Augsburg
Looking down Augsburg's Maximiliansstraße in 1938 and today
It was from an aerodrome near Augsburg that Rudolf Hess flew to the United Kingdom at 17.45 on Saturday, May 10 1941 alone over the North Sea to Scotland, seeking out the Duke of Hamilton. This is also the hometown of Jakob Grimminger, famous for having been awarded the honour of carrying the blood-stained Blutfahne from the Munich putsch.
Propaganda during the Reichstag elections of November 12, 1933. The sign above the clock reads "Wir wollen kein Volk minderen Rechts sein." From Hakenkreuz und Zirbelnuß. Augsburg im Dritten Reich (Filser and Thieme).
After February 1944 bombing and today, showing how much has been reconstructed
The wife in front of the Augustus statue at Maximiliansplatz
The Herkulesbrunnen then and now
Welcoming Hitler on his March 17, 1937 visit
The Herkulesbrunnen then and now
Welcoming Hitler on his March 17, 1937 visit
The left shows a Nazi demonstration outside the Stadttheater on March 23, 1933 and a neo-nazi demonstration at the same site on December 2, 2006. On the right is Hitler in front of the Stadttheater on March 19, 1937 and the building today, sporting a banner denouncing racism at another recent demonstration. It was in a speech at Augsburg on November 21 that year that Hitler made the demand for colonies when he declared: "What the world shuts its ears to today it will not be able to ignore in a year's time. What it will not listen to now it will have to think about in three years' time, and in five or six it will have to take into practical consideration. We shall voice our demand for living-room in colonies more and more loudly till the world cannot but recognize our claim."
Landratsamt
Just from the train station down Prinzregentstr. is the Landratsamt (District administration office) with the reichsadler still above the door and state-protected by a mesh screen.
Also on the façade is what appears to be NS relief typical of the time for the German Workers' Front.
The building and, on the right, a vehicle registration plaque from the Landsrat during the NSDAP era.
Am Haus Theodor Wiedemann Strasse 35
The left shows a relief representing a link between the Roman Empire and the Third Reich whilst the right shows under the claws of an eagle a tank and the navy, with above it the air force bombing and the army. The tank and lightnings are toward the east aligned. If one puts the realm eagle on a map, heading direction the north, the view is against France. The line of sight of the NSDAP Reichsadlers was modified to the right (the east).
Am Haus Firnhaberstrasse 53
This relief shows a stylised representation of a Messerschmidt BF 109 - the most important fighter of Luftwaffe.
Richthofen Strasse
Above the doors are reliefs representing the Deutschen Arbeitsfront, Hitlerjugend and the NS Frauenschaft.
Richthofen Strasse
The swastika has been removed from all devices.
Reinöhlstrasse
Gentnerstrasse 53 -59
Reliefs celebrating the 1936 Olympic Games; note the Hitler hairstyle in the second relief.
Site of Augsburg's 'Liberation'
I hadn't heard of this 'Augsburg Liberation Movement' which helped the American 3rd Infantry Division 'liberate' the town from the Germans (apparently only after it became clear the war was days from being lost) until I came across this plaque. Google-searching the group in English found only one entry for it.
The Synagogue
The synagogue before and after the war, with the signs reading "Entry Forbidden for the General Public", but also mentioning a Jewish Service on Friday and Sunday. In 1913 the local Jewish community had the architects Lömpel and Landauer build a synagogue in the town centre which was dedicated in 1917. Described as "possibly the most significant art nouveau synagogue in Europe" it was seriously damaged during Kristallnacht but survived before finally reopening in 1985.
Augsburg was also the setting for Göring's surrender to the allies. On the right is colour footage of Göring's first day as a prisoner in the town.
May 11, 1945, he was taken out of the back door of the two-storey suburban house in Augsburg to meet fifty Allied newspapermen. Gripping a pair of matching grey suede gloves, he slumped into an easy chair and mopped at his brow as the shutters clicked. After five minutes they allowed him to move into the thin shade of a willow tree. The questioning resumed. Heaping blame for the first time in public on Martin Bormann, he insisted that it must have been Bormann and not Hitler who had nominated Dönitz as the new Führer. “Hitler,” rasped Göring, “did not leave a thing in writing saying that Dönitz was to take his place!”
He publicly revealed that he had opposed Hitler’s attack on Russia. “I pointed out to him,” said Göring, “his own words in Mein Kampf concerning a two-front war. . . . But Hitler believed that by the year’s end he could bring Russia to her knees.” He revealed to the newspapermen his unhappiest moment of the war. “The greatest surprise of the war to us was the long- range fighter bomber that could take off from England, attack Berlin, and return to its home base. I realized,” he added disarmingly, “that the war was lost shortly after the invasion of France and the subsequent breakthrough.”
Asked inevitably about the Nazi extermination camps, Göring was dismissive. “I was never so close to Hitler as to have him express himself to me on this subject,” he said. He was sure that these atrocity reports were “merely propaganda. Hitler,” he concluded, recalling that trembling right hand signing the documents, “had something wrong with his brain the last time I saw him.”
Irving (691) Göring: A Biography
Regensburg
The Salzstadl from the 1940 book Regensburg: Eine Stadt des Reiches published by Gauverlag Bayerische Ostmark in Bayreuth and today.
It was here in Regensburg that former Chancellor Franz von Papen, who more than anyone else jobbed Hitler into office, was held after having been sentenced to eight years’ hard labour at the Nuremberg trials.
Cathedral
While he was in Regensburg he was set upon by an SS man in the washhouse who beat him bloody, fracturing his nose and cheekbone and splitting his lips and eyelids. He was sewn up by another prisoner, a surgeon. Papen says he was singled out for special treatment. Meanwhile he was convinced that the right way to get out was to appeal for a shorter sentence rather than a retrial, which might have taken years to bring about.
Giles MacDonogh (403) After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation
Cathedral
The wife standing in front of one of the finest Gothic cathedrals in Europe which is still allowed to have on its facade the Jews' Sow, an example of antisemitic propaganda used by the authorities to ostracise the Jewish minority. There is a plaque that reads euphemistically:
The sculpture should be regarded as a witness in stone to a bygone era and should be seen in connection to its time; It is repugnant for the viewer of today in its anti-Jewish expression.
Regensburg Rathaus
Hitler exiting in 1933 and the site today.
During the war in 1942 and today
During the war in 1942 and today
Oskar Schindler's Residence 1945-1950
It was here, off Goliathstrasse, that Oskar Schindler briefly lived after the war, all but penniless.
The morning after Reichskristallnacht in Regensburg: Jews led down Arnulfplatz, Ludwigstraße and Maxstraße to the railway station
On the night of November 9, Sebastian Platzer, head of the NSKK driver training school in Regensburg, was ordered by his superior, Wilhelm Müller-Seyfferth, to set fire to the local synagogue together with the NSKK men under his command. In characteristic fashion, the NSKK, the SA, and the ϟϟ fought over who would get to carry out the arson attack. Arrests of Jewish families began directly thereafter, and the next morning – under the supervision of Müller-Seyfferth – the SA and the NSKK forced the Jewish men to do degrading drills. Finally, all of the Jewish men in Regensburg were led to the train station on a “march of shame” [Schandmarsch] under a poster that read “Exodus of Jews” [Auszug der Juden]. Some were deported to the Dachau concentration camp; others were taken to the Regensburg prison. A total of 224 Jewish men from the entire administrative district of Lower Bavaria and Upper Palatinate were sent to Dachau. In the end, only eleven survived the camps and could be released in May 1945 by the Allies.
The Nazis’ use of the phrase “Exodus of Jews” was particularly cynical since it alluded to the exodus of Jews from Egypt, a central liberation theme in Jewish tradition. This phrase was used in later waves of persecution and killings. At the train station a reminder of Reichskristallnacht appears on a mural on the wall at the entrance.
The Nazis’ use of the phrase “Exodus of Jews” was particularly cynical since it alluded to the exodus of Jews from Egypt, a central liberation theme in Jewish tradition. This phrase was used in later waves of persecution and killings. At the train station a reminder of Reichskristallnacht appears on a mural on the wall at the entrance.
However, the persecution of the Jews took place much earlier in Regensburg's history. The original Synagogue was erected between 1210 and 1227 on the site of the former Jewish hospital in the centre of the ghetto. In 1519 following the death of Emperor Maxmilian who had long been a protector of the Jews in the imperial cities, the town, which blamed its economic troubles on its prosperous Jewish community, expelled the 500 Jews. The Jews themselves had demolished the interior of their venerable synagogue, on the site of which seen behind me a chapel was built in honour of the Virgin. Two etchings made by Albrecht Altdorfer just before it was destroyed on February 22, 1519 provide the first prints of an actual architectural monument. Just in front is a memorial created by Dani Karavan in 2005 that depicts the foundation of the Synagogue. Dani Karavan website
The synagogue alight during Reichskristallnacht, November 8-9 1938...
... and the current synagogue today, with memorial plaque to the events of the past
The house on the right of the photograph showing Regensburg in flames after allied bombing remains at Donaustaufer Straße, although it's uncertain for how much longer.
Chapter 22: Regensburg, Germany
The Regensburg Walhalla
The Americans were only a short distance away, and few people were prepared to go down in flames as the enemy took the town. Next morning some women started going round shops, spreading the word that there was to be another meeting that evening in Moltkeplatz, in the city centre, to demand that Regensburg be handed over to the Allies without a fight. Nearly a thousand people, many of them women with children, turned out. As the crowd started to become restless, it was addressed by a prominent member of the cathedral chapter, Domprediger Dr. Johann Maier, who, however, was able to say only a few words before he and several others were arrested.For a personal account of the American entry into Regensburg May 1, 1945:
When [Gauleiter] Rucksdeckel heard what had happened, he ordered that Maier and the other 'ringleaders' be hanged. A rapidly summoned drumhead court lost no time in pronouncing the death sentence on Maier and a seventy-year-old warehouse worker, Joseph Zirkl. They were hanged in the early hours of 24 April. The terror apparatus had still functioned. But with the Americans on the doorstep, the town's military commandant, its head of regional government, the Kreisleiter and the head of police suddenly vanished into the night. Gauleiter Rucksdeckel had also disappeared. The way was all at once clear for emissaries to hand over the city on 27 April, still largely undamaged by the war.
Kershaw (342-3) The End
Chapter 22: Regensburg, Germany
The Regensburg Walhalla
Built by Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1830-41 at the 'hall of fame' for German heroes, on 7 June 1937, Hitler installed the bust of Anton Bruckner, (who was one of his favourite composers), in the Regensburg Walhalla; Wagner, of course, had already been honoured in the Walhalla.
On the night of 13th-14th January, 1942 after a hearing of Bruckner''s Seventh Symphony, Hitler remarked:
This work is based on popular airs of upper Austria. They're not textually reproduced, but repeatedly I recognise in passing Tyrolean dances of my youth. It's wonderful what he managed to get out of that folklore. As it happened, it's a priest to whom we must give the credit for having protected this great master. The Bishop of Linz used to sit in his cathedral for hours at a time, listening to Bruckner play the organ. He was the greatest organist of his day.
Hitler's Table Talk (205)
Among the busts of renowned speakers of Germanic languages is this of Sophie Scholl.
Ingolstadt
Adolf-Hitler-Platz then and now.
The Bavarian King visiting what is now the Polizeimuseum during the First World War
BBC News2012-05-26
Passau
From 1892 until 1894, Adolf Hitler and his family lived here in Passau. The city archives mention Hitler being in Passau on four different occasions in the 1920s for speeches.
Hitler mentions it on the first page of Mein Kampf:
Hitler mentions it on the first page of Mein Kampf:
my father had to leave that frontier town which I had come to love so much and take up a new post farther down the Inn valley, at Passau, therefore actually in Germany itself.According to John F. Williams in his book Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914-1918: The List Regiment, "[f]rom his childhood – much of which was spent in the German border town of Passau – Hitler had been brought up to consider himself Bavarian."
According to The Hitler Pages , Hitler lived here at Theresienstrasse 23 until May 1, 1893 before his family moved across to the other side of the Inn.
The Passauer Tölpel then and now
Passau has recently been the scene of demonstrations by and against neo-nazis after the town's police chief Alois Mannichl had been stabbed in front of his home by a neo-nazi.
Kulmbach
The flags outside the rathaus have all been changed since. It was here in Kulmbach on February 5 1928 that Hitler gave a speech declaring that
The idea of struggle is as old as life itself, for life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle. ... In this straggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things. ... It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle. ... If you do not fight for life, then life will never be won.
Bullock (36) Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Hitlerjugend in the main square with Plassenburg castle in the background and marching down a road
Kelheim
Hitler and Roehm leaving what appears to be the rathaus which hasn't changed after all these years. In the postcard in the background can be seen the Befreiungshalle
The Befreiungshalle ("Hall of Liberation") is an historical classical monument upon Mount Michelsberg above the city of Kelheim upstream of Regensburg on the Danube. On October 22 1933 Hitler gave two speeches in front of the Befreiungshalle on the occasion of a parade by the SA. He stated of it: "This monument of unification is a symbol for us of that to which we aspire in our struggle: ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Wille." On the right I have attempted to photoshop a photo of Himmler, Roehm and Hitler in front with as it appears today.
Neumarkt
Bird's-eye-view then and now
A Nazi memorial to Dietrich Eckart, one of the important early members of the NSDAP and a participant of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. It was to him that Hitler had dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf in which he is described as a martyr and is referred to in the last sentence of the book:
And among them I could also reckon that man who as no one else has devoted his life to the awakening of his, of our nation in writing, poetry, thought and finally in the deed.Incredibly, it still remains in his hometown. Hitler was here on October 29, 1933 where he spoke at its unveiling. Eckart's 1925 unfinished essay Hitler-Eckart: Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin: Zwiegespräch zwischen Hitler und mir ( Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: Dialogues Between Hitler and Me") was published posthumously, although it has been shown that the dialogues were an invention.
Hitler visiting the town
Nazi propaganda over Untere Marktstraße and today
March by the Reichsarbeitsdienst, looking the other way on Obere Marktstraße
The Gasthaus Zum Hechten at Untere Marktstraße 3; today the building appears to have been completed replaced. Not surprising given the damage the town received during the war:
The Unteres Tor during the war and as it appears today
Obere Marktstraße-Klostergasse with the church still in the background
The rathaus in 193, after the war and as it appears today
The railway station during the Third Reich and now
Obere Marktstraße-Klostergasse with the church still in the background
The rathaus in 193, after the war and as it appears today
The railway station during the Third Reich and now
Herrsching am Ammersee
Herrsching am Ammersee on the east shore of the Ammersee southwest of Munich is usually the starting point of trips to Andechs Abbey. This, one of the most impressive Nazi eagles remaining in Germany, is found on the façade of the former Reichsfinanzschule.
Rosenheim
Rosenheim
It was at the Marienbad Sanitarium in Rosenheim that Hermann Wilhelm Göring was born on 12 January 1893. The photo on the right shows the SA marching during the the April 1, 1933 boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Their signs read: "Germans shop in German stores! The Jew is stirring up hate against Germany! Therefore, do not go to Jewish stores!"
SA marching during the Party Congress in Rosenheim on 1 September 1929 with the same site on Max-Josefs-Platz today.
Hitler giving a speech to a crowd on the 15th anniversary of the NSDAP chapter in Rosenheim, the first major NS Ortsgruppe to have formed outside Munich, at Max Joseph Square on August 11 1935:
At that time [1920] we stood one man pitted against ten, and we did not let up from this struggle until success was won. Today nine members of the Volk as a whole stand pitted against one of the little doubters. if we did not capitulate then, we will certainly not capitulate now.
Fighting we once conquered the German Reich, and fighting we will maintain and preserve it. Let those who are against us not be deceived! We have never shunned the fight—not then, and not now. If they want the fight, they can have it! We will give them such a battering (niederschmettern) that they will abandon every thought of continuing this fight for the next fifteen years!
Today the Movement is the Movement of Germany; today this Movement has conquered the German nation and is shaping the Reich. Would that have been possible without the blessing of the Almighty? Or would those who ruined Germany back then pretend they had God’s blessing? What we are is what we have become not against, but by virtue of the will of Providence, and as long as we are loyal, honest and courageous in battle, as long as we believe in our great cause and do not capitulate, we will continue to enjoy the blessing of Providence. If those who ruined Germany in fifteen years fancy today, in light of the National Socialist achievements in reconstruction, that they see a ray of hope, I can only answer: That would please you fine, now that there is once again something to be squandered away!
And if Fate should choose to test us in the future, we hope that such hammer blows of Providence will make us truly hard and strong...
If we have the sacred will to educate our Volk in this unity, then after decades of unceasing work, National Socialism as a Weltanschauung will have become the great mutual experience consolidating our Volk, and then a Volk will exist which is filled to its innermost depths with the sense of its common task and mission. My belief in respect to the future is just as unshakeable as it was fifteen years ago in respect to today! At that time I created this flag and said that it would one day fly over the whole of Germany. Fifteen years have passed, and waving over Germany are our flags! And today I further predict: in five hundred years this flag will have become the lifeblood of the German nation!
Hitlerjugend during Kriegstag in 1942
Oberammergau
In his Table Talk Hitler declared that
One of our most important tasks will be to save future generations from a similar political fate and to maintain for ever watchful in them a knowledge of the menace of Jewry. For this reason alone it is vital that the Passion Play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry.
Feldberg
Outside of one of the buildings near the Feldberg Ski Resort
Rothenburg ob der Tauber
Looking along Markusturm in 1934 and today. According to Kristin Semmens in her book Seeing Hitler's Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich (95),
In Rothenburg ob der Tauber, anti-Semitism became a central component of the tourist experience. In 1937, the town erected four wooden, handcrafted plaques on its medieval gates. They bore stereotypical images of ‘the Jew’ and a number of anti-Semitic texts, which visitors could purchase in the form of postcards. KdF holidaymakers were greeted there with speeches about local anti-Semitic agitation in the Middle Ages.
Rohrbühl Münchberg
This was built in the mid 1930s to honour the war dead of the Great War. The reichsadler has long since been removed.
Waldmünchen
Adolf-Hitler-Platz then and now
Rudolf Hess's Grave in Wunsiedel
Both the gravesite at Kath. Kirche u. Friedhof and town have been the focus of attention for fascists and anti-fascists alike. Neo-Nazi groups had organised memorial marches each 17 August, the anniversary of his death in 1987. The number of participants rose from 120 in 1988 to more than 1,100 in 1990 before being banned by the state.
Rudolf Hess exhumed to deter neo-Nazis
The remains of Rudolph Hess, Hitler's former deputy, have now been exhumed. Officials removed the tomb and headstone in order to prevent hoards of neo-Nazi pilgrims descending on the small community. Every year on August 17 hundreds of Nazi sympathisers commemorate the death of Hess. After being exhumed Hess's bones were taken to a crematorium, and his ashes scattered at sea. The action was taken after consultation with his remaining family. Karl-Willi Beck, 56, who has been mayor of Wunsiedel since 2002, said the cemetery administrators removed Hess’s remains and his gravestone early Wednesday. “It was the right thing to do,” Mr. Beck said.
Hotel Bube
The hotel in Bad Berneck where Hitler would stay during his pilgrimages to Bayreuth hasn't changed at all.
The Haus der Deutschen Erziehung (House of German Education) and its current incarnation.
The fresco on the Rotmainhalle, built in 1935, is from the prominent artist during the NS-zeit Oskar Martin-Amorbach.
Rudolf Hess exhumed to deter neo-Nazis
Hotel Bube
Bayreuth
