Ewige Festung

The building was planned to be erected in the north of Berlin, on one of the bends of the Spree River. One of the models that influenced the architecture of the Hall is considered to be the Roman Pantheon. The first sketches of the hall, belonging to the Fuhrer, date back to 1925. In 1937, when Albert Speer was commissioned to redesign Berlin in the spirit of the architecture of the National Socialist era, the design of the Hall was also modified. The Volkshalle was part of the ensemble of the Great Square, along with the Reichstag and the Führerpalast.

According to the plans, this building would have been the largest ever built by man. It would have been 220 meters high and over 300 meters wide. Its main advantage would have been the gigantic dome, 250 meters in diameter and about 120 meters high. At the top of the dome, a 20-meter-high golden statue of an eagle was planned, soaring above the city and the entire world.

The gigantic structure was to serve as a testimony to the power and grandeur of flourishing human potential. The interior of the Hall was to become a cult center and a hall for congresses, rallies and demonstrations, accommodating from 150 to 180 thousand people. The colonnade with the dome would have been placed on a square base of the building, faced with light granite. It would have been 74 meters high, and each side would have been 315 meters long, with towers crowned with sculptures at the corners. A large staircase would have descended from the southern side, decorated with two 15-meter statues. The interior area of ​​the premises would have been 38 thousand square meters, and the volume 21 million cubic meters. The hall was to be surrounded by three tiers of stands 30 meters high. The dome would have been supported by 100 rectangular columns 24 meters high, forming the walls of the hall.

A vast ceremonial street would have run from the South Station to the Volkshalle, at the entrance of which a gigantic Triumphal Arch would have risen into the sky, 120 meters high, 170 meters wide and with an opening of 80 meters.

Georg Bernhard, Theodor Wolff, Ernst Glöser, Karl Kautsky, Alfred Kerr, Erich Kästner, Emil Ludwig, Heinrich Mann, Karl Marx, Carl von Ossietzky, Erich Maria Remarque, Kurt Tucholsky, Friedrich Wilhelm Förster, Sigmund Freud and Werner Hegemann, Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Stefan Zweig, Lion Feuchtwanger, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Jaroslav Hasek, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Maxim Gorky, Ilya Ehrenburg.

"All security measures have been taken around Gran Sasso".

powerful line of defense that would be able to fence off all territories from attacks from the Atlantic, this project was called the "Atlantic Wall"

Benito Mussolini, former monarch Edward VIII, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Japanese ambassador Oshima Hiroshi, the King of Romania Carol II, the Prince Regent of Yugoslavia Pavel Karadjordjevic, the Prime Minister of France Pierre Laval, the head of the Croatian government Ante Pavelic, the US ambassador John Kadehi, the Tsar of Bulgaria Boris III.