DOI: 10.11118/978-80-7509-904-4-0340

THE UNFINISHED HITLER’S MOTORWAY – A HERITAGE IN THE CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPE

Ivo Dostál, Marek Havlíček, Hana Skokanová

The unfinished extraterritorial motorway A88 Breslau – Wien, also known as Hitler's motorway, was a strategic construction of the German Reich connecting major centres through the territory of Czechoslovakia (later Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia). Within the present-day territory of the Czech Republic, work on the Hitler Motorway began in April 1939 and was halted in April 1942, with a total of 85 km of the motorway being built out of a total of 320 km. In 80 years, only three short, isolated sections have been completed as highways or roads. Most of the completed part of the route is kept as a zoning reserve for the construction of a capacity road from Brno to Moravská Třebová. In addition to standard agricultural areas, there are relatively attractive green infrastructure elements in the landscape in several places. They are represented by shrubs, tree vegetation or meadows. Two sites are currently protected as nature reserves and natural monuments. From the point of view of recreation and tourism, some preserved technical infrastructure objects are also attractive, e.g. motorway bridges, culverts, earthworks on notches. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the heritage of the unfinished motorway in the current landscape, with an emphasis on its potential in green infrastructure of the landscape and its use in local and regional tourism and recreation.

Keywords: motorway, history, landscape, green infrastructure, recreation

pages: 340-345, Published: 2023, online: 2023