design history 2008 at kingscliff TAFE: NAZI ARCHITECTURE

When Adolf Hitler(1889-1945)come into power he declared he would bring back Germany to it's former glory. It is said that the Nazi Architecture was another form of propaganda with its tall dominating structures of incredible proportions to give hope and to inspire the people as a message of what a great country Germany could be.

In his younger days Hitler applied to study fine art in Vienna but was rejected twice, he was told that his talents lay in architecture, which turned out to be quite true.

Hitler admired the ancient Romans and the Greeks as he regarded them as being early forms of the Aryan race, it was the neoclassicism and art deco or "servere" deco style of architecture that his chief architect Albert Speer emulated on many Nazi sites and monuments.

They did not have one specific style, there was no official architecture of the Third Reich, only the neoclassical baseline that was enlarged, multiplied, altered and exaggerated, sometimes to the point of ludicrousness.

The Nazis built architecture of colossal dimensions to overawe and intimidate. Hitler was preoccupied with architectural monuments that celebrated or glorified a victory ideology, triumphal arches (the largest in the world on Berlin's north-south axis), columns and trophies. As Albert Speer remarked, "The Romans built arches of triumph to celebrate the big victories won by the Roman Empire, while Hitler built them to celebrate victories he had not yet won."

I think there's no denying that Hitler used architecture well in Nazi Germany and also that the architecture was used for more reasons than simply making buildings look good.

Propaganda was far more than likely to be a reason, because the Nazis used propaganda all throughout their reign and Hitler himself admitted that he saw architecture as "The Word In Stone".