If you’ve seen 'The Man in the High Castle' (2015–2019), you know the TV show imagines a world where the Axis won WWII and Berlin became the capital of a vast German empire. But this idea of a Nazi supercity wasn’t just fiction, it was actually Adolf Hitler’s own grand plan.
Before the war, Hitler dreamed up Welthauptstadt Germania, a massive redesign of Berlin as the shining heart of his “Greater Germanic Reich.” Some buildings, like a new Chancellery, were actually built; others, like a colossal Triumphal Arch meant to dwarf Paris’s, stayed on paper.
Hitler planned to use forced labor and Allied reparations to fund this urban makeover, but his 1945 death brought the whole vision crashing down. Although it never came to life, the remnants and blueprints of Welthauptstadt Germania reveal a disturbing glimpse into what might have been.
Click through the gallery to see the ambitious designs that almost reshaped history.