One asks oneself, should something really perish, which has made world history for 2,000 years? One must then come to the conviction that when man struggles for something in life, it is worth while to fight for the highest that exists, for his people. And this conviction must come into our conviction when, in a time of highest expression of power, a people consumes its strength in the internal fratricidal war. If, in a time of great revolutions, a people is no longer able to exert any external power, and if its power is consumed internally, it must be pushed back and lose its means of existence.It was in Offenburg during the Occupation of the Ruhr following the Great War that French troops had occupied Offenburg as it fell within the perimeter of the Kehl bridgehead. The French occupation forces entered the town in February 1923 and stayed until 1924, blocking any traffic on the Rhine Valley Railway between Offenburg and Appenweier. During the Second World War the civilian population was exposed to various restrictions, such as evacuation measures after the war in 1939 and against the end of 1945, due to its proximity to the French border. In addition, parts of the population were involved in work related to the construction of the West Wall. In the course of the Second World War, the railway facilities in the north-east of the city of Offenburg were repeatedly the target of attacks by the Allied air forces. The heaviest air attack that hit Offenburg on November 27, 1944 was Operation 727 of the USAAF. On April 15, 1945, the town suffered the humiliation of French troops marching into the city from the north and taking over the military and administrative force.
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If we now follow German history, we can say one thing: political power always means prosperous economic periods, whereas political decay means periods of economic ruin. If we continue to pursue what is characteristic of such periods of political decay, we can always state that in such periods the people did not turn their inherent power outwards, but that internal conflicts led to the consumption of these forces, but always vice versa then, when this inner energy consumption returns, the German nation has stood extremely powerfully in the world. We can closely follow these two processes: external force - inner unity, inner disunity - external weakness.
Adolf-Hitler-Straße
The war memorial when it was on Platz der SA on Adolf-Hitler-Straße. Following Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s the Jewish population fell victim to acts of repression that in the pre-war era culminated in the vandalism of the local synagogue in November 1938. After the war had begun, those members of the Jewish population that had not managed to emigrate were deported in October 1940 to the concentration camp of Gurs and in 1942 from there to Auschwitz. At least from the beginning of the 19th century, Jewish families were resident in the city. The inn "Zum Salmen" was converted into a synagogue in 1875. In the course of the November pogroms, the synagogue and a Jewish café were devastated on November 10, 1938, and items from the synagogue, such as the Torah, were burned in front of the town hall. All adult male inhabitants of Jewish faith were arrested and deported to the Dachau concentration camp. Before that, they were driven to the station by members of the ϟϟ in a one-half-hour march, during which they were humbled and beaten. On October 22, 1940, the last German Jews living in Offenburg were deported to the Camp de Gurs as part of the Wagner-Bürckel campaign. This is reminiscent of a monument in Neckarzimmern as well as a memorial built in 1990 at the Jewish cemetery. In the cemetery is also a memorial, with which is reminded of victims of forced labour. Towards the end of the war, Gestapo officials committed murders in the Rammersweier Forest. On November 27, 1944, four French girls were hanged as was, a week later, eleven men who had attempted to evade forced recruitment. It is also thought of as a monument. Since there was no longer a Jewish community in Offenburg after the war, the supreme Jewish council of Baden sold the synagogue. The front building was demolished in 1955 and a residential and commercial building was built. Today a memorial erected in 1978 recalls the events.
The memorial to Sir Francis Drake by sculptor André Friedrich which, for eighty years graced the centre of Offenburg, was eventually destroyed in 1939 by the Nazis. On July 17, 1853, an
Alsatian sculptor named Andreas Friederich erected this statue
portraying the English explorer with his left hand holding a potato
plant. At the base of the statue it stated: “Sir Francis Drake,
introduced potatoes into Europe, in the year of our Lord 1586.” It was unveiled at the Town Hall, the first monument in the world erected in his honour; 86 years later it was destroyed by Nazi fanatics angered that the rathaus, now on Platz der SA, had a monument to a foreigner (who gave his name to my son). The landlord of the neighbouring Gasthaus Sonne saved Drake's stone hands that night and later donated them to the local museum, where they can be seen today.
The rathaus then with the statue and today
Hitlerjugend at the Kinzigdamm with the town church in the background
The Neues Krankenhaus Diakonie-Klinikum with swastikas and today
During the war, owing to the geographical proximity to the French border, Offenburg was either exposed to temporary evacuations during the Battle of France in 1940 or artillery fire towards the final stages of the war. Though only being a primary target on one occasion during the war on November 27, 1944 when a force of more than 300 USAAF B-17 and Liberator bombers attacked the marshalling yards, many tactical attacks were flown during 1944 and 1945 against the railway installations.
Schwäbisch Hall
Nazi eagle decorating a branch of Sparkasse.
In 1934, Hall was officially named Schwäbisch Hall. During the Third Reich a Luftwaffe air base was built at Hessental. During Reichskristallnacht on November 9 1938, local Nazis burned the synagogue in Steinbach and devastated shops and houses of Jewish citizens. Approximately forty Jewish citizens of Schwäbisch Hall fell victim to the Holocaust in extermination camps in Eastern Europe. In 1944 a concentration camp was established next to the train station Hall-Hessental. The train station at Hall was targeted by an American air raid on February 23, 1945, but the devastation was mostly limited to the suburbs of St. Katharina and Unterlimpurg. The town was occupied by American troops on April 17, 1945 without serious resistance; though several buildings were destroyed or damaged, the historical old town suffered comparatively little.
In 1934, Hall was officially named Schwäbisch Hall. During the Third Reich a Luftwaffe air base was built at Hessental. During Reichskristallnacht on November 9 1938, local Nazis burned the synagogue in Steinbach and devastated shops and houses of Jewish citizens. Approximately forty Jewish citizens of Schwäbisch Hall fell victim to the Holocaust in extermination camps in Eastern Europe. In 1944 a concentration camp was established next to the train station Hall-Hessental. The train station at Hall was targeted by an American air raid on February 23, 1945, but the devastation was mostly limited to the suburbs of St. Katharina and Unterlimpurg. The town was occupied by American troops on April 17, 1945 without serious resistance; though several buildings were destroyed or damaged, the historical old town suffered comparatively little.
The Neues Krankenhaus Diakonie-Klinikum with swastikas and today
Some tough nuts suspected of major war crimes were kept in the old penitentiary in the pretty town of Schwäbisch Hall near Stuttgart. Here prisoners were subjected to some particularly nasty forms of interrogation. Old boys included ϟϟ commanders Sepp Dietrich, Fritz Kraemer and Hermann Priess, all of whom denied issuing orders to shoot prisoners of war. Seventy-four ϟϟ men were finally arraigned for the massacre of American servicemen at Malmédy, but many of their confessions were subsequently withdrawn because they said they had been extracted under torture. One of the last to break was the cigar-chewing ϟϟ officer Jochen Peiper, who was suspected of being chiefly responsible for the massacre. The Americans had used methods similar to those employed by the ϟϟ in Dachau. ...The screams of the prisoners in Schwäbisch Hall could be heard throughout the little country town. The torturers were not all American: they included vengeful Polish guards like those mentioned by Salomon. The archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joseph Frings, kept a tally of reports of American brutality.MacDonogh (406) After the Reich
Mannheim
March 21, 1943 and today showing the Wasserturm and decked with Nazi flags
The
Nationaltheater just before its destruction in 1943 and today as it was
rebuilt in 1957 at Goethe Place rather than in the same location as the
original National Theatre, based on the designs of the architect
Gerhard Weber. On November 13, 2015 it premièred Hitler's "Mein Kampf" parts 1 and 2. It immediately raised the question of whether this book can be performed at all, because until today Hitler's hate speech is considered a badly written and confused treatise that was banned for decades by politics and the judiciary. This was made all the more an issue on January 1, 2016 when the rights of use to the book administered by the Free State of Bavaria ended. The play itself consisted of six performers inhabiting a bookshelf, each picking up Mein Kampf to read and analyse. One question raised in the play concerns what happened to the 12 million copies of Mein Kampf after 1945.
The Friedrich-List-Schule in 1941 and today. It
was here that Albert Speer was born and where, on December 9, 1945, in a
relatively trivial automobile accident near Mannheim, Patton sustained a
severe injury. His neck broken, the general was paralysed from the neck
down. Pulmonary oedema and congestive heart failure developed, and
George S. Patton Jr. died on December 21, 1945. During the Third Reich, at least 2,262 of Mannheim's Jews were despatched for extermination. Air raids on Mannheim almost completely destroyed the city during the Second World War. Since Mannheim was an important industrial centre for Nazi Germany, it was heavily damaged during aerial bombing by the RAF and USAAF. In addition to bombing the important factories, the RAF razed the city centre of Mannheim with night-time area bombing. Some sources state that the first deliberate so-called "terror bombing" of German civilians by the R.A.F. occurred at Mannheim on December 16, 1940. The Allied ground advance into Germany reached Mannheim in late March 1945, which was potentially well-defended by German forces, however, they suddenly abandoned the city and the U.S. 44th Infantry Division entered unopposed on March 29, 1945. To this day a large American military presence in the Mannheim area remains.
The former Zeughaus (armoury) sporting two Nazi flags during the war in front and today after having reopened in 2007 to house on its three floors various aspects of art and cultural history from the ancient to Mannheim's city history and modern photography.
The Rosengarten under construction in 1900 and today. Hitler spoke here in 1928 and on November 5, 1930 in the crowded Nibelungen Hall of the Rose Garden. In the latter occasion he spoke from 20.30 to 22.00 on the occasion of the forthcoming municipal, district and district elections in Baden. Roughly 7,000 were in the audience, concluding that
if all of Germany had the spirit of them (pointing to the SA), then today there would be no more bondage. That's essential! This is the courage that will one day take precedence, and the sentiment that once required greatness from those who fight and wrestle for this great one. And we National Socialists can proudly confess: The spirit of our movement, which is sustainable for a whole people! The spirit of our movement is suitable for the attainment of the freedom of the spiritual movement, also suitable for the bridging of the contrasts in which our people suffer so much within. And it must be ensured that the spirit of the movement will be the spirit of the German Reich. When this hour comes, a great unity will re-emerge in Germany, the nation will not quarrel over new flags and colour combinations, but from necessity will naturally raise a flag with a cross on a white background and a red field! This is then not imposed by the state laws of the nation like the present one, but it will rise because it was first carried by the Spirit, who called for freedom, and was carried forward before the armies that fought for Germany's freedom to have. Then this flag will blow, then the eagle with the wide wings will float again, and the cross of redemption and the cross of freedom will precede!
I remember stopping late in the evening in Mannheim [where] there was a stormy jostling all around [Hitler] and shouts of Heil. The masses rushed together around his window and grabbed for his hand. One lot of flowers after another rained down on him through the window, and there was no end to the enthusiastic celebration. He spoke with the people in simple, heart-felt words, always, asking if they were happy with him and his work. And the approval filled with thanks swelled up to the national hymn, which rang far and wide above and beyond the shining railway platform. It was the most genuine contact of a national leader with his nation which anyone can imagine. We experienced it. No one can persuade us otherwise, for we were his dumb eye and ear witnesses who were most deeply moved time and again.
H. Frank (209-11) Im angesicht des Galgens
Grillo Theater in 1941 and its current incarnation. The building was badly damaged in the Second World War and was restored with a much simpler façade and re-opened in 1950 with Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
The palace in 1938 bedecked in swastikas and today with my bike in the foreground, sporting the red ensign.
During the Third Reich, almost two thousand Mannheim Jews were deported. There were around 140 places in the city where forced labourers were housed, many in the vicinity of the large companies that employed forced labourers and prisoners of war during the war. In the district of Sandhofen there was a subcamp of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. Mannheim was almost completely destroyed during the war by the Anglo-American air raids. Soon after their invasion of Mannheim, the American troops faced the problem that there were at least 20,000 displaced persons, mostly Eastern European forced labourers, in the city. The history of DPs in Mannheim seems to have been little researched so far, apart from the essay by Christian Peters. In May 2020, Mannheim's Archive for City History and Memory announced a research and book project on Mannheim's migration history, within which the history of the DPs should also be discussed. In order to be able to supply them, the American military government set up a DP camp for the DPs from Mannheim and North Baden on March 30, 1945 in the Kaiser Wilhelm barracks - later Turley Barracks. However, this accommodation appears to have been inadequate, as a photograph in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents the expulsion of German Mannheim residents from their homes to make more space for DPs. UNRRA was responsible for looking after the DPs and the camps, and the primary goal was to get people back to their home countries as quickly as possible. In some cases, up to 2,000 people per day were sent back to their homeland, so that in 1948 there were only 960 homeless people in the barracks. However, these repatriations often met with resistance, especially from Eastern European DPS, because they feared reprisals in Soviet territory. Der Spiegel, for example, reported that 600 DPs from Ukraine in a Mannheim camp staged an uprising at the beginning of September 1945 against being transported back to the Soviet Union. However, this was without success as after a four-day postponement of their departure, they still had to start the return journey. In the DP camp directory of the Arolsen Archives there are several entries relating to Mannheim, including one about an employment centre in Käfertal. This could be a reference to the Franklin area, where American soldiers and several hundred DPs were supposed to be housed in the anti-aircraft barracks and Gallwitz barracks. Another entry in the Arolsen Archives is for a DP Technical School/Training School . In connection with the DP camp in Hanau, Alice Noll mentions that “along with Wiesbaden and Mannheim, the Hanau camp had a prominent position within the western Allied zone.” This prominent position was linked to the project to establish vocational and training centers in the camps that were intended to prepare people for professional reintegration. However, Noll only reported on the implementation of these plans for Hanau. Some Mannheim DPs and 47 returnees from the last transport to Theresienstadt founded a Jewish community in Mannheim again in October 1945. At that time, their community center and synagogue were located in the former Jewish orphanage at R 7, 24. Reconstruction of the city began only with difficulty. The castle and water tower were rebuilt and the National Theatre was built in a new location. In the old location there is a Schiller monument and the restaurant Zum Zwischen-Akt. The housing shortage led to the development of numerous new residential areas.
The schloss seen at the end of Kurpfalzstraße in 1943 and today.
Kloster Maulbronn
Hitler
visited what has been described as the best-preserved Cistercian
Monastery in Europe in 1927. Recorded in his 'Table Talk' on the "5th
September 1942, midday", Hitler spoke of the monastery at Maulbronn asone of the most beautiful in existence, thanks chiefly to the fact that it ceased to be a monastery in the Middle Ages and has not, like so many others of its kind, been altered or modernised in any way. The rules of the Order, which I have read, were extremely severe. In winter the monks had but one room heated; this common room was built over a cellar, in which fires were lighted and from which pipes led the hot air into the room above. The Romans employed the same system two thousand years ago, and the remains of their heating installations are still visible in the castle at Saalburg.
Villingen-Schwenningen
Hitler spoke here to 60,000 people on April 9, 1932
The Friedensschule at Mozartstraße 12 dates from the 1930s and still sports the Nazi eagle
The
Burenhaus then and today. After taking power in 1933, the Nazis used
the building as its party headquarters. Given its location at the centre
of the marktplatz, it was ideally suited for parades and national
celebrations and party events. In common parlance, the building soon
became known as the 'Brown House'. Its fuhrer balcony was created and
remains today, the Nazi eagle still present in the grill.
The Bickentor and St. Ursula school then and now
Pfullingen
The rathaus sporting the swastika and a portrait of Hitler on its façade.
Heidenheim an der Brenz
Schloss Hellenstein looking over the town from a Nazi-era postcard and
today. Erwin Rommel was born November 15, 1891 here in Heidenheim,
Wurttemberg to schoolmaster Erwin Rommel, Sr. and his wife, Helene von
Luz.
During the war, a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp was located below in the town itself, providing slave labour to local industry. After the war was over in 1945, a displaced persons camp was outfitted in the city to help relocate Jewish displaced persons. The camp, housing at times up to 2,300 individuals, was dissolved in August 1949.
During the war, a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp was located below in the town itself, providing slave labour to local industry. After the war was over in 1945, a displaced persons camp was outfitted in the city to help relocate Jewish displaced persons. The camp, housing at times up to 2,300 individuals, was dissolved in August 1949.
Friedrichshafen
The Hafenbahnhof, now the Zeppelin Museum.
On 2 July 1900, the people of Friedrichshafen witnessed a momentous
occasion - the first flight of LZ 1, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's
first airship. Although deemed a failure, a succession of better craft
(LZ 2 to 10) enabled the Zeppelin to expand into the consumer market of
airship travel, whilst also providing military craft for the German
Army and Navy. Friedrichshafen served the Nazis as a resort for workers. The presence of Zeppelin, Maybach, Dornier, and Zahnradfabrik also made it an important industrial centre for Germany during the Second World War. Between 1942 and 1945, these factories employed hundreds of concentration camp prisoners from Dachau and Dora-Mittelbau. They were housed first at Zeppelin's hangar and then, following its destruction during a raid, the V-2 factory Raderach. The prisoners were also used to dig underground tunnels near Friedrichshafen to protect production sites from the repeated bombing. Between June 1943 and February 1945, the city was the site for eleven Allied bombing attacks. The most serious took place on April 28, 1944, and destroyed most of the old town centre. Approximately two-thirds of the city was destroyed over the course of the war.
Friedrichshafen Halle and its new incarnation
Donaueschingen
Göppingen
Swastikas in front of the rathaus and today. As early as the evening of December 11, 1922 some 30 members of the Nazi party tried to carry out their first public demonstration in Göppingen led by Max Weber from Munich who gave the speech "The NSDAP - Germany's Future" in the "Hotel zu den Aposteln" (now the Edeka on Untere Marktstrasse). The event was part of the Nazi offensive in the early 1920s outside Bavaria with local groups and SA bands and was the first event of the Nazi Party in Württemberg. The day before, members of the Communist Party and trade unionists met to write an advertisement in the newspaper calling on all workers to "appear early in the assembly" to stand up to the Nazis. The next morning three Göppinger members of the SPD met at the city police office to have the demonstration banned. When the three were dismissed, the Nazi Ortsgruppenleiter Wilhelm Oesterreicher appeared to apply for police protection for his event. The Göppingen authorities decided not to do anything. In order to be able to carry out the event, Hitler sent 90 brownshirts from Munich for support, among whom was his later deputy Rudolf Hess. Before leaving, he gave a speech to the delegation, asking everyone to "do his utmost to ensure that the Göppingen event took place."
Once in Göppingen, the Nazis marched openly and in formation from the station to the Apostel-Hotel, seen as a direct provocation by the left-wing Göppinger workforce and the Jewish community. In the meantime the hotelier Friedrich Pfeifle hanged a sign outside the door of his hotel entrance, which read: "The Nazi event must not take place." In front of the hotel, the incoming Nazis encountered Göppingen antifascists. The police intervened and announced the ban on the Nazi event. The Nazis then moved across the Jebenhäusen Bridge to the restaurant "Walfischkeller", where the Werner-Heisenberg-Gymnasium stands today, singing and chanting. More and more counter-demonstrators arrived and threw snowballs at the Nazis. The police then left the Nazis on the bridge, but blocked the anti-Fascist workers and asked them to go home who then stormed the bridge armed with fencing plates. The Nazis made use of sharp firearms, after which the anti-fascists also used firearms. Four anti-fascists and five Nazis suffered gunshots and the police pushed the anti-fascists back and the Nazis back across the Jahnstrasse to the station. In the evening there were more fights between anti-fascists and the Nazis. At the train station, three right-wing students from Stuttgart and Tübingen arriving late, were beaten to the hospital. Hitler referred to this day in the following way: "The NSDAP has recently been spoken of as a raw, brutal, no-frightening band. This makes me very happy, for I am promising that my endeavours and my party will be feared and made known. "
The Nazi-era war memorial from 1938 which replaced the earlier pieta monument that had earlier stood at the spot since the end of the Great War. Despite calls that continue to be made to remove it, it remains with an information sign stuck in front of it.
The memorial to the Jews of Göppingen murdered in the Holocaust. At least since the 19th century, Jewish families had lived in Göppingen, which formed a close community and built a synagogue in the Freihofstraße. At the 1938 November Pogrom, this building was destroyed by SA men. In the Jewish cemetery within the municipal cemetery in Hohenstaufenstraße, a memorial tablet of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust is commemorated. Shortly before the end of the war nearly three hundred inhabitants were killed and 212 buildings were destroyed during an air attack on March 1, 1945.
The memorial to the Jews of Göppingen murdered in the Holocaust. At least since the 19th century, Jewish families had lived in Göppingen, which formed a close community and built a synagogue in the Freihofstraße. At the 1938 November Pogrom, this building was destroyed by SA men. In the Jewish cemetery within the municipal cemetery in Hohenstaufenstraße, a memorial tablet of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust is commemorated. Shortly before the end of the war nearly three hundred inhabitants were killed and 212 buildings were destroyed during an air attack on March 1, 1945.
Tübingen
The market square with the rathaus in 1936 and today. After the law published on April 1, 1933 on Gleichschaltung of the Länder and municipalities, the Tübingen council had to be considered dissolved. According to calculations made that day, the new municipal council, which had to be formed by April 30, was to comprise of only 24 seats, with the Nazis getting 14 seats. At the first meeting of the new municipal council with thirteen Nazi city councilors on 4 May 1933, Reich President v. Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler, President Murr and Minister of Culture Mergenthaler were appointed honorary citizens . Mühlstraße was renamed Hitlerstraße, Neuestraße to Murrstraße, and Friedrich Ebert Street to Mergenthalerstraße. Already by May 15, 1933, the local council, probably one of the first in Germany, decided to ban the "Jews and strangers" from using the outdoor pool.
The rathaus then and now from the other side. In 1932 , the Jewish community still had 127 members. In 1937 there were only 25 members left. Like many other synagogues in Germany, the Tubingen synagogue in Gartenstrasse 33 was destroyed by ϟϟ men from November 9 to 10, 1938, during Kristallnacht and then burned down on the orders of the Kreisleiter. The Jewish community was dissolved in 1939 , after the remaining Jews had to pay the demolition of their destroyed synagogue themselves. By 1942 the last fourteen remaining Jews were deported and taken to extermination camps. Only two Tübingen Jews survived.
The main railway station then and now. This was the station where 1,000 Württemberger Jews were deported to Stuttgart.
The University. After the Great War, many students and parts of the professorship proved to be propagandists of aggressive anti-Semitism. Partly, however, there were also among the Tübingen student connections critical voices against the National Socialist Agtitation, such as the later resistance fighter Wilhelm Roloff, a member of the fraternity Derendingia, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer , a member of the Academic Association Hedgehog . As early as 1920, the National Students' Union, to which just under a third of the students in Tübingen belonged, decided to exclude Jews. Even before 1933, the university prided itself on being "pure Jew." In fact, in 1933 she did not have to dismiss a Jewish professor and only a few assistants and private lecturers, including physicist and later Nobel laureate Hans Bethe. Among other things, the religious philosopher Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich and the mathematician Erich Kamke were occupied with a professional ban. Erwin Weinmann (brother of the above Tübingen Lord Mayor) was a medical student in Tübingen and from 1932 faction leader of the National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB) in the General Student Committee (AStA) and a member of the ϟϟ. In the period from 1942 to July 1943 He was responsible for the mass murder of Jews in Ukraine as Chief of Sonderkommando 4a. In addition to Weinmann, the following Tübingen students were members of the NSDStB and later members of the Reich Main Security Office and, as heads of SD special commands, were mainly responsible for the planning and execution of mass murder and war crimes in the former Soviet Union.
Gerhard Kittel , Protestant theologian and pupil of Adolf Schlatter, took over his chair in 1926 in Tübingen.
Together with Karl Adam , Karl Georg Kuhn, Hans Fleischhacker and Robert Wetzel, head of the Nazi Teachers' Association, Kittel founded the so-called "Scientific Anti-Semitism", which provided the academic superstructure and justification for the planned final solution of the genocide of Jews.
No German university theologian was as close to the Nazi extermination machine as Kittel. In his position as a scientist, Gerhard Kittel actively and consciously contributed to the final solution to the Jewish question in Europe propagated by himself through lectures, publications and expert reports on Jewish ethnic groups for the Reich Security Main Office. Between 1934 and 1944, at least 1158, but probably 1243 people were forcibly sterilised at the University hospitals Tübingen. The directors of the Women's, Nerves and Surgical University Clinic carried out some sterilisation even before 1933, even without a legal basis. After 1945, however, all participants were considered relieved. The victims of forced sterilisation often suffered psychologically and physically for the rest of their lives as a result of the operation, but despite low compensation payments, they have not yet been officially recognized as victims of Nazi persecution.
Gerhard Kittel , Protestant theologian and pupil of Adolf Schlatter, took over his chair in 1926 in Tübingen.
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| View from south of Tübingen towards Neckar and Galgenberg |
No German university theologian was as close to the Nazi extermination machine as Kittel. In his position as a scientist, Gerhard Kittel actively and consciously contributed to the final solution to the Jewish question in Europe propagated by himself through lectures, publications and expert reports on Jewish ethnic groups for the Reich Security Main Office. Between 1934 and 1944, at least 1158, but probably 1243 people were forcibly sterilised at the University hospitals Tübingen. The directors of the Women's, Nerves and Surgical University Clinic carried out some sterilisation even before 1933, even without a legal basis. After 1945, however, all participants were considered relieved. The victims of forced sterilisation often suffered psychologically and physically for the rest of their lives as a result of the operation, but despite low compensation payments, they have not yet been officially recognized as victims of Nazi persecution.
Next to the museum on Wilhelmstraße 3 lived Hugo
Löwenstein, the first Jewish businessman in the city to sell his business in the autumn of 1933 after Nazi intimidation. He later emigrated to British Palestine.
The barracks gate of the Burgholzkaserne on Reutlinger Straße in 1939 and today. From 1873 onwards Tübingen became a military base, and an infantry barracks were set up south of the town, in which the 10th Württemberg Infantry Regiment, No. 180, was stationed. In 1938, the barracks were called Thiepval Barracks, named after the hamlet of Thiepval, located in the French province of Picardy, where soldiers of this regiment fought during the summer battle of September 1916. A panel on the barrack wall reminds us of this. In a French air attack in the First World War, 16 houses were damaged. From 1914 to 1916, a second barracks was erected, which was first called the New Barracks, and in 1938 it was given the name of Loretto Barracks to commemorate Lorettoschlacht. In 1935 a third barracks were opened, which in 1938 was renamed Burgholzkaserne in Hindenburg barracks.
The lower Schlosstor with and without the weather vane
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The old brewery Waldhörnle on Schweizerstraße and its replacement today. The war left the city largely unscathed, mainly because of the
peace initiative of a local doctor, Theodor Dobler. It was occupied by
the French army and became part of the French occupational zone. From
1946 to 1952, Tübingen was the capital of the newly formed state of
Württemberg-Hohenzollern, before the state of Baden-Württemberg was
created by merging Baden, Württemberg-Baden and
Württemberg-Hohenzollern. The French troops had a garrison stationed in
the south of the city until the end of the Cold War in the 1990s.
Looking at the old and new Neckar bridge on the right. After the war, Bebenhausen was a favourite place for Old Nazis to spend some of their life-time here. For example, August Heißmeyer (head of the "Dienststelle ϟϟ Obergruppenfuhrer Heißmeyer", inspector of the concentration camps and head of the Totenkopfstandarten and General of the Waffen-ϟϟ - ranked with Heydrich and direct report line to Himmler) lived until his death in the late seventies in Bebenhausen. Likewise the Reichsfrauenführerin in Nazi Germany Gertrud Scholtz-Klink lived after the war until her death in 1999 in Bebenhausen and died there. Regular visits by old Nazi greats in Tübingen and Bebenhausen, such as Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath (Reich Foreign Minister in Nazi Germany and Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia) and Gottlob Berger (in the Nazi Reich head of the ϟϟ Main Office, ϟϟ Obergruppenfuehrer and General the Waffen-ϟϟ and very close friend of Oskar Dirlewanger ), are further documented until the 1970s. Todtnau
The Michael Fleiner Haus youth hostel flying the Hitler Youth flag in the late 1930s and today.
Ulm
When
Hitler's train stopped here on the way to the front at the start of the
Great War, Hitler posted a card to his landlord, Joseph Popp, writing
"best wishes from Ulm on my way to Antwerp."
It was at Ulm that, according to Martyn Housden (60) in Hitler: Study of a Revolutionary?, that
[t]he quintessence of Hitler’s deception of respectability became manifest during the trial of the Ulm officers which took place in September 1930. The episode showed that he remained as much of a revolutionary agitator as ever. It was one of the most important political events in the life of the Weimar Republic and a ‘milestone’ in the development of the party. At stake was much more than the actions of the three junior army officers who were accused of treason on account of setting up National Socialist cells within the army. Eventually the three received sentences of 18 months’ imprisonment. But in the midst of weighty accusations, Hitler took the stand. His testimony, made once again in the full glare of the national press, rambled across the history of his party. Its main thrust was as follows: "I have not created an instrument in order to implement a violent revolution. I have organised nothing to implement it. Our party is not the mouthpiece of a German revolutionary movement. The propaganda which we practise, is a mental/spiritual revolutionising of the German Volk, a transformation to a new ideology, which at the very least is as gigantic as the transformation to Marxist thinking or the transformation from feudal state to a democratic–parliamentary system. The NSDAP wants a perfectly new ideas world, to construct a completely new state. It cannot occur to me for one second to fight against a state with a consolidated army and a police force. Violence is not necessary for our movement."
Münsterplatz
in 1935 and today. The Great War and the subsequent world
economic crisis had hit Ulm particularly hard, as the city's business
enterprises were designed to be export-oriented and as former armaments
companies were directly affected by reparation claims and restrictions
on the production of the Versailles Treaty. The radical reduction in the
number of the military stationed in Ulm because of the defeat in the
First World War also had an extremely negative effect on the local
economy. On top of that, the city's commercial enterprises were heavily export-oriented and, as former armaments companies, were directly affected by reparations demands and production restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. .gif)
A protest against food shortages and excessive prices escalated into bloody riots on June 22, 1920, with seven deaths. Later, the currency was destroyed by inflation in 1923 , which briefly led to the creation of a separate regional currency, the Wära token money. Through all this the Nazis and their allied anti-democratic parties succeeded in making those parties that supported the Weimar Republic scapegoats for the reparations obligations, the poor economic situation and also for the reduction of the military. Combined with the already high level of anti-Semitism, Jews were seen as the originators of all the negative events of the Weimar Republic. In addition, there was the fight against the communists, who themselves rejected the Weimar Republic. As a result, the Nazis received a high share of the vote in Ulm from the late 1920s onwards. In October 1930, three officers from the 5th Artillery Regiment stationed in Ulm were accused of preparing to commit high treason and were ultimately sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment for distributing political (specifically Nazi) propaganda. Hitler was personally questioned as a witness and used this opportunity to make a propaganda speech whilst also assuring the judge during his questioning that he would only seek political change through constitutional means.
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A protest against food shortages and excessive prices escalated into bloody riots on June 22, 1920, with seven deaths. Later, the currency was destroyed by inflation in 1923 , which briefly led to the creation of a separate regional currency, the Wära token money. Through all this the Nazis and their allied anti-democratic parties succeeded in making those parties that supported the Weimar Republic scapegoats for the reparations obligations, the poor economic situation and also for the reduction of the military. Combined with the already high level of anti-Semitism, Jews were seen as the originators of all the negative events of the Weimar Republic. In addition, there was the fight against the communists, who themselves rejected the Weimar Republic. As a result, the Nazis received a high share of the vote in Ulm from the late 1920s onwards. In October 1930, three officers from the 5th Artillery Regiment stationed in Ulm were accused of preparing to commit high treason and were ultimately sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment for distributing political (specifically Nazi) propaganda. Hitler was personally questioned as a witness and used this opportunity to make a propaganda speech whilst also assuring the judge during his questioning that he would only seek political change through constitutional means. Immediately after the Nazis took power, the persecution of Weimar Democrats, Communists and Jews began, initially carried out by the SA and ϟϟ. Many of the victims of this persecution were imprisoned and mistreated without trial in the Oberer Kuhberg concentration camp, one of the fortifications of the Federal Fortress of Ulm, from 1933 to 1935. The remaining prisoners were later transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, among them Kurt Schumacher who would later refound the SPD in Germany after 1945. By now the true rulers of Ulm were the Nazi district leader Eugen Maier and his superiors in the NSDAP Gau Württemberg-Hohenzollern. From the beginning of this rule the Württemberg Political Police set up a branch office in the Neuer Bau, located in Ulm's old town, which was built between 1584 and 1593 to serve serve primarily as a municipal warehouse for grain, among other thing. Now it would serve as an office of the Secret State Police from 1936 until the end of the war. In addition,from 1933 to 1935 the Oberer Kuhberg concentration camp, which housed mainly political prisoners, existed in the fort of the same name in the federal fortress of Ulm.
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Seen here from swastika-bedecked Walfischgasse from Nazi-era postcards, the steeple of Ulm Münster is the
tallest in the world. Spotts (376) records that when designing his intended retirement home in Linz where he would spend his final years cultivating his treasured museum collections, Hitler chose a hill overlooking the river and the new city centre. Its dominant feature was to be a tower inside of its base was to be an octagonal groined vault which was to be a mausoleum for his parents. However, he stipulated that the tower had to be shorter than the tower of the Ulm cathedral, at 172 metres the world’s tallest Gothic spire. "I don't want to hurt the feelings of the people of Ulm since they are rightly proud of the achievement of their forefathers." It was here on April 22, 1934, opposition representatives of the Protestant Church from all over Germany issued the Ulm Declaration in the Ulm Minster, in which they opposed the efforts to subordinate the independence of the Protestant Church to the Nazi state. Here for the first time the church opposition distanced itself from the regime and described itself as the legitimate Protestant church in Germany: We, representatives of the Württemberg and Bavarian state churches, the Free Synod in the Rhineland, Westphalia and Brandenburg, as well as many confessing congregations and Christians throughout Germany, declare ourselves to be the legitimate Protestant church in Germany before this congregation and all of Christendom.
Bishop Hans Meiser went on to declare that "[i]n view of the constant threat to the confession, we present ourselves [...] as a unit that intends to remain faithful to the confession through the power of God, although we must expect that this will cause us much hardship." The Ulm Declaration marks the beginning of the Confessing Church.
The rathaus, sporting Nazi propaganda on its façade reading Adolf Hitler für Deutschland.
Immediately after the Nazis took over power on January 30, 1933, the persecution of the Weimar Democrats, communists, and even the Jews began. This was initially carried out by the SA and ϟϟ on behalf of the Nazis and later by the police officers. Many of the victims of this persecution were imprisoned and ill-treated in the concentration camp of Oberer Kuhberg, one of the fortifications of the federal fortress Ulm, from 1933 to 1935 without court proceedings. Later, the remaining prisoners were transferred to the Dachau concentration camp. Among them was Kurt Schumacher. At the same time, the democratic bodies and the democratic state were abolished. The actual rulers of Ulm were from 1933 the Kreisleiter Eugen Maier and his superiors in the NSDAP-Gau Württemberg-Hohenzollern. In 1933, the Württembergische Politische Polizei set up an extermination agency in the Neue Bau, which functioned as a service of the Secret State Police from 1936 until the end of the war. From 1933 to 1935, the Oberer Kuhberg concentration camp consisted mainly of political prisoners in the Fort of the Ulm.
Under the Nazi regime 1,155 people from Ulm and the surrounding area were sterilised against their will, being deemed “unworthy of reproduction” because of an illness considered hereditary, a disability or because they did not conform to social norms. Mentally ill or disabled people were systematically killed from 1940 onwards. The exact number of Ulm victims remains unknown to this day. At least 184 women, children and men from Ulm were murdered by doctors and nurses in extermination centres, sanatoriums and other institutions, because they were deemed “unworthy of life”.
In
1944, heavy air raids on Ulm began. By the end of the war - particularly
as a result of the major raid on December 17, 1944 - 81% of the historic
old town had been destroyed, but the cathedral was largely spared. On April 24, 1945,
Ulm was occupied by American troops. That the town was
reduced to rubble by Allied bombs in 1944, sparing the Münster is shown in the period photo taken by 1st Lieutenant Felix E. Mock (3rd Platoon Leader, B CO., 65th Armoured Infantry Battalion (AIB). Ulm's largely destroyed city centre was rebuilt in the decades after the end of the war. In the end, the sole RAF strategic bombing against Ulm took place on December 17, 1944, against the two large lorry factories of Magirus-Deutz and Kässbohrer, as well as other industries, barracks, and depots in Ulm. The Gallwitz Barracks and several military hospitals were among fourteen Wehrmacht establishments destroyed. This raid killed 707 Ulm inhabitants and left 25,000 homeless and after all the bombings, over 80% of the mediæval city centre lay in ruins. The Magirus factory hosted a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp. The question of whether the reconstruction should be historical or modern led to heated debates as elsewhere as mentioned throughout this site. Most of the city was rebuilt in the style of the 1950s and 1960s. In order to realise large traffic projects such as the "Neue Straße" as an east-west main road, even preserved historical buildings were sacrificed. However, there were also reconstructions of individual buildings that were important for the city's history, and numerous modern buildings were more or less based on historical forms, such as the pointed gables typical of Ulm.
The city's bomb damage from the cathedral and gargoyle from top of cathedral today. At the end of the war, especially as a result of the large-scale attack of December 17, 1944, 81% of the historic old town was destroyed, but the Münster was largely spared.
The synagogue before and after the Reichskristallnacht pogrom and its replacement. In the so-called "Reichspogromnacht" of the 9th-10th November 1938, the synagogue at am Weinhof 2, which was consecrated in 1873, was set on fire by an Ulm SA group. Members of the Jewish community were also abused, and other Ulm citizens also participated. 56 men were imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp for several months. Two prisoners from Ulm did not survive their torture there. The municipal fire brigade quickly extinguished the fire of the synagogue, but not to prevent the fire of the sanctuary of the Jewish community, but because it wanted to prevent an attack on the neighbouring buildings. In order to complete the Nazi pogrom, the city administration ordered the demolition of the building a few days later and forced the Jewish community to finance it itself. After the "Reichskristallnacht", the remaining people living in Ulm were forced into Jewish houses. From 1941 to 1942, the remaining Jews from Ulm were transported to the extermination camps in the east to assassinate them. Only a few of the deported Ulm Jews survived. At the end of the stairs of Sparkasse Neue Strasse 66, a memorial placard to the persecuted and murdered Jews of Ulm and their Gotteshaus was recalled from the year 1990 to the construction of the synagogue on the Weinhof. The memorandum of the Federal Archives for the victims of the National Socialist persecution of Jews in Germany (1933-1945) records, in particular, 198 Jewish inhabitants of Ulm who were deported and largely murdered. The central database of the names of the Holocaust victims (Beta) of Yad Vashem records in particular a total of 452 Jews who are associated with Ulm, including 281 Jewish citizens of Ulms, most of whom were murdered.
Anti-fascists vs. neo-Nazis in Ulm during May Day 2009. During the Nazi era there had been isolated opposition to the Nazis. In
1942, a group of high school graduates around Hans and Susanne Hirzel
and Franz J. Müller formed the Ulmer offshoot of the well-known Munich
resistance group Weiße Rose, in which the two Ulmer citizens Hans and Sophie
Scholl were active. Both resistance groups were taken in 1943. Their
members were partly sentenced to death, partly to imprisonment. In
1945, the Dachau concentration camp underwent ϟϟ-Arbeitslager Ulm in
the district of Söflingen with thirty to 40 prisoners to build submarine
parts at Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz.
Schloss Lichtenstein
Lichtenstein Castle is a castle situated on a cliff located near Honau, shown during the Third Reich and today. It was supposedly here that at the end of the war Hitler intended to have Pope Pius XII imprisoned under "Operation Rabat" - after the Arabic term for "fortified place." Apparently, the Germans wanted to prevent the Pope from being under the influence of the Anglo-Americans who had landed in southern Italy in September 1943. Listening records from the British intelligence service say a telephone conversation was intercepted on October 1, 1943, saying, "[i]f, after all the necessary precautions, the Pope were proposed to move to Lichtenstein, he could agree." The ϟϟ general in Italy, Karl Wolff, had reported about the planned internment and before his death had left behind a document that is still in the Vatican archives stating "I received from Hitler the personal order to kidnap the pope." Wolff had been not only an Italian specialist for the Nazis, but also chief of the "personal staff Reichsführer-ϟϟ "and" liaison officer of the ϟϟ to Hitler " although it is still unclear whether Hitler actually wanted Eugenio Pacelli to be evacuated to Schloss Lichtenstein or whether he should be shot on the run. Such a theory first appeared in 1946 in the American army newspaper "Stars and Stripes".
Dilsberg
The Stadttor Dilsberg then, serving as a youth
hostel flying the Hitler Youth flag and now. The Dilsberg youth hostel
was first established in 1924. At first it consisted of the historic
gate tower and the night watchman's house next to it before being given
an extension, which was celebrated in 1934. At a workshop of the Gau
managing director in 1935, the founder of the German youth hostel,
Richard Schirrmann was injured in a raid by the Hitler Youth with a shot
from a gas pistol which severely injured his eye. Until the end of the
war the hostel served as a military training camp. After the war, the
community confiscated the building and used it as a town hall as well as
a collection point for displaced persons. Already in 1947 there was
again a hostel with sixty beds. The last displaced people left the gate
tower in 1955. A major expansion and modernisation followed in the
1970s. Most recently, around 10,000 overnight stays were counted each
year. According to German Youth Hostel state
chairman Susanne Pacher during its reopening in 2019 after four years
of refurbishment totalling 3.4 million euros, the 95-year-old Dilsberger
hostel is the second oldest establishment of its kind in
Baden-Württemberg.
Blaustein
The home of Rommel from where, linked to the failed July Plot against Hitler, he was forced to commit suicide with a cyanide pill in return for assurances that his family would not be persecuted following his death. He was given a state funeral, and it was announced that Rommel had succumbed to his injuries from an earlier strafing of his staff car in Normandy. As his son related after the war,
Shortly before twelve o'clock, my father went to his room on the first floor and changed from the brown civilian jacket which he usually wore over riding-breeches, to his Africa tunic, which was his favourite uniform on account of its open collar.At about twelve o'clock a dark-green car with a Berlin number stopped in front of our garden gate. The only men in the house apart from my father, were Captain Aldinger, a badly wounded war-veteran corporal and myself. Two generals- Burgdorf, a powerful florid man, and Maisel, small and slender- alighted from the car and entered the house. They were respectful and courteous and asked my father's permission to speak to him alone. Aldinger and I left the room. "So are not they are not going to arrest him," I thought with relief, as I went upstairs to find myself a book.
Rommel's grave in the town cemetery A few minutes later I heard my father come upstairs and go into my mother s room. Anxious to know what was afoot, I got up and followed him. He was in the middle of the room, his face pale. "Come outside with me," he said in a tight voice. We went into my room. "I have just had to tell your mother", he began slowly, "that I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour." He was calm as he continued: "To die by the hand of one's own people is hard. But the house is surrounded and Hitler is charging me with high treason. ' In view of my services in Africa'", he quoted sarcastically, "I am to have the chance of poison. The two generals have brought it with them. It's fatal in three seconds. If I accept, none of the usual steps will be taken against my family, that is against you. They will also leave my staff alone.""Do you believe it?" I interrupted."Yes," he replied." "I believe it. It is very much in their interest to see that the affair does not come out into the open. By the way, I have been charged to put you under a promise of the strictest silence. If a single word of this comes out, they will no longer feel themselves bound by the agreement."I tried again. "Can't we defend ourselves..." He cut me off short."There's no point," he said. "It's better for one to die than for all of us to be killed in a shooting affray. Anyway, we've practically no ammunition." We briefly took leave of each other. "Call Aldinger, please", he said.Liddell Hart (503) The Rommel Papers
Breisach am Oberrhein
Adolf
Hitler Straße then and now. During the war, 85% of Breisach was
destroyed by Allied artillery as the Allies crossed the Rhine. The St.
Stephansmünster was also heavily damaged.
Radolfzell
The
rathaus on the day Hitler was appointed Chancellor- January 30, 1933
and today. Hitler had visited the town on July 29 the year before, speaking also at Reutlingen, Neustadt an der Hardt and Freiburg im Breisgau.
An SA group was formed in the town in October 1930 which publicly presented itself on May 17, 1931 under troop leader Ludwig Beck. That same year saw the founding of the Allgemeine-ϟϟ, subordinated to the ϟϟ-Sturm von Konstanz, who in turn was assigned to the local ϟϟ-Sturmbann.
Soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor, the roughly 250 SA and ϟϟ men who had staged a torchlight procession in the evening in Berlin, called out the town's 7,500 citizens, of whom 100 to 200 communists protested and were attacked in two places. This torchlight procession of the SA on the occasion of Hitler's seizure of power saw a sharp increase in SA in 1934 as Radolfzell became the seat of the SA Reiterstandarte 156. In the July 1932 Reichstag election the Nazis became the town's second strongest party, and in the sham elections after the seizure of power (eg 98% 'yes' votes for Hitler in the March 29, 1936 Reichstag election or 98.37% in the April 1938 Reichstag election after extremely high turnouts).
Soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor, the roughly 250 SA and ϟϟ men who had staged a torchlight procession in the evening in Berlin, called out the town's 7,500 citizens, of whom 100 to 200 communists protested and were attacked in two places. This torchlight procession of the SA on the occasion of Hitler's seizure of power saw a sharp increase in SA in 1934 as Radolfzell became the seat of the SA Reiterstandarte 156. In the July 1932 Reichstag election the Nazis became the town's second strongest party, and in the sham elections after the seizure of power (eg 98% 'yes' votes for Hitler in the March 29, 1936 Reichstag election or 98.37% in the April 1938 Reichstag election after extremely high turnouts).
The
municipal council, which was last elected democratically in 1930, fell
like all other German representatives after the Reichstag election on
March 5, 1933, which saw the Nazis gain the most votes in Radolfzell for
the first time with 39 percent. The new municipal council, which met
for the first time on September 7, 1933, consisted exclusively of Nazis,
who with the exception of one latecomer, had been supporters of the
Hitler Party as "old fighters" before January 30, 1933. Before long
streets were accordingly renamed so that from March 1933 Schützen-Straße
became Adolf-Hitler-Strasse, Böhringer-Straße to
Hermann-Goering-Strasse, Konstanz-Straße to Dr.-Josef-Goebbels-Strasse
and the marketplace itself renamed "Hindenburgplatz". The war memorial on Luisenplatz (formerly Horst-Wessel-Platz)
still retains such Nazi links. Inaugurated on May 22, 1938. The town had enlisted Konstanz sculptor Paul Diesch to implement the draft design of Wilhelm Kollmar on today's Luisenplatz, at the instigation of the World War I fighter ace Jöhle. Half of the funding for the over 30,000 RM was covered by postcards and "building blocks" that could be adopted by citizens.
As late as the 1970s it was used as the site for former ϟϟ members to rally and honour their comrades of the Waffen-ϟϟ. On the centenary of the start of the Great War for which this fascist-style memorial was intended to commemorate, Mayor Monika Laule had an explanatory text panel of glass erected nearby, stating that the Nazis had turned the memorial of a day of remembrance for the dead to one of hero worship.
As late as the 1970s it was used as the site for former ϟϟ members to rally and honour their comrades of the Waffen-ϟϟ. On the centenary of the start of the Great War for which this fascist-style memorial was intended to commemorate, Mayor Monika Laule had an explanatory text panel of glass erected nearby, stating that the Nazis had turned the memorial of a day of remembrance for the dead to one of hero worship.
Laufenburg
The war memorial from a 1935 postcard, unchanged today
Rexingen
The
monument overlooking the town was built in 1933 and officially
inaugurated in 1937. Shortly before the war ended the swastika was
removed and in 1952 replaced with a cross. Since the Thirty Years' War there has been a Jewish community in the city for 300 years, initially under the protection of the Knights of Malta and Maltese, which temporarily constituted half of the population. In 1932 the Jewish inhabitants of Rexingen had shrunk to a few hundred. A third of the victims of the extermination camps, ten families and several unmarried young men (adopted in the Rexinger synagogue on February 6, 1938) succeeded in emigrating in 1938-39, mainly to Palestine and the United States. The Israeli Moshaw Shawe Zion was founded by Jews from the town. The former Rexingen synagogue managed to survive the Nazis and is now a memorial and evangelical church. Another memorial site is the town's Jewish cemetery.
Schönau
Schlageter's grave then and what's left of it today. After his execution Schlageter
became a hero to some sections of the German population. Immediately
after his death a Schlageter Memorial Society was formed, which agitated
for the creation of a monument to honour him. The German Communist
Party sought to debunk the emerging mythology of Schlageter by
circulating a speech by Karl Radek portraying him as an honourable but
misguided figure. It was the Nazi party who most fully exploited the
Schlageter story. Hitler refers to him in Mein Kampf. Rituals
were constructed to commemorate his death, and in 1931 the Memorial
Society succeeded in getting a monument erected near the site of his
execution. This was a giant cross placed amid sunken stone rings. Other
smaller memorials were also created. After 1933 Schlageter became one
of the principal heroes of the Nazi regime. The Nazis renamed the Haus
der Technik in Königsberg the Schlageterhaus. Hanns Johst, the Nazi
playwright, wrote Schlageter (1933), a heroic drama about his
life. It was dedicated to Hitler, and was performed on his first
birthday in power as a theatrical manifesto of Nazism. The line "when I
hear the word culture, I reach for my gun", often misattributed to Nazi
leaders, derives from this play. The original line is slightly
different: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning,"
"Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my
Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). It is spoken by another character in
conversation with the young Schlageter. Several important military
ventures were also named for him, including the Jagdgeschwader 26 Schlageter
fighter-wing of the Luftwaffe, and the naval vessel Albert Leo
Schlageter. His name was also given as a title to two SA groups, the SA-Standarte 39 Schlageter at Düsseldorf and SA-Standarte 142 Albert Leo Schlageter at Lörrach. An army barracks on the south side of Freiburg was also named after him.
Groups like the Black Forest Society (Schwarzwaldverein), a self-described ‘Fatherlandish and nationalist’ hiking club with local chapters throughout the region, organised at Whitsuntide hikes here as it was the birthplace of Leo Schlageter. Schlageter had been shot in 1923 by French occupation authorities in the Ruhr. Already a nationalist hero, Schlageter soon took his place among the pantheon of Nazi martyrs. By including pilgrimages to his hometown within the annual calendar of events, the Black Forest Society contributed to the creation of a Nazi politics of public memory.
Nazi flags flying from the town hall then and now when Sonnenstrasse had been renamed Adolf-Hitler-Straße. By
order of the State Criminal Police Office, thirty members of the
Communist Party were arrested on March 10 in Balingen, ten of whom
coming from Ebingen alone, including the two city councilors. A
week later, police officers and SA men occupied the Ebingen town hall. A
huge crowd of people gathered near the town hall but was kept in peace
and order by the police and the SA teams. " After this conspicuous
demonstration of power, the Nazis occupied the trade union house and
there burned flags and badges. In the course of this action, seven
Communists were arrested Like most communities, when the Nazis took
power Ebingers failed to show any visible resistance when communists and trade unionists disappeared, the few Ebinger Jews were driven out, and autonomous clubs and parties were allowed to move to dissolution. One of the few upright figures is the manufacturer Fritz Haux, who was active in fighting for liberal values and was therefore temporarily in prison. The war brought more than 1,600 forced labourers
into the city, half of them Russians. The war itself did not intrude
into the town until July 11, 1944 in the form of a bomb attack on Ebingen, where sixty-one were killed and 37 houses were destroyed in the town centre. During the Nazi era Emil Hayer became Mayor of Ebingen since 1934. He
was first replaced by Eugen Rilling in 1944, but was again mayor in
1945. After the war, Albert Walker became mayor, who was already
replaced by Fridolin Reiber in 1946, who was in office until 1948.
Groups like the Black Forest Society (Schwarzwaldverein), a self-described ‘Fatherlandish and nationalist’ hiking club with local chapters throughout the region, organised at Whitsuntide hikes here as it was the birthplace of Leo Schlageter. Schlageter had been shot in 1923 by French occupation authorities in the Ruhr. Already a nationalist hero, Schlageter soon took his place among the pantheon of Nazi martyrs. By including pilgrimages to his hometown within the annual calendar of events, the Black Forest Society contributed to the creation of a Nazi politics of public memory.
Schlageter had been shot in 1923 by French occupation authorities in the Ruhr. Already a nationalist hero, Schlageter soon took his place among the pantheon of Nazi martyrs. By including pilgrimages to his hometown within the annual calendar of events, the Black Forest Society contributed to the creation of a Nazi politics of public memory. Moreover, like the NSDAP itself, the Black Forest Society claimed that it fought against the spirit of class and happily repeated Nazi slogans such as ‘public good before private profit’. Additionally, the monthly journals were filled with endless photographs of members’ processions through swastika-bedecked streets, which reinforced the Nazi message.
Semmens (86)
Ebingen
Nazi flags flying from the town hall then and now when Sonnenstrasse had been renamed Adolf-Hitler-Straße. By
order of the State Criminal Police Office, thirty members of the
Communist Party were arrested on March 10 in Balingen, ten of whom
coming from Ebingen alone, including the two city councilors. A
week later, police officers and SA men occupied the Ebingen town hall. A
huge crowd of people gathered near the town hall but was kept in peace
and order by the police and the SA teams. " After this conspicuous
demonstration of power, the Nazis occupied the trade union house and
there burned flags and badges. In the course of this action, seven
Communists were arrested Like most communities, when the Nazis took
power Ebingers failed to show any visible resistance when communists and trade unionists disappeared, the few Ebinger Jews were driven out, and autonomous clubs and parties were allowed to move to dissolution. One of the few upright figures is the manufacturer Fritz Haux, who was active in fighting for liberal values and was therefore temporarily in prison. The war brought more than 1,600 forced labourers
into the city, half of them Russians. The war itself did not intrude
into the town until July 11, 1944 in the form of a bomb attack on Ebingen, where sixty-one were killed and 37 houses were destroyed in the town centre. During the Nazi era Emil Hayer became Mayor of Ebingen since 1934. He
was first replaced by Eugen Rilling in 1944, but was again mayor in
1945. After the war, Albert Walker became mayor, who was already
replaced by Fridolin Reiber in 1946, who was in office until 1948.
