early Autobahn poster

Like Steven Joyce, plenty of motorways appealed to Adolf Hitler, and with the thousands of kilometres of Reichsautobahnen built during the peacetime years of his reign, he effectively pioneered them in Europe.

The above 1930s tourist poster was based on an actual scene (shown in the postcard) on the Berlin-Munich Autobahn A9 bridge spanning the Saale River on the boundry of the states of Thüringen and Bayern (Bavaria). It was the site of a Nazi monument, a tall stone pylon topped by a Reichsadler (eagle) with swastika. Today there is a lot more traffic than in the poster and the pylon has gone, but otherwise the site remains much the same. It is not a marked pull-off for Autobahn traffic.