Pabst Plan
Nazi plan to rebuild Warsaw as a smaller German town
The Pabst Plan (German: Neue deutsche Stadt Warschau, lit. 'New German city of Warsaw') was an urban plan by Nazi Germany to reconstruct the city of Warsaw as a Nazi model city. Named after its creator Friedrich Pabst, the Nazis' "Chief Architect for Warsaw", the plan assumed that Warsaw, the historical capital of Poland and a city of 1.5 million inhabitants, would be completely destroyed and rebuilt as a small German town of not more than 130,000 inhabitants.
In modern historical works the term is used to denote any of the German World War II plans concerning the destruction and reconstruction of Warsaw. In particular the "Pabst Plan" refers to a plan prepared by Hubert Gross and Otto Nurnberger in 1940 and another plan, prepared by Pabst himself in 1942. Both plans envisioned the destruction of most of Warsaw with its historical monuments and residential areas. In its place a new model city was to be created as a seat for the German ruling class of the occupied Polish territories. It was to house a large Parteivolkshalle ("People's Party Hall") in place of the Royal Castle in Warsaw and serve as a major transportation hub.
After the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the Germans decided to simply destroy the city in its entirety as an act of vengeance.
History
Pre-war planning
The destruction of the city was already planned long before its almost total destruction in 1944, even prior to the start of World War II. On 20 June 1939, while Adolf Hitler was visiting an architectural bureau in Würzburg, his attention was captured by a project to create a future "German" town—Warsaw (German: Warschau, Polish: Warszawa), which later became known as the Pabst Plan. Friedrich Pabst prepared a technical plan for the annihilation of Warsaw and the complete ethnic cleansing of its native Polish population, with Polish Jews condemned to be the first destined for extermination.
“Pabst Plan” enters the record as nazi plan to rebuild Warsaw as a smaller German town. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pabst, Plan and Nazi can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Pabst Plan” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Pabst, Plan and Nazi provides the most credible route into that argument.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13377383. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1942, 1944 and 1939.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pabst Plan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.