Word: autobahnen
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could not hope to paralyze German transport except at the Ruhr bottleneck, but the broad new Autobahnen (speed highways) helped guide night pilots to Augsburg (northwest of Munich), which in the 15th and 16th Centuries was one of Europe's great trade centres and now has, besides the ancient palaces of its merchant princes, the Messerschmitt aircraft plant...
From Berlin, centre of the Autobahnen, Herr Hitler's workers had also laid highspeed roads to Falkenburg, within 95 miles of the Polish Corridor; to Hamburg, in the northwest corner of the Reich; to Saarbrücken on the French frontier; to Munich in the south and Vienna in the southeast. As Herr Hitler was opening the Auto Show, 300,000 workmen were resting in 218 barrack towns for the next day of digging, blasting and concrete-pouring on Autobahnen in every quarter of the Reich, even in East Prussia, on the other side of the Polish Corridor...
Hitler himself turned the first spadeful of dirt for the Autobahnen in 1933. By last year's end, 1,903 miles of the road system had been completed. Neither
Slickly engineered, with a minimum of turns and steep grades, the twin three-lane strips of the Autobahnen are separated by a hedged and grassed parkway 16 feet wide, which keeps traffic separated and cuts down headlight glare. Service stations, hotels, repair shops and rest stations are spaced along the highway with Teutonic regularity (26 miles between filling stations) and at even intervals there is a blackboard to call motorists to the phone for messages from home or summonses to emergency military duty...
Much more than speedways for vacationing Nazis, the Autobahnen have potent military significance. Logistics experts calculate that soldiers with all their impedimenta can be trucked over any stretch of the system, using only one strip, at the rate of 72,000 an hour. Thus German officers, particularly those of the younger, mechanized generation, are convinced that the Autobahnen will supplant railroads as the prime mode of wartime transport...