Deutsche Architekten im Elsass 1940–1944

After the occupation of Alsace by the Wehrmacht in the summer of 1940, German architects were among the first wave of experts who swarmed into the disputed borderland to follow military conquest with administrative conquest. Strasbourg, which was intended to be the capital of a new “Gau Oberrhein,” was to receive a monumental urban expansion and grow together with Kehl on the right bank of the Rhine. The political center with buildings for the party and the Wehrmacht was planned for the new district on the Rhine. Under the supervision of Albert Speer, a competition was held among eight architects for the “New Strasbourg”. The works submitted were anything but homogeneous designs. They reflect the different attitudes of the architects towards the Nazi regime, but above all the rivalries and positional struggles of various schools of architecture in Germany, which were waged with vigor beneath the surface.