Visiting Germany for business or pleasure certainly offers rich and varied memories, including the places where history was made.
     Daily, giant lorries and automobile operators find the wide, flat, and even aspect of the Autobahn super highway (if not the speed associated with demand) quite useful in moving from point to point throughout the country and onto the EU.
     Aside from the pioneering aspect of the super-highways, there are a notable number of locations besides the Autobahn where history, fortunately has not been made and which are not all that obvious to the untrained eye:
     During the Cold War occupation, the “NLP-Str.” as they were abbreviated in German bureaucratese (Notlandeplatz-Strasse or Emergency Landing Strip-Road) were something commonly encountered on German highways both in Western Germany and Eastern Germany.
     These Emergency Landing Strips—ELSs—were something other than one might assume from the designator ELS, and not intended to be used for the purpose of aircraft emergencies but for military purposes.

There Is A Jet At My Rest Stop
 
    At the peak of the cold war between East and West, the most common threat scenario assumed Warsaw Pact troops rolling into the NATO territory bordering the Warsaw Pact states.
     In particular, Germany—both its Eastern and Western parts—was considered an expendable “buffer zone” where the first clash of the amassed forces was to take place.
     Under the allied forces agreement, a multitude of US, Canadian, French, and British troops were stationed in Western Germany, and Soviet forces in Eastern Germany, after WWII Germany.
     This situation lasted until Germany achieved full sovereignty in 1990 following reunification as a result of the Two-plus-four agreement, which settled the status of the reunified German state within Europe.
     Many German regional airports started their existence as military airfields of allied forces, including Hahn, which was a former U.S. military airbase; Baden-Baden, a Canadian air base; and Magdeburg-Cochstedt, a former Soviet base.

Emergency Landing Strips 1938

     World War II proved that military airfields as well as other locations of prime military significance were primary targets for enemy air raids and options were limited to protect these targets by traditional military means.
     The Germans began in 1938 to convert parts of their prized new super highways, which were being built to connect the nation, to also allow military aircraft operations.
     This measure was adopted by postwar Germany and the NATO allies (as it was adopted in Eastern Germany) in order to provide sufficient hidden capacity for fighter aircraft.
     German law provided a legal framework for both the conversion of existing highway parts to such ELSs and for the construction of new ones.
     While to the unsuspecting observer these facilities were—and still are—not obvious, they are fairly easy to spot if you know what to look for:
     Specifications called for even strips of road not less than three lanes (all German highways are at least a four-lane blacktop) of no less than 2,500 meters (1.55 mi) with suitable aircraft parking and ground support facilities, as well as keeping the surrounding areas free of obstructions such as tall buildings, antennas, and trees.
     For this reason, ELSs were predominantly constructed near to or in conjunction with existing rest stations and parking facilities.
     The latter were equipped with power and water connections, connecting taxiways and sometimes, sheltered aircraft parking facilities.
     The area between the lanes was paved and the median crash barrier had glare protection installed as a plug-in solution, which could be removed in a matter of minutes.

     Furthermore, detours that allowed bypassing the ELSs part of the Autobahn were planned so that the use of such ELSs would not cause a total breakdown of vehicular traffic.
     Since the construction of such ELSs was subject to strict specifications, the construction of new highways (or their reconstruction) was often carried out differently from initial specifications to allow for locations that were free of bridges, crossings, and obstructing buildings and landscape.

Last Hurrah

     The last time these facilities were subjected to a large-scale test was in 1984, when the NATO-exercise “Highway’84” took place: Click Here to view
     Although “Highway’84” proved the viability of the concept, in the years to follow it became clear that any military clash in Europe would likely not involve large fleets of aircraft and tanks; in other words, the threat scenario had changed, owing to a more unified and pan-European approach and the absorption of former Warsaw Pact states Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania within the European Community and their integration into the NATO defense alliance.
     But still today there are traces of the past, the least of which are certainly not those long, straight ribbons of highway moving people and commerce from here to tomorrow all over Germany.
Jens