Heilbronn
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| The town hall sporting swastikas and today |
In front of the Nazi eagle still remaining on Rosenberg Bridge; the other side as another eagle with the date 1939-1939.
In
1940 allied air raids began, and the city and its surrounding area were
hit about 20 times with minor damage. On September 10, 1944, a raid by
the allies targeted the city specifically, in particular the Böckingen
train transfer station. As a result of 1,168 bombs dropped that day, 281
residents died. The city was carpet-bombed from the southern quarter
all the way to the Kilianskirche in the centre of town. The church was
burnt out. The catastrophe for Heilbronn was the bombing raid on
December 4, 1944. During that raid the city centre was completely
destroyed and the surrounding boroughs heavily damaged. Within one half
hour 6,500 residents perished, most incinerated beyond recognition. Of
those, 5,000 were later buried in mass graves in the Ehrenfriedhof
(cemetery of honour) in the valley of the Köpfer creek close to the
city. A memorial continues to be held annually in memory of those that
died that day. As a result of the war Heilbronn's population shrank to
46,350. After a ten-day battle, with the allies advancing over the
strategically important Neckar crossings, the war ended for the
destroyed city, and it was occupied by the Americans on April 12, 1945.
Local Nazi leader Drauz became a fugitive because of executions of
American prisoners of war he had ordered in March 1945. He was
eventually arrested, tried, and hanged by the Allies in Landsberg on
December 4, 1946.
The
Nazi flag flying atop the Kiliansturm for the first time January 30-31,
1933 and the resulting damage to Kilianskirche after the war. Already
on September 10, 1944, the roofs of the choir, the northern side nave
and the sacristy were destroyed by fire bombs during an American air
attack. On October 12, 1944, an airmine destroyed the windows, parts of
the chimneys, the southern spiral staircase, and part of the the high
altar. On December 4, 1944, the church was almost completely destroyed
during the air attack on Heilbronn. The western tower and the northern
Chorturm burned out, whilst the choir with net vault, the gallery and
the organ were completely destroyed. In April 1945, strong American
artillery fire continued to inflict further damage, particularly on the
West Front.
As of today, anti-Semitism has made reappearance, especially with the huge influx of Muslims by the Merkel government with the latest attack occurring at 21.45 on Christmas Eve 2017 when the three-metre-high Hanukkah Menorah in the alley of Synagogengasse had been vandalised with several lamps and their glass cartouches knocked off.
As of today, anti-Semitism has made reappearance, especially with the huge influx of Muslims by the Merkel government with the latest attack occurring at 21.45 on Christmas Eve 2017 when the three-metre-high Hanukkah Menorah in the alley of Synagogengasse had been vandalised with several lamps and their glass cartouches knocked off.
Schwäbisch Gmünd
The Nazis had only
achieved only 26% of the votes cast in Gmünd during the last somewhat
free Reichstag elections in March 1933 which came well below the
national average of 44%. In breach of the constitution, the results of
these elections were now transferred to the state and local councils,
so that Gmünd's local council had to be newly formed in April 1933
resulting in the Nazis getting eight seats from their previous two
whilst, the Catholic Centre Party enjoyed eleven seats with the
remaining three from other parties. In the course of the
"Gleichschaltung", the non-Nazi councilors were forced to
resign so that from April 1934 the Nazi Party represented the council
alone. In November 1934, the unelected Nazi Franz Konrad was simply appointed Lord Mayor. The Nazi Party district leader, Hermann
Oppenländer, was charged with mobilising the population for the goals of
the party from 1937 onwards. This included of course the harassment of
Jewish citizens. Those few who still lived in Gmünd were penned into the
two houses that were still owned by Jews at Kornhausstrasse 10 and
Königsturmstrasse 18. It was to get even worse in 1941 when the last ten Jews were sent to Becherlehen 1/2, a barrack referred to as
"Lüllig-Dorf". From there they were deported to the extermination camps
in the east. None of them survived. In all, a total of 22 Gmünd Jews are
known by name who were murdered by the Nazis.From the start as well,
laws were passed that allowed people with "hereditary diseases" to be
forcibly sterilised going on to murder the disabled and the mentally
ill. In Gmünd it's known that six citizens were euthenised. In
1933 there were ninety Jews recorded as living in Schwäbisch Gmünd,
which corresponds to 0.4% of the total of 20,131 inhabitants. Already
the year before SA propaganda parades called out "Germany awake - Judah
verrecke!" in the town's streets. Between 1936 and 1938 all Jewish shops
were forced to close, either sold off at knock-down prices or simpy
forced out. The interior of the synagogue was demolished as early as
1934. By 1939 there were still 22 Jewish inhabitants who were forced
into special "Jewish houses" at the beginning of the war located at
Königsturmstrasse 18 and Becherlehenstrasse 1/2. Eventually they would
be forced into the "Lülligdorf", a basic settlement for homeless people
from the 1920s on Mutlanger Strasse. From here the remaining Jewish
residents were transported to the extermination camps.
In Schwäbisch Gmünd, a small town in Württemberg not far from Stuttgart, the Kreisleiter and combat commandant had two men executed just before midnight on 19 April, hours before the Americans entered the town without a fight. One of the men was known to have been an opponent of the Nazis since 1933, when he had been arrested for distributing anti‑Nazi pamphlets and returned from his stay in a concentration camp a changed person, psychiatrically disturbed. The other was a former soldier, no longer fit to fight after a serious injury. In a heated argument about handing over the city or fighting on, with the certainty of the destruction of the lovely town with its beautiful medieval minster, they had been heard to shout, probably under the influence of alcohol, ‘Drop dead Hitler. Long live Stauffenberg. Long live freedom.’ The two were removed from their police cells late at night, taken to a wood at the edge of the town and shot dead. The local Nazi representatives were ensuring, with their last act of power, that long‑standing opponents would not live to enjoy their downfall. Even as the executions were taking place, the Kreisleiter and his entourage were preparing to flee from the town.
Under Lieutenant Mortimer, the Americans immediately set up
their military government, which consisted of eight officers and fifteen
soldiers, initially at Villa Koehler. They had unrestricted authority
to issue instructions to the German authorities and the head of the tax
office, Emil Rudolph, was appointed acting mayor and the operations
manager of the Deyhle company, Konrad Burkhardt, was appointed district
administrator. In addition to supplying the population with food and
energy, the repatriation of the now liberated forced labourers posed a
major problem as many used their new freedom to plunder isolated farms.
Around ten thousand Poles, Balts and Ukrainians were housed in the two
barracks and in Gotteszell- a women’s prison on the grounds of a monastery- before being repatriated. Above all the
Americans saw their most important task in denazification, through which
all officials, who usually had to be members of the Nazi Party, were
automatically arrested, so that around 100,000 people were held in
internment camps throughout the American zone. In March 1946, the
denazification was placed into German hands and those affected had to
answer before the ruling chambers in a court-like procedure.
One
unmistakeable reminder of the Nazi era is the war memorial that towers
over the market square, shown here in a Nazi-era postcard and today with my bike in front.
Although the swastika that topped it has been
simply replaced with a statue of St. Michael, it is covered in Nazi
iconography including Hitler salutes. It was created by sculptor Jakob
Wilhelm Fehrle and inaugurated on November 9, 1935, the twelfth
anniversary of the failed Beer Hall Putsch depicted in the painting
above. It was initially intended to
commemorate those who fell in the Great War and is made of 21 bronze
cast parts based on Trajan's column. Originally the column carried an
eagle with a swastika on its top but was replaced in 1952 by the Michael
statue placed on a ball, also made by Fehrle. During the tenure of
Mayor Franz Czisch, the entire column was dismantled in 1946 and stored
at the Gmünd freight yard. By this time given the loss of so many church
bells to the war effort and the severe shortage of materials in the
post-war period, in January 1948 the Gmünd authorities were requested
that the “bronze material of the war memorial be melted down in favour
of a peace bell.” 
Czisch
agreed, and applied to use the memorial for the “replacement of the
bells of the town hall and the hospital.” Most of the town council
seemed to agree to the proposal to donate the material from the former
memorial to the favour of a peace bell although councillor Böhnlein
called for more "old material to be retained for the tower clock of the
Schmidt tower." But
it was Dr. Hermann Erhard, owner and board member of Erhard &
Söhne, who was most influential in ultimately preserving the monument.
He wanted to “commemorate the 640 Gmünder soldiers who had fallen in
Gmünd” but felt the ringing of some 'peace bell' would have meant
nothing; for him [p]eace for citizens does not come about through
symbols of peace, instead through re-education in the hearts and minds
of the people" He advocated keeping the bronze material for the city and
in so doing brought another central point into the discussion. Erhard,
who had fought in the First World War, not only wanted to have his
fallen comrades formally commemorated, but also pointed to the "artistic
value"of the monument. He argued that “[t]he column be put up again
after the swastika was removed.” Ultimately his campaign was successful
as three Social Democrats abstained from the vote, possibly under the
impression that its reliefs were damaged after the monument's
demolition. And so, despite the mayor's wishes, the column
was not melted down but was put up again after he was voted out of
office. Today the column is said to be dedicated to the memory of the
thousand Gmünders who fell in both world wars- not to any German
victims. 
Standing at the most remarkable site at Schwäbisch Gmünd- the very limit of the Roman Empire along the Raetian Limes. On the
top left is a visual representation from the Aalen museum of how it
would have appeared whilst below is an actual reconstruction at the
entrance to the park. Up until this point the Upper German Limes from
the Rhine to the Rotenbachtal here, northwest of Schwäbisch Gmünd,
consisted most recently of a rampart and a moat serving as a substitute
for a wooden palisade. During the last expansion phase, a continuous
stone wall was erected in the province of Raetia, from the Rotenbachtal
to the Danube at Ausina. 
That
this spot really does mark the transition from the Limes wall to the
Upper German palisade is strongly supported not only by the wall's
precisely constructed terminus, but by the fact that in front of it was
found the remains of an altar that was possibly dedicated to the fines,
or border deities, a replica of which I'm standing beside in front of
the wall and how it appeared when uncovered by Steimle at the end of the
19th century in the Rotenbachtal at the beginning of the Rhaetian Wall
near Kleindeinbach. It has four rosettes on the face of as many
bulges atop with no remains of inscriptions below the cornice beyond
seven radial grooves, apparently from the grinding of tools. This altar,
and the finished nature of the roughly hewn sandstone blocks of the
wall itself, provide considerable evidence that this section marked the
end of the Upper Germanic Limes and the start of the Rhaetian Limes.
Here from about 160 to 260 CE, the Rems Valley was the outermost border
zone of the Roman Empire, guarded by over 1,500 soldiers within the
Gmünd area stationed in cohorts in Lorch, at Schirenhof and Böbingen as
well as in some smaller facilities such as Freimühle, Kleindeinbach and
Hintere Orthalde.
Aalen
The town centre during the Nazi era and today. In
1933 there were seven Jewish residents living in Aalen, two of whom
were children. During Kristallnacht in 1938, the shop windows of the
three Jewish shops in the town were shattered and the owners
subsequently imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp for several
weeks. After their release, most of the Jews emigrated. Eduard and
Frieda Heilbron last lived in a so-called Judenhaus in Wiesbaden,
where Eduard Heilbronn died of a heart attack. His wife Frieda was
deported to Theresienstadt and later murdered in the Treblinka
extermination camp. Their daughter Irene survived, managing to emigrate
to Colombia with her husband Kurt Wartzki and their children. The last
Jewish resident, Fanny Kahn, was forcibly relocated to Oberdorf am Ipf in 1941, later deported and also murdered in. In 2005 a
street in Aalen was named in her honour. Of the town's Jews who were
murdered, Yad Vashem, records the names of Leopold Elter; Eduard, Frieda
and their son Willi Heilbronn; and Fanny Kahn.
In
Aalen, there are sixteen stolpersteine memorials located at seven
different sites. One at Bahnhofstrasse 23 names Siegfried Pappenheimer
as one of those children saved by the British before the war through the
kindertransport in 1939. Another on Hofherrnstrasse 28 commemorates Karl Schiele, a member of the Communist Party who had taken part in
protests against the Nazis and was arrested on March 20, 1933 and taken
to one of the first concentration camps, the Heuberg camp. He was
imprisoned until April 11, 1933. After the war began, he listened to
foreign broadcasters; a sports teammate betrayed him under torture and
Schiele was arrested on March 6, 1940 at his workplace. The Stuttgart
Special Court sentenced him to twenty months in prison. His wife, who
had refused to testify against him, was imprisoned in Gotteszell for ten
months. He arrived at the notorious moor camp in the Emsland and was
released in June 1942 - seven months after the end of his sentence,
emaciated to the bone and with tuberculosis. The camp administration
dubbed him an 'unusable subject'. He did not recover and died after a
long illness on April 3, 1944 in the Isny sanatorium. After the war his
widow managed to have his sentence posthumously overturned and he was
officially recognised as one persecuted by the Nazi regime. She lived in
poverty in Dewangen and died in 1991. In
August 1934, the Nazi consumer exhibition Braune Messe took place in
Aalen. This was primarily intended to serve as a platform for local
handicrafts to present themselves and their products. Similar events had
already been held in Nördlingen and Schwäbisch Gmünd during the year.
In 1936, a riding and driving school for the military was stationed in
the city, an army supplies office and an ancillary equipment office were
set up and housed an ancillary army ammunition facility. In 1935, the
incorporation of neighbouring towns began. In the town's hospital, the
deaconesses who had previously worked there were increasingly being
replaced by sisters of the National Socialist People's Welfare. At the
same time in the course of the Nazis' so-called racial hygiene
programme, around 200 people were forcibly sterilised there; three are recorded on the town's stolpersteine as having been murdered in the T-4 euthanasia programme.
In
September 1944, the Wiesendorf concentration camp, a satellite camp of
the Natzweiler/Alsace concentration camp, was set up in Wasseralfingen
for 200 to 300 prisoners who had to do forced labour in industrial
companies in the area. By the time the camp was closed in February 1945,
sixty prisoners had died. Between 1946 to 1957 the warehouse buildings
were demolished although I was able to still see its foundations still
in place on Moltkestrasse 44/46 as seen on the left. In addition,
prisoners of war as well as women and men from countries occupied by
Germany were concentrated in several labour camps who were forced to
work for the armaments industry in large companies such as the Swabian
ironworks and the Alfing Keßler machine factory.
In
September 1944, the Wiesendorf concentration camp, a satellite camp of
the Natzweiler/Alsace concentration camp, was set up in Wasseralfingen
for 200 to 300 prisoners who had to do forced labour in industrial
companies in the area. By the time the camp was closed in February 1945,
sixty prisoners had died. Between 1946 to 1957 the warehouse buildings
were demolished although I was able to still see its foundations still
in place on Moltkestrasse 44/46 as seen on the left. In addition,
prisoners of war as well as women and men from countries occupied by
Germany were concentrated in several labour camps who were forced to
work for the armaments industry in large companies such as the Swabian
ironworks and the Alfing Keßler machine factory. 
A flag-bedecked Adolf-Hitler-Platz (now Bahnhofplatz) showing a red swastika-adorned railway station on May Day 1939. In
general, Aalen was largely spared from the war although the station
would not survive unscathed. It was not until the last weeks of the war
that air strikes led to the destruction or serious damage to parts of
the city, the train station and the other railway facilities. On April
1, Easter Sunday, Aalen experienced one of the heaviest air raids of the war when American fighter-bombers first attacked targets in the
city. This began a series of air strikes that lasted more than three
weeks which culminated on April 17, 1945, when American Air Force
bombers bombed the auxiliary armoury stationed in Aalen and the railroad
facilities. 59 people were killed, over half of them were buried, and
more than 500 left homeless. 45 buildings, 33 of which were residential, and
two bridges were destroyed and 163 buildings, including a couple of
churches, were also damaged. Five days later, the Nazi regime in Aalen
was deposed by the American armed forces.
What particularly drove me to visit Aalen was the Limesmuseum,
located on the site of the largest Roman equestrian fort north of the
Alps. The size of the fort indicates that it was garrisoned by the ala II Flavia milliaria, the only ala milliaria of the province. Indeed, the elite mounted unit, the ala miliaria,
is what gives Aalen its name. In May 2019, after two and a half years
of renovation and closure, it was reopened with a newly designed
permanent exhibition with over 1,200 original finds. The main focus is
on the relationship between Teutons and Romans and the understanding of
borders. In the main rooms on the ground floor, visitors are forced to
interactively learn about seven people who lived in Roman Aalen 1,800
years ago using specific archaeological objects and get to know their
living conditions better. For me, this completely ruined the experience
as one can't walk anywhere or view some of the spectacular pieces in
peace- such as the masked cavalry helmet found during the expansion of
the Limes Museum and the huge Osterburken Mithras relief- without
setting off a cacophony of sound effects- horses, for example- and loud
voice overs that could not be shut off. 
At
the staff building, the principia, with a modern statue of Hadrian
despite the fort being built during the 160s as part of the military
reorganisation and expansion of Marcus Aurelius; the dendrochronological
records fall in the period between 159 and 172. An impressive number of
sixteen building inscriptions have been found from Aalen, all datable
to the Severan dynasty. The fort was operational until the middle of the
3rd century and evidence from coins indicates that the fort was
destroyed following the reign of Aemilian, in the years after 253/254,
although there have been two disputable coins issued under Emperors Valerian and Gallienus that have also been found.
Part
of the Roman fort has been incorporated in the town cemetery in which
is located St. Johann's Church, one of Aalen's oldest buildings, dating
back to the 13th century. Located directly in front of the former porta praetoria, the main gate of a Roman camp, the Roman stone
blocks which were reused at the time to build it can be clearly seen in
the area of the foundation. The excavation in 1997 whose preserved
remains are shown here and from the same spot today offer valuable insights
into the history of Aalen in the early Middle Ages. For example, it was
discovered that the church was not the oldest building in this
location. The articles found date back to the seventh and eighth
centuries. It appears that around this time, directly on the road in
front of the former main gate of the garrison, a residential building or
an early monastery cell was located here. The oldest parts of the
buildings 1 and 2 belong to this era as well as a number of graves
nearby which were excavated at the start of the 20th century. The
present-day church itself was built sometime around the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Work was carried out on Building 2 at the same
time, also using stones from the fortress as building material. On the
western corner there was a Roman inscription to the goddess Minerva
which is now in the Limes Museum.
Konstanz am Bodensee
During the war and today, little changed. Because it almost lies within
Switzerland, directly adjacent to the Swiss border, Konstanz was not
bombed by the Allied Forces during the war. The city left all its lights
on at night, thus fooling the bombers into thinking it was actually
part of Switzerland after the erroneous bombing of Schaffhausen on April 1, 1944. The
districts on the right bank of the Rhine, which are clearly separated
from Swiss areas by the Seerhein, continued to be darkened, but were not
attacked despite companies like Degussa and Stromeyer. As
early as 1933, SA men prevented visitors to Jewish shops and medical
practices from entering. Signs on benches, shops, inns and at the Horn
outdoor swimming pool excluded Jews from use and visiting. The
systematic persecution of the Jews began in 1935 with the Nuremberg
Laws. Jews then sold their residential and commercial buildings at low
value and emigrated. From 1938, "Aryanisation sales" were only possible
with state approval, after the deportation in 1940 the property was
expropriated and auctioned. On
October 22, 1940, 110 Jews from Constance were deported to the Gurs
concentration camp in southern France, the last eight to Riga, Izbica
and Theresienstadt from 1941 to 1944. A
Reich flight tax of 25% was levied. In the first arson attack on the
Konstanz synagogue in 1936, the building was saved by the volunteer fire
brigade. The damaged seven Torah scrolls were buried in the Jewish
cemetery. On the Reichskristallnacht the Konstanz synagogue was set on
fire by members of the Allgemeine ϟϟ, section XIX Konstanz, under ϟϟ
senior leader Walter Stein. The fire department was not allowed to fight
the fire this time. On the contrary, attempts were made to open the
synagogue's roof hatches in order to give the fire better traction. The
synagogue was then blown up by the ϟϟ disposal force III./ϟϟ standard
Germania from Radolfzell and sixteen male Jews were brought to the
Dachau concentration camp. A Jewish property tax was levied in 1938.
Until 1939, some families in Constance managed to escape to Switzerland,
British Palestine, England, the USA, Argentina and Asian countries. The
Swiss cantons of Lake Constance sealed themselves off. 433 Jews lived
in Constance in 1933, 120 in 1940. On the evening of November 8, 1939,
Georg Elser was arrested in Constance when he tried to flee to
Switzerland after having previously placed a bomb in Munich to kill
Adolf Hitler. Jews, prisoners of war, forced labourers and German
deserters attempted to flee the Saubach. Escaping by jumping over the
Saubach was possible until 1938. From the end of 1939, a border fence
was erected on the Swiss side from Kreuzlinger Zoll to the Wiesenstrasse
crossing and from the railway line to the lake to prevent refugees.
Weingarten
The Basilica of St. Martin and Oswald. During Nazi Germany Weingarten
was incorporated into Ravensburg; after the war, the rival cities were
separated again.
Schloss Sigmaringen
Following
the Anglo-American liberation of France, the French Regime was moved from
France into Schloss Sigmaringen. The princely family was forced by the
Gestapo out of the castle and moved to Schloss Wilflingen. The French
authors Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Lucien Rebatet, who had written
political and anti-semitic works, fled to
Sigmaringen with the Vichy government. Céline's 1957 novel D'un château
l'autre, describes the end of the war and the fall of Sigmaringen on April 22, 1945 and was made into a German movie in 2006, called Die Finsternis. Relocated to
Sigmaringen in the summer of 1944, the Vichy government no
longer had any relevance. On September 7, fleeing the advance of the Allied troops in France whilst
Germany was in flames and the Vichy regime no longer existed, a
thousand French collaborators (including an hundred officials, a few
hundred members of the French militia and militants of the
collaborationist parties and the editorial staff of the journal Je suis partout), came here. Pétain and Laval were led away according to what they said had been
"against their will" by the Germans in their retreat in August 1944 and
resided there until April 1945. The government commission, chaired by
Fernand de Brinon and supposed to incarnate the continuity of the
Vichy regime, was formed, composed of former members of the Vichy
governments, but some who followed Petain to Sigmaringen refused to
participate. Visitors were
even obliged to present a piece of identification, since they were
entering French territory. This "Sigmaringen government" lasted until
April 1945. Petain, his suite, and his ministers, though on "strike," lodged in the castle whilst the rest were housed in schools and gymnasiums, transformed into dormitories, and in the few guest rooms and
hotels in the city, such as the Bären or Löwen, which received the most
prestigious guests, including the writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline in the
book D'un château l'autre. The exiles in the city's shanty houses were
hardly able to live in summer, but especially in the winter under the
rumbling of Anglo-American bombs and an intense cold which reached -30°C in December 1944. On the approach of the Allies in April 1945, most of them
exiled themselves: Petain was taken by the Germans in a fashion to the
Swiss border, Laval fled to Spain, Brinon took refuge in the
surroundings of Innsbruck, whilst others found refuge in Northern Italy.
Postwar, some 10,000 French were executed for collaboration with the Germans, including Laval. Pétain, stripped of his rank, was condemned to death, but de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life in prison. Despite de Gaulle’s ridiculous efforts to cast France during the war as a nation of resisters, the four-year-long Vichy regime left a legacy of shame and controversy that still shames France today.
Following
the Anglo-American liberation of France, the French Regime was moved from
France into Schloss Sigmaringen. The princely family was forced by the
Gestapo out of the castle and moved to Schloss Wilflingen. The French
authors Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Lucien Rebatet, who had written
political and anti-semitic works, fled to
Sigmaringen with the Vichy government. Céline's 1957 novel D'un château
l'autre, describes the end of the war and the fall of Sigmaringen on April 22, 1945 and was made into a German movie in 2006, called Die Finsternis. Relocated to
Sigmaringen in the summer of 1944, the Vichy government no
longer had any relevance. On September 7, fleeing the advance of the Allied troops in France whilst
Germany was in flames and the Vichy regime no longer existed, a
thousand French collaborators (including an hundred officials, a few
hundred members of the French militia and militants of the
collaborationist parties and the editorial staff of the journal Je suis partout), came here. Pétain and Laval were led away according to what they said had been
"against their will" by the Germans in their retreat in August 1944 and
resided there until April 1945. The government commission, chaired by
Fernand de Brinon and supposed to incarnate the continuity of the
Vichy regime, was formed, composed of former members of the Vichy
governments, but some who followed Petain to Sigmaringen refused to
participate. Visitors were
even obliged to present a piece of identification, since they were
entering French territory. This "Sigmaringen government" lasted until
April 1945. Petain, his suite, and his ministers, though on "strike," lodged in the castle whilst the rest were housed in schools and gymnasiums, transformed into dormitories, and in the few guest rooms and
hotels in the city, such as the Bären or Löwen, which received the most
prestigious guests, including the writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline in the
book D'un château l'autre. The exiles in the city's shanty houses were
hardly able to live in summer, but especially in the winter under the
rumbling of Anglo-American bombs and an intense cold which reached -30°C in December 1944. On the approach of the Allies in April 1945, most of them
exiled themselves: Petain was taken by the Germans in a fashion to the
Swiss border, Laval fled to Spain, Brinon took refuge in the
surroundings of Innsbruck, whilst others found refuge in Northern Italy.Postwar, some 10,000 French were executed for collaboration with the Germans, including Laval. Pétain, stripped of his rank, was condemned to death, but de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life in prison. Despite de Gaulle’s ridiculous efforts to cast France during the war as a nation of resisters, the four-year-long Vichy regime left a legacy of shame and controversy that still shames France today.
Ravensburg
Irving
in Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (30) writes how Goebbels played "the huge cathedral organ" in the cathedral shown in the
background in 1918 for two other students he had travelled the area
with. During the war, Ravensburg was strategically of no relevance.
Ravensburg did not harbour any noteworthy arms industry (unlike nearby
Friedrichshafen with its large aircraft industry), but was home to a big
aid supplies centre belonging to the Swiss Red Cross; so no air raid
destroyed the historic city centre. During
the Nazi era 691 patients from the Weißenau psychiatric clinic were
murdered as victims of "euthanasia." The Sinti resident in the city were
first interned in the Gypsy Forced Labour Camp, thirty-six Sinti were
deported in 1943 with 29 of them murdered in Auschwitz. The few Jews who
had settled in Ravensburg had been forced to flee with some murdered as
victims of the Holocaust.
The town hall then and now, with Nazi functionaries in front of the entrance in 1938 and today
Nazis
intimidating those thinking of shopping at the Jewish-owned Kaufhaus
Landauer, and stolperstein at the site today, remembering the murdered
Landauers.
Böblingen
Flughafen
Böblingen. On April 9, 1932 Hitler spoke at this airport that was later
used by the USAAF after the war. Some buildings remain, on the right is
the reception building dating from 1925. During the First World War, the Böblingen military airfield was inaugurated on August
16, 1915. Subsequently, it was of decisive importance for the further
development of the town that Böblingen became the seat of the
Landesflughafen for Württemberg in 1925 making Böblingen the "Brücke zur
Welt" (bridge to the world).
At the end of the airfield, Böschinger aviation pioneer Hanns Klemm set
up his company "Leichtflugzeugbau Klemm" at the end of 1926. Until the
war, this became the most important industrial city in the region.
The St. Dionysius church in 1943 and today. The air attack by Allied air forces in the night of October
7-8 1943 destroyed most of the old town with the town church, the castle and
the town hall. There were many dead and injured. Through this and other
bombings, about 40 per cent of the built-up area had been destroyed
during warfare and nearly 2,000 people were homeless.
Hardheim
The schlossplatz in front of what is now the Erfatal-Museum
Ludwigsburg
The courtyard in use by the Wehrmacht and today. In 1921, Ludwigsburg became the largest garrison in southwest Germany.
The synagogue in the town was destroyed by the Nazis during Reichskristallnacht,
the pogrom of November 1938. Two years later the Nazi propaganda film,
Jud Süß, was filmed in Ludwigsburg. The film was based on a historical
figure, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, who was executed in Stuttgart in 1738;
Oppenheimer lived in Ludwigsburg.
During the war, the city suffered moderate damage compared to other German cities. There were 1500 deaths. It was the home of the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag V-A from October 1939 till April 1945. After the war, there was a large displaced persons camp which housed several thousand mainly Polish displaced persons until about 1948. After 1945 until the middle of 1946, there was also an allied internment camp for war criminals in Ludwigsburg and the American Army maintained the Pattonville barracks on the edge of town, large enough to have its own American high school. The land was returned to Germany in 1994.
Freistett
During the war, the city suffered moderate damage compared to other German cities. There were 1500 deaths. It was the home of the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag V-A from October 1939 till April 1945. After the war, there was a large displaced persons camp which housed several thousand mainly Polish displaced persons until about 1948. After 1945 until the middle of 1946, there was also an allied internment camp for war criminals in Ludwigsburg and the American Army maintained the Pattonville barracks on the edge of town, large enough to have its own American high school. The land was returned to Germany in 1994.
Freistett
The memorial to the Franco-Prussian War remains between the town hall and the church
The rathaus at the turn of the century and today, appearing as it did when redesigned in 1933/34.
The
former site of the town's Jewish cemetery; the last burial had been of
Gustav Bloch from nearby Rheinbischofsheim in 1939. Due to declining
membership, the Jewish communities in Freistett and Rheinbischofsheim
were combined in June 1935 and the synagogue attended Freistetter Jews
was henceforth in Rheinbischofsheim. The synagogue in Rheinbischofsheim
was finally demolished in 1953.
Schloß Kapfenburg
During the time the castle served as a Gauschule, which was a training centre for local government employees, in this case for the NSV (NS-Volkswohlfahrt, the Nazi welfare organisation).
Waldhilsbach
The Gasthaus zum Röss'l sporting
the Nazi flag during the war and today. It's still in operation on
Heidelberger Straße 15 with its thirteen rooms. Waldhilsbach was,
already before war, a commuter community, as the agricultural land of
the district and the forest work in the Heidelberg city forest did not
provide a sufficient agricultural livelihood. This development continued
after the war, when the community received around 200
refugees, many of whom settled here. Since the end of the 1950s,
agriculture no longer had any economic significance. The economic
development was hampered by the unfavourable traffic conditions and the
cramped conditions in the district but given its location on the
southeastern slope of Königstuhlscholle on the southern edge of the
Buntsandsteinodenwald, surrounded by idyllic fields and meadows with
numerous fruit trees, it's become a notable tourist hub.
Bräunlingen
The stadttor on the former Robert Wagner Straße, named after the
Gauleiter of Baden. The SA was established in Bräunlingen in 1931.
During the Nazi era the Jewish-owned Kaufhaus Zimmt on Blaumeerstraße 13
was increasingly boycotted. To keep some customers, Fritz Zimmt
hanged up a sign reading "Entrance also from behind". On the street in
front of the Zimmt department store was scrawled 'The Jews are our
misfortune'. A few younger workers of the Ortsgruppenleiter attacked Zimmt in the Hasenfratz
hairdressing salon leaving him beaten with his teeth knocked out. The
local newspaper would report how the shop, "which was temporarily owned
by the Jews, has now received another Aryan successor." Zimmt fled,
before which he had hoped to entrust his dog to the neighbours, going so
far as paying the dog tax two years in advance only to have his dog
eventually shot. On February 18, 1939, he and his family first travelled
to Genoa, then by ship to Shanghai. Fritz Zimmt died in 1945.
In
July 1940 Robert Wagner, now in charge of Alsace, and Josef Bürckel,
Gauleiter of the Saar-Palatinate and Chief of the Civil Administration
in Lorraine, both pressed Hitler to allow the expulsion westwards into
Vichy France of the Jews from their domains. Hitler gave his approval.
Some 3,000 Jews were deported that month from Alsace into the unoccupied
zone of France. In October, following a further meeting with the two
Gauleiter, a total of 6,504 Jews were sent to France in nine trainloads,
without any prior consultation with the French authorities, who
appeared to have in mind their further deportation to Madagascar as soon
as the sea-passage was secure.
Lörrach
Café Binoth, now the Drei König, on the former Adolf Hitler Straße. Early during the period of
the Weimar Republic, there was growing social unrest in Lörrach
starting on the 14th of September, 1923 which left three dead, many
injured, and several examples of hostage abuse. The economic slump also
led to the authorities and the administration being unable to carry out
urgent construction projects. It was around this time the Nazis grew in
support. The Nazi Party in Lörrach had existed since 1922. However,
during the 1920s the Weimar Republic was rather difficult to gain a
foothold, although there was also anti-parliamentary propaganda in
Lörrach with the German nationalist journal Der Markgräfler run
by Hermann Burte. After the Nazi seizure of power, Reinhard Boos was
appointed mayor of Lörrach in 1933. Boos, who built and strengthened the
Nazi party in Lörrach with great enthusiasm, subsequently taking part in the
defeat of the trade unions and the opposition parties. From 1938
onwards, Boos played a leading role in the actions against the Lörrach
Jews. During the November pogroms of 1938 several men gained access to
the synagogue and destroyed them. The destroyed Gotteshaus was then
demolished. Lorrach remained comparatively undamaged during the Second
World War thanks to the geographical distance to the fronts. On April
24, 1945, French troops occupied Lörrach, adding to its humiliation.
Amstetten
Amstetten
Adolf Hitlerplatz and today
Adolf-Hitler-Straße
in a Nazi-era postcard with the 13th century Obertorturm in the
background, and from the same site today. Eduard Mack had served as the
town's mayor from 1921–1933 when he was removed from office upon the Nazi seizure of power. According to the local newspaper Der Kinzigtäler from June 27 of that year
Mack had been taken into protective custody in the Offenburg gaol for
"inflammatory speeches against the NSDAP." He was replaced by Franz Geiger, a master tin maker and local group leader of the Gengenbach branch of the Nazi Party. He in turn was replaced by Nazi member Anton Hägele during the whole duration of the war.
Nagold
The
Hotel Post on Adolf Hitler Straße and today. Nagold was the home of
Emilie Christine (Christa) Schroeder, one of Adolf Hitler’s personal
secretaries before and during the war. Schroeder would
argue that she was never a Nazi but simply worked with Hitler. In 1945,
she was originally considered to be a war criminal but was later
reclassified as a collaborator and released days later, on May 12, 1948.
As early as 1924, Nagold was a Nazi base of support in which, according
to voting statistics, 19.4% of the population voted for the Nazis that
May. Comparatively, the Nazis captured just 6.5% of the vote nationwide,
and a mere 4.1% in Baden and Württemberg during the same election.
After the war, the town had the shame of falling within the French
occupation zone until 1947. Right-wing parties in Nagold have been
successful in the postwar period. In the state election in 1968 , the
candidate of the NPD was elected by the second count in the state
legislature. The NPD is possibly the party most aligned to the Nazis
today, and according to the Federal Constitutional Protection Report of
2012, the objectives of the NPD are "incompatible" with the democratic
and constitutional characteristics of the Basic Law due to their "anti-
pluralistic, exclusionary and anti-egalitarian characteristics." The
ideological positions of the party are "expressing a closed right-wing
extremist worldview." In addition, the candidate of the REP succeeded in
1992 and 1996 to collect on the second count in the state legislature.
Since 2007 however, the party is no longer listed in the constitution
protection report as being a right-wing extremist party.
Gengenbach
Bad Cannstatt
The Rosensteinbunker outside Stuttgart then and now. The town saw, as
with towns across Germany, egregious violence towards its Jewish
population. On January 28, 1936, the Stuttgart district court sentenced
the Jewish insurance official Edwin Spiro from Taubenheimstrasse 60/2 to
six months in prison after being charged with violating the "Law for
the Protection of German Blood and Honour", which stipulated in §2:
"Extramarital traffic between Jews and nationals of German or related
blood is prohibited." After the pogrom night in 1938, he was arrested
again with tens of thousands of other Jews and incarcerated in the
dreaded Welzheim concentration camp until January 31, 1939. The
synagogue in Cannstatt was set on fire by the head of the fire station,
two firefighters and some Nazis during Reichskristalnacht. On that night
of November 9, 1938, Ida Carlebach from Dürrheimer Straße 5 and her
eleven-year-old neighbour Margarete Carle witnessed the fire at the
Cannstatt synagogue. Margarete Carle reported that her father came to
the children's room with the call "Children are on fire!" From where
they were, the flaming synagogue on König-Karl-Straße was easy to
observe. In fact, the sparks flew almost towards the house. With the
synagogue's destruction, Ida Carlebach committed suicide on November 27,
1938 and her house became 'aryanised' in March 1939.
Hechingen
Located
37 miles south of Stuttgart, during the start of Nazi rule most of the
businesses in Hechingen were in Jewish hands and were closed or
'aryanised'. Much of the architecture of the city was destroyed or
damaged by Nazi attempts to build air raid shelters in public buildings.
Here is St. Johnnes Kirche, from an 1880 engraving and today.
The rathaus, shown here in 1940 and today, was so damaged that it had to be destroyed.
Marktplatz then and now
Many
industries, including DEHOMAG, a predecessor of IBM, were relocated to
Hechingen from damaged areas of Germany, such as Berlin. Parts of the
Kaiser Wilhelm Society were also relocated there. In April 1945,
American troops entered Hechingen and took over the atomic research
laboratory and nuclear reactor. Many of the physicists were interned in
Farm Hall in England and tried over the following years. Many of the
scientists went on to have successful postwar careers for instance; on
15 November 1945 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that
Otto Hahn had been awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his
discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei."
Above all, a few municipalities came to the Kreis area on the Fildern (formerly Amtsoberamt Stuttgart) and in the Schurwald. In the Reichspogromnacht (more commonly known as Kristallnacht) the Esslinger Synagogue was desecrated. Jewish citizens were deported to the East for extermination. The "Israelitische Orphanage and Educational Institution Wilhelmspflege" was demolished in 1939 and converted into a plaque commemorating the plague. The last Jewish home director Theodor Rothschild was murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944. Some of Esslingen's victims of the Nazis are now commemorated as elsewhere in German towns by Stolpersteine. On April 22, 1945, Esslingen was occupied by American soldiers. During the war, sixty houses were completely destroyed in Esslingen, seventy five heavily damaged, 260 were moderately damaged, and 1236 slightly damaged.
.gif)
Spent
a night in this cheerless, dilapidated town (there are no less than
five kebab shops on a single street but no German rstaurants anywhere)
finding to no surprise as seen in these GIFs that 95% of the town centre
had been destroyed by wartime bombing.
For comparison, other Württemberg cities that had suffered from heavy
air raids and ground fighting were significantly less damaged such as Stuttgart (35% damaged) or Heilbronn
(57%). In the 1930s, the Luftwaffe built an airfield in the west of the city. During the war, the airfield and railway were the target of Anglo-American air raids from 1944 onwards. After the city had already been captured by the Americans in early April 1945, German counterattacks during the Battle of Crailsheim of April 5 to April 21 forced the Americans to retreat once again. On the morning of April 5, the 10th American Panzer Division began its planned breakthrough attempt and approached Crailsheim on April 6. By 17.00 American tanks drove into the city without resistance. .gif)
The defenders were surprised by the rapid advance, so that the tank barriers at the entrance to the city were closed but not manned. The air base crew and the local military withdrew from the city after minor skirmishes, and the Volkssturm went home. A few white flags were found on houses, so the Americans took the town almost without resistance. However, two days later ϟϟ units from Ellwangen two regiments of mountain infantry, and a smoke-thrower brigade attacked the town in an attempt to recapture it. In the process, the town came under mortar fire leaving the town center badly hit with fires destroying many houses. On April 9 and 10, German infantry attacked the American armoured unit stationed in Crailsheim from the south, east, and northeast. Although the American attempt to break through in the direction of Backnang failed, their troops were initially able to hold their ground in Crailsheim. Nevertheless, German units managed to significantly disrupt the American supply lines, and continuous attacks on the supply line on the Kaiserstrasse by mobile tank destroyers even made air support necessary resulting in the Americans finding themselves surrounded in the town itself. .gif)
Crailsheim, where there had once again been very hard fighting, was later nicknamed Little Bastogne by the American soldiers, a reference to the bitter fighting in the Belgian town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. Jet-powered fighter-bombers of the type Messerschmitt Me 262 also repeatedly attacked the air base, now used by the Americans, with on-board weapons and rockets. Finally, on April 11, the Americans decided to retreat towards Bad Mergentheim. This retreat is considered the only major failure of the invading army during its final offensive against Germany east of the Rhine and the victory of the Wehrmacht and the ϟϟ was exploited for propaganda purposes in a time when there was little positive news for the Nazi rulers. The Wehrmacht report mentioned the Battle of Crailsheim, and Joseph Goebbels also wrote about the success in his diary - he even mentioned the recapture of individual villages. Motivated by the recapture, thirteen tank barriers were erected in the town, anti-tank ditches were dug, and anti-tank grenades were issued to the Volkssturm. The commander of the XIII ϟϟ Army Corps, ϟϟ Group Leader Max Simon, described as one of the "worst Nazi generals of endurance," had Crailsheim unofficially declared a fortress and personally ordered the defence. Anyone who dared to contradict him had to expect death, as was made clear by an incident that took place in the nearby village of Brettheim where Simon had Mayor Gackstatter, the Nazi local group leader, and a farmer executed for alleged treason. The three had disarmed Hitler Youth who wanted to resist the American tanks and had thrown their anti-tank grenades into the village pond. When the Americans withdrew, the ϟϟ troops from Schillingsfürst came and, on Simon's orders, hanged the three people on the cemetery's linden trees. So deterred, no one offered any resistance to the planned defence of Crailsheim. .gif)
On April 20 in time for Hitler's birthday,the Americans were again stationed in front of Crailsheim. After bombardments and artillery fire, they tried to persuade the garrison of Crailsheim to surrender although by now only about 600 residents were still present with the majority of the approximately 10,000 residents having fled to the surrounding villages, and Mayor Fröhlich hiding in Rechenberg Castle. The part of the population that was still in the city sat in intimidated cellars and was afraid of the ϟϟ, who were still in the city. After the Americans were unable to establish contact in Crailsheim for handover treatment, they continued the artillery bombardment with phosphorus shells. The defenders slowly withdrew as the bombardment began and moved towards Ellwangen. The bombardment of the city continued until the early hours of April 21, and around midday the Yanks marched into the rubble. as several important buildings in the town centre including the castle and large parts of the city fortifications burned with no one attempting to put out the flames. Hundreds were killed in the last weeks of the war with only St. John's Church in the southern old town surviving the firestorm relatively unscathed, along with some surrounding buildings.
.gif)
In front of the new town hall building, inaugurated in 1954. Of the historic buildings that survived or were rebuilt after the war, the Liebfrauenkapelle, consecrated in 1393, standing beside the town hall, the Johanneskirche (built between 1398 and 1440), the Spital zum Heiligen Geist from 1400 and the 57.5 metre high town hall tower were preserved. Despite claims on the information board on the town hall tower describing it as the "highest Reformation monument in the world," there is in fact no historical evidence that the tower was built to mark the 200th anniversary of the Reformation.
The Rosensteinbunker outside Stuttgart then and now. The town saw, as
with towns across Germany, egregious violence towards its Jewish
population. On January 28, 1936, the Stuttgart district court sentenced
the Jewish insurance official Edwin Spiro from Taubenheimstrasse 60/2 to
six months in prison after being charged with violating the "Law for
the Protection of German Blood and Honour", which stipulated in §2:
"Extramarital traffic between Jews and nationals of German or related
blood is prohibited." After the pogrom night in 1938, he was arrested
again with tens of thousands of other Jews and incarcerated in the
dreaded Welzheim concentration camp until January 31, 1939. The
synagogue in Cannstatt was set on fire by the head of the fire station,
two firefighters and some Nazis during Reichskristalnacht. On that night
of November 9, 1938, Ida Carlebach from Dürrheimer Straße 5 and her
eleven-year-old neighbour Margarete Carle witnessed the fire at the
Cannstatt synagogue. Margarete Carle reported that her father came to
the children's room with the call "Children are on fire!" From where
they were, the flaming synagogue on König-Karl-Straße was easy to
observe. In fact, the sparks flew almost towards the house. With the
synagogue's destruction, Ida Carlebach committed suicide on November 27,
1938 and her house became 'aryanised' in March 1939. 
The
Nazi flag flying in front of Schloss Rosenstein when it served as a war
museum during the Nazi era. After its destruction during the war in
1944, the castle was rebuilt in 1955-1956 and turned into a museum for
natural science. Between 1990 and 1992, the building was renovated and
adapted to the requirements of a modern museum.
Hechingen
Adolf-Hitler-Platz, now Obertorplatz
The rathaus, shown here in 1940 and today, was so damaged that it had to be destroyed.
Marktplatz then and now 
The
town has completely restored its nineteenth-century synagogue, shown
here in 1937 and today. As recently as June, 2018 the Jewish cemetery
which had only been reopened after considerable refurbishment was targetted by vandals.
Perpetrators knocked over and destroyed one tombstone whilst throwing a
second, smaller tombstone over the newly renovated cemetery wall,
damaging it. Unlike previous attacks- the last attacked a quarter century earlier- there had been no right-wing
extremist graffiti found although Michael Kashi, a board member of the
Jewish community in Württemberg which owns the cemetery, says one does
not need swastikas to identify targeted anti-Semitism. "You can see that
someone did this on purpose. Unfortunately, we experience this again
and again and everywhere." The town mayor, Philipp Hahn, stated how
"awareness of the Jewish past in Hechingen is important to me and to the
local council. Such vandalism is loathsome." The desecration had been
discovered on Saturday by employees of the specialist company Kiris-Bau
from Freudenstadt, which was renovating the crumbling surrounding wall
on behalf of the city of Hechingen. The Jewish community, which was
informed by the city, immediately filed a complaint with the Hechingen
police against unknown persons - even if Michael Kashi's hope that the
perpetrators would be caught is rather low. "A few months ago the facade
of the synagogue in Ulm was damaged. There is even video surveillance
there, and yet the crime has not yet been solved."
Obertürkheim
Just outside Stuttgart is the Gasthaus Ochsen shown here sporting Nazi flags and today, in the centre of Obertürkheim.
Künzelsau
 |
| Oberen Marktplatz with Nazi flags and today |
There had been a Jewish community here since the 14th century; by 1933 there were still 65 Jews living in the town. Anti-Jewish riots broke out in the city as early as March 1933 when, on the 20th, SA men under the leadership of SA Standartenführer Klein from Heilbronn carried out a "weapons search" among Jewish citizens and opponents of the Nazi regime. Jewish teacher Julius Goldstein, who would manage to emigrate to the United States with his wife and two children in 1939, was dragged to the town hall by SA men and was so abused that the iron synagogue key he was carrying in his pocket broke in two. The head of the Jewish community, businessman Max Ledermann, died of a heart attack whilst visiting Goldstein at the time. Another community member, David Furchheimer, committed suicide as a result of the incident. As the years went on due to the consequences of increasing disenfranchisement and the consequences of the economic boycott, some of the Jewish residents emigrated or moved from Künzelsau. The synagogue, dating from 1907, was destroyed during the Kristallnacht as the last of the Jewish shops were either closed or 'aryanised'. Until the final deportations in 1941 and 1942, the Jews still living in the town were forced into a few "Jewish houses" and were used for forced labour, including in the city quarry. The Jewish community was dissolved on July 12, 1939. Whilst some of the town's Jews were able to emigrate, the majority were deported to the death camps with only the merchant Sigbert Baer surviving the Nazi era.
Esslingen
Adolf-Hitler-Platz, now Rathausplatz during the Christmas market. The eagle-adorned war memorial from the First World War remains in place. On November 9, 1918, the day the Kaiser was forced to abdicate and the country became a Republic, workers' demonstrations were held. A Workers 'and Soldiers' Council was elected. In 1919 communist workers took over the city. A military intervention from the Stuttgart government cost sixteen people's lives and forced the return to rest. As early as 1922 a branch of the Nazi party was formed here. In 1933 the town council of Esslingen was dissolved by the Nazis in the course of the so-called co-operation. In 1935, Esslingen am Neckar was declared a "city district" on the basis of the German municipal regulation. In the course of the administrative reform, the former Oberamt Esslingen was transferred to the Landkreis Esslingen in 1938 and extended by a number of areas.
Above all, a few municipalities came to the Kreis area on the Fildern (formerly Amtsoberamt Stuttgart) and in the Schurwald. In the Reichspogromnacht (more commonly known as Kristallnacht) the Esslinger Synagogue was desecrated. Jewish citizens were deported to the East for extermination. The "Israelitische Orphanage and Educational Institution Wilhelmspflege" was demolished in 1939 and converted into a plaque commemorating the plague. The last Jewish home director Theodor Rothschild was murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944. Some of Esslingen's victims of the Nazis are now commemorated as elsewhere in German towns by Stolpersteine. On April 22, 1945, Esslingen was occupied by American soldiers. During the war, sixty houses were completely destroyed in Esslingen, seventy five heavily damaged, 260 were moderately damaged, and 1236 slightly damaged. The Gypsy is and remains a parasite on the people who supports himself almost exclusively by begging and stealing. . . The Gypsy can never be educated to become a useful person. For this reason it is necessary that the Gypsy tribe be exterminated . . . by way of sterilisation or castration.—Esslingen Chief of police in letter to the chief administrative officer, 1937
Crailsheim
.gif)
Spent
a night in this cheerless, dilapidated town (there are no less than
five kebab shops on a single street but no German rstaurants anywhere)
finding to no surprise as seen in these GIFs that 95% of the town centre
had been destroyed by wartime bombing.
For comparison, other Württemberg cities that had suffered from heavy
air raids and ground fighting were significantly less damaged such as Stuttgart (35% damaged) or Heilbronn
(57%). In the 1930s, the Luftwaffe built an airfield in the west of the city. During the war, the airfield and railway were the target of Anglo-American air raids from 1944 onwards. After the city had already been captured by the Americans in early April 1945, German counterattacks during the Battle of Crailsheim of April 5 to April 21 forced the Americans to retreat once again. On the morning of April 5, the 10th American Panzer Division began its planned breakthrough attempt and approached Crailsheim on April 6. By 17.00 American tanks drove into the city without resistance. .gif)
The defenders were surprised by the rapid advance, so that the tank barriers at the entrance to the city were closed but not manned. The air base crew and the local military withdrew from the city after minor skirmishes, and the Volkssturm went home. A few white flags were found on houses, so the Americans took the town almost without resistance. However, two days later ϟϟ units from Ellwangen two regiments of mountain infantry, and a smoke-thrower brigade attacked the town in an attempt to recapture it. In the process, the town came under mortar fire leaving the town center badly hit with fires destroying many houses. On April 9 and 10, German infantry attacked the American armoured unit stationed in Crailsheim from the south, east, and northeast. Although the American attempt to break through in the direction of Backnang failed, their troops were initially able to hold their ground in Crailsheim. Nevertheless, German units managed to significantly disrupt the American supply lines, and continuous attacks on the supply line on the Kaiserstrasse by mobile tank destroyers even made air support necessary resulting in the Americans finding themselves surrounded in the town itself. .gif)
Crailsheim, where there had once again been very hard fighting, was later nicknamed Little Bastogne by the American soldiers, a reference to the bitter fighting in the Belgian town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. Jet-powered fighter-bombers of the type Messerschmitt Me 262 also repeatedly attacked the air base, now used by the Americans, with on-board weapons and rockets. Finally, on April 11, the Americans decided to retreat towards Bad Mergentheim. This retreat is considered the only major failure of the invading army during its final offensive against Germany east of the Rhine and the victory of the Wehrmacht and the ϟϟ was exploited for propaganda purposes in a time when there was little positive news for the Nazi rulers. The Wehrmacht report mentioned the Battle of Crailsheim, and Joseph Goebbels also wrote about the success in his diary - he even mentioned the recapture of individual villages. Motivated by the recapture, thirteen tank barriers were erected in the town, anti-tank ditches were dug, and anti-tank grenades were issued to the Volkssturm. The commander of the XIII ϟϟ Army Corps, ϟϟ Group Leader Max Simon, described as one of the "worst Nazi generals of endurance," had Crailsheim unofficially declared a fortress and personally ordered the defence. Anyone who dared to contradict him had to expect death, as was made clear by an incident that took place in the nearby village of Brettheim where Simon had Mayor Gackstatter, the Nazi local group leader, and a farmer executed for alleged treason. The three had disarmed Hitler Youth who wanted to resist the American tanks and had thrown their anti-tank grenades into the village pond. When the Americans withdrew, the ϟϟ troops from Schillingsfürst came and, on Simon's orders, hanged the three people on the cemetery's linden trees. So deterred, no one offered any resistance to the planned defence of Crailsheim. .gif)
On April 20 in time for Hitler's birthday,the Americans were again stationed in front of Crailsheim. After bombardments and artillery fire, they tried to persuade the garrison of Crailsheim to surrender although by now only about 600 residents were still present with the majority of the approximately 10,000 residents having fled to the surrounding villages, and Mayor Fröhlich hiding in Rechenberg Castle. The part of the population that was still in the city sat in intimidated cellars and was afraid of the ϟϟ, who were still in the city. After the Americans were unable to establish contact in Crailsheim for handover treatment, they continued the artillery bombardment with phosphorus shells. The defenders slowly withdrew as the bombardment began and moved towards Ellwangen. The bombardment of the city continued until the early hours of April 21, and around midday the Yanks marched into the rubble. as several important buildings in the town centre including the castle and large parts of the city fortifications burned with no one attempting to put out the flames. Hundreds were killed in the last weeks of the war with only St. John's Church in the southern old town surviving the firestorm relatively unscathed, along with some surrounding buildings. Of the town's 1,799 buildings, 444 of them were totally destroyed and 192 severely damaged. Two thirds of its houses were either usable for residential purposes or only to a limited extent. According to the two planners who were mainly responsible for the town's reconstruction, building councillor Gustav Schleicher and Ludwig Schweizer, “[t]he city centre offered the image of a single ruin.” .gif)
.gif)
One
indication of the destruction of Crailsheim culture and architecture is
seen here from a postcard from the Nazi era of Schlossplatz; today all
that remains is the name itself. Built around 1400, the schloss was
completely destroyed in April 1945 during the war and subsequently
demolished.
After the war, Crailsheim wasn't rebuilt according to historical models like in Munich, but as part of a general plan based on the then modern concepts; the cityscape was changed significantly. From the very beginning it was clear that the new town couldn't be a copy of the destroyed Alt-Crailsheim, one in the core mediæval town with narrow streets and densely groups of houses moved together. The implementation of the new street development plan meant that not all ruined properties could be rebuilt in the old square. About fifty owners of the ruins had to be resettled to loosen up the town centre, primarily the owners of farms and non-commercial private individuals.
.gif)
Beside the white shell limestone stele on Adam-Weiß-Straße commemorating the site of the former synagogue. Jews in Crailsheim are first mentioned as victims of the Black Death persecutions of 1348-49 and from 1540 were subjected to severe disabilities until their presumed expulsion in 1560. By the time the Nazis took power, 160 Jewish residents were counted which amounted to 2.5% of Crailsheim's 6,444 residents. In July 1939, the Jewish community was dissolved. The last Jewish residents of Crailsheim were deported in 1941-42. During Kristallnacht the synagogue's interior was destroyed but, because of the dense development of the area, the building itself wasn't set on fire and so remained standing although its windows were smashed. Jewish
men were arrested and deported to the Dachau concentration camp; among them
Berthold Stein was murdered there as a result of torture. About an hundred Jewish were able to emigrate although 29 perished after expulsion to the east in late 1941 and 1942 with another 26 murdered locally. In 1942, it was converted into accommodation for forced labourers but was eventually destroyed during the Anglo-American bombing in 1945. This memorial plaque at the former location commemorates the synagogue. In the city museum, a brass pendant, a tin wick holder and a blanket are still available from the former synagogue. The Federal Archives' memorial book for the victims of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany (1933–1945) lists the names of 52 Jewish residents of Crailsheim who were deported and mostly murdered. Yad Vashem 's Central Database of the Names of Holocaust Victims lists the names of 45 Jewish citizens who lived in Crailsheim before the war and who were subsequently murdered.
At the memorial for Hans Scholl and Eugen Grimminger, both of whom were born in Crailsheim and who supported the White Rose group resisting against dictatorship, racism and war. Costing 70,000 euros, the outside of the monument are made of safety glass and are fixed on an aluminium frame. The dynamic element on the north side shown on the left consists of a changing picture with the word 'Freiheit', taken from the last exclamation of Hans Scholl before his execution. The image changes depending on the location of the viewer and is framed by the text of the fifth leaflet of the White Rose. On the south side shown on the right, a gilded shell attached behind the glass pane begins to glow depending on the time of day and sunlight flanked by portraits and short information about Scholl and Grimminger. A week after Scholl's execution the Gestapo arrested Grimminger, bringing him to Munich where he was interrogated and forced to admit that he had given 500 Reichsmarks to the White Rose which was enough for the prosecutor to demand the death sentence. He was saved by his secretary Tilly Hahn who convinced the court that her boss had believed that the money was supporting needy soldiers. Instead, he was sentenced to ten years in jail, which he spent in a prison in Ludwigsburg. His wife however was arrested and murdered in Auschwitz. In the nearby Geschwister-Scholl-Schule there is a Scholl-Grimminger room with furniture from the Scholl family's apartment on Ulmer Münsterplatz and from the possession of Eugen Grimminger and his Jewish wife Jenny, née Stern, who was murdered. In the Crailsheim town hall a display case was set up with changing exhibits relating to the Scholl siblings and Eugen Grimminger.
