These were the numbers that made the engineers at Henschel spin when they presented the calculations for a “standard locomotive” in 1943. The monster was supposed to be 42 meters long, six meters wide and seven meters high.

It was about a locomotive for a railway project. The project was intended to eclipse everything that had come before: Hitler’s super train – a broad-gauge railway with dimensions that were both gigantic and unrealistic.

Hitler dreamed of a railway

The “broad gauge railway” was a favorite Project of the “Leader” in the last years of the Second World War. While the Wehrmacht was being pushed back at the fronts, cities were falling into rubble and ashes and millions of people were being murdered in the extermination camps, Hitler dreamed of a railway.

It was supposed to cross his “thousand-year empire” from west to east and from north to south – and extend far beyond. In 1942, he commissioned engineers from the Reichsbahn and several large companies to develop a 3,000 millimeter wide track. That was more than twice as much as the standard global gauge of 1,435 millimeters.

The railway project was a matter for the boss

The original plans for the expansion of the German railway network in the late 1930s were still conventional. But Hitler declared the project a top priority in 1942 – thus it became an expression of his megalomania.

Hitler’s goal was to create a land equivalent to the massive ocean liners. The broad-gauge railway was not only intended to open up the “Greater Germanic Empire”, it was also intended to symbolically elevate it. Just like the planned “world capital Germania”, which Berlin was to be expanded into.

However, the decisive impulse came from Fritz Todt, the minister of armaments and inventor of the motorways. He suggested to Hitler that the newly conquered areas in the east be opened up with an efficient railway.

“Operation Barbarossa” stimulates the railway project

The attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, “Operation Barbarossa”, suddenly expanded the goal of German expansion. Now it was no longer just about influence and prestige, but about the brutal exploitation of huge territories. According to the plan, Ukraine was to become the empire’s “granary” and the Caucasus would provide the oil sources.

Hitler was convinced that conventional railways were not sufficient to transport the stolen goods. The Reichsbahn experts pointed out that the colonization of the East could also be achieved by expanding the conventional railway. But the “leader” didn’t want to hear that.

For him, ships were out of the question as they were too slow and too vulnerable. A new super solution was needed: a completely new, self-sufficient railway line of gigantic dimensions that would transport goods in an unprecedented volume from the east to the heart of the empire and beyond.

Everything was under “leader reservation”

Hitler brushed aside the concerns of experts who pointed out the incompatibility with the existing network, the immense costs and the absurd time frame. The project was subject to “the Führer’s reservation” – that meant the highest priority and absolute secrecy. Above all, Hitler ignored any technical and economic reservations.

What emerged from German industrial companies in 1942 was beyond imagination. In addition to the Reichsbahn, renowned companies such as Krauss-Maffei, Henschel, Borsig and Krupp were involved in the planning.

Initially there was even talk of a track width of 4,000 millimeters before the experts were able to negotiate the “Leader” down to 3,000 millimeters. According to these plans, passenger trains should reach a length of 500 meters and freight trains even up to 1200 meters.

The speeds were set high for the time: 250 kilometers per hour for passenger trains, 100 km/h for freight trains. The wagons were to be double-decker, 42 meters long, six meters wide and seven meters high – this corresponded to around nine times the volume of a standard wagon at the time.

Tracks and bridges would have collapsed

The engineers designed 41 different locomotives. There were steam and diesel locomotives, even gas turbine locomotives, with outputs of up to 18,400 kilowatts – many times what was common at the time.

The vehicles would have had to be so heavy and so wide that conventional tracks and bridges would have collapsed immediately. This required further planning, because the infrastructure – such as train stations and bridges – also had to be completely reinvented.

The rails were to lie on a new type of concrete, ballastless fixed track that rested on massive pillars. It was designed as a four-track route, separated into passenger and freight traffic.

The eventuality of war was immediately taken into account because the roadway had to be constructed in such a way that it could also be used as a road by heavy military columns. The platforms of the train stations, which were also planned to be monumental in size, were to be two-story to allow access to the double-decker carriages.

Moving palaces for the people

The inner workings of the trains revealed the dual character of the Nazi state. For the “German comrades” and travelers from allied countries, the trains were designed as moving palaces on rails. The designs called for promenade decks, bars, hair salons, a cinema, a winter garden and even a swimming pool.

The furnishings were reminiscent of the large ocean liners that Hitler admired. The comfort was intended to demonstrate the superiority of the Germanic race and to make the long journeys and vast distances of the empire bearable.

Wagons were intended for the transport of forced laborers, so-called Eastern workers, in which people were to be carted like cattle into the heart of the empire to work for the war machine.

The largest train station in the world

The planned route network showed the expansion envisioned by Hitler. At the center was to be the largest train station in the world: a new central station in the “world capital Germania”, from which the trains would radiate in a star shape in all directions.

In 1943 four main axes were defined. Axis number 1 was supposed to run from Paris via Berlin to Warsaw, Kiev and Rostov. From there it should continue to the Caucasus – and in a second step even to India.

A north-south route was planned from Hamburg via Berlin, Munich, Vienna and to Rome and Istanbul. Further lines should lead to Madrid, Stockholm and Trondheim, Norway. An extension across the Bering Strait to Canada was even considered. The broad-gauge railway was intended to span the entire globe as a technical monument to German world domination.

While the engineers were still fine-tuning the details, measuring routes and carrying out material samples, the dream of the broad-gauge railway was shattered by the reality of the war. The project involved around 100 civil servants and 80 engineers until the last days of the war. The work had an advantage for them: they didn’t have to go to the front.

So the men continued to plan, even though they were aware that this railway would never run because it was technically impossible to implement. In fact, the project failed not because of technical impossibility, but because of the course of the war, which from 1943 turned more and more against Germany.

Insufficient resources

The resources needed to build thousands of miles of concrete roadway, hundreds of bridges and tunnels, and thousands of locomotives and wagons were not available.

Steel and concrete were needed for tanks and bunkers, and workers had to fight at the front or toil in armaments production. So the broad-gauge railway remained an example of Hitler’s megalomania, his gigantomania. It took on increasingly absurd dimensions as his actual power waned.