Bavarian State Tax Office (Oberfinanzpräsdium)
Poster
displaying the history of the eagle as used on the coats of arms of
German cities and governments from the earliest times through 1939. When
confronting Germans with this offensive symbol, most respond to me that
without the swastika, it is simply a typical eagle that has always been
the symbol of Germany. But as this chart shows, the Nazi eagle was
entirely different from its previous (and current) incarnations. Hitler
Hitler and Mussolini at the Munich railway station, September 1938 for the Munich conference. The post building in front looks unchanged apart from the loss of one floor and is today an hotel. A
sketch by Hitler dated 22 March 1939 served as the basis for the
competition for the Munich Central Station: a flat dome rests on a ring
of supporting buildings, a columnar portico emphasizes the projecting
entrance. A circular ribbon window and a lantern illuminate the giant
cupola. Hitler very specifically wanted a distinction between the Munich
Central Station as a “monument of our century’s technology”, in
contrast to the Halle des Volkes in Berlin, designed by Albert Speer as
a massive dome.
Schellingstraße
This building at Sophienstr. 6 was constructed between 1938 to 1942. During
the Nazi era this building administered the expropriation of assets of
political opponents and racial undesirables through public auctions of
furnishings. Regarding the “Arisierung” of Jewish property, the fiscal
authority located here played a key role. After 1945 it was found that
1,589 Munich properties had been confiscated by this office.
Victims of Hitlerism still have to endure this symbol when entering a government building.
This less-offensive Eagle in the courtyard represents the Bavarian Free State.
After the war this building served the American Military Authorities
before hosting the America Haus (until it moved to the former Führerbau in 1948). This is also where the Bavarian State Parliament met from May 1947 until January 1949.
Poster
displaying the history of the eagle as used on the coats of arms of
German cities and governments from the earliest times through 1939. When
confronting Germans with this offensive symbol, most respond to me that
without the swastika, it is simply a typical eagle that has always been
the symbol of Germany. But as this chart shows, the Nazi eagle was
entirely different from its previous (and current) incarnations. HitlerMunich Main Stationspent hours poring over old art publications and books on heraldry to find a model for the eagle. Eventually he discovered what he wanted in an anti-Semitic lexicon where the fowl was characterised as the Aryan of the animal kingdom. He then asked a jeweller to design a model, but when this proved too feeble, he invented his own- a menacing eagle which appeared about to take flight.Spotts (52-53) Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics
The main railway station in 1923 and in a still from footage of the Day
Of German Art held on the weekend of 14-16 July, 1939.Hitler was
assigned to guard the site upon his return from the Great War.
Planning
conceived of the redesign of the station through architect Paul Bonatz
with a 136 metre high domed structure with a width of 300 metres and
the establishment of a “monument of the movement” at its old site. It
was to have served as the central nodal point for the planned
Adolf-Hitlerstrasse and would accommodate wide-gauge double-decker
trains that would travel at speeds of 250 km/h across the Gross
Deutsches Reich from Brest to Baku.
What Hitler proposed and his war disposed; the Main Station after the war and today.
Between June 1942 and February 1945 the hauptbahnhof was the starting
point of the deportations of Munich Jews, Roma and Sinti to the
extermination camps in the east of the reich.
Schellingstraße during the wartime bombing. The street has a number of sites associated with the NSDAP era:
Nazi Party offices Schellingstraße 50
Dates at the cinema and restaurants followed. From 1925 until 1931 the NSDAP-Eva was the middle of the three daughters of Fritz Braun, a master craftsman from Simbach on the Inn. She was a pretty, empty-headed blonde, with a round face and blue eyes, who worked as a shop girl in Hoffmann's photographer's shop. Hitler met her there, paid her a few casual compliments, gave her flowers, and occasionally invited her to be one of his party on an outing. The initiative was all on Eva's side: she told her friends that Hitler was in love with her and that she would make him marry her.Bullock (394)
Inside, with the Blutfahne flanked by two standards. The photo on the right shows Hitler conducting a meeting in the building 1928. Also present in the photo are Alfred Rosenberg, Gregor Strasser, Heinrich Himmler and Julius Streicher.
Hitler with Unity Mitford at right at the Osteria.Her sister Diane married Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Fascist Party, made it her business to meet Hitler here. In 1934 she stalked him in Munich where he noticed her at the Osteria Bavaria. She was invited to his table and so began five years within Hitler’s inner circle. Lady Phipps, wife of the British ambassador to Berlin, observed that Hitler spoke only a few words of English and when speaking of Unity Mitford he had said falteringly: "Young lady, young English lady, Freeman, bonourable lady. . . ." (David Pryce-Jones, Unity Mitford: A Quest, p. 100). When England declared war on Germany in 1939, she was mortified and attempted suicide (like many other women in Hitler’s life). The bullet lodged inoperably in her brain. Subsequently, Hitler arranged for her to return to England via Switzerland.
Polizeipräsidium (Hauptant - Oberstes ϟϟ und Polizeigericht)
This was also the location for the German TV series “Derrick”. In April 2013 it was revealed that the star, Horst Tappert, had joined the infamous 3. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Totenkopf, then employed on the Eastern Front, in March 1943. Historian Jan Erik Schulte, an expert on the history of the SS, said that the circumstances of Tappert's membership in the SS and the question of whether he was pressured or coerced to join remain unclear. The "Liebstandarte" division was the premier fighting unit of the Waffen-SS, officered by committed Nazis and guilty of numerous war crimes and atrocities (especially on the Eastern Front).
Exhibition on „Die Münchner Polizei und der Nationalsozialismus“ with Drake Winston pointing at the same spot used in the poster
On the right is a remarkable document: Reichsfuhrer ϟϟ Heinrich
Himmler's speech to the ϟϟ officers responsible for carrying out the
wholesale extermination of the European Jews. Delivered in Poznan,
Poland on October 4, 1943. The text of the speech scrolls in both the
original German and its English Translation. The recordings are the
first known documents in which a high-ranking member of the Nazi
government openly spoke of the on-going destruction of the Jews. They
demonstrate that the Nazi government wanted, planned and carried out the
Holocaust.
Munich Gestapo Headquarters
Schelling Salon
Having lunch at the Schelling Salon. I'm going to quote from my copy of the 'Past Finder Zik Zak' of Munich, which is based on Maik Kopelek's series of books, although the fold-out map hasn't any author mentioned:
"Family-owned since 1872... Hitler is said to have often left without paying; Lenin never did! Worth seeing: the stone urinals in the cellar."
Osteria Bavaria
"Family-owned since 1872... Hitler is said to have often left without paying; Lenin never did! Worth seeing: the stone urinals in the cellar."
Claimed to have been used by Lenin, Hitler and Franz Josef Strauss.
When banned from entering for refusal to pay his bills, Hitler then moved down the road to the 
Now the Osteria Italiana, this was apparently Hitler's favourite restaurant where he would have his "Stammtisch" and where he wooed Eva Braun who worked, one block down the street, as a clerk and bookkeeper, at Heinrich Hoffmann's photography studio. Clearly little has changed. It was here that, according to Irving (100) in Hitler's War, that
Irving also quotes Goebbels's diary (in an excessively misleading way that Evans castigates in Lying About Hitler) wherein he records that it was here that he had reported to Hitler about the events of Reichskristallnacht:
Hitler himself had sketched the rough outlines for the House of Art, using the back of an Osteria menu, one day in 1931 – a gallery of stern Grecian lines which even today is mocked as Munich’s 'Athens Station.’
Irving also quotes Goebbels's diary (in an excessively misleading way that Evans castigates in Lying About Hitler) wherein he records that it was here that he had reported to Hitler about the events of Reichskristallnacht:
[Hitler] is in agreement with everything. His views are quite radical and aggressive. The Aktion itself went off without a hitch. A hundred dead. But no German property damaged.’ Each of these five sentences was untrue, as will be seen. With minor alterations the Führer authorizes my decree re: breaking off the Aktionen. I issue it immediately through the press. The Führer wants to proceed to very harsh measures against the Jews. They must repair their shops themselves. The insurance companies will pay them nothing. Then the Führer wants Jewish businesses gradually expropriated and their owners compensated with paper which we can [word illegible: devalue?] at any time. Meanwhile people are starting with their own Aktionen. I issue appropriate secret decrees. We’re waiting to see the repercussions abroad. For the time being there is silence there. But the hullabaloo will come.
At the usual time, around half past two, I went to the Osteria Bavaria, a small artists' restaurant which rose to unexpected fame when it became Hitler's regular restaurant. In a place like this, one could more easily imagine a table of artists gathered around Lenbach or Stuck, with long hair and huge beards, than Hitler with his neatly dressed or uniformed retinue. But he felt at ease in the Osteria; as a "frustrated artist" he obviously liked the atmosphere he had once sought to attain to, and now had finally both lost and surpassed.Quite often the select group of guests had to wait for hours for Hitler. There would be an adjutant, also Bavarian Gauleiter Wagner if by this time he had slept off last night's drinking bout, and of course Hitler's constant companion and court photographer, Hoffmann, who by this time was quite often slightly tipsy. Very often the likable Miss Unity Mitford was present, and sometimes, though rarely, a painter or a sculptor. Then there would be Dr. Dietrich, the Reich press chief, and invariably Martin Bormann, Rudolf Hess's secretary, who seemed utterly inconspicuous. On the street several hundred people would be waiting, for our presence was indication enough that he would be coming.Shouts of rejoicing outside. Hitler headed toward our regular comer, which was shielded on one side by a low partition. In good weather we sat in the small courtyard where there was a hint of an arbor. Hitler gave the owner and the two waitresses a jovial greeting: "What's good today? Ravioli? If only you didn't make it so delicious. It's too tempting." Hitler snapped his fingers: "Everything would be perfect in your place, Herr Deutelmoser, if I did not have to think of my waistline. You forget that the Fuehrer cannot eat whatever he would like to." Then he would study the menu for a long time and order ravioli.Everyone ordered whatever he liked: cutlets, goulash, Hungarian wine from the cask. In spite of Hitler's occasional jokes about "carrion eaters" and "wine drinkers," everyone ate and drank with zest. In this circle there was a sense of privacy. One tacit agreement prevailed: No one must mention politics. The sole exception was Lady Mitford, who even in the later years of international tension persistently spoke up for her country and often actually pleaded with Hitler to make a deal with England. In spite of Hitler's discouraging reserve, she did not abandon her efforts through all those years. Then, in September 1939, on the day of England's declaration of war, she tried to shoot herself with a small pistol in Munich's Englischer Garten. Hitler had the best specialists in Munich care for her, and as soon as she could travel sent her home to England by a special railroad car through Switzerland.Speer (39-40) Inside the Third Reich
This is where the Nazis' bureaucracy of oppression started, at Ettstasse 2. In
July 1932, Heydrich's counterintelligence service grew into an
effective machine of terror and intimidation. With Hitler agitating for
absolute power in Germany, Himmler and Heydrich wished to control the
political police forces of all 17 German states, and they began with the
state of Bavaria. In 1933, Heydrich gathered some of his men from the
SD and together they stormed police headquarters in Munich and took
over the police using intimidation tactics. Himmler became commander of
the Bavarian political police with Heydrich as his deputy. In his funeral eulogy for Heydrich in 1942, Himmler stated
After we came to power, I became Munich police chief on March 12, 1933. I immediately gave Heydrich the so-called political division of the presidium. In no time he re-organized the division, and in a few weeks transformed it into the Bavarian Political Police. Soon the division became a model for political police departments in non-Prussian German territory. On April 20, 1934, the Prussian Minister President, our Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, appointed me to lead the State Police of Prussia and appointed ϟϟ Brigadeführer Heydrich as my deputy. In 1936 the Führer appointed 32-year-old Heydrich chief of the newly created Security Police. Besides the secret police, he was responsible for all of the criminal police.From there, the duo moved on to the police forces of the 16 remaining German states. When this prison became overcrowded, the police established the first Nazi concentration camp at Dachau outside Munich on March 20, 1933.
This was also the location for the German TV series “Derrick”. In April 2013 it was revealed that the star, Horst Tappert, had joined the infamous 3. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Totenkopf, then employed on the Eastern Front, in March 1943. Historian Jan Erik Schulte, an expert on the history of the SS, said that the circumstances of Tappert's membership in the SS and the question of whether he was pressured or coerced to join remain unclear. The "Liebstandarte" division was the premier fighting unit of the Waffen-SS, officered by committed Nazis and guilty of numerous war crimes and atrocities (especially on the Eastern Front).
Munich Gestapo Headquarters
From 1933 onwards the Wittelsbach Palais in Brienner Straße 22 was the headquarters of the Bavarian Political Police, which later became part of the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei or secret state police). This regional headquarters of terror spread fear and dread among the population. Anyone resisting the regime in Munich fell into the clutches of the Gestapo. The carpenter Georg Elser, for example, who attempted to assassinate Hitler on 8 November 1939 by planting a bomb in the Bürgerbräukeller, was interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp after weeks of interrogations in Munich and Berlin. He was later taken to Dachau, where he was shot by the ϟϟ shortly before the end of the war. The Gestapo officials in the Wittelsbach Palais were also responsible for issuing orders to compile death lists and for dispatching the deportation orders that led to the annihilation of Munich’s Jewish community.
ThemenGeschichtsPfad National Socialism in Munich
Today the site is occupied by the Bayerischen Landesbank. The original building was destroyed in bombing in 1944; this plaque on its façade on the corner of Brienner and Türkenstrasse marks the former site. In 1955 there were discussions on building a cultural or popular education centre on the site, but it was sold to the BayernLB (Bank of Bavaria) in 1958.
The stone lion in front of the northern entrance on Gabelsberger Straße is a copy, placed here in 1980 with the inscription: “Copy of the lion destroyed when the Wittelsbacher Palais was bombed in AD 1944.” As the historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld writes, “A clear example of the postmodern scorn towards artistic authenticity, this monument seems to have been meant to prevent any further commemoration at the site which might have addressed its Nazi past.”
Directly behind was to have been the site of Hitler's mausoleum. The mausoleum was to be connected to the planned Halle der Partei at Munich by a bridge over Gabelsbergerstraße (where, at £37, the NSDAP’s Main Office for Local Government played key roles in the unrestrained plundering of the Jews, directed at private property, art
collections and libraries, houses, flats and land, but also at
commercial enterprises.) to become a party-political cult centre in the city regarded by Hitler as the home of the Nazi party.
The dimensions were slightly smaller than the Pantheon. The oculus in the centre of the dome was to be one metre wider in diameter than that of the Pantheon (8.92 metres) to admit more light on Hitler's sarcophagus, placed immediately under it on the floor of the rotunda. The modest dimensions of the structure and its lack of rich decoration are at first sight puzzling in light of Hitler's predilection for gigantic dimensions, but in this case the focal point of the building was the Führer's sarcophagus, which was not to be dwarfed by dimension out of all proportion to the size of the sarcophagus itself. Likewise, rich interior decoration would have distracted the attention of "pilgrims". Giesler's scale model of the building apparently pleased Hitler, but the model and plans, kept by Hitler in the Reichskanzlei, are are now probably in the hands of the Russians or have been destroyed.Hitler relaxed with a sketching pad, deftly drawing a Party Forum that should grace Munich after his death – a parade square, Nazi Party office buildings, a bridge across Gabelsberger Strasse, and his own mausoleum, dwarfing the city’s famous Frauenkirche and built to ‘last until the end of time.’ It was a concrete sign of his optimism about the future.Irving (178)
Just outside the Alte Pinakothek within the Museumsquartier is the Türkentor, the only remaining section part of the Türkenkaserne barracks, built in 1826 for the Royal Bavarian
Infantry Lifeguards Regiment. According to The Hitler Pages, on "October 8, 1914 a ceremonial farewell of Hitler’s regiment took place at the Türkenkaserne, with the king present."
The Sicherheitsdienst (SD), “Security Service,” was the intelligence service of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS). From 1933 to 1939, the SD was under the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), then was transferred to the Reichsicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Service Office, RSHA). The SD was created in 1932 by Reinhard Heydrich, who built it into a powerful organization that became the exclusive Nazi Party “information service” on June 9, 1934. In 1938, the SD was made the intelligence organization for the Reich as well as for the Nazi Party. It worked in parallel with the Gestapo, which it supported with intelligence information. The mission of the SD was primarily to detect and eliminate those who would subvert or otherwise harm the Nazi Party and the Reich. The SD cultivated and managed a network of several hundred agents and thousands of informants throughout the Reich and, during the war, in the occupied territories as well. The SD was always primarily an intelligence-gathering agency serving the Gestapo, which was the executive agency. Ultimately, therefore, the SD came under the control of Heinrich Himmler, who, as chief of the German police, headed the Gestapo and was also the senior officer of the ϟϟ.Alte Pinakothek
Axelrod (728) Encyclopedia of World War II
The Alte Pinakothek situated in the Kunstareal is one of the oldest galleries in the world and houses one of the most famous collections of Old Master paintings. The midsection had been destroyed during the war and was reconstructed in 1952 - 1957 by Hans Döllgast.
The restored section can clearly be seen today. Outside the building on the western side is the sculpture of the horse tamer (Rosselenker) by Hermann Hahn from 1928, its bullet holes serving as "scars of remembrance."
Hitler had declared on the night of 15th-16th January 1942 thatThe Munich Pinakothek is one of the most magnificent achievements in the world. It's the work of one man. What Munich owes to Ludwig I is beyond computing. And what the whole German people owes to him! The palace of the Uffizi at Florence does honour not to Florence alone, but to all Italy.Neue Pinakothek
[W]ith the advent of war in 1939, the Alte and Neue Pinakotheken closed their doors to the public and the artworks were sent to the provinces for safekeeping. Although restoration work continued in the museums’ workshops through 1944, there were no wartime exhibitions to organise.It had been all but destroyed during the war and its ruins demolished in 1949. Designed by architect Alexander Freiherr von Branca, the new postmodern building shown on the right opened in 1981.
Jonathan Petropoulos (24) The Faustian Bargain - The Art World in Nazi Germany
Site of High Command of the SA (Oberste SA-Führung)
The Sturmabteilung ("Storm detachment" or "Assault detachment" or "Assault section", usually translated as "stormtroop(er)s") was the paramilitary organisation of the Nazi Party and played a key role in Hitler's rise to power. SA men were often called "brownshirts" for the colour of their uniforms which distinguished them from the Schutzstaffel (ϟϟ), who wore black and brown uniforms (in comparison to Mussolini's blackshirts). Brown-coloured shirts were chosen as the SA uniform because a large batch of them was cheaply available after World War I, having originally been ordered for German troops serving in Africa. The SA was also the first Nazi paramilitary group to develop pseudo-military titles for bestowal upon its members later to be adopted by several other Nazi Party groups, chief among them the ϟϟ. The SA became largely irrelevant after he took control of Germany in 1933; it was effectively superseded by the ϟϟ after the Night of the Long Knives.
The day and night of June 30 marked the Night of the Long Knives, when the entire leadership of the SA was purged, along with many other political adversaries of the Nazis. At dawn that morning, Hitler flew to Munich and then drove to Bad Wiessee, where he personally arrested Röhm and the other SA leaders. All were imprisoned at Stadelheim Prison in Munich.At a special party congress held 29 July 1921, Hitler was appointed chairman. He announced that the party would stay headquartered in Munich and that those who did not like his tactics or leadership should just leave; he would not entertain debate on such matters. The vote was 543 for Hitler, and 1 against him.Toland (111) Adolf Hitler
Left: Colour footage of an SA procession with Die Braune Kompanie playing.
Right: Account of the so-called Nacht der langen Messer
Hitler was uneasy authorising Röhm's execution and gave Röhm an opportunity to commit suicide. On July 2, he was visited by SS-Brigadeführer Theodor Eicke (then Kommandant of Dachau) and SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Lippert, who lay a pistol on the table, told Röhm he had ten minutes to use it, and left. Röhm refused, and when Eicke and Lippert returned, he stood in the middle of the cell with his shirt opened, theatrically baring his chest as they shot him. Röhm was buried in the Westfriedhof (Western Cemetery) in Munich:
My bike outside the cemetery
Roehm's grave within.
Roehm's grave within.
House of German Doctors (Haus der Deutschen Ärzte)
In 1933 Jewish doctors were deprived of their licences to practise under health insurance plans. From 1938 onwards they were only allowed to practise as “providers of treatment” for Jewish patients and not permitted to use the title “doctor”. The Association of Health-Fund Physicians of Germany, which had its Munich headquarters in the House of German Physicians, inaugurated in 1935, and the Association of National Socialist German Physicians at Karlstraße 21 played a key role in these measures. The members of these organisations included not only the ideologues of racially based medicine but also the advocates of medical experiments on humans, forced sterilisation and “euthanasia”.
The first Reich Doctors' Leader (Reichsärzteführer) was Dr Gerhard Wagner, in large measure responsible for euthanasia and sterilisation carried out against Jews and the handicapped, and who showed himself at the Nuremberg Party Congress in 1935 to be a staunch proponent of the Nuremberg Laws, and thereby also of Nazi Germany's race legislation and racial politics. Under his leadership before dying suddenly in Munich in 1939, the Nazi killing institution at Hadamar was established. He instructed doctors to be less dogmatic in their approach to and understanding of medicine:
In his thinking and practice, the German doctor must become closer to nature. He should no longer swear solely and only by the dogma of his university acquired Schulmedizin-based knowledge. Rather, he should also master the methods of Naturheil, homeopathy, and Volksmedezin. We National Socialists subscribe neither to economic nor intellectual dogma, we only know one dogma: The well-being of the German Volk.
Chad Ross (78-9) Naked Germany
After the war the second floor swastika and laurel wreath were removed and the stone plaque altered to read Haus der Muenchener Ärzte. (Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments, and the Legacy of the Third Reich by Gavriel David Rosenfeld, page 80)
Reich HQ of the National Socialist Women's League
(Reichsführung der NS-Frauenschaft)
Unlike man, as Alfred Rosenberg once put it, woman thinks 'lyrically’ and not 'systematically’, 'atomistically’ and not 'synoptically’, whatever that may mean; and while he saw it as one of woman’s main tasks 'to preach the maintenance of the purity of the race’, the Reich Women’s Leader Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, in full agreement, complained especially of the absence in sober modern times of the sacred racial function and significance of women and called upon them 'to become once more the priestesses of the family and nation’.She eventually served eighteen months in gaol after the war (only having been caught whilst in hiding in 1948 after witnesses had claimed she had died in the bunker with Hitler) and remained an unrepentant Nazi until her death in 1999, twenty years earlier In she had dedicated her book The Woman in the Third Reich to “the victims of the Nuremberg trials.” The building itself today dates from 1957 after the original was bombed during the war.
Fest (316) The Face Of The Third Reich
Former NSDAP Accounting Office (Reichrevisionsamt/Rechnungsamt)
Initially American cultural officials concentrated on the transmission of high culture so as to overcome inherited notions of German cultural superiority. Its chief instruments were the several dozen “America Houses,” which in the larger cities offered a rich selection of U.S. newspapers, journals, and books that would help curious Germans quench their thirst for information. Typical of their political message was the celebration of America by the poet Stephen Vincent Benet: “There is a land of hope, a land of freedom. There is a land in which the most different kinds of people live, descendants of all peoples of this earth living together under the same big sky.” Especially appealing were novels by Ernest Hemingway, William Saroyan, and others that furnished a key to understanding this land of contradictions, as well as art exhibits that brought back masterpieces of modernism from their exile in the United States. Attempts to convey the work of classical composers like Aaron Copeland and dramatists such as Thornton Wilder, however, proved more difficult. But when reading Nathaniel Hawthorne, one young English major noted enthusiastically: “Finally, [this is] another America than the one we’re used to from the U.S. newspapers, journals, and the occupiers.”Oberstes Parteigericht
Konrad H. Jarausch (121) After Hitler: Recivilising Germans, 1945–1995
Formerly the site of Palais Törring built in 1812 from the plans of Karl von Fischer, this was the site of the Supreme Court of the NSDAP headed by Walter Buch (whose daughter ended up marrying Martin Bormann). It was responsible for settling internal party conflicts and disciplining individual members whose behaviour might be damaging to the party. It was destroyed during the war and completely rebuilt.
Kraft durch Freude - München-Oberbayern
The headquarters of the Upper Bavarian branch of the German Labour Front (DAF), whose goal was to bring together in a single organisation all »working Germans«, regardless of their training, social status or actual profession, and indoctrinate them with Nazi ideology. The DAF was made particularly attractive by the leisure activities and holidays offered by its Strength through Joy organisation (Kraft durch Freude– KdF). They were located here at Brienner Straße 26–28 when, 1935 the KDF took over the business premises and house of the Jewish antiquarian bookseller Jacques Rosenthal who was forced to sell the building to the Reich Leadership of the NSDAP for well below its value.
After the free trade unions were disbanded in May 1933, their assets were confiscated and many trade-union functionaries were arrested. They were replaced by the German Labour Front (DAF), whose goal was to bring together in a single organisation all “working Germans”, regardless of their training, social status or actual profession, and indoctrinate them with Nazi ideology. The DAF was made particularly attractive by the leisure activities and holidays offered by its “Strength through Joy” organisation (“Kraft durch Freude” – KdF). The headquarters of the Upper Bavarian branch of the DAF were located at Brienner Straße 26–28, and in 1935 the KdF took over the business premises and house of the Jewish antiquarian bookseller Jacques Rosenthal at Brienner Straße 26. Rosenthal was forced to sell the building to the Reich Leadership of the NSDAP for well below its value.
ThemenGeschichtsPfad (57-58)
Former office of Ernst Hanfstaengl, Head of the International Press Office, at Karlstraße 18. Gradually from 1933 the addresses at Karlstraße 6-20 and 22-29 held the offices of the Oberste SA-Führung, Reichsführung SS, NS-Dozentenverband, Reichsjugendführung and the NS-Studentenverbund. Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl (1887–1975), who had studied in the US, served the NSDAP in various functions before losing favour and emigrating to London in 1937. An early backer of Hitler, he participated in the Beer Hall Putsch and hid Hitler in his home after it failed. He became acquainted with Hitler on the occasion of a NSDAP meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller. As its largest civil promoter he became part of Hitler's close circle of friends. From 1931-1937 he served as foreign press chief of the NSDAP. After the elimination of the SA and Ernst Röhm on 30 June 1934 he dissociated himself increasingly from the party, which made him suspicious in the eyes of the Gestapo. He fled in 1937 and eventually arrived in the USA, where in 1942 he became German advisor to Roosevelt; the only man to have worked directly under Hitler and FDR.
Widenmayerstr 18 bears the name of Hanfstaengl through Munich photographer and founder of the eponymous publishing house Franz Hanfstaengl Verlag, which specialised in art publications. Ernst's brother Edgar (1883-1958) was joint owner Munich of this publishing house, which since 1933 printed postcards and propaganda for the National Socialists and became the party's art advisor.
Just off Odeonsplatz and overlooking the hofgarten beside the residenz, this was a main Hitler site. The photo on the left shows him with his main acolytes from Geoff Walden's Third Reich in Ruins.
The same site July 26 1933 with a visiting group of 411 Italian fascist youth and today.
Hanfstaengl with Hitler at Cafe Heck. The former wrote in his book Hitler: The Missing Years that "whenever he was in Munich, he was usually to be found with his inner circle at the Cafe Heck, in the Galleriestrasse, which became his Stammtisch after leaving Landsberg" (page 132). The video on the right shows a scene in Rise of Evil when Hanfstaengl, played by Liev Schreiber, introduces himself to Hitler.
In the rather dire Hitler: Rise of Evil, the unappealing Hanfstaengl is portrayed with considerable sympathy by Liev Schreiber, a rather problematic characterisation In the film he is portrayed as a noble (and decent-looking) character who almost despises Hitler which obviously follows Hanfstaengl`s own gloss over view of himself which he gave in his biography after the war. In fact, Hanfstaengl was an anti-Semite completely in the thrall of Hitler.
In the September 4 entry of his diary, William Shirer described Hanfstaengl as
Within one can still find the Neptune fountain sculpted in 1937 by Nazi sculptor Josef Wackerle.
an immense, high-strung, incoherent clown who does not often fail to remind us that he is part American and graduated from Harvard, made the main speech of the day in his capacity of foreign press chief of the party. Obviously trying to please his boss ,he had the crust to ask us to“report on affairs in Germany without attempting to interpret them.”“History alone,”Putzi shouted,“can evaluate the events now taking place under Hitler.”What he meant, and what Goebbels and Rosenberg mean, is that we should jump on the bandwagon of Nazi propaganda. I fear Putzi’s words fell on deaf, if good-humoured, ears among the American and British correspondents, who rather like him despite his clownish stupidity.
Park Cafe
Park Cafe and the entrance to the Botanical gardens. The rear of the building has the same fascist busts that can be found on the façade of the nearby Zentrale which " housed some of the main Nazi administration offices for the Party" and was built the same time in 1934.
Reichsrechtsamt der NSDAP
1. Central Office: Chief: Oberbereichsleiter HEINZ EISENLOHRAccording to The Hitler Pages, in the summer of 1927 Geli Raubal's history teacher, Hermann Foppa, asked her if she could arrange a class meeting with her uncle. In the beginning of July the class went here to the villa of Elsa and Hugo Bruckman on the Karolinenplatz where they had the meeting with Hitler.
2. Office for Legal Administration: Oberbereichsleiter Dr. WALTHER BERCKHOLTZ
3. Office for Legal Policy: Chief: Reichsamtsleiter HEINRICH BARTH.
4. Office for the Enforcement of the Legal Rights of the German People: Chief: Oberbereichsleiter HEINZ EISENLOHR.
5. Office for Legal Literature: Chief: Reichsamtsleiter HEINRICH BARTH.
6. Office for Legal Training: Chief: Reichsamtsleiter HEINRICH BARTH.
7. Office for Judicial Advisers (Rechtswahrer): Chief: Reichsamtsleiter Dr. WILHELM HEUBER.
Of Elsa, Hitler would later remark on the night of March 10, 1942:
One day I detected an unexpected reaction even in Frau Bruckmann. She had invited to her house, at the same time as myself, a very pretty woman of Munich society. As we were taking our leave, Frau Bruckmann perceived in her female guest's manner a sign of an interest that she doubtless deemed untimely. The consequence was that she never again invited us both at once. As I've said, the woman was beautiful, and perhaps she felt some interest in me—nothing more.As a student in Munich, future Hitlerjugend leader Baldur von Schirach lived in the house of the publisher Bruckmann, who was friendly not only with his parents but also with Hitler." Fest (456), The Face Of The Third Reich.
Hitler's Table Talk (359)
It was also here that Hitler first met his favourite architect, Professor Ludwig Troost, in 1928,
and that same day he told the architect, "When I come to power, you will be my architect. I have great plans in mind and I believe you are the only one who can carry them out for me." Troost did not however live long. As Hitler gave the obligatory three taps to the foundation stone for the House of Art (which still stands in modern Munich), the shaft of the silver-headed hammer broke, an omen of ill for- tune of the highest degree, as the local architect Schiedermayer tactlessly whispered to the Führer in his dialect: "Dös bedeudt a Unglück."In the photo on the right I'm standing beside the obelisk on the Karolinenplatz:
Irving (100) Hitler's War
The photo on the right is during the Munich conference of September, 1938
Deutschen Museum
The
museum had hosted a set of ideological Special exhibitions, which were
conceived in Munich as itinerant exhibitions. 1936 saw the opening of
the anti-Semitic and antisoviet propaganda exhibition "Der
Bolschewismus" in the presence of representatives from 37 states. It
had 350,000 visitors, who were brought in by special trains from
throughout Europe. On the left, Joseph
Goebbels and other Nazi officials are greeted by saluting Germans as
they proceed toward the Bibliothek des Deutschen Museums for the
opening of Der ewige Jude on November 8, 1937.
At the entrance to the exhibition "Der ewige Jude" in November 1937 and today. The exhibition
was held in the Library of the German Museum until January 31, 1938.
It was the largest prewar anti-Semitic exhibit the Nazis held. It
emphasised supposed attempts by Jews to bolshevise Germany, It did
this by revealing an 'eastern' Jew - wearing a kaftan, and holding gold
coins in one hand and a whip in the other. Under his arm is a map of
the world, with the imprint of the hammer and sickle. The exhibition
attracted 412,300 visitors which was over 5,000 per day, seeing 400,000 visitors by January 1938.
The eagles that are allowed to continue to adorn the building were designed by Munich artist Kurt Schmid Ehmen (1901-1968) who had specialised in reichsadlers and swastikas (such as those found at the "Ehrenmal" der Feldherrnhalle and Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg and the Reich Chancellery in Berlin).
SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Franz Hippler was the most eager and unscrupulous among Goebbels's film experts who knew how to arrange the most disparate clips and most antagonistic arguments into a triumph of dialectical destructiveness. It was he who put together the morally most perfidious, intellectually most under handed, and ideologically most perverse mishmash that has ever been produced. This was Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), made in 1940. Only human scum could bring out such a diabolical work. Together with Jud Süß (1940) and Die Rothschilds (1940), as well as the book by Hans Dieboro with the same title. Der ewige Jude raised the pogrom mood against the Jews to boiling point. These films and a number of other books were calculated to justify in advance the mass murder of the European Jews.
Hoffmann, Broadwin, Berghahn (173) The Triumph of Propaganda - Film and National Socialism 1933-1945
Der ewige Jude is certainly the "hate" picture of all time, and one of the great examples of the way in which the film medium can be used as a propaganda tool far greater than the printed or spoken word alone. Fortunately, the film is inaccessible beyond a few film archives where it is kept in the restricted division usually re- served for pornography, which is exactly the genre to which this film belongs.
Of the museum itself, Hitler had remarked June 13, 1943 that
One of the great attractions of the Deutsches Museum in Munich is the presence of a large number of perfectly constructed working models, which visitors can manipulate themselves. It is not just by chance that so many of the young people of the inland town of Munich have answered the call of the sea.(318) Hitler's Table Talk
Deutsches Museum Kongreßsaal
Completed
in 1936 by architect German Bestelmeyer, this building in front of the
museum "was used during the Third Reich for meetings, exhibits,
speeches, and the state funeral of Gauleiter Adolf Wagner." (http://www.thirdreichruins.com/munich5.htm#dtmuseum)
The eagles that are allowed to continue to adorn the building were designed by Munich artist Kurt Schmid Ehmen (1901-1968) who had specialised in reichsadlers and swastikas (such as those found at the "Ehrenmal" der Feldherrnhalle and Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg and the Reich Chancellery in Berlin).
Other Munich Pages
Odeonsplatz
