Inauguration of Adolf-Hitler-Strasse, 1933; today it is Theaterstraße.
When Hitler himself visited the town, the Würzburger Hof was his hotel of choice
When Hitler himself visited the town, the Würzburger Hof was his hotel of choice
The Stadttheater during the Third Reich and today
Looking down Domstraße towards the Grafeneckart-Turm of the rathaus
Looking down Domstraße the other way towards the cathedral
Sanderglacisstraße officially renamed Schlageter-Straße on May 26
The Gauhaus
Sanderglacisstraße officially renamed Schlageter-Straße on May 26
When a Duisburg bridge was blown up and nine people in a Belgian compartment on a train were killed, seven Germans were tried before a French military court and shot. In an Essen hotel, a young German, Albert Leo Schlageter, was arrested, taken for trial, tried, and executed. Despite the Nazis’ general dislike of the Ruhr resistance as not being aimed at the proper enemy (the Weimar government in Berlin), Schlageter was adopted by the movement to serve as a martyr for the cause.
The Gauhaus
The
former Hotel "Crown Prince" was purchased in 1934 by the Nazi Party and
expanded with an honorary hall and flags. In January 1935 the
management of the Gau of Franconia moved here, and on 13 June 1935 the
building was officially opened by Reichsleiter Rosenberg. It served as
the seat of government of Gauleiter Dr. Hellmuth.
The
so-called Villa des Gauleiters, private villa of Gauleiter Dr. Otto
Hellmuth at Rottendorfer- (at the time Ludendorff-) Straße 26.
Over most of his term as Gauleiter, Hellmuth was not an impressive
personality with Joseph Goebbels describing him as "a most retiring
unassuming Gauleiter in whom one had not too much confidence." However,
Hellmuth defended his Gau vigorously in the spring of 1945, as Goebbels
noted in his diary on April 2. In 1947, Hellmuth was accused of
complicity in the murders of Allied aircraft pilots. He was tried at
Dachau and sentenced to death. This sentence was later commuted to life
imprisonment. He was released in 1955 and died in
Reutlingen in 1968.
The concrete bunker was located in the immediate vicinity of the Villa des Gauleiters
beside the normal air-raid shelter. It served during the war as a
command post in the district leadership. The bunker was demolished in
June 1988.
In the Hall of Honour, the names of the movement's 'martyrs' from the Gau Franconia were
commemorated and the names of the Würzburg Olympic champions recorded.
The photo on the left shows Gauleiter Dr. Hellmuth welcoming Dr. Ley in
the Hall of Honour on the occasion of the Gauhauses the selection of
candidates for the training castle. 22nd March 1936. 
The Standortlazarett, a large military hospital complex, was built in 1937, becoming one of the most noted works of this period. After taking power, the Nazis knew how to quickly establish good relations with the former Reichswehr. Würzburg was an old garrison town since the time of Balthasar Neumann and a connection with military traditions gave the system support the national bourgeoisie.
The Standortlazarett, a large military hospital complex, was built in 1937, becoming one of the most noted works of this period. After taking power, the Nazis knew how to quickly establish good relations with the former Reichswehr. Würzburg was an old garrison town since the time of Balthasar Neumann and a connection with military traditions gave the system support the national bourgeoisie.
'Dr.
Goebbels-Haus'- Headquarters of the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher
Studentenbund. The building had been completed in 1937 as the NSDStB
camaraderie house and was dedicated to Goebbels because he had studied
for some time before 1922 in Würzburg.
Large demonstration of the DAF in July, 1936 at the Residenzplatz
Site of the NS-Lehrerbund - Lehrerhochschule, completed in 1936.
The
Neue Universität, when it served the Association of university
professors under the leadership and control of the Nazis, and today.
University teachers were controlled by the
Nationalsozialistische-Dozentenbund (NSDB—Nazi Lecturers League), a
professional association of university lecturers designed to keep them
in line with Nazi ideology.
Site of the NS-Lehrerbund - Lehrerhochschule, completed in 1936.
Teachers were encouraged to join the Nazi Party and all of them had to be members of the Nationalsozialistische Lehrerbund (NSLB—Nazi teacher league). The monolithic NSLB, formed in November 1935, rejected the democratic heritage of the Weimar regime, and subjected all teachers to strict Nazi Party control. It had a newspaper, Der deutsche Erzieher (German Educator) and took charge of services to the teaching profession. After 1938, teachers were indoctrinated at a special, compulsory, one-month training course of drills and lectures where they learned what knowledge to pass on the pupils. By 1939 the forty-one NSLB training camps had prepared 215,000 members for their educational tasks—these being spirit of militarism, paganism, anti–Semitism, and the cult of the perfect “Aryan” racial type—by means of ideological instruction, propaganda courses, conferences, group travel, paramilitary physical training and field sports. There was also the Reichslehrerbund (RLB—Reich Teachers’ League), an organisation of teachers devoted to the ideals of Nazism, carefully watched by high Nazi officials.Lepage (90) Hitler Youth, 1922-1945: An Illustrated History
Palais Thüngen, the 'Braunes Haus' of the SA and Kraft durch Freude at Wilhelmstraße 5
Fritz-Schillinger-Haus, headquarters of the NS-Volkswohlfahrt
(People's Welfare). Building on it started 3 May 1936 with the topping
out ceremony taking place on 10 October 1936.
The former Gauschule der NSF which served to train those who would become leading functionaries.
Headquarters of the NS-Frauenschaft, the Nazi Women's League. Their appointed tasks were to promote recycling within the Saar Palatinate, community support, business honorary service (replacement of workers on the machine by women and girls), sewing rooms, Harvest Help and patchwork bag action (repairing garments), and supporting the Kindertransport. During the war their service for the Wehrmacht involved hospital care, soldiers' care, socks and glove supply, army kitchens, assistants for government agencies, facilitation for domestic helpers in Bad Kissingen, and construction of hospital lights. Nevertheless, as Kater (74) wrote in Hitler Youth ,
Headquarters of the NS-Frauenschaft, the Nazi Women's League. Their appointed tasks were to promote recycling within the Saar Palatinate, community support, business honorary service (replacement of workers on the machine by women and girls), sewing rooms, Harvest Help and patchwork bag action (repairing garments), and supporting the Kindertransport. During the war their service for the Wehrmacht involved hospital care, soldiers' care, socks and glove supply, army kitchens, assistants for government agencies, facilitation for domestic helpers in Bad Kissingen, and construction of hospital lights. Nevertheless, as Kater (74) wrote in Hitler Youth ,
As much as women might busy themselves in the service of Hitler’s movement, the popular consensus was that politics was a man’s game and they had better stay out of it. Thus conditioned, they acquiesced when Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess told comrades at the Nuremberg Party rally of 1938: “Talk to your wives only about such matters which are expressly designated for public discussion.”
The hauptbahnhof after being bombed by the RAF in 1945 and its current incarnation.
The remains of the Falkenhaus and its remarkable reconstruction
The site of Ecke Theater on Kapuzinerstraße then and now
Hof Seebach then and now
The Bechtolsheimerhof on Hofstraße in 1959 and today
Birthplace of German rococo sculptor Johann Peter Wagner, Stephanstraße, 1958 and today
Schottenkirche (Scots Church) after the war and the site today 
The kriegerdenkmal designed by Fried Heuler then and now.
Identical views of the city from the fortress immediately after the war and today.
The remains of the Falkenhaus and its remarkable reconstruction
The kriegerdenkmal designed by Fried Heuler then and now.
Americans marching away German POWs in front of the bombed Löwenbrücke with Festung Marienberg behind.
Identical views of the city from the fortress immediately after the war and today.
Erlangen
This town of 100,000 is located just over ten miles north of Nuremberg. There are two notable examples of reichsadlers still existing:
The Amtsgericht
The Amtsgericht
The reichsadler of the doorway of the Amtsgericht on Sieboltstraße 2
Friedrich-Rückert-Schule
The
entrance to Friedrich-Rückert-Schule at the Ohmplatz with a detail of
the shield (dated 1936) and one of the carvings adorning the side of the
door.
Around
the corner over another doorway is this disturbing reminder...
Schoolchildren continuing to support the Nazi eagle, albeit without
swastika. The school can be seen behind this monument celebrating the reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990
Erlangen Schloss in 1936 and today
The headquarters of Siemens in the Himbeerpalast then and now
The Bayerischer Hof on the site of what had been the Colosseum where Hitler had spoken several times.
The
hakenkreuz over the Frauenklinik on the 'Day of Potsdam' on March 21,
1933 nearly two months after Hitler had been "jobbed into office by the
old guard" as chancellor of the Reich. This day of Hitler's visit to the
aged President Hindenburg, who wore the uniform of the Imperial Field
Marshal, was directed by Joseph Goebbels as a solemn act of state. This
propaganda event was presented as a "legitimate heir" after the end of
1918, the lost empire. On the "Day of Potsdam" almost all public
buildings were decorated with flags in the German empire with the
swastika flag.
Until 1945,
more than 500 women were sterilised at this Erlanger hospital for
alleged hereditary disease. Almost all were of German nationality, most
were unmarried, childless, and 26 to 30 years old. But women near
menopause had surgery; the ages ranged from 13 (the youngest) to 48.
Many of the women were inmates of the Hospital and Nursing Home
Erlangen. Most sterilisation sentences were justified by the diagnosis
"schizophrenia" (51%). "Congenital idiocy" was given in 29% of cases as
a ground for sterilization.
Most
sterilisation procedures were performed in the first years after the
Act.
In 1935, for example, every 16th woman to be included in the
gynaecological department underwent forced sterilisation in the
hospital. Some women were made barren by X-rays. The operation,
however, was the method of choice. The gynaecologist squeezed the
fallopian tubes with a clamp and tied them. For the doctors, it was
done quickly. For the women, however, the operation meant a fateful
intervention in body and life.
Ernst Rudin's Institute for Genealogy and Demography became one of the leading centres for race hygiene in Germany. Riidin, a psychiatrist, co- authored a book with Arthur Giitt and Falk Ruttke, a lawyer, which was a commentary on the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring passed on 14 July 1933—the Sterilization Law. The law stated that an individual could be sterilized if he or she suffered from a "genetic" illness including feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, and epilepsy. What began as legislation in America had finally also been realized in Germany. The Sterilization Law was just the first step in measures to eliminate a whole group of people considered to be either genetically defective or racially inferior.Macrakis (127-128) Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany
30 km northeast from Nuremberg, this was Göring’s childhood home which, according to David Irving in Göring: A Biography (23) "left its most powerful mark on Göring’s childhood":
A towering jumble of castellated walls, built and rebuilt over nine hundred years on the site of an old for- tress fifteen miles from the city, Veldenstein Castle had begun to decay during the nineteenth century. In 1889 stones had crumbled onto four houses beneath, and the then-owner, Nuremberg businessman Johann Stahl, decided to unload it onto some unsuspecting purchaser. “Army physician Dr. Hermann Epenstein” (no von then), “property owner of Berlin,” bought it for twenty thousand marks on November 29, 1897; over the next forty years, until it was formally deeded to Field Marshal Hermann Göring on Christmas Eve, 1938, this philanthropic gentleman would pour one and a half million marks into the renovation and reconstruction of its keep, its roof timbers, its inner and outer fortifications. Veldenstein Castle was the romantic setting for Hermann’s boyhood. Undoubtedly Epenstein had provided it to the Göring family out of a sense of obligation to the elderly former colonial governor, Dr. Göring, whose young wife he had taken quite openly as his mistress.
Hiltpoltstein
From page 15 of Adolf Hitler, Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers and looking at the town from the same angle today with the church and schloss in the background.
Hitler with his adjutants Wilhelm Brückner and Julius Schaub in 1936 from page 10 of Adolf Hitler, Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers in front of the war memorial between Hilpoltstein and Kappel and the site today.
Schweinfurt
The Zeughaus
Clearing up the debris on the Marktplatz April 1945 and today
The main railway station
Pegnitz
Schweinfurt
The Zeughaus
Clearing up the debris on the Marktplatz April 1945 and today
The main railway station
[P]recision attacks could go wrong precisely because the Germans could work out where to expect them - as the Americans discovered to their cost when they attacked Schweinfurt, a centre of ball-bearing production in northern Bavaria, on August 17 and October 14, 1943. In the first raid, thirty-six B-17S were shot down out of an initial strike force of 230; twenty-four were lost the same day in a similar attack on Regensburg. In the October attack - the 8th Air Force's 'Black Thursday' - sixty out of 291 B-17S were shot down and 138 badly damaged.Ferguson (566) War of the World
On the Schweinfurt raids, see Thomas M. Coffey, Decision over Schweinfurt: The U.S. 8th Air Force
Battle for Daylight Bombing (New York: McKay, 1977); Friedhelm Golücke, Schweinfurt
und der strategische Luftkrieg 1943: der Angriff der U.S. Air Force vom 14. Oktober 1943 gegen
die Schweinfurter Kugellagerindustrie (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1988); Martin Middlebrook,
The Schweinfurt-RegensburgMission (New York: Scribner, 1983). See also Hinsley, British
Intelligence, 3/1: 293-96, 308-16; Murray, Lufiwaffe, pp. 164-68.
Pegnitz
Local district asembly of the NSDAP in 1939 in the marketsquare.
Gunzenhausen
Nazis demonstrating their support in the 1920s. On October 13 1932, Hitler spoke here, in Nuremberg (Luitpoldhain), and in Weiden.
