At the height of World War II, German leader Adolf Hitler was not only thinking about the course of the war, but he was continuing to plan to achieve his dream of Germany leading the world.
The German media recently revealed a massive project that the Nazi leader was planning, which was to establish a railway linking his country to distant destinations, most notably India.
But it was not an ordinary train, but rather it was gigantic, like many of the leader’s dreams, and it was also like them in that it did not go to the end of the road until it saw the light.
The widely circulated German magazine Stern says that the matter is not far from the paranoia that prevailed in the Nazi era, in addition to the fact that Hitler was fond of everything huge, and until his last days he continued planning with his architect for a new capital, as well as the construction of a unique railway line.
The story begins in 1942, when World War II (1939-1945 AD) was at its peak, after three years that witnessed sweeping advances by the axis led by Germany, along with Italy and Japan, facing the Allied forces led by Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, then joined by the United States.
Here, the Führer (which means leader, a title Hitler chose for himself) surprised his aides and advisors with his giant project, which baffled and astonished the engineers at the Henschel railway factory, as described by the German news agency.
Giant train
What the leader asked for was closer to a dream, which was to create a giant train that was unprecedented, whether in terms of size, strength, or speed.
According to the specifications that Hitler wanted, the train car should be 42 meters long, 6 meters wide, and 7 meters high on two floors. To simplify the matter, these were all numbers equivalent to double what was usual at that time until the present time.
As for power, Hitler requested that the train rely on several engines, with their power reaching 36,000 horsepower, which is six times the current power of locomotives.
At that time, the maximum speed of trains was barely 100 kilometers per hour, but Hitler requested that it be doubled two and a half times, reaching 250 kilometers per hour, which is close to the speed of the most modern diesel trains today.
Specialists began to make designs, and the Reichsbahn National Railway Company played an important role in the planning work, along with well-established engineering companies such as Krauss-Maffei, Borsig and Krupp.
Although experts expressed concerns mainly related to the project’s incompatibility with the existing network, its huge costs, in addition to the unreasonable timetable, the Fuhrer was determined to produce a super train that would surpass all that preceded it, and made it one of his favorite projects without concern for technical or economic reservations.
One of these experts is the architect Albert Speer, who was close to Hitler and later spent twenty years in prison due to his involvement with the Nazi regime until he was released in 1966.
Top secret
Speer says that the project was so secret that Hitler did not discuss with him all the details related to it. He adds that he expressed doubts about the possibility of the trains reaching the planned speed, which was 250 km/hour, but he explained that the Fuhrer “if an idea stuck in his head, he would certainly push it to the end.”
According to what the German News Agency reported from a book by author Anton Joachimstaller published in 1980, in which he spoke with Speer, the latter also pointed out the difficulty of implementing what Hitler requested regarding the width of the train, which was to reach 6 metres, which requires that the distance between the two railway tracks be 4 meters instead of the usual distance of 1,435 metres.
According to Speer, the experts succeeded, after an effort, in convincing Hitler to reduce the distance between the bars to three meters instead of four.
According to the same spokesman, according to the leader’s plans, the length of passenger trains was scheduled to reach 600 meters, while freight trains were scheduled to reach 1.2 kilometers.
As for the number of passengers, the plan was to reach four thousand people on one train, with a spacious and comfortable space for each of them, with entertainment facilities, including a full dining car similar in size to a cruise ship, as well as a cinema hall that can accommodate two hundred people and a reading room.
It is noteworthy that Albert Speer was also responsible for planning a huge new-style capital called “Germania,” which, along with the new train, was considered an expression of the new Germany that would dominate the world after achieving the victory that Hitler expected.
Extreme difficulties
Fox, one of the largest German news sites, shed more light on this project, noting that engineers have already designed 41 different locomotives. These locomotives included steam, diesel, and even gas turbine locomotives, with capacities of up to 18,400 kilowatts – many times what was the case at the time.
The site pointed out an important point regarding the fact that these vehicles are so heavy and wide that traditional tracks and bridges would have collapsed immediately. This required more planning, as infrastructure such as train stations and bridges had to be fully adapted.
In fact, it was not just an idea to develop a giant train, but rather an attempt to reshape the political and economic geography of the world.
The project aimed to build a giant train network starting from Germany to connect Europe with Asia and Africa.
According to the plans that were discussed at the time, several axes were drawn for this international network:
- Eastern axis: It starts from Paris via Berlin, Warsaw, and Kiev, reaching Rostov and the Caucasus.
- Al-Aqsa and Middle East Corridor: It was designed to extend from Istanbul through Türkiye to reach the oil fields in Iraq and Iran, with a future extension to India.
- North-South axis: It connects Hamburg to Berlin, Munich and Vienna, all the way to Rome and Istanbul, with branches reaching Madrid and Stockholm.
the end
All of this did not affect the priority of the project for the Nazi leader until World War II threw its first surprises in April 1943, through a major shift represented by a crushing defeat of German forces at the hands of the Russian Red Army in Stalingrad, after which it seemed that Germany was on its way to losing the war.
However, Hitler continued to defend the railway plans as “essential to the war effort”, and so the engineers continued to work on modifying the plans, testing the materials to be used in parallel with surveying the roads that would be used for the dream train.
Until the last days of the war, about 100 government employees and 80 engineers remained busy working on this project, which had one advantage, according to the German News Agency, which was that they did not have to go to the battlefront.
At the beginning of 1945, Germany seemed on its way to collapse under the attacks of the Allied forces advancing from the east and west, and at the end of April, Soviet forces succeeded in entering the capital, Berlin.
As she made her way to the center of the city, where the Reich Chancellery was located, stories say that Hitler committed suicide in a fortified underground bunker on April 30, putting the end to his life, and with it the end to one of his dreams: the largest train in the world.
