordinary amount of human history, though it is often unnoticed, leads to a remarkable parallel in the Nazi discourse on nature. 3ti
The Nazi regime appreciated the human history in nature openly as
part of their ideology, and, at least rhetorically, it tried to change the
course of human history by changing nature and thereby strengthening
FIGURE 11.5 The aurobahn in the Palatinate in the 1930S. The harmony with nature
evoked by aurobahn rhetoric Stands in obvious contrast ro this picture. As the fourlane road cutS through the fotests of the Palatinate, it exposes the geological
formations of the Bunter sandsrone and divides the woods sharply. Still, aurobahn
literatute claimed that a ride on the foresrry stretches of the roads could bring
urbanites closer ro nature and evoke feelings of belonging in sheltering and confined
spaces. Courtesy of the Deutsches Museum, Munich.
the German race. This hubris underscores the truly totalitarian nature
of the regime.
In this respect, it is hard to see how the landscape policy of the autobahn can be considered a boon to the modernization of German society,
unless one resorts to rather arbitrary definitions of modernization. The
Nazis' transportation policy as a whole has already been labeled unmodern by one historian. 39 The autobahn itself appeared as the embodiment
of conflicting elements, some of which were modern and others oriented toward reestablishing a lost natural past. 10 Some of the design
features of the motorways were adapted from the parkways in the
United States; however, their concept was transformed into an everyday
transportation route. What is more, they had to serve the notion of
Germanness, that is, a racially grounded national identity. The enlistment of a group of landscape advocates answered the call of the environmentalist movements of the day, yet the advocates' efforts were
drastically mitigated in the building process of the autobahn as they
contended with the engineers over professional status and expert knowledge. On a deeper level, the expertise generated by the counselors was
used by the regime at will; instead of a modern, participatory democratic exchange of ideas on nature and its different usages, authoritarian,
behind-the-scenes decisions gained true importance. Even the possibilities of visual consumption and a seemingly democratic, individualistic
;ppropriation of speed were inextricably bound to nurturing a vijlkisch
community of Aryan subjects on the autobahn. They were to be impressed by a strong state's capacity to unveil a nationwide transportation
system and its ability to create scenic impressions. Only by acknowledging the intricacies and discrepancies of this amalgam can we understand
the nature of the autobahn more deeply.41 Moreover, the landscape of
the autobahn had an ironic legacy. After 1945, attempts to bring nature
back into the discourse of modernization not only were morally discredited by the association with the Nazis, bur were tainted by the smell of
blood and soil.
NOTES
1. On the relationship between modernity and Nazism, see Zygmunt Baumann, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.¥.: Cornell University Press,
1989); Peter Fritzsche, "Nazj Modern," Modernism/Modernity 3 (1996): 1-21.
233
The assumption of an unintentional tearing down of class barriers builds on
the works of Ralf Dahrendotf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York:
Doubleday, 1967), and David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and
Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (New York: Doubleday, 1966). The more
recent debate draws on Rainer Zitelmann and Michael Prinz, eds., Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, 2d ed. (Darmstadt, Germany: WissenschafrJiche
Buchgesellschaft, 1994). On a political level, the latter book fits into the mold
of tecent efForts of the German Right to construct a positive, usable German
identity.
2. Michael Prinz, "Die soziale Funktion moderner Elemente in der Gesellschaftspolitik des Nationalsozialismus," in Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, ed. Rainer Zitelmann and Michael Prinz (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche BuchgeseUschaft, 1991), 297-327, 315.
3. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Knopf, 1995), 09.
Schama, of course, delivers a tour d'horizon of changing cultUral meanings of
landscapes over time and is not interested in the debate on modernization or
in the National Socialist regime specifically.
4. Exceptions are Michael Wettengel, "Staat und Naturschutz 1906-1945.
Zur Geschichte del' Staatlichen Stelle fur Naturdenkmalpflege in Preugen und
der Reichsstelle fur NatUrschutz," Historische Zeitschrift 257 (1993): 355-399,
and Karl Dirt, Raum und Volkstum. Die Kulturpolitik des Provinzialverbandes
Westfalen 1923-1945 (Munster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1988). For a recent summary of the debate on "green Nazis," see Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Tschernobyl,
26. April 1986. Die Okologische HerausfOrderung (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1998), 155-178. Also, see Raymond H. Dominick, The Environmental lvJovement in Germany. Prophets and Pioneers, 1871-1971 (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1992).
5. The landscape of the autobahn has been the subject of twO recent articles,
both of which are based on printed sources that lead the authors to skewed
interpretations: Dietmar Klenke, "Aurobahnbau und Naturschutz in Deutschland. Eine Liaison von Nationalpolitik, Landschaftspflege und Mororisierungsvision bis zur okologischen Wende der siebziger Jahre," in Politische Ziisuren
undgesellschaftlicher Wandel im 20. Jahrhundert. Regionale und vergleichende Perspektiven, ed. Matthias Frese and Michael Prinz (Paderborn, Germany: Schoningh, 1996), 465-498, and William H. Rollins, "Whose Landscape? Technology, Fascism, and Environmentalism on the National Socialist Autobahn,"
Annals o/the Association 0/American Geographers 85 (1995): 494-520.
6. For a general overview of environmental history in Germany see Joachim
Radkau, "Was ist Umweltgeschichte?" in Umweltgeschichte. Umweltvertriigliches
Wlirtschaften in historischer Perspektive, ed. Werner Abelshauser (Gottingen,
Germany: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1994), 1I-28; and Gunter Bayed, Norman Fuchsloch, and Tomen Meyer, eds. Umweltgeschichte: Methoden, The-men,
Potentiale (Munster, Germany: Waxmann, 1996). For a discussion of the American scene, see the essays in 1::nvironmental History I, no. I (1996); and William
Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New
234
York: Norton, 1996). A constructivist approach such as the one proposed by
Cronon is not considered particularly revolutionary in Central Europe, as in
the United States, since the idea of "wilderness" simply would not resonate in
Europe. Nature conservationists in Germany, for example, celebrated and
sought to protect Kulturlandschaften-culturally altered landscapes-as early
as in the mid nineteenth century because these landscapes incorporated values
of a romanticized rural life. Naturlandschaften, natural landscapes and the closest concept to wilderness, on the other hand, are sparse and culturally less significant. For an intellectual history of German landscape, see Gcrt Groning
and Ulfert Hcrlyn, cds., Landschaftswahrnehmung und Landschaftserfthrung
(MUnster, Germany: Lit, 1996).
7. See Joachim Radkau, Technik in Deutschland. 110m 18. Jahrhundert bis zur
Gegenwart (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 308, and Gudrun Brockhaus,
Schauder und Idylle: Faschismus als Erlebnisangebot (Munich: Kunstmann,
1997)·
8. Richard J. Overy, "Cars, Roads, and Economic Recovery in Germany,
1932-1938," in War and Economy in the Third Reich, ed. Richard J. Overy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 68-89.
9. Heidrun Edelmann, "Der Traum vom 'Volkswagen,' " in Geschichte der
Zukunft des Verkehrs. Verkehrskonzepte von der Fruhen Neuzeit bis zum 2I. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans-Liudger Dienel and Helmuth Trischler (Frankfurt: Campus,
1997), 280-288.
ro. Christopher Kopper, "Modernitat oder Scheinmodernitat nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft. Das Beispiel der Verkehrspolitik," in lion der Aujgabe
der Freiheit. Politische Verantwortung und burgerliche Gesellschaft im 19. und 20.
Jahrhundert. FestschriftfUr Hans Mommsen zum ). November 1995, ed. Christian
Jansen and Lutz Niethammer (Berlin: Akademie, 1995), 399-4II.
II. Alfred Gottwaldt, Julius Dorpmull.er, die Reichsbahn und die Autobahn.
Verkehrspolitik und Leben des Verkehrsministers his 1945 (Berlin: Argon, 1995).
12. Franz W Seidler, Fritz Tbdt. Baumeister des Dritten Reiches (Frankfurt:
Ullstein, 1988).
13. For a recent analysis of the autobahn's representations, see Erhard
SchUtz and f::Ckhard Gruber, Mythos Reichsautobahn. Bau und Inszenierung der
"Strajten des Fuhrers" I933-I941 (Berlin: Christoph Links, 1996).
14. Lately, the Heimatschutz movement has been cited as an example of social reform in a bold and sometimes overstated revisionist effort. William Rollins, A Greener Vision ofHome: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reftrm in
the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904-1918 (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1997). Cf. the older German literature stressing the conservative, if not reactionary, outlook of the movement and its close alliances with
Nazi Germany; for example, Arne Andersen, "Heimatschutz: Die blirgerliche
Naturschutzbewegung," in Besiegte Natur. Geschichte der Umwelt im 19. und 20.
Jahrhundert, ed. Franz-Josef Brliggemeier and Thomas Rommelspacher, 2d ed.
(Munich: C. H. Beck, 1989), 143-157.
15. Deutsche Technikwas published from 1933 until 1943 by the only associa-
235
tion acknowledged by the National Socialist Party, the Kampfbund Deutscher
Architekten und Ingenieure; see Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). For a critique of HerE's position, see Michael
Allen, "The Puzzle of Nazi Modernism: Modern Technology and Ideological
Consensus in an SS Factory at Auschwitz," Technology and Culture 37 (1996):
527-571, esp. 545 ff. Allen is correct in remarking that romantic-modernist contradictions caused German engineers in the Nazi period "few sleepless nights"
(546). By stressing the intricacies of the "actual world," however, this approach
risks downplaying intellectual traditions and climates that helped to shape debates and actions. For example, such an analysis would have less success in
explaining the touting of the autobahn as a work of technology that would
reconcile these contradictions. Also, see Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Ti?Chnik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (Dusseldorf: Athenaum/Droste, 1979).
16. Helmut Maier, "Nationalsozialistische Technikideologie und die Politisierung des 'Technikerstandes': Fritz Todt und die Zeitschrift 'Deutsche Technik,' " in Technische Intelligenz und "Kulturftktor Technik. " Kulturvorstellungen
von Technikern und Ingenieuren zwischen Kaiserreich undfriiher Bundesrepublik
Deutschland, ed. Burkhard Dierz, Michael Fessner, and Helmut Maier (Munster, Germany: Waxmann, 1996), 253-268.
17. The classic work of this vein is Paul Schultze-Naumburg's widely popular Kulturarbeiten, 9 vols. (Munich: Callwey, 1902-1917). Volumes 7 through 9
deal with "Die Gestaltung der Landschaft durch den Menschen," the designing
of landscapes by humans.
18. Statement of Todt, 18 January, 1934, 1LnIIl503, Federal Archives, Koblenz, Germany (hereafter "FAK"). Translations, unless otherwise stated, are
by author.
19. The Nazi Party banned one prospective coworker because of his former
membership in the freemasons and kept one architect under close watch for
alleged ties to the Communist Party before 1933. Virtually all of the landscape
architects in the group were connected to the Heimatschutz movement and
came out of the German Youth Movement. The majority were dose to or
members of the anthroposophic movement of Rudolf Steiner, which promoted
organic farming and other issues of life reform.
20. Evidence on this point abounds in the papers of Alwin Seifert. See, for
example, Schneider to Seifert, 30 June 1934, folder 146, Alwin Seifert Papers,
Technical University of Munich (hereafter "ASP"); Meyer-Jungclaussen to Seifert, 3 June 1934, folder 138, ASP; Siegloch to Seifert, 6 June 1938, folder 153, ASP.
21. Alwin Seifert, "Schlangelung?," in 1m Zeitalter des Lebendigen. NaturHeimat-Technik, ed. Alwin Seifert (Planegg, Germany: Langen Muller, 1942),
II4-1I7,1I4·
22. Todt to Seifert, 26 June 1935, NS 26/1188, FAK.
23. Todt to Direktion Reichsautobahnen, 6 July 1936, NS 26/1188, FAK,
Seifert to Todt, 13 November 1939, NS 26/1188, FAK.
24. "Rede des Reichsministers Dr. Todt auf der Architekten-Tagung des
Generalinspektors fur das deutsche Stragenwesen auf der Plassenburg," 9, 31
August 1940, NS 26/n88, FAK. For this speech, see the apologetic autobiography ofAlwin Seifert, Ein Leben fUr die Landschaft (Dusseldorf/Cologne: Diederichs, 1962), 58.
25. Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn and Gert Groning, 'The Ideology of the
Nature Garden. Nationalistic Trends in Garden Design in Germany during the
Early 20th Century," Journal ofGarden History 12 (1992): 73-80. Gert Groning
and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Die Liebe zur Landschaft, 2d ed., part I
(MUnster, Germany: Lit, 1995), and part III (Munster, Germany: Lit, 1997).
26. Michael G. Barbour, "Ecological Fragmentation in the Fifties," in Cronon, Uncommon Ground, 233-255.
27. Clements quoted in Donald Worster, Nature's Economy. A History of
Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 211. Ludwig
Trepl, Geschichte der Okologie, vom I7. Jahrhundert his zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt/Main: Athenaum, 1987).
28. Alwin Seifert, "Natur und Technik im deutschen Stragenbau," in 1m
Zeitalter des Lebendigen. Natur-Heimat- Technik, ed. Alwin Seifert (Planegg,
Germany: Langen Muller, 1942), 22-25.
29. Ibid., 22.
30. This tendency is in line with a growing amount of money allocated
to fundamental research in biology. Ute Deichmann and Benno MUlier-Hili,
"Biological Research at Universities and Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in Nazi Germany," in Science, Technology, and National Socialism, ed. Monika Renneberg
and Mark Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 160-183.
31. Seifert to Schwarz, 28 October 1936, 46.01/864, Federal Archives, Potsdam, Germany (hereafter "FAP").
32. "Entwurf cines Rundschreibens," 23 October 1936, 46.01/864, FAP.
33. "Vorlaufige Richtlinien Uber die Bepflanzung der Kraftfahrbahnen auf
Grund der Besprechung beim Generalinspektor vom n.n.1936," folder n6,
ASP. The original reads, "zur Krone der von ihr erschlossenen Landschaft."
34. Todr, "Runderlag," 27 January 1940, NS 26/n88, FAK.
35. Author's calculations according to "Reichsautobahnen Direktion, Kosten der technisch nicht notwendigen Pflanzungen und BegrUnungen," 16 April
1937, R 65II!I4, FAK. According to this source, 808,500 reichsmark were spent
for the landscaping of the autobahn until the end of 1936. This amount is
dwarfed not only by the overall costs of erecting the autobahn system, but also
by the 3,147 million reichsmark extra that were spent to have one thousand
kilometers teady for a celebratory opening in September 1936. "Zusammenstellung der Mehrkosten der Baubeschleunigung zur Eroffnung verschiedener Zivi1strecken am 27. September 1936," 8 March 1937, R 65II/15, FAK.
36. The blasting of moors was celebrated in the movie Der Kampfmit dem
Moor (Fighting the Moor). A celebratory detonation was included in the administration's festivities to commemorate the three-thousandth kilometer of
237
the autobahn. "Generalinspektor, An die Gefolgschaftsmitglieder!" 14 December 1938, R 65I138, FAK.
37. This might be viewed as an expression of the modernity of the regime.
By creating a myth of landscape friendliness, the regime combined older elements with a new amalgam. I do not mean to downplay the regime's failure in
implementing these policies, bur rather to point to the intellectual history that
it created. In this respect, a differentiation between modernization and modernity is helpful.
38. "The idea of nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary
amount of human history," is Raymond Williams's now famous quote. Cited
after William Cronan, "Introduction: In Search of Nature," in Cronon, Uncommon Ground, 23-56, 25.
39. Kopper, "Modernirat oder Scheinmodernitat."
40. In this understanding, Jeffrey Herr's notion of reactionary modernism
has to be extended, as Allen ("The Puzzle of Nazi Modernism") did, in order
to make sense in light of the debate on modernization and the evidence used
here. It is unteasonable to deny that modern elements can be found in the
autobahn's example. Therefore, the question does not evolve around the existence or nonexistence of these elements. Rather, it is important to analyze how
they were connected to contradictory elements within rhe same process. For
example, the Nazis set our to modernize the transportation system by implementing rhe autobahn even if it was built ahead of demand, but by the same
degree, they chose design features that sought to unite inconsistent means
and ends.
41. For vision and vistas, see Teresa Brennan and Martin Jay, eds., Vision in
Context. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight (New York: Routledge, 1996) and Rudy Koshar, Germany's Transient Paths. Preservation and National Memory in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 175. Klenke ("Autobahnbau") ties the landscaping of the
autobahn together with nature conservation, which was practically irrelevant in
the building process. His notion of a "constructive cooperation" follows older
conceptions (469). Rollins ("Whose Landscape") goes as far as citing the autobahn as an example of "effective environmental reform" (513) and fails to place
it in the larger context of Nazi Germany.
TECHNOLOGIES
OF
LANDSCAPE
FROM REAPING TO RECYCLING
r
1
f
Edited by
DAVID
E.
NYE
t
f
1999
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS
AMHERST
Central European History 44 (2011), 447–477.
© Conference Group for Central European History of the American
Historical Association, 2011
doi:10.1017/S0008938911000392
Volksgemeinschaft Engineers: The Nazi “Voyages
of Technology”
John C. Guse
“The special train of German technology in the Sudentengau demonstrates
that . . . the German engineer is also a great activist and propagandist.”
— Fritz Todt in Eger, November 24, 1938
UNCTUALLY at 4:05 on the morning of March 31, 1938, a new diesel locomotive left the Holzkirchen Bahnhof in Munich, pulling the first traveling
“achievement exhibition” (Leistungsshau) of German technology.1 It had
been nineteen days since the Anschluss, and on April 10 all Greater Germany
would vote its approval of incorporating Austria into the Reich. Despite their
use of terror to influence the Austrian vote and virtual assurance of electoral
success, the National Socialists embarked on an extensive propaganda effort in
Austria to ensure a wide margin of victory there. Hitler campaigned throughout
Austria during the last ten days before the vote, making six major speeches, and
other top Nazi officials made electioneering tours.2 Famous for constructing
the Autobahn network, Fritz Todt, Inspector General for German Highways,
and the engineers of the NSDAP Central Office for Technology, organized a
traveling propaganda exhibit to display German technology under the motto
P
I wish to thank the Fulbright-Hays Commission for its generous financial support and the staffs of
the Bundesarchiv, the Institut für Zeitgeschichte-Munich, the VDI-Archiv (Düsseldorf), and the
Deutsches Historisches Institut-Paris for their kind assistance. I much appreciate both the helpful suggestions provided by the anonymous readers of Central European History and Kenneth F. Ledford’s editorial encouragement. Special thanks go to Gayle Godek for her deft editing and to Gaëlle Guse for
her assistance with the illustrations.
1
The locomotive had completed its maiden voyage in the Black Forest only three days earlier.
“Auch Österreichs Schlote sollen wieder rauchen. Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik,”
Salzburger Zeitung, April 5, 1938, Bundersarchiv (Berlin, formerly Koblenz), NS 14/5, folio 1.
Hereafter, unless otherwise indicated, all primary source files, particularly NS 14 (Hauptamt für
Technik/Nationalsozialistischer Bund Deutscher Technik, 1934–45), are found in the
Bundesarchiv-Lichterfelde. On the significance of Leistung (“achievement” or “performance”) for
Nazi economics, see S. Jonathan Wiesen, Creating the Nazi Marketplace: Commerce and Consumption
in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 28–34.
2
Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, Nemesis (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2000), 82;
Allen Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, revised ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1964),
434–435; John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 624.
447
448
JOHN C. GUSE
“Austria’s chimneys will smoke again.”3 It was the first of three “Voyages of
Technology” undertaken by Todt and his Nazi engineers.
Although only minor episodes in the history of the Third Reich, these voyages
of technology are significant for a number of reasons. In the decades since the
publication of Karl-Heinz Ludwig’s classic study of Nazi engineers, much has
been written on the “coordination” of German engineers, the role of engineers
in Nazi projects ranging from Autobahn construction to wartime “wonder
weapons,” and the place of technology in Nazi ideology.4 It is now evident
that Nazi ideology embraced modern technology and that engineers such as
Gottfried Feder and Fritz Todt sought to use party institutions to control the
German professional engineering societies while seeking enhanced status and political power for engineers in the Third Reich. It has also become apparent that this
Deutsche Technik ideology varied considerably in nature and influence under the
diverse leadership of Feder, Todt, and Albert Speer.5 Historian Thomas Klepsch
has described Nazi ideology as having a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Bolshevik “gravitational core,” with other peripheral elements as “satellites” whose importance
was pragmatically determined by historical circumstances.6 Deutsche Technik
was just such a peripheral ideological element, whose orbit drifted near and
3
The only full biography of Todt is Franz W. Seidler, Fritz Todt. Baumeister des Dritten Reiches
(Munich and Berlin: Herbig, 1986). Seidler mentions these voyages of technology on page 52.
A hagiographic essay by one of Todt’s collaborators is Edward Schoenleben, Fritz Todt: Der
Mensch, der Ingenieur, der Nationalsozialist. Ein Bericht über Leben und Werk (Oldenburg: Gerhard
Stalling, 1943).
4
Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1974). For the
engineering professions in the Third Reich, in addition to Ludwig’s study, see especially Konrad
Jarausch, The Unfree Professions: German Lawyers, Teachers, and Engineers, 1900–1950 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990); and John Guse, “The Spirit of the Plassenburg: Technology and
Ideology in the Third Reich,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska, 1981). Karl-Heinz Ludwig and
Wolfgang König, eds., Technik, Ingenieure und Gesellschaft. Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure
1856–1981 (Düsseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981); and Gerd Hortleder, Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs.
Zum politischen Verhalten der Technischen Intelligenz in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1970), are also still valuable. For a local example, see Donald Thomas, “Nazi ‘Coordination’ of
Technology: The Case of the Bavarian Polytechnical Society,” Technology and Culture 31 (1990):
251–264. A historiographical overview written in the context of the “historization” debate is
Jonathan Harwood, “German Science and Technology under National Socialism,” Perspectives on
Science 5 (1997): 128–151. For the Reichsautobahn, see footnote 111 below. Important contributions
on Nazi ideology and technology are found in Mark Walker and Monika Renneberg, eds., Science,
Technology, and National Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Burkhard Dietz,
Michael Fessner, and Helmut Maier, eds., Technische Intelligenz und “Kulturfaktor Technik.”
Kulturvorstellungen von Technikern und Ingenieuren zwischen Kaiserreich und früher Bundesrepublik
Deutschland (Münster: Waxmann, 1996); Wolfgang Emmerich and Carl Wege, eds., Der
Technikdiskurs in der Hitler-Stalin-Ära (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995); and Herbert Mehrtens and Steffen
Richter, eds., Naturwissenschaft, Technik und NS-Ideologie. Beiträge zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte des
Dritten Reiches (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980).
5
See John Guse, “Nazi Technical Thought Revisited,” History and Technology 26 (2010): 3–33.
6
Thomas Klepsch, Nationalsozialistische Ideologie. Eine Beschreibung ihrer Struktur vor 1933 (Münster:
Lit, 1990), 246–247.
NAZI “VOYAGES OF TECHNOLOGY”
449
then away from the active core of Nazi beliefs.7 These voyages of technology took
place when Deutsche Technik was at its most influential, coming as they did after
the so-called “Reordering of Technology” in 1937—which brought the German
engineering professions under tighter party control—and prior to the restrictions
placed by the war, and particularly Albert Speer, on spreading Todt’s ideology.8
They provide a specific example of “reactionary modernism” at its zenith, clarifying the role that Nazi engineers assigned for technology in Nazi society.9 These
little-known exhibitions are one of the best examples we have of Nazi engineers
serving as propagandists, carrying their message directly to the public. In short,
they demonstrate Deutsche Technik in practice.
The voyages of technology should be seen in the context of recent historical
research that explores how Nazi propaganda appealed to the German population and transformed values during the Third Reich. Claudia Koonz has
shown how Nazi propaganda helped to form an “ethical” consensus among
Germans willing to eliminate those perceived as threatening the well-being
of the nation.10 Similarly, Jeffrey Herf has demonstrated how wartime Nazi
propaganda successfully branded the Jews as enemies who desired the destruction of Germany and who were responsible for World War II.11 David Welch
has argued that Nazi “national community” (Volksgemeinschaft) propaganda
was more effective than often assumed in providing social integration and
stability.12 Peter Fritzsche has described how ideology and propaganda helped
“racially groom” Germans to see the world in racial terms.13 Certainly
Volksgemeinschaft propaganda reinforced the exclusion of all those considered
7
A similar argument was initially made by Heinrich Adolf in “Technikdiskurs und
Technikideologie im Nationalsozialismus,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 48 (1997): 432; followed by Thomas Zeller, Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970
(New York: Berghahn, 2007), 68–70. Zeller’s bibliography is particularly useful for many aspects
of the Nazi technical ideology.
8
The party engineering association, the NSBDT, incorporated the German engineering associations, most notably the Society of German Engineers (VDI), during the “reordering of German technology” undertaken by Todt in April 1937. Deutsche Technik (April 1937): 203; and “Zur Neuordnung
der deutschen Technik,” Deutsche Technik (May 1937): 209–214. For analysis of the process, see
Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure, 170–175; Jarausch, The Unfree Professions, 165–166; and Guse,
“Plassenburg,” 166–172.
9
The most influential interpretation of the engineers’ ideology has been Jeffrey Herf’s “reactionary
modernism” thesis. Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and
the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Among those who reject Herf’s thesis
is Thomas Rohkrämer, “Antimodernism, Reactionary Modernism, and National Socialism,”
Contemporary European History 8 (1999): 29–50.
10
Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003).
11
Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press, 2006).
12
David Welch, “Nazi Propaganda and the Volksgemeinschaft: Constructing a People’s
Community,” Journal of Contemporary History 39 (2004): 213–238.
13
Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2008).
450
JOHN C. GUSE
“community aliens” (Gemeinschaftsfremde).14 Key to these studies is an appreciation that Nazi propaganda had a very real impact on the German population
and that the concept of an egalitarian Volksgemeinschaft, united by race and
Nazi values, was an attractive ideal for many Germans. It was an ideal that,
as Jill Stephenson and Norbert Frei have written, was left unfulfilled and lost
its attraction amid the sacrifices of the war.15 These voyages of technology illustrate how Nazi engineers used propaganda in the prewar period to convert their
“Volk comrades” to a positive acceptance of modern technology. Nevertheless,
when Todt and his engineers sought greater influence on German foreign
policy, the canceling of a further voyage to eastern Europe suggests that the
regime and its plans for conquest placed limits on the use of technology as
propaganda.
Growing out of the “history of the everyday” methodology of the 1980s,
historians now emphasize that a key component within Nazi propaganda
was its appeal to nascent consumerism in Germany—even though, due to
the regime’s fiscal restraints and investment in rearmament, it was
“Volksgemeinschaft on a budget.”16 Wolfgang König has detailed how, despite
often limited diffusion, “Volksproducts” such as the radio (Volksempfänger),
refrigerator (Volkskühlschrank), and Volkswagen combined Nazi propaganda and
“consumer society” policies.17 While denying its “ecological” nature, Thomas
Zeller has placed the Nazi Autobahn in the context of a “racially defined emerging consumer society,” a concept reinforced by Shelly Baranowski’s description
of how the “Strength through Joy” organization substituted nonmaterial rewards
and experiences for true mass consumption.18 As Jonathan Wiesen puts it in
his recent analysis of commerce in the Third Reich, economic difficulties “did
not dispel popular visions of a thriving consumer marketplace.”19 According to
Paul Betts, such studies show that the regime’s inability to make good on its
14
See Avraham Barkai, “The German Volksgemeinschaft from the Persecution of the Jews to the
‘Final Solution,’” in Confronting the Nazi Past: New Debates on Modern German History, ed. Michael
Burleigh (London: Collins and Brown, 1996), 84–97; and Nikolaus Wachsmann, “The Policy of
Exclusion: Repression in the Nazi State, 1933-1939,” in Nazi Germany, ed. Jane Caplan (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 122–145.
15
Jill Stephenson, “Inclusion: Building the National Community,” in Nazi Germany, ed. Caplan,
99–121; Norbert Frei, “People’s Community and War: Hitler’s Popular Support,” in The Third
Reich between Vision and Reality: New Perspectives on Germany History, 1918–1945, ed. Hans
Mommsen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 59–77.
16
Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York:
Viking, 2007), chapter five.
17
Wolfgang König, Volkswagen, Volksempfänger, Volksgemeinschaft: “Volksprodukte” im Dritten Reich.
Vom Scheitern eine nationalsozialistische Konsumgesellschaft (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004).
18
Zeller, Driving Germany, 241; Shelly Baranowski, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass
Tourism in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
19
Wiesen, Creating the Nazi Marketplace, 10.
451
promises in no way detracted from the symbolic importance of these socioeconomic projects. He argues that “dreams of deferred gratification and postwar affluence” only became more intense with Nazi limitations on consumer spending
and wartime sacrifices.20 This process is best summarized by Peter Fritzsche,
who notes that “it was not so much durables as the promise of prosperity that
was consumed.”21 The voyages of technology are an example of how Nazi propaganda not only addressed economic anxiety but also reinforced consumerist
aspirations.
Press releases and unpublished communications aboard the trains offer a unique
glimpse into the mind-set of Nazi engineers, particularly their overt antiSemitism, which stands in stark contrast to the traditional picture of the “apolitical” engineer and lends credence to the argument that it was anti-Semitism that
linked Nazi technical thought to the other core elements of Nazi ideology.22
Anti-Semitism was overtly expressed in the propaganda disseminated on these
traveling exhibitions and marks Fritz Todt, the Nazi engineers, and their ideology
as more far more openly anti-Semitic than the picture painted many years ago by
Thomas Parke Hughes, who labeled Todt an “acquiescing auditor” who drew
back from “explicit anti-Semitism.”23 Deutsche Technik was undoubtedly
anti-Semitic in character.
Last, the Nazi technical ideology, as articulated on these voyages, is directly relevant to the endless, vast debate on Nazi “modernization.”24 Whether one is
convinced that the Nazis were conscious modernizers or is skeptical of the
whole enterprise of applying modernization theory to National Socialism, one
can observe here the specific manner in which Nazi engineers presented
modern technology to the public. With the bombast typical of Nazi propaganda
in general, they transformed rhetoric aimed at politicizing German engineers
themselves—in courses given at the “Reich School for Technology” on the
Plassenburg and articles in the party “techno-political” journal Deutsche
Technik—to appeals for public support, presenting modern technology as essential
Paul Betts, “The New Fascination with Fascism,” Journal of Contemporary History 37 (2002): 554.
Fritzsche, Life and Death, 59.
22
Zeller, Driving Germany, 68–70.
23
Thomas Parke Hughes, “Technology,” in The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide. The
San Jose Papers, ed. Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton (Milwood, NY: Kraus International
Publications, 1980), 173, 177.
24
A full overview of the historiography and an extensive bibliography are contained in Ricardo
Bavaj, ed., Die Ambivalenz der Moderne im Nationalsozialismus. Eine Bilanz der Forschung (Munich: R.
Oldenbourg, 2003). A brief synthesis is in Michael Thad Allen, “Modernity, the Holocaust, and
Machines without History,” in Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Park Hughes, ed.
Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 181–184. See also
the special edition of Central European History 30 (1997); and the review by Mark Roseman,
“National Socialism and Modernization” in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and
Contrasts, ed. Richard Bessel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
20
21
452
JOHN C. GUSE
to the economic and social well-being of the national community.25 When it
came to the Volksgemeinschaft, these Nazi engineers were both committed
modernizers and fervent exclusionists.26
This essay focuses on the propaganda used by Nazi engineers on the voyages of
technology and makes no attempt to address the contradictions that may have
existed between technological promise and the reality of its implementation in
Austria or the Sudetenland. Numerous historians have pointed to examples of
Nazi technical rhetoric not matching results, and there is no question that the
Third Reich saw its share of technological failures, ranging from mass motorization—not a single Volkswagen was ever produced for private use—to its incapacity effectively to pursue an atomic bomb.27 Similarly, we know that the
Autobahnen were far from the economic panacea we will see portrayed in
these voyages of technology.28 The historical literature proves that Nazi technology often failed to achieve its stated aims, sometimes due to overriding economic
and political priorities, sometimes as a result of the nefarious influence of a fundamentally irrational ideology. As Karl-Heinz Ludwig and Jeffrey Herf argued
some time ago, the irrational strain in Nazi ideology certainly contributed to
the inefficiency of the Nazi war effort.29
We should be cautious, however, not to overemphasize the discrepancy
between Nazi rhetoric and Nazi technical accomplishment, for the symbolic
and psychological impact of Nazi ideology was often crucial. Autobahn construction, for example, while having little real impact on employment, nevertheless
provided a lasting illusion of economic recovery and technological progress.30
Recent scholarship has shown the absolute centrality of Nazi ideology to the
evolution of life in Nazi Germany. Ranging from its effect on workers to its formative influence among the Order Police, the SS security apparatus, and SS
engineers, there is no longer any question that Nazi ideology altered the
25
Kees Gispen combines these themes when he argues that Nazi inventor policy aimed for “a more
modern, technologically dynamic, equitable, and efficient Volksgemeinschaft . . . of consumers.” Kees
Gispen, Poems in Steel: National Socialism and the Politics of Inventing from Weimar to Bonn (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 8.
26
Ian Kershaw’s Jewish colleague could not imagine having suffered the wrath of the Nazis for the
goal of modernizing Germany; the deportment of these engineers illustrates the paradox. Ian Kershaw,
Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 16.
27
Tooze, Wages, 156; Mark Walker, Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb
(Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 1995), 196–197.
28
Richard Overy stresses the economic significance of the Autobahnen, but Adam Tooze argues
that “they did not contribute materially to the relief of unemployment,” a position supported by
Thomas Zeller. Richard Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1994), 68–89; Tooze, Wages, 45–47; Zeller, Driving Germany, 59. See also Dan P. Silverman,
Hitler’s Economy: Nazi Work Creation Programs, 1933–1936 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1998), chapter seven.
29
Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 202, 215, 222–224; Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure, 254–255.
30
Erhard Schütz, “Faszination der blassgrauen Bänder. Zur ‘organischen’ Technik der
Reichsautobahn,” in Der Technikdiskurs, ed. Emmerich and Wege, 124–125.
453
perceptions and behavior of many who lived under its sway.31 Ideology was
among the caustic mix of factors that led even basically nonideological
“Pennemunders” to acquiesce in murderous criminality.32 Indeed, Nazi ideology
“worked its way into the most mundane corners of everyday life.”33 These studies
make clear that historians should systematically consider the ideological and symbolic implications of Nazi projects, as well as their actual implementation, when
judging their influence. It is best to follow Adam Tooze’s sage description of
Nazism as an “ideological-pragmatic synthesis” in which the regime combined
“ideological motivation with the pragmatic necessities of power.”34 The
voyages of technology display both aspects of this synthesis at work.
∗
∗
∗
The Austrian Voyage of German Technology was officially a combined project of
the Central Office for Technology of the Nazi Party, the NS League of German
Technology (NS-Bund Deutscher Technik) which grouped together the principal
German engineering associations, and the Office for Technical Science in the
German Labor Front; the latter, however, took part little in its execution.35
Fritz Todt participated from April 3-5, making speeches in Wels, Styr, Linz,
and Salzburg and again on April 8 in Graz.36 It was primarily the engineers of
the Central Office for Technology, headed by Todt’s deputy, Karl-Otto Saur,
who made up the main traveling group, working, eating, and sleeping in the
cramped quarters of the train for most of the ten-day journey—the source of
good-natured friction among the participants.37
Karl-Otto Saur, whom Albert Speer later self-servingly referred to as “not an
agreeable fellow” (kein angenehmer Typ), and whom Adolf Hitler named in his
31
Alf Lüdtke, Eigen-Sinn. Fabrik-Alltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den
Faschismus (Hamburg: Ergebnisse Verlag, 1993); Edward Westermann, Hitler’s Police Battalions:
Enforcing Racial War in the East (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2005); Michael Wildt,
Generation des Unbedingten. Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg: Hamburger
Edition, 2003); Christian Ingrao, Croire et Détruire: Les Intellectuels dans la Machine de Guerre SS
(Paris: Fayard, 2010); Ulrich Herbert, “Ideological Legitimization and Political Practice of the
Leadership of the National Socialist Secret Police,” in The Third Reich between Vision and Reality, ed.
Mommsen, 95–108; Michael Thad Allen, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the
Concentration Camp (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
32
Michael Petersen, Missiles for the Fatherland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
33
Wiesen, Creating the Nazi Marketplace, 21.
34
Adam Tooze, “The Economic History of the Third Reich,” in Nazi Germany, ed. Caplan, 195.
35
Link, “Merkblatt für die Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik anlässlich der Volksabstimmung
in Österreich,” NS 14/5, folio 1.
36
“Auch Österreichs Schlote sollten wieder rauchen! Österreich-Fahrt der deutschen Technik,”
draft press release, NS 14/5, folio 1.
37
Only on the sixth night in Salzburg and the last two nights in Vienna did the group stay in hotels,
leading participants on the train to complain of the snoring and their inability to wash clothing. Brume,
“Horchideen im Zug der Technik,” Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 4 (April
8, 1938): 7, NS 14/5, folio 1.
454
JOHN C. GUSE
testament as Speer’s successor, was the epitome of the ambitious Nazi engineer.38
Brusque of manner, caustic, and contemptuous of subordinates, Saur was nevertheless seen by other Nazis as an “organizer par excellence.”39 He is infamous for
later heading the “Fighter Staff” ( Jägerstab) in Speer’s Ministry for Armaments and
War Production—an undertaking so intimately linked to Nazi genocide that his
labor-hungry office maintained telephone contact with the ramp at Auschwitz
where Hungarian Jews were selected for either work or execution.40 Adam
Tooze has described him as “pugnacious,” an “intemperate bully,” and a “fanatical slave-driver.”41 Saur had become Todt’s right-hand man by directing the
“bringing into line” (Ausrichtung) of German engineering associations during
the “reordering of German technology” in 1937.42 Like Albert Speer, Saur
had joined the NSDAP only in 1941.43 Contrary to Todt or Speer, however,
Saur projected the image of a classic Nazi “old fighter”: corpulent, abrasive,
and openly anti-Semitic—hardly the common perception of the detached, “apolitical” engineer.
In addition to Saur, many of the leading engineers of the NSDAP Central
Office for Technology participated in the Austrian voyage. Among them, Dr.
Otto Streck, head of Technical-Political Education, was co-responsible for the
exhibits; Dr. Flemming of the Press Office handled the press service; Link, in
charge of the Office for Organization, was responsible for the travel; and
Schneider, Central Office Treasurer, shared responsibility for financing, provisioning, and accommodations. Much of the propaganda during the voyage was
penned by Josef Greiner.44 In all, twenty-six individuals, including two secretaries, made up the entourage.45 See Figure 1.
The traveling exhibition consisted of two trains: a diesel locomotive and cars
and a second train pulled by a steam locomotive. As the trains were not
purpose built, exhibition spaces were developed on the railway cars: in the
diesel locomotive itself; in first-, second-, and third-class coaches; and in a sleeping car. Displays in the German Railway cars showed how new materials
38
Albert Speer, interview with John Guse, October 23, 1974; and Hitler’s testament in Werner
Maser, Hitler’s Letters and Notes, trans. Arnold Pomerans (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 358.
39
The phrase is Georg Seebauer’s (prior to Saur, Todt’s primary deputy), quoted in Ludwig, Technik
und Ingenieure, 411.
40
Tooze, “Economic History,” 194.
41
Tooze, Wages, 434, 560. As Adam Tooze says, it is astounding that Saur escaped prosecution at
Nuremberg.
42
Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure, 171 ff. On Saur’s wartime activities, see Allen, Business, 233–239;
and Tooze, Wages, 628–634.
43
Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure, 65.
44
Evidence suggests, but is insufficient to conclude, that this is the same engineer Josef Greiner who
published the now-discredited Das Ende der Hitler-Mythos (Zurich, Leipzig, and Vienna: AmaltheaVerlag, 1947).
45
Link, “Merkblatt für die Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik anlässlich der Volksabstimmung
in Österreich,” NS 14/5, folio 1.
455
Fig. 1. The Austrian Voyage Train. Source: Grazer Volkblatt, April 9, 1938, Bundesarchiv NS 14/5,
folio 1; enhanced by Gaëlle Guse.
developed with the goal of economic autarky could provide both comfort and
efficiency. Sheets and linen, curtains, upholstery, blankets, luggage racks, and carpeting were made of synthetic materials, ranging from cellulose to rayon to synthetic leather. The Linz newspaper Arbeitersturm delighted in the fact that “even
the third-class wagon is upholstered”—upholstery whose source was not
Australian sheep farms or American cotton plantations, but German forests.46
Window and door frames were made of lightweight metal alloy, developed to
replace the Reichsbahn’s reliance on copper and brass.47 Piping of sundry sorts
was of synthetic rubber. Among other items exhibited were “silent” gears of synthetic resin and lightweight metal for Zeppelin construction.48 In the towns
where the train stopped for presentations, the engineers set up further displays
with photographs, drawings, and models covering the whole range of Nazi
activity, both technical and sociopolitical. Autobahn construction, models of
the House of German Art in Munich and the Party structures in Nuremberg,
“Winter Help,” “Strength through Joy,” “Labor Service,” and the “new
Wehrmacht” were all featured.49 The film “Adolf Hitler’s Highways through
Germany” was shown at various indoor and outdoor settings a total of sixty-six
times to an estimated 75,000 viewers.50
46
“Deutsche Werkstoffe im Sonderzug ‘Deutsche Technik,’” Grazer Volksblatt, April 9, 1938; and
“Alle Schlote sollen wieder rauchen. Deutschland baut mit deutschen Werkstoffen,” Arbeitersturm,
Linz, April 5, 1938, both in NS 14/5, folio 1.
47
“Siegeszug der deutschen Technik,” Steyrer Zeitung, April 7, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 1.
48
“Jules Verne übertroffen,” Arbeitersturm, Linz, April 4, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 1.
49
Report from Dornbirn, April 1, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 1.
50
J. Greiner, “Männer der Technik als Propagandisten der Tat,” Sparwirtschaft. Zeitschrift für
Wirtschaftlichen Betrieb (April 1938): 109–110, NS 14/5, folio 1.
456
JOHN C. GUSE
The itinerary for the Austrian voyage led from Vorarlberg into the Tyrol, to
Upper Austria and the Salzburg region, from there across to Lower Austria,
south to Styria, and then returned north, ending in Vienna.51 In all, the train traveled approximately 2,200 kilometers, stopping for exhibitions in nineteen
locations. If one accepts the Nazi’s statistics, 132,000 people visited this “rolling
achievement exhibition.” Among the propaganda materials handed out were
330,000 copies of the techno-political journal Rundshau Deutscher Technik;
262,000 photo-folios on the Labor Front’s “Beauty of Work” program;
140,000 pamphlets about a planned “Beauty of Work” program for Austria;
65,000 printed likenesses of Hitler; and 55,000 swastika flags.52 See Figure 2.
As the Austrian voyage wound its way through Vorarlberg and Tyrol, exhibits
and speeches emphasized how German technology could reduce Austrian unemployment. Factories would be reopened and new jobs created, particularly by the
extension of the Autobahnen into Austria. The Nazi engineers blamed the
Schuschnigg government and, in Jenbach, Jewish factory owners, for closed factories and economic hardship: “Better times began for Jenbach as soon as Jewish
domination ended.”53 After joining the train on the third day in Wels, Fritz Todt
continued on this theme. He argued that 15,000 Austrian workers could have
already been employed on highway construction, had not the Austrian government rejected as “political highways” his earlier offer to extend the Autobahnen
into Austria.54 The next day in Steyr, Todt promised to end unemployment “in
a few months,” principally through highway construction.55 That night, in Linz,
site of the Hermann-Goering-Works, Todt joked about what was to become,
in effect, a point of dispute between Goering and himself: the distribution of
workers between the Hermann-Goering-Works and Autobahn construction.56
51
Ibid.; “Das Erlebnis. Gemeinschaft des Schicksals, des Blutes und des Lebens,” Österreichfahrt der
deutschen Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 4 (April 8, 1938): 2; and Link, “Merkblatt für die
Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik anlässlich der Volksabstimmung in Österreich,” all in NS
14/5, folio 1.
52
J. Greiner, draft press release,“Erfolg der Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik. Die rollende
Leistungschau in Zahlenbild,” NS 14/5, folio 1. For the ideological implications of the “Beauty of
Work” program, see Anson Rabinach, “The Aesthetics of Production in the Third Reich,” in
International Fascism: New Thoughts and New Approaches, ed. George Mosse (London: Sage, 1979),
189–222.
53
“Potemkin’sche Dörfer—Schuschnigg’sche Fabriken,” Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik. Eigene
Zugzeitung, no. 1 (April 3, 1938): 2, NS 14/5, folio 1.
54
Unsigned draft, “Kundgebung der deutschen Technik,” part of a draft version of Österreichfahrt der
deutschen Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 2 (April 4, 1938): 3–4, NS 14/5, folio 1. In same draft, Todt is
quoted as saying he had “known” since 1934 that Autobahnen would be built in Austria, suggesting
more foreknowledge of territorial ambitions than he usually cared to admit. The draft is edited,
however: the word “known” ( gewusst) is struck out and replaced by “in the belief” (in der Überzeugung).
55
Unsigned draft press release, “Die Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik in Styr und Linz,” NS
14/5, folio 1.
56
On the Todt-Goering relationship, see Seidler, Fritz Todt, 339–340; Richard Overy, Goering
(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1984), 206–207; and Norman Mörtzschky, “Wer profitierte vom
457
Fig. 2. Map of the Austrian Voyage Itineary. The legend reads, “The Experience: Community of
Fate, Blood, and Life.” Source: Bundesarchiv NS 14/5, folio 1; enhanced by Gaëlle Guse.
This emphasis on economic improvement through technology became even
more pronounced as the train descended into the industrial region of Lower
Austria. In Neunkirchen, engineers estimated that half of the men were out of
work. Typical of the train’s propaganda, one engineer reported that “yearlong
suffering was etched into the face of nearly every visitor.”57
Not only were press releases filled with pathos about economic conditions, but
they also dwelt on the “suffering” of Nazi sympathizers, such as the mother whose
son, having fled persecution by the Austrian authorities, died in Upper Bavaria.58
The train personnel made continual reference to the supposed discrimination to
which Austrian Nazis and their supporters had been subjected prior to the
Anschluss. Enthusiastic response to the exhibits gave the false impression that
depressed industrial communities had, overnight, changed their political color
from red to brown. In Steyr, a community that the engineers regarded as
having been “mostly communist” only a few weeks earlier, Todt warned that
every missing vote would be a blemish on the residents.59 No reference was
plötzlichen Tod des Reichministers für Bewaffnung und Munition, Dr. Fritz Todt?,” Historische
Mitteillungen 11 (1998): 99.
57
14/5, folio 1.
58
“Mein Sohn liegt wieder im Reich,” Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 4
(April 8, 1938): 4, NS 14/5, folio 1.
59
14/5, folio 1.
458
JOHN C. GUSE
made, even in the train’s internal newsletter, to the brutal measures being taken
throughout Austria to eliminate opposition to the Nazis.60
Most of the technology on display was presented as strengthening the nation as
a whole as opposed to benefiting individual households. Nevertheless, typical of
Volksgemeinschaft propaganda, appeal was also made to potential consumerism—even if the public had little money to spend on technical innovations.
The Nazi engineers commented repeatedly on what may have been true “astonishment” shown by visitors when seeing such new materials as fiberglass,
Plexiglas, and synthetic rubber.61 Greiner wrote that visitors in Linz could not
believe that these “wonderful technical creations would now be at their disposal”
or that German technology would improve their well-being to such an exceptional extent, a sentiment echoed in the local newspaper in Graz.62 In
Neunkirchen, hard hit by unemployment, “the proud achievements of
German technology must have appeared to most people as an unbelievable
luxury, in which they themselves hardly hoped to share.”63 A stated purpose of
the exhibits was to show the Volk that technology “makes work easier, multiplies
efficiency, and brings the fulfillment of wishes and dreams closer.”64 The local
newspaper in Steyr echoed the train’s propaganda: engineers would help to
solve social problems, for “the machine has become a friend of the Germans.”
No longer leaving men without bread, technology was now a “welcome and
powerful helper” that would raise living standards higher and higher.65 Thus
the exhibits not only stressed technical prowess and its implications for employment, but also contained latent promise of future consumption and an improved
life for Volk comrades.
In addition to smugness about German technological superiority, press releases
from the train, particularly those of Josef Greiner, reflected the technical ideology
espoused by Fritz Todt, namely a concern for “humanizing” technology and
broadening contacts between technicians and laymen. After becoming the
60
See Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), 656–661.
Unsigned draft press release, “Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik. Propagandafahrt zum
Bekenntnis des Herzens,” April 1, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 1.
62
J. Greiner, draft press release, “Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik. Ein beispielloser Erfolg,”
April 6, 1938; and “Sonderzug Deutsche Technik,” Grazer Volksblatt, April 8, 1938, both in NS 14/5,
folio 1.
63
Unsigned draft press release, “Die Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik in Steyr und Linz,” NS
14/5, folio 1.
64
Unsigned draft press release, “Die Technik fand das Volk,” NS 14/5, folio 1. There is a faint echo
here of the consumer-oriented “technological corporatism” of Weimar reformers such as Oskar von
Miller, but without its overt reliance on market forces. See Eve Duffey, “Oskar von Miller and the Art
of the Electrical Exhibition: Staging Modernity in Weimar Germany,” German History 25 (2007):
517–538. For the political struggle surrounding the Deutsches Museum, see Eve Duffey,
“Representing Science and Technology: Politics and Display in the Deutsches Museum,
1903–1945” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2002).
65
“Siegeszug der deutschen Technik,” Steyrer Zeitung, April 7, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 1.
61
459
Third Reich’s “chief engineer” following the demise of Gottfried Feder in 1934,
Todt proposed a technical ideology that emphasized both politicizing German
engineers and, at the same time, awakening the German public to the value of
modern technology for the national community.66 Technology would help to
attain Volk harmony. The common interest between technicians and the
general public would become evident by showing how technology served the
entire community. A press release from the train entitled “Technology Found
the People” put it this way:
This is the great revelation of this voyage: the direct path of technology to
the people does not pass through technical schools, museums, or journals,
but rather from heart to heart. Only when the mutual interests between
the technician and the simplest worker and simplest housewife, the old
man and the child, are made apparent does that which journals publish
and museums display attain any true validity. Only when the people
come to know the technician and what he wants through direct dialog,
only when they themselves can hold the technically created object in
their hands, will the spark of love and enthusiasm for technology be
ignited.67
To transform the status of technology, however, it was considered necessary
first to transform the technician himself, creating a new political consciousness
among engineers. The engineer was to become a more complete member of
the Volk community by being drawn out of his narrow realm of specialization.
His newfound consciousness would allow him to become a political being, actively
striving toward the wider goals that the Führer established for the nation.
Central to this process was indoctrinating the engineer in the new technical ideology, the outstanding example being “techno-political” courses held for engineers
at the “Reich Castle for Technology,” the Plassenburg.68 Consequently, the
direct contact between technician and Volk experienced on the Austrian
voyage not only informed the layman of the advantages of technology, but
also had the reciprocal effect of creating true National Socialist technicians, or,
more precisely, setting the example to be followed. Thus the same press release
stated:
Earlier it would have been unthinkable for a technical-scientific organization to take part actively in election propaganda. Only out of the total
66
Unlike Todt, Feder had advocated a form of “völkisch technocracy” that implied a radical socioeconomic transformation of Germany. Guse, “Nazi Technical Thought,” 5–18. On the “technocracy” movement among German engineers, see especially Stefan Willeke, Die Technokratiebewegung
in Nordamerika und in Deutschland zwischen den Weltkriegen. Eine vergleichende Analyse (Frankfurt am
Main: P. Lang, 1995); and Adolf, “Technikdiskurs,” 436–440.
67
Unsigned draft press release, “Die Technik fand das Volk,” NS14/5, folio 1.
68
On the Plassenburg courses, see Guse, “Nazi Technical Thought,” 12–15; and Guse,
“Plassenburg,” 172–180. See also Seidler, Fritz Todt, 57–61.
460
JOHN C. GUSE
conception of National Socialism, in which each individual not only works
in his own specialty, but also on the realization of great political tasks, could
this voyage be completed.69
Not all German engineers accepted this National Socialist view of their role;
several studies have demonstrated the limits of Nazi “coordination” of the
German professions.70 In the case of the Austrian voyage, at least the
Association of German Chemists (VDCh) was highly reluctant to have their
work translated into propaganda, particularly at the expense of falsifying statistics.
As the voyage was being prepared, Dr. W. Foerst of the VDCh wrote to Dr.
Flemming of the Press Office complaining strongly that he would not be pressured to produce statistics other than those provided by the Reich Delegate for
Chemistry or the Economic Group Chemistry. To give unsubstantiated statistics,
he argued, would be illegal, and any statistics used should be verified by the Office
of Economic Improvement (Amt für Wirtschaftsausbau). He concluded that “We
can make no election propaganda with export statistics in the chemical area, for
they are mostly regressive.”71
Once the distinction between the ideal envisioned by Nazi ideologues and its
qualified acceptance by the engineering societies is made clear, however, and
allowing for the exaggerations and pompous declarations emanating from the
train, this propaganda nevertheless accurately reflected the National Socialist conception of technology as expressed by Fritz Todt and the engineers of the Central
Office of Technology. Engineers were to take a prominent place in the national
community. His values reoriented, the engineer would become an active, politically conscious comrade, benefiting from direct contact with the masses he served.
Engineers became symbols of an acceptable, indeed desirable, modernity.
∗
∗
∗
The apparent success of the Austrian voyage of technology as propaganda led to
another traveling exhibit, under similar circumstances, into the Sudentenland
between November 24 and December 4, 1938. Again the voyage was part of
an election campaign for a plebiscite to approve annexation to the Reich.
Coming nearly two months after the Munich conference and the arrival of
German troops in the Sudentenland and four months before Hitler’s triumphant
arrival in Prague, the Sudenten Voyage, like its predecessor, presented German
technology as an economic panacea and indispensible to the new National
Socialist society. Even prior to the voyage, its techno-political orientation was
made clear: “Inconspicuously, yet forcefully, the political application (Einsatz)
Unsigned draft press release, “Die Technik fand das Volk,” NS 14/5, folio 1.
On the “coordinating” of the engineering professions, see Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure,
105–175; and Jarausch, The Unfree Professions, chapter five.
71
Dr. W. Foerst to Dr. Flemming, March 25, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 1.
69
70
461
of technology will become as evident to the visitor as the development of a
machine, the fabrication of plastic, or a chemical process.”72
Organized at the behest of Gauleiter Konrad Henlein and the Sudenten Nazi
Party, the Sudeten voyage of technology was again directed by Karl-Otto
Saur, who quickly confirmed his reputation as an abrasive taskmaster, particularly
in his handling of the railroad personnel; in the internal train communication,
Saur is satirized as the chief who “eats railway workers for breakfast.”73 Saur’s
coworkers called him “Reich Cog-Railway General First Class,” chiding him
to use a more respectable tone with his subordinates and to abstain from referring
to them with such epithets as “assholes.”74 The masculine camaraderie among the
Nazi engineers is evident in both the train newspaper and its satirical internal
newsletter, wherein the participants were identified as Link (“the quiet pol”
and “ladies man”), Kurz (“with the well-formed, poetic, classically graceful
speech”), Priemer (“the flying Labor Front propagandist”), and Heil (the
“Commander of Etiquette” [Sitten-Kommandant]), who were joined by Führer,
Schneider, Flemming, Josef Greiner, and Heinrich Himmler’s brother,
Gebhard, who headed the Office for Professional Questions (Berufsfragen) in
the Central Office for Technology.75 Fifty-nine individuals made up the traveling
contingent, including thirty German Railway employees.76 Of note is the fact
that the train’s private “house notices” (Hausmitteilungen) satirized not only the
engineers, but also the exhibit visitors, often with a caustic sense of superiority,
in contrast to the comradely tone of the train’s propaganda.77 These engineers
may have been sincere propagandists, but they often saw themselves as superior
to the masses that their propaganda said they were meant to serve.
Robert Ley, head of the German Labor Front, briefly inspected the train in
Leipa, where the director of the Czech railroads and other ranking Czech dignitaries also visited; Saur turned down an invitation to take the train to Prague for
“technical and also political reasons.”78 Todt himself traveled with the train only
72
J. Greiner, draft press release, “Sudetenfahrt mit 100 kleinen Wundern,” November 21, 1938, NS
14/5, folio 2.
73
Link, “Merkblatt für die Kreis- und Ortsgruppenleute der NSDAP im Sudetengau,” November
1938; and Efde, “Hausmitteilungen (anonym),” both in NS 14/5, folio 2.
74
“Hausmitteilungen (anonym),” NS 14/5, folio 2.
75
J. Greiner, “Unsere kleinen Erlebnisse,” Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, nos.
3–4 (November 26–27, 1938): 5; and Efde, “Hausmitteilungen (anonym),” both in NS 14/5, folio
2. Gebhard Himmler was made responsible for professional education within the Ministry of
Education in 1944. Peter Longerich, Himmler [French ed.] (Paris: Héloise d’Ormesson, 2010), 372.
76
“Rollende Leistungschau der deutschen Technik,” Münchener Zeitung, November 24, 1938. A list
of Central Office of Technology participants is contained in [Karl-Otto] Saur, “An die Mannschaft der
Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik,” November 19, 1938, 1. Both sources in NS 14/5, folio 2.
77
Efde, satirical poem, “Die Sudentenfahrt,” in Efde, “Hausmitteilungen (anonym),” NS 14/5,
folio 2.
78
“Dr. Ley bei den Sudetenfahren,” Völkischer Beobachter, November 30, 1938; and Gringmuth,
“Teure hinterbliebene Frauen!,” December 1, 1938, both in NS 14/5, folio 2.
462
JOHN C. GUSE
Fig. 3. Fritz Todt speaking in Eger, Sudetenland, November 24, 1938. Source: Rundschau Deutsche
Technik, Dec. 1, 1938, Bundesarchiv NS 14/5, folio 2; enhanced by Gaëlle Guse.
from Wiesau in Upper Palatinate to its first stop in Eger, where he turned it over
to Konrad Henlein’s representative, declaring, “One hears again that technology
has little political impetus (Auftrieb) and that in general technicians engage in little
political activity in their work . . . The Special Train of German Technology
demonstrates that at the right moment the German technician is also a great activist and propagandist.”79 See Figure 3 above.
The Sudenten voyage was run on a grander scale than its predecessor. Two separate trains with three locomotives and a total of sixteen railroad cars took part.80
This time one train was built expressly for exhibition purposes. One exhibit
showed synthetic materials developed primarily through new chemical processes:
vanadium extracted from iron ore sediments; high-performance tools created
through alloying and thermal processing; new rust-free, acid-proof, heat-resistant
steel (to replace rare or imported minerals); plated steel girders; steel and alloy
parts for automobiles and aircraft; synthetic rubber, textiles, and plastics. The
“wonder work” was a model of a motor made from Plexiglas, as designed by
Cologne engineer Peter Koch. As on the Austrian voyage, the German Railways
presented textiles made from cellulose, synthetic fibers, and rubber; metal parts
79
J. Greiner, “Die Egerländer begeistern sich für die deutsche Technik,” Völkischer Beobachter,
November 25, 1938; and Fritz Todt, quoted by J. Greiner, “Begeisterung für Dr. Todt,”
Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 2 (November 25, 1938): 5, both in NS
15/5, folio 2.
80
“Dr. Todt in Eger. Leistungschau der deutschen Technik in der Obhut des Sudetengaues,” Die
Zeit, Reichenberg, November 26, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
463
from lightweight alloys; synthetic pipes and conduits; and upholstery constructed
from wood waste.81 Displays and models abounded in the exhibit on “New
Construction in the Third Reich,” including the Autobahn system and its impressive bridges, a model home for Hitler Youth (the Julius-Streicher Settlement), a
“garden city” settlement, a Zeppelin field, and the new Strength through Joy steamship Wilhelm Gustloff.82 Added especially for the Sudenten voyage were exhibits on
economic recovery and reconstruction in Austria, similar plans for the
Sudentenland, and a display on the Westwall defensive line being built by the
Organization Todt along the French frontier.83 The second train had two regular
second-class cars that served as offices and sleeping quarters for the engineers, two
platform cars to carry a new KdF-Volkswagen and field kitchens, a provisions car
made of lightweight metal, and a baggage car with twenty-seven tons of propaganda
material.84 The train had its own post office, printing press, and radio-film center.
From Eger, the trains passed through the heart of industrialized Bohemia:
through Falkenau, with its large chemical and electrical plants; Karlsbad, center
of the porcelain industry; Komotau, railroad construction center; through the
coal-mining region around Brux; through the Sudenten chemical center in
Aussig; to the new “Gau capital” Reichenberg, home region of Ferdinand
Porsche, creator of the Volkswagen. From there the exhibition visited the eastern
Sudentenland before returning to Reichenberg. Covering 2,500 kilometers with
twenty-seven official stops, the Sudeten voyage was an even larger success than
the Austrian voyage: 312,000 visitors in ten days and 185 film presentations—
sometimes shown ten or more times at a single stop—seen by an additional
120,000. The crew distributed 220,000 pictures of Hitler, 300,000 “Winter
Help” postcards, and thirty-four tons of Labor Front material. Supposedly
“nearly one in every ten Sudenten Germans saw the exhibition.”85 See Figure 4.
81
J. Greiner, draft press release, “Sudetenfahrt mit hundert Wundern der Technik. Rollende
Leisungsschau im politischen Einsatz,” reproduced in slightly altered form as “Begeisterung über
den Zug der deutschen Technik,” Völkischer Beobachter, November 24, 1938. This edition of the
Völkischer Beobachter published the front page of the train’s first newspaper, dated November 24,
1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
82
Link, ‘‘Merkblatt für die Kreis- und Ortsgruppenleiter der NSDAP im Sudetengau,” November
1938; and W. Kosubek, “Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik,” Rundschau Deutscher Technik,
December 1, 1938, both in NS 14/5, folio 2.
83
Dr. Flg. [Flemming]/Schr., “Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Übersicht über die Bilderschau
und die erforderlichen Arbeiten bezw. Anschaffungen,” November 3, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
84
J. Greiner, “Grossfahrt der deutschen Technik ins Sudetenland,” Völkischer Beobachter, November
11, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
85
Statistics in ibid.; and article by Dr. Flg. [Flemming] in Deutsche Licht- und Wasserfach-Zeitung, no. 9
(1939): 149–151; and, with citation, unsigned draft, “Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik,” February
28, 1939. Itinerary in J. Greiner, “Grossfahrt der deutschen Technik ins Sudetenland,” Völkischer
Beobachter, November 11, 1938; and [Karl-Otto] Saur, “An die Mannschaft der Sudetenfahrt der
deutschen Technik,” November 19, 1938, 3–4. Economic activities of the cities visited in
J. Greiner, “Sudetendeutsches ABC der Technik,” Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Eigene
Zugzeitung, no. 2 (November 25, 1938): 1–4. All of the above in NS 14/5, folio 2.
464
JOHN C. GUSE
Fig. 4. The Train Newsletter showing the Sudenten Voyage Itinerary and Visitors’ Statistics after the
Fourth Day. Source: Bundesarchiv NS 14/5, folio 2; enhanced by Gaëlle Guse.
This trip had a stronger consumerist orientation than the Austrian voyage.
In addition to the new Volkswagen for display, radios and vacuum cleaners
were exhibited to demonstrate “technology in the service of the family.”
Technology would ease working conditions, improving performance and
465
public health.86 The primary thrust of the technical exhibits remained the display
of technology for industrial use, but technology for improved household living
found its place—and the Volkswagen must have engendered reveries of motoring. Consumerist fantasies were reinforced when the 100,000th visitor to the
train, a highway worker from Jechnitz, was awarded a radio; the 200,000th was
given a washing machine; and the 300,000th a refrigerator.87 Sudeten Germans
could look forward to “healthier homes, greater joy in life and leisure, and
truly valuable goods [Kulturgüter].”88
One wonders if the peasants or workers who visited the exhibits found most of
the highly technical items presented as intrinsically interesting as the engineers
themselves did. This was certainly a concern of Saur in planning the voyage.
Sensitive to what must have been perceived weaknesses of the Austrian voyage,
he insisted that exhibits be organized so that the visitor needed “the least possible
expenditure of his own conceptual ability.”89 Propagandist Josef Greiner was
defensive about exhibits that could not easily be understood by visitors and
claimed in the Völkischer Beobachter prior to the voyage that the method of presentation did not allow “fatigue and boredom,” that walking through the exhibits
would be an enrichment rather than an effort, that short explanatory text was used
only when absolutely necessary. Exhibits would contain fewer statistics (“the
horror of all exhibition visitors”) and no complicated models. To his mind, the
simplicity and logic of the technical presentations were unequaled in Europe.90
Of perhaps greater interest than alloys and girders for most visitors were the displays and models depicting economic recovery, massive construction projects,
and the attendant political propaganda. As on the Austrian voyage, the exhibits
went far beyond technological innovation to encompass a vast range of Nazi
projects. Not only was heavy emphasis placed on “Strength through Joy” and
“Beauty of Labor” projects, but the whole scope of Nazi political, economic,
and even military activity was represented. Typical are some of the titles of
picture and photo displays: “Germany’s Iron Army,” “Goals of the Four-Year
Plan,” “Demonstrations of Political Will,” “Free Peasants on Free Soil,”
“Socialism of the Act,” “Soldiers of the Spade,” “Germany Builds!,” “No
Strength without Joy,” “Combat Troops of the Movement.” The Sudeten
86
J. Greiner, draft press release, “Sudetenfahrt mit hundert Wundern der Technik. Rollende
Leisungsschau im politischen Einsatz,” reproduced in slightly altered form as “Begeisterung über
den Zug der deutschen Technik,” Völkischer Beobachter, November 24, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
87
J. Greiner, “Die Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik,” National Zeitung, Essen, November 30,
1938; and “Abschluss der Sudetenfahrt. Der Zug der deutschen Technik in Reichenberg,” Die
Zeitung Reichenberg, December 5, 1938, both in NS 14/5, folio 2.
88
“Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik,” Brürer Zeitung, November 26, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
89
“Sudetenfahrt mit 100 kleinen Wundern,” November 21, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
90
J. Greiner, “Startbereit zur ‘Sudetenfahrt Deutscher Technik,’” Völkischer Beobachter, November
21, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
466
JOHN C. GUSE
voyage engineers truly were, as they called themselves, “active propagandists”
(Propagandisten der Tat) for the regime.91
That large crowds awaited the trains and visited the exhibits is attested to by
photographs in the press.92 Nevertheless, and without denying what must have
been the genuine attraction of the “Wonder-Train of Technology,” part of the
motivation for many visitors had to have been the hot chocolate, cake, sausages,
and bread given out by the field kitchens accompanying the exhibits. Tickets for
free food were distributed to those considered needy by the trains’ advance party
prior to its arrival at a destination.93 By the seventh day of the voyage, it was estimated that more than one-third of the 223,600 visitors had been fed in the kitchens.94 At its conclusion, the train had distributed at least 115,000 packs of biscuits;
80,000 portions of chocolate; and 35,000 sausage and bread rations.95 One visitor
in Komotau voiced what must have been a common sentiment: what pleased him
most was that, in addition to the marvelous exhibits, he could eat his fill without it
costing anything!96
As on the Austrian voyage, attacks on the Jews were frequent, further evidence
that Todt and his engineers were much more openly anti-Semitic than has sometimes been thought.97 The train’s engineers reported back with enthusiasm to
their wives how Karlsbad was proud that there were no Jews left in the city,
91
Dr. Flg. [Flemming]/Schr., “Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Übersicht über die
Bilderschau und die erforderlichen Arbeiten bezw. Anschaffungen,” November 3, 1938, NS 14/5,
folio 2; and Greiner, “Männer der Technik als Propagandisten der Tat.”
92
Photograph by Josef Greiner accompanying article by J. Greiner, “Die Sudetenfahrt der
deutschen Technik. Ein grosser Erfolg. Fast 175 000 Besucher nach vier Tagen,” National Zeitung,
Essen, November 30, 1938; and photograph by Wagner or Greiner accompanying article by
W. Kosubek, “Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik,” Rundschau Deutscher Technik, December 1,
1938, both in NS 14/5, folio 2.
93
Link, “Merkblatt für die Kreis- und Ortsgruppenleiter der NSDAP im Sudetengau,” November
1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
94
J. Greiner, “Dr. Ley bei den Männern der Technik. Freudige Anerkennung f. ihren Einsatz,”
Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 6–7 (November 29–30, 1938): 1, NS 14/5,
folio 2.
95
“Abschluss der Sudetenfahrt. Der Zug der deutschen Technik in Reichenberg,” Die Zeit
(Reichenberg), December 5, 1938; and “Die ‘rollende Leistungsschau’ der deutschen Technik. 185
Tonfilm-Vorführungen im Ausstellungszug—Abschluss der Fahrt in Reichenberg,” Berliner
Montagspost, December 5, 1938; both in NS 14/5, folio 2. Greiner claimed that 115,000 portions
of bread and sausages, as well as biscuits, had been distributed—a probable exaggeration. J. Greiner,
“Der Abschluss der Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Leisungsbericht,” Völkischer Beobachter,
December 5, 1938. At the outset the train carried 16,000 sausages, 16,000 packs of biscuits, and 25
barrels of dry milk. “Rollende Leistungsschau der deutschen Technik. Von München aus fuhren
die ‘Wunderzüge’ in das Sudetenland,” Münchener Zeitung, November 24, 1938. All above in NS
14/5, folio 2.
96
J. Greiner quoting Link, “Unsere kleinen Erlebnisse,” Sudentenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Eigene
Zugzeitung, no. 3–4 (November 26–27, 1938): 5, NS 14/5, folio 2.
97
See Thomas Parke Hughes, “National Socialist Ideology and German Engineers 1933–1939,”
unpublished manuscript presented at the American Historical Association convention,
San Francisco, 1973; and Hughes, “Technology,” 165–181, also reprinted as Hughes, “Ideologie
für Ingenieure,” Technikgeschichte 48 (1981): 308–323.
467
that the “Jewish hotel” and the “Jewish nursing home” were remnants of the
past.98 In Leipa, the Jews had “disappeared” along with the Czechs.99
“Infamous Jewish policies” were blamed for keeping wage levels low for
miners in Falkenau, due to the “sadistic greed” of Jewish mine owners and coal
merchants.100 On this voyage, however, not only were the Jews attacked as harbingers of economic ruin, but the Czechs as well. A Jewish-Czech-capitalist conspiracy was singled out as the cause of the Depression.101 The Prager Börsenjuden
became the collective scapegoat blamed for factory closings in northern Bohemia.
In Karlsbad, the closing of textile and glass factories was blamed on “the catastrophic policies of Czech-Jewish high finance.”102 Josef Greiner declared that
Sudeten technology was no longer to serve capital, for the profit of companies
and their stockholders, but for the well-being of the whole society.103 Such
phrases suggest that, in addition to anti-Semitism, considerable anticapitalism,
similar to that espoused by Todt’s predecessor Gottfried Feder, still permeated
the Central Office for Technology.
A telling example of the engineers’ anti-Semitism occurred in Deutsch-Gabel.
While visiting the town, Saur and a group of engineers chanced upon a 300-yearold Jewish monument inscribed in Hebrew. Receiving no satisfactory explanation for the monument from the mayor’s office, and despite assurances that
its presence brought the town significant tourist revenue, Saur decided to take
matters into his own hands. After acquiring black weather-resistant varnish and
fortifying themselves with the local brew, the engineers, accompanied
by townspeople and a journalist, proceeded to obliterate the inscription.
This petty vandalism completed, they spent the rest of the day drinking and
“terrorizing” the inhabitants—indeed, beating up two individuals, proclaiming
themselves “active propagandists” of whom the infamous Julius Streicher
himself would have been proud, cleansing the Sudetenland of “disgraceful
Jewish-Bolshevik culture.”104 See Figure 5.
Gringmuth, “Teure hinterbliebene Frauen!,” December 1, 1938, 3, NS 14/5, folio 2.
“Dr. Ley bei den Sudetenfahren,” Völkischer Beobachter, November 30, 1938, NS 14/5, folio 2.
100
J. Greiner, “Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik in Falkenau-Karlsbad,” Sudetenfahrt der
deutschen Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 3–4 (November 26–27, 1938): 1, NS 14/5, folio 2.
101
On the use of propaganda during the Sudeten crisis, see Helmut Michels, Ideologie und
Propaganda. Die Rolle von Joseph Goebbels in der nationalsozialistische Aussenpolitik bis 1939 (Frankfurt
am Main: P. Lang, 1992), 382. For the vastly exaggerated “persecution” of Sudeten Germans, see
Kershaw, Nemesis, 870–871 note 167; and Ronald Smelser, The Sudetenland Problem 1933–38:
Volkstumspolitik and the Formulation of Nazi Foreign Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University
Press, 1975), 214 ff.
102
J. Greiner, “Wunderzug der Technik. Tagesgesprach im Sudetenland,” Sudetenfahrt der deutschen
Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 3–4 (November 25–26, 1938): 3, NS 14/5, folio 2.
103
J. Greiner, “Grossfahrt der deutschen Technik ins Sudetenland,” n.d., NS 14/5, folio 2.
104
“Hausmitteilungen (anonym);” and unsigned article (probably Greiner), “Männer der Technik
gaben ein Beispiel,” Sudetenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 6–7 (November 29–30,
1938): 7, both in NS 14/5, folio 2.
98
99
468
JOHN C. GUSE
Fig. 5. Sketch of Jewish Monument Destruction in Deutsch-Gabel (from internal train newsletter).
Source: Bundesarchiv NS 14/5, folio 2; enhanced by Gaëlle Guse.
The actions of Todt’s close subordinates, engineers who claimed to represent
Todt’s ideals, suggests strongly that, while not a raging anti-Semite, Todt was not
the “outsider” who did not identify with Nazi racial laws and who simply was
“bound” to the party line, as portrayed by Franz Seidler.105 The overt antiSemitism displayed by the Nazi engineers during these voyages corroborates
Thomas Zeller’s argument that Todt’s Deutsche Technik ideology, which
Zeller labels a “peripheral segment” of Nazi ideology, was linked to Nazism’s
core beliefs by its anti-Semitic character.106 Indeed, for Jeffrey Herf, the racial
struggle between Aryan and Jew was central to Nazi understanding of
technology.107
Todt and the Central Office for Technology engineers viewed the Sudenten
Voyage as more than mere election propaganda. It was also to serve as a catalyst
for solving practical problems, as is shown by an interview with Rupert Glass,
Todt’s choice to head the Sudenten Office for Technology.108 Lamenting the
deleterious effect of Czech rule, Glass outlined specific areas where technical
expertise was needed, the first being road building and highway construction in
105
Seidler, Fritz Todt, 334–335. Helmut Maier also makes this point. Helmut Maier,
“Nationalsozialistische Technikideologie und die Politisierung des ‘Technikerstandes.’ Fritz Todt
und die Zeitschrift ‘Deutsche Technik,’” in Technische Intelligenz und “Kulturfaktor Technik,” ed.
Dietz, Fessner, and Maier, 253, note 2.
106
Zeller, Driving Germany, 68–70.
107
Jeffrey Herf, “Der nationalsozialistische Technikdiskurs. Die deutschen Eigenheiten des
reaktionären Modernismus,” in Der Technikdiskurs, ed. Emmerich and Wege, 82.
108
J. Greiner, draft press release, “Aufgaben der Technik in Sudetenland. Unterredung mit dem
Leiter des Amtes für Technik in Reichenberg,” NS 14/5, folio 2.
469
order to lower unemployment.109 Glass enumerated further the need for levees
and dikes in the mountainous areas subject to flooding, the general shortage of
adequate housing, the need to replenish the forest economy by new plantings
and the draining of swamps, and finally the planned integration of the
Sudenten economy into the Four-Year Plan with its goal of national self-sufficiency. He struck a völkisch note in his desire to renovate villages that “especially
in the industrial areas show marks of a capitalistic culture-less time.” Glass
reflected the current in Nazi technical thought that sought a balance between
mechanization and the industrial worker, claiming that true National Socialists
see human concerns next to technical ones: “We want never to forget that it is
the worker who realizes, with us, the creations of technology . . . Where it is possible to ease the lot of the worker without the loss of jobs, it is for us to provide for
the sensible introduction of the machine.” Glass concluded menacingly that the
incorporation of all Sudeten engineers into the NS League of German
Technology (NSBDT), the Nazi umbrella engineering association, was a prerequisite to fulfilling these projects.110
Glass’s views are representative of the technical ideology fostered by Fritz Todt
and indicative of the position allotted technology in the Nazi worldview by 1939.
Technology, neither the symbol of decadent modernization seen by “blood and
soil” fanatics, nor simply a utilitarian tool for rapid economic development,
would serve Volk cohesiveness. Technology’s transformation was integral to
the “spiritual revolution” envisioned by Todt and like-minded Nazi ideologues.
The harmony of the national community was to extend beyond social integration
to encompass man, machine, and nature in a collectivist whole, the outstanding
example being the Autobahnen, with their attempt to express the German soul
through an artistic synthesis of highway and landscape.111
Fritz Todt was responsible for this emphasis on creating a harmony of man,
machine, and nature and on unifying technology and art, themes to which he
repeatedly returned in his speeches and writings—often using the pseudo-philosophic jargon of the Nazi zealot.112 Since the essence of technology is a consequence of the laws of nature, argued Todt, the outward form of technological
109
Sudetenland unemployment was indeed lowered dramatically, but at the cost of a constant drain
of workers to the Old Reich, which led paradoxically to an influx of detested Czech workers to the
Sudetenland. Ralf Gebel, “Heim ins Reich!” Konrad Henlein und der Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938–1945)
(Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2000), 243–250.
110
On the integration of Austrian engineers, see Jarausch, The Unfree Professions, 168–169.
111
Among the many works on Autobahn aesthetics, see especially Zeller, Driving Germany; and
Erhard Schütz and Ekhard Gruber, Mythos Reichsautobahn. Bau und Inszenierung der “Strassen des
Führers,” 1933–1941 (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1996). Also useful are Benjamin Steininger, Raum-Machine
Reichsautobahn. Zur Dynamik eines bekannt/unbekannten Bauwerks (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos,
2005); and Rainer Strommer, ed., Reichsautobahn. Pryamiden des Dritten Reiches (Marburg: Jonas, 1982).
112
A good summary of Todt’s ideas are his “Plassenburg Quotations” (“Plassenburg Worte”), which
are excerpts from his speeches to engineers at the Plassenburg school; they are contained in NS 14/78.
Some examples are found in Seidler, Fritz Todt, 58.
470
JOHN C. GUSE
works should express this inner essence.113 Technical works “should correspond
to their spiritual content: a power station should not appear beautiful, but rather
strong. A bridge should be daring in form, a pylon slender, a locomotive heavy
and swift.”114 The Autobahnen were “to make out of nature and technique
one perfect unit” that reflected “the deeper and spiritual movement of the
National Socialist revolution . . . a psychic and cultural renovation of the
German citizen.” The highways, built with “artistic feeling and a love of
nature,” would lend a new character to the German landscape, the vastness of
the scene helping Germans to “think on broader lines than was heretofore possible.”115 Artists would be inspired by the “heroic conception of a technical
problem,” and highway construction engineers would draw inspiration “by
viewing the landscape with the eye of the artist.”116 This ideology found
expression in various forms on the voyages of technology. For example,
“Beauty of Labor” propaganda stressed the need for clean, well-lit working conditions, including “above all else, flowers, flowers wherever possible: on the
workbench . . . on the writing table, everywhere else.”117 As with Autobahn aesthetics, natural beauty and technological innovation went hand in hand for Nazi
propagandists.
∗
∗
∗
Following the Austrian and Sudenten voyages of technology, it was evident that
technology could be useful propaganda. The Nazi engineers now sought to use
German technological achievements for diplomatic and propaganda purposes
beyond the frontiers of the Reich. By so doing they would have a greater
voice in foreign policy decisions. This reflects both Todt’s technocratic ideal of
the role of engineers as political leaders, plus the desire of Todt and Saur for
more power vis-à-vis the other political fiefdoms of the Third Reich.
A meeting of Central Office of Technology personnel took place in Munich
on January 26, 1939, to plan a third voyage of technology through eastern
Europe, with stops in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania,
Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. This “southeast voyage” was to take
place between May 17 and June 10, 1939. According to Saur, the voyage
would support the declared aim of the Economics Ministry that southeastern
Todt, “Plassenburg Worte,” NS 14/78.
Fritz Todt speech at the 73rd VDI convention, Breslau, 1935, VDI-Archiv, Düsseldorf.
115
Fritz Todt, “The Motor Highways Built by Herr Hitler,” reprinted in Germany Speaks (London:
T. Butterworth, 1938), copy in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich.
116
Fritz Todt, “Introduction,” in Die Strassen Adolf Hitlers in der Kunst, ed. Dietrich Eckart Heim
et al. (Berlin: Volk und Reich Verlag, 1936).
117
Brume, “Schönheit der Arbeit—einmal anders gesehen,” Österreichfahrt der deutschen Technik.
Eigene Zugzeitung, no. 4 (April 8, 1938): 5, NS 14/5, folio 1. The insistence on flowers for aestheticization of the workplace was typical of Beauty of Labor propaganda. Baranowski, Strength through Joy,
83–84.
113
114
471
Europe “must be conquered for Germandom and above all for the German
market.” The overall purpose was political and economic rather than purely propagandistic, hence visits to the exhibits were to be limited to twenty-four
members of the host country’s government, plus a further thousand individuals
representing political groups, industry, and economic affairs, in addition to the
residents of the official German community. Exhibits were to reflect the needs
of the countries visited: agricultural technology, settlement planning, road and
railroad construction, and energy development. Estimating its cost at 200,000
Reichsmark, Saur claimed that the voyage would demonstrate that Germany
was not interested in the southeast due to pretensions of power (Machtanspruch),
but because of the chances for “reciprocal economic and cultural fertilization.”
Xavier Dorsch, at the time head of the Foreign Bureau in the Central Office
for Technology, cautioned that the voyage “must be politically scrutinized and
prepared.” Given anticipation that the rest of Czecho-Slovakia, as it had been
re-titled, would be incorporated into the Reich, Dorsch openly posed the question that must have been on the mind of all the participants: “Should Prague be
visited?” Dorsch and Heil were tasked with informing Alfred Rosenberg of the
project.118
At least one precedent existed for such a propaganda exhibit traveling through
southeast Europe to enhance German foreign policy. In the late winter or early
spring of 1938, a “Strength through Joy” exhibit entitled “Joy and Work” containing photographic displays, models of leisure ships and resorts, and Beauty of
Labor furnishings traveled throughout Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Romania to
Greece, where it was visited by the king.119 By the following year, however,
the annexation of the Sudentenland and Hitler’s bellicose intentions had
shifted the foreign policy context considerably.
A second planning meeting occurred on February 16, 1939, in the offices of
the Inspector General for Highways (Todt) in Berlin. Present were Saur, Link,
Schneider, Dr. Kurz, Greiner, and Dorsch for the Central Office of
Technology; Dr. Garben of the Foreign Office; representatives of the German
railroad; exhibit specialists; and Heil as the liaison with Alfred Rosenberg’s
office. Saur again emphasized the political nature of the trip, adding that the
voyage should demonstrate “the highest technical achievement of the Third
Reich” and should be “tailored to the consumer of the individual country.” A
number of specialized technical developments, such as the electron microscope,
were to be combined with exhibits of more general interest. ”If the voyage were
118
Link, “Akten-Notiz Betr: Südostfahrt der deutschen Technik. Besprechung in München in
Hauptamt für Technik am 26. Januar 1939,” Munich, February 2, 1939, NS 14/5, folio 1.The document is marked “Top secret! For official use only!”
119
Baranowski, Strength through Joy, 63; and e-mail correspondence with the author, August 27,
2010. My thanks to Professor Baranowski for information about the time period of the Strength
through Joy voyage.
472
JOHN C. GUSE
to display only specialized technical achievements,” said Dorsch, “there is the
danger that what is shown would be of great personal interest for the visiting ministers, but of no practical meaning for their country and people.” Reference was
made to the fact that both France and England were planning similar exhibitions
in eastern Europe, to which Saur replied that “we, however . . . want to show
something completely new on the basis of [our] experience.” Due to the political
orientation of the voyage, Dr. Garben suggested that the foreign legations of the
countries concerned be invited to a demonstration showing. It was made clear
that the voyage would not be made public until the Minister of Economics,
Walther Funk, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop,
had given their approval; Dorsch was to contact Funk and von Ribbentrop that
same afternoon.120
Despite Joseph Goebbels laying claim to an “age of technology” at the Berlin
Auto Show the following day, interests other than those of Todt and Saur intervened, and planning for the southeastern voyage was abruptly halted.121 Internal
disputes, such as the rivalry between Funk and von Ribbentrop, plus the opposition of those who disliked the incursion of the Central Office for Technology
into foreign affairs, quite possibly were decisive. Certainly the increasingly
tense international situation played a role. Hitler secretly lectured Wehrmacht
officers three times in January-February 1939 to prepare for the coming conflict,
as he contemplated his next foreign policy move. The fact that the voyage was
planned to travel through Poland, whose refusal to reach accommodation on
Danzig had hardened Hitler’s approach, and through what remained of
Czecho-Slovakia, which Hitler had decided to smash militarily, probably made
the voyage an impossibility.122 Further research is required to determine the
exact reasons, but the planned southeastern voyage of technology was dropped
and never became public knowledge.
This development is significant both politically and ideologically. The expanding role for engineers envisioned by Fritz Todt and Karl-Otto Saur, a Nazified
form of technocracy, which had found expression in the “reordering” of the technical associations under the party in 1937, in the Plassenburg courses, and in the
Voyages of Technology, was temporarily halted. For the moment, Todt and the
Nazi engineers were limited to “techno-political” control within the Reich.
120
Spettnagel, “Sitzenbericht: betr. Südostfahrt der deutschen Technik. Besprechung am 16.2.1939
in Berlin der Räumen der Generalinspecktion für das deutsche Strassenwesen,” Munich, February 22,
1939, NS 14/5, folio 1.
121
Jeffrey Herf considers Goebbels’s speech, in which he evokes the “steely romanticism” of the
times, the classic expression of reactionary modernism. Herf, “Die nationalsozialistische
Technikdiskurs,” 87; and Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 196. It is interesting to note that trips
planned by professional engineering societies to attend the New York World’s Fair were canceled
in January due to “the political situation.” Link, “Akten-Notiz Betr.: Frühjahrsreise des Amtes für
Technik mit dem KdF-Schiff Robert Ley,” January 21, 1939, 4, NS 14/5, folio 1.
122
See Kershaw, Nemesis, 163–168.
473
Their authority and influence would later increase after Todt became Minister of
Armaments and Munitions in 1940. From the standpoint of Nazi ideology, it
suggests that, while engineers had been integrated into the Nazi worldview
and had come to be seen as essential to the national community, there were
limits to how far the party hierarchy was willing to go in proselytizing Todt’s
specific technical ideology. The vision of man, machine, and nature linked harmoniously together to serve the national community might make good propaganda for Volk comrades, but it could not take precedence over political and
military goals.123
The cancellation of the southeast voyage of technology is an indication of the
limits of reactionary modernism within National Socialism, at least as concerns
actively spreading Todt’s technical ideology beyond the frontiers of the Reich.
And the abrupt end of the southeastern voyage is a mild forerunner of what
was to happen to the Central Office for Technology and its educational, press,
and propaganda functions once Albert Speer succeeded Fritz Todt in 1942:
they were shut down in the name of the war effort.124 By that time the regime
was going in two opposing directions in what could be labeled the paradox of
“fanatical utilitarianism.” As the war progressed, elements of Nazi ideology not
essential to the central racist dynamic of the movement began to lose influence
to a more utilitarian approach, a tendency that accelerated in the last years of
the war. This was true of “German physics,” for example, and it was true of
Todt’s Deutsche Technik ideology.125 At the same time, however, especially
after 1942, the regime returned to what Hans Mommsen labels a Kampfzeit mentality, exposing and carrying to unthinkable extremes the brutal, irrational core
elements of Nazi ideology.126 In the desperation of pending defeat, concepts of
a technocratic, future-oriented, harmonious community were replaced with
frantic calls for active defense of a disintegrating Volksgemeinschaft.
∗
∗
∗
123
Even Todt had begun to sacrifice his commitment to preserving the German landscape with his
construction of the Westwall fortifications in 1938. Maier, “Nationalsozialistische Technikideologie,”
262–263.
124
See Guse, “Nazi Technical Thought,” 18–21.
125
On the regime’s shift to pragmatism in physics, see Margit Szöllösi-Janze, “National Socialism
and the Sciences: Reflections, Conclusions, and Historical Perspectives,” in Science in the Third
Reich, ed. Margit Szöllösi-Janze (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 12; and Margit Szöllösi-Janze, “‘Wir
Wissenschaftler bauen mit.’ Universitäten und Wissenschaften im Dritten Reich,” in Der
Nationalsozialismus und die deutsche Gesellschaft. Einführung und Überblick, ed. Bernd Sösemann
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002), 165; Kristie Macrakis, Surviving the Swastika: Scientific
Research in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 153, 204; Mark Walker,
German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), 66, 229; Alan Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the Physics
Community in the Third Reich (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 188.
126
Hans Mommsen, “The Indian Summer and the Collapse of the Third Reich: The Last Act,” in
The Third Reich Between Vision and Reality, ed. Mommsen, 116–117.
474
JOHN C. GUSE
The last Nazi voyage of technology had none of the political goals of its predecessors. It was, however, highly symbolic as a concrete expression of Todt’s technical ideology at its apogee, coming just prior to the outbreak of the war. A
pleasure cruise to the Norwegian fjords for some 1,500 German technicians
and representatives of German industry on the new Strength through Joy steamship Robert Ley from May 10 to 16, 1939, the Norwegian Voyage of German
Technology was far from devoid of ideological overtones.127 The passengers,
generally selected through their local NS League of German Technology chapters, included leading party figures (Todt, Rosenberg), Transportation Minister
Julius Dorpmüller, scientists, economists, and SA and military officers.128 A few
foreign guests were invited, who were certainly impressed by what Shelley
Baranowski describes as a combination of “technological glitz and creature
comfort.”129 Reports from the cruise marveled over the ship as a technical
“masterpiece,” the “grandiose mountain and water world” of the fjords, and
the camaraderie developed in a myriad of leisure activities, ranging from enjoying
the sports and sun decks to dancing, games, and evening entertainment.130
Most passengers were engineers, prompting Todt to defend the voyage in an
interview as more than simply a “floating engineer congress.” He argued that
his task was to alter the engineers’ narrow professionalism and the impression,
often shared by engineers themselves, that they served only material purposes.
Not mere automatons, engineers were endowed with a mission in the life of
the Volk, and they had the duty to participate fully in all aspects of community
life. Therefore, for Todt, the Norwegian voyage was a pause in the everyday
grind that would rejuvenate the engineer for his future efforts and awaken his
interest in the world beyond his working environment. “Shoptalk” was supposedly limited to one hour per day. The beauty of the fjords would confirm the
engineer’s attachment to nature, and cultural evenings would renew his taste
for Kultur.131 Or, as the National Socialist newspaper Rheinfront put it in describing the voyage, the engineer could no longer lead the life of a “technical monk,” a
“drawing board hero.” He must be transformed from an “all-too-serious, dignified gentleman” into a “more active, youthful individual” accomplished in “the
127
Link, “Akten-Notiz Betr.: Frühjahrsreise des Amtes für Technik mit dem KdF-Schiff Robert
Ley,” January 21, 1939, NS 14/5, folio 1. The number of participants was variously placed at from
1,500 to more than 1,600, with at least 1,200 paying 75 RM for the cruise. Overall cost of the
voyage was estimated at 100,000 RM.
128
“Norwegenfahrt der deutschen Technik. Erlebnisbericht eines Essner Fahrtteilnehmers von
Bord des Robert Ley, National Zeitung, Essen, June 8, 1939, NS 14/5, folio 1.
129
Baranowski, Strength through Joy, 61.
130
“Der Weg zur Kamaradschaft. Bilder von der Nordlandfahrt der deutschen Technik,” Cottbuser
Anzeiger, May 16, 1939, NS 14/5, folio 1. Singers, dancers, musicians, a magician, and a comic were
among those hired to provide evening entertainment.
131
“Technikern mitten im Volk. NSK-Unterredung mit Hauptdienstleiter Dr. Todt,”
Nationalsozialistische Partei-Korrespondenz, May 17, 1939, NS 14/5, folio 1. See also Seidler, Fritz
Todt, 306.
475
art of living.”132 A luxurious modern steamship, filled with dynamic, dedicated
engineers and floating amid the beauty of the Norwegian fjords, was highly symbolic of Todt’s ideal: the harmony of man, machine, and nature.
The voyage was seen as furthering the goal of “reeducating” the engineer.
“Technicians themselves,” said Todt, “are not the people with whom one can
realize the highest political mission. For that, it is necessary to form and to
educate engineers politically.”133 The Norwegian voyage was a natural extension
of the Plassenburg courses aimed at indoctrinating engineers in the new technical
ideology. It was a convenient way to bring together leading technicians in an
atmosphere conducive to cooperation and mutual exchange of ideas, while at
the same time furthering the Nazi ideological program. To hold the voyage up
as an example for other engineers, an article describing the voyage was prepared
for forty-three different professional engineering journals in Germany, in
addition to articles in the popular press.134
While on the Norwegian voyage, Alfred Rosenberg granted an interview that
was published for the opening of the annual convention of the German
Engineering Association (VDI) in May. It is a useful way to conclude our reflection of the Nazi voyages of technology, because it treats the role of technology as
seen by a key Nazi ideologue, but one who was not an engineer, just prior to the
transforming impact of World War II.135 The interviewer first made clear that the
National Socialists desired a synthesis of technology and Kultur, ending a perceived or real dichotomy.136 Humans would have the feeling of mastering the
machine, moving from an era where the machine was an expression of a purely
materialistic conception of life, to the “techno-political epoch.” The principles
of völkisch life and the Nazi worldview would determine the character
(Wesen) of technology in the new period.
Rosenberg agreed that technology and Kultur had been alienated, due to a lack
of understanding on the part of politicians and economists. The National
Socialists placed the ideological attitude of the technician in the foreground,
for “even the best specialist who is without a new conviction [Gesinnung]
would be of extremely limited use to us. Only his ideological-political knowledge enables him to produce works conforming to the new, many-sided consciousness [Lebensgefühl].” Once reeducated, the technician could set about
132
“Mit den Technikern nach Norwegen,” N.S.Z. Rheinfront, Saarbrücken, June 3, 1939, NS 15/5,
folio 1.
133
“Technikern mitten im Volk. NSK-Unterredung mit Hauptdienstleiter Dr. Todt,”
Nationalsozialistische Partei-Korrespondenz, May 17, 1939, NS 14/5, folio 1.
134
“Artikel ‘Norwegenfahrt der deutschen Technik,’” NS 14/5, folio 1.
135
H. Staak, “Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg. Die politische Kraft der Technik,”
Nationalsozialistische Partei-Korrespondenz, May 18, 1939, NS 14/5, folio 1.
136
On this issue, see Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 224–227; and Herf, “The Engineer as Ideologue:
Reactionary Modernists in Weimar and Nazi Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 19 (1984):
631–648.
476
JOHN C. GUSE
solving practical problems. Through the application of technology, Rosenberg
envisioned healthy housing, successful resettlement projects, and the creation
of new industrial centers, echoing in some ways the previously discredited settlement projects of Gottfried Feder or those later developed by the SS for the east.137
“National Socialism,” declared Rosenberg, “has opened the eyes of the Volk to
the meaning of technology” and technology had become “a natural expression
[Äusserung] of the nation.” The airplane, radio, and automobile were now part
of the political life of the country: millions could be sworn to an oath at the
same time, and great communal gatherings were possible in an instant. And
through technology, the defense of the nation was secured. Rosenberg, paraphrasing Hitler, concluded that the Nazi revolution “affords technology a new
social status in which the principles of technology, politics, and thought [Idee]
are brought into harmony.” Within four months of Rosenberg’s interview, the
Wehrmacht was deep within Poland and the Third Reich had embarked on a
war of conquest and self-destruction that obliterated Nazi fantasies of a harmonious, technocratic Volksgemeinschaft.
∗
∗
∗
The Nazi voyages of technology illustrate that by 1938–39, Deutsche Technik
had become a mainstream element within Nazi Volksgemeinschaft propaganda,
with technology presented as essential for the well-being of the national community. Based on assumptions of Aryan creative genius and on technocratic aspirations, Fritz Todt’s Deutsche Technik ideology was a key component of the
Nazi worldview in the prewar period. In addition, these voyages heightened
underlying consumerist aspirations, but because the Nazis stymied immediate
mass consumption, for fulfillment in the future. As seen with the aborted plans
for a southeast voyage, however, Todt’s technological propaganda was limited
to the Greater Reich by the regime’s commitment to war in 1939. It would
later disappear entirely in the reorganization for “total war.”138
The voyages of technology make clear that the role of technology in a National
Socialist society was predicated on a dual transformation. The engineer was
brought into the mainstream of the Volk community through reeducation
(the Norwegian voyage), and Germans were taught the value of technology to
the community (the Austrian and Sudenten voyages). For Nazi ideologues, the
137
For Feder’s settlement projects, see Guse, “Plassenburg,” 127–136; and Tilman A. Schenk and
Ray Bromley, “Mass Producing Traditional Small Cities: Gottfried Feder’s Vision for a Greater Nazi
Germany,” Journal of Planning History 2 (2003): 107–139. For SS settlement planning, see among many
others Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Architects of Annihilation (London: Phoenix, 2003), chapter four;
and Tooze, Wages, 463–476. On SS settlement links to modernization, see Allen, Business, 98–112.
138
Todt began this process himself by turning the Plassenburg into a medical recuperation home for
construction workers and decentralizing techno-political education. Seidler, Fritz Todt, 59. For the
subsequent “speaker program” put in place by Todt, see Guse, “Nazi Technical Thought,” 16–17;
and Guse, “Plassenburg,” 239–257.
477
engineer stood with the soldier and the peasant farmer as an integral, if less traditional, member of the national community. The collectivist impulse in
National Socialism embraced the engineer and projected a society in which
man, machine, and nature functioned in harmony. It was, however, an exclusionist society, and the blatant anti-Semitism of Nazi engineers shows how technology was linked to the racist, genocidal core elements of Nazi ideology.
Fritz Todt and his engineers constantly referred to National Socialism as a
“spiritual revolution,” entailing a massive change in perceptions among both
engineers and the German public. We should remain skeptical as to what
extent most German engineers adhered to Todt’s vision or resembled the racist
ideologues of the Central Office for Technology.139 Yet our current understanding of life in the Third Reich suggests that, far from meaningless rhetoric, this
“brown revolution of the mind,” as it has been called, found substantial echo
among a population that came to identify a secure, prosperous future with
National Socialism.140 Access to modern technology was an essential ingredient
of that future, one that Todt and his engineers presented with pride and enthusiasm on the voyages of technology.
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF PARIS, EMERITUS
139
On engineer-NSDAP membership, see Jarausch, The Unfree Professions, 166.
Fritzsche, Life and Death, 64. The phrase is from Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul,
Herrschaft und Alltag. Ein Industrierevier im Dritten Reich (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz, 1991), 162.
140

Landscape, Perceptions, and Modernizing Effects

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