Read full article here:
(CNN) Ah yes, “ze Autobahn”. Few other landmarks represent Germany more than its freeway system. Colognes cathedral is distinctively West German, and the TV Tower in Berlin is a GDR feat of engineering, but the Autobahn (literally “car runway”) connects the whole country. Over the decades, it has morphed from a utilitarian piece of national infrastructure to a cultural icon that has spawned artworks, albums, merchandise around the globe — and even the name of an Irish pub. But why has it become so legendary, and what relationship do Germans have with their Autobahn today? More importantly, is it true that you can drive as fast as you want on it?Dubious beginningsFirst things first: the Nazis didnt invent the Autobahn. Instead, the idea of constructing motorways connecting Germanys expanding cities after World War I was conceived in the post-war Weimar Republic. The first public road of this kind was completed in 1932, linking Cologne and Bonn. It still exists — today, its part of Autobahn 555. After Hitler rose to power in 1933 he used the Autobahn for political gain, appointing Fritz Todt as “Inspector General of German Road Construction,” and tasking him with increasing the Autobahn network. Todt was behind a jobs creation program which, according to Nazi propaganda, helped eradicate unemployment in Germany. Autobahn workers lived in work camps near their construction sites, though often did not come here voluntarily — they were conscripted through the compulsory Reich Labor Service (that way, they were removed from the unemployment registry). The true results of that motorway expansion were meager, however, and construction increasingly relied on forced workers and concentration camp inmates after war broke out in 1939. The forced labor, she adds, took place “obviously under very poor working conditions. “By 1942, when the war turned against the Nazis, only 2,360 miles (3,800 kilometers) out of a planned 12,430 miles (20,000 kilometers)
