Showing posts with label Ravensburg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ravensburg. Show all posts

Nazi Sites in Baden-Württemberg (3)

Schwäbisch Gmünd
The Nazis had only achieved only 26% of the votes cast in Gmünd during the last somewhat free Reichstag elections in March 1933 which came well below the national average of 44%. In breach of the constitution, the results of these elections were now transferred to the state and local councils, so that Gmünd's local council had to be newly formed in April 1933 resulting in the Nazis getting eight seats from their previous two whilst, the Catholic Centre Party enjoyed eleven seats with the remaining three from other parties. In the course of the "Gleichschaltung", the non-Nazi councilors were forced to resign so that from April 1934 the Nazi Party represented the council alone. In November 1934, the unelected Nazi Franz Konrad was simply appointed Lord Mayor. The Nazi Party district leader, Hermann Oppenländer, was charged with mobilising the population for the goals of the party from 1937 onwards. This included of course the harassment of Jewish citizens. Those few who still lived in Gmünd were penned into the two houses that were still owned by Jews at Kornhausstrasse 10 and Königsturmstrasse 18. It was to get even worse in 1941 when the last ten Jews were sent to Becherlehen 1/2, a barrack referred to as "Lüllig-Dorf". From there they were deported to the extermination camps in the east. None of them survived. In all, a total of 22 Gmünd Jews are known by name who were murdered by the Nazis.From the start as well, laws were passed that allowed people with "hereditary diseases" to be forcibly sterilised going on to murder the disabled and the mentally ill. In Gmünd it's known that six citizens were euthenised. 
 In 1933 there were ninety Jews recorded as living in Schwäbisch Gmünd, which corresponds to 0.4% of the total of 20,131 inhabitants. Already the year before SA propaganda parades called out "Germany awake - Judah verrecke!" in the town's streets. Between 1936 and 1938 all Jewish shops were forced to close, either sold off at knock-down prices or simpy forced out. The interior of the synagogue was demolished as early as 1934. By 1939 there were still 22 Jewish inhabitants who were forced into special "Jewish houses" at the beginning of the war located at Königsturmstrasse 18 and Becherlehenstrasse 1/2. Eventually they would be forced into the "Lülligdorf", a basic settlement for homeless people from the 1920s on Mutlanger Strasse. From here the remaining Jewish residents were transported to the extermination camps.
Just before Gmünd was taken by the Americans on April 20, 1945- Hitler's birthday- without bloodshed,
Nazi district leader Oppenländer fled along with his colleagues- but not before committing acts of terror against their own population as Ian Kershaw relates in The End:
 In Schwäbisch Gmünd, a small town in Württemberg not far from Stuttgart, the Kreisleiter and combat commandant had two men executed just before midnight on 19 April, hours before the Americans entered the town without a fight. One of the men was known to have been an opponent of the Nazis since 1933, when he had been arrested for distributing anti‑Nazi pamphlets and returned from his stay in a concentration camp a changed person, psychiatrically disturbed. The other was a former soldier, no longer fit to fight after a serious injury. In a heated argument about handing over the city or fighting on, with the certainty of the destruction of the lovely town with its beautiful medieval minster, they had been heard to shout, probably under the influence of alcohol, ‘Drop dead Hitler. Long live Stauffenberg. Long live freedom.’ The two were removed from their police cells late at night, taken to a wood at the edge of the town and shot dead. The local Nazi representatives were ensuring, with their last act of power, that long‑standing opponents would not live to enjoy their downfall. Even as the executions were taking place, the Kreisleiter and his entourage were preparing to flee from the town.
Under Lieutenant Mortimer, the Americans immediately set up their military government, which consisted of eight officers and fifteen soldiers, initially at Villa Koehler. They had unrestricted authority to issue instructions to the German authorities and the head of the tax office, Emil Rudolph, was appointed acting mayor and the operations manager of the Deyhle company, Konrad Burkhardt, was appointed district administrator. In addition to supplying the population with food and energy, the repatriation of the now liberated forced labourers posed a major problem as many used their new freedom to plunder isolated farms. Around ten thousand Poles, Balts and Ukrainians were housed in the two barracks and in Gotteszell- a women’s prison on the grounds of a monastery- before being repatriated. Above all the Americans saw their most important task in denazification, through which all officials, who usually had to be members of the Nazi Party, were automatically arrested, so that around 100,000 people were held in internment camps throughout the American zone. In March 1946, the denazification was placed into German hands and those affected had to answer before the ruling chambers in a court-like procedure.
One unmistakeable reminder of the Nazi era is the war memorial that towers over the market square, shown here in a Nazi-era postcard and today with my bike in front. Although the swastika that topped it has been simply replaced with a statue of St. Michael, it is covered in Nazi iconography including Hitler salutes. It was created by sculptor Jakob Wilhelm Fehrle and inaugurated on November 9, 1935, the twelfth anniversary of the failed Beer Hall Putsch depicted in the painting above. It was initially intended to commemorate those who fell in the Great War and is made of 21 bronze cast parts based on Trajan's column. Originally the column carried an eagle with a swastika on its top but was replaced in 1952 by the Michael statue placed on a ball, also made by Fehrle. During the tenure of Mayor Franz Czisch, the entire column was dismantled in 1946 and stored at the Gmünd freight yard. By this time given the loss of so many church bells to the war effort and the severe shortage of materials in the post-war period, in January 1948 the Gmünd authorities were requested that the “bronze material of the war memorial be melted down in favour of a peace bell.” 
Czisch agreed, and applied to use the memorial for the “replacement of the bells of the town hall and the hospital.” Most of the town council seemed to agree to the proposal to donate the material from the former memorial to the favour of a peace bell although councillor Böhnlein called for more "old material to be retained for the tower clock of the Schmidt tower." But it was Dr. Hermann Erhard, owner and board member of Erhard & Söhne, who was most influential in ultimately preserving the monument. He wanted to “commemorate the 640 Gmünder soldiers who had fallen in Gmünd” but felt the ringing of some 'peace bell' would have meant nothing; for him [p]eace for citizens does not come about through symbols of peace, instead through re-education in the hearts and minds of the people" He advocated keeping the bronze material for the city and in so doing brought another central point into the discussion. Erhard, who had fought in the First World War, not only wanted to have his fallen comrades formally commemorated, but also pointed to the "artistic value"of the monument. He argued that “[t]he column be put up again after the swastika was removed.” Ultimately his campaign was successful as three Social Democrats abstained from the vote, possibly under the impression that its reliefs were damaged after the monument's demolition. And so, despite the mayor's wishes, the column was not melted down but was put up again after he was voted out of office. Today the column is said to be dedicated to the memory of the thousand Gmünders who fell in both world wars- not to any German victims. 
Standing at the most remarkable site at Schwäbisch Gmünd- the very limit of the Roman Empire along the Raetian Limes. On the top left is a visual representation from the Aalen museum of how it would have appeared whilst below is an actual reconstruction at the entrance to the park. Up until this point the Upper German Limes from the Rhine to the Rotenbachtal here, northwest of Schwäbisch Gmünd, consisted most recently of a rampart and a moat serving as a substitute for a wooden palisade. During the last expansion phase, a continuous stone wall was erected in the province of Raetia, from the Rotenbachtal to the Danube at Ausina. That this spot really does mark the transition from the Limes wall to the Upper German palisade is strongly supported not only by the wall's precisely constructed terminus, but by the fact that in front of it was found the remains of an altar that was possibly dedicated to the fines, or border deities, a replica of which I'm standing beside in front of the wall and how it appeared when uncovered by Steimle at the end of the 19th century in the Rotenbachtal at the beginning of the Rhaetian Wall near Kleindeinbach. It has four rosettes on the face of as many bulges atop with no remains of inscriptions below the cornice beyond seven radial grooves, apparently from the grinding of tools. This altar, and the finished nature of the roughly hewn sandstone blocks of the wall itself, provide considerable evidence that this section marked the end of the Upper Germanic Limes and the start of the Rhaetian Limes. Here from about 160 to 260 CE, the Rems Valley was the outermost border zone of the Roman Empire, guarded by over 1,500 soldiers within the Gmünd area stationed in cohorts in Lorch, at Schirenhof and Böbingen as well as in some smaller facilities such as Freimühle, Kleindeinbach and Hintere Orthalde.
At the bath complex near Schirenhof fort a mile away, shown in 2008 and when I visited in 2021. The fort itself had been built around 150 CE halfway up a mountain spur with a view over the Rems to the Rhaetian Limes. This structure had been excavated for the first time in 1893 and was opened to the public in 1975 in this restored condition after new excavations carried out during urbanisation. These excavations showed that the Cohors I Flavia Raetorum, named on brick stamps and the fragment of a genius statue, had been the main troop unit garrisoned here after having been transferred either from Eislingen-Salach or another unidentified fort in Raetia. Shortly after 247 at the latest, the last soldiers left the place based on the evidence from Roman coins discovered here in the fort’s bath.
 
Aalen
Aalen's market square on Hitler's 50th birthday, 1939. In the Reichstag election on November 6, 1932, the Nazis performed well below average in Aalen, receiving 25.8 percent of the vote compared to 33.1% in the rest of the country, making it only the second strongest party in Aalen after the Centre Party which had received 26.6 (compared to a mere 11.9 % nationally) and ahead of the SPD's 19.8%. However, by the time of the next national election on March 5, 1933, the picture had changed; whilst the Nazis still performed below average with 34.1 percent compared to 43.9% nationally, it now became by far the strongest party in Aalen as well and the Central and SPD parties' results remained unchanged. At the beginning of the Nazi era, the democratically elected mayor Friedrich Schwarz remained in office until he was ousted by the Nazis in the council's first meeting of 1934 when SA-Sturmbannführer and member of the parliamentary group, Fridolin Schmid declared "[t]he city is [now] ours and not yours, Lord Mayor!" He was replaced first by the chairman of the Nazi Party council group and brewery owner Karl Barth as administrator and later by lawyer Dr. Karl Schübel. After the war as part of the denazification process, Schübel was classified in the second instance in the group of followers. Nevertheless, in May 1950, he was elected Lord Mayor of the Aalen with 87% of the votes cast from from among three applicants, with a turnout of 81%. Election posters of an opposing candidate, Peter Lahnstein, had been smeared with anti-Semitic slogans because of his Jewish descent.
The town centre during the Nazi era and today. In 1933 there were seven Jewish residents living in Aalen, two of whom were children. During Kristallnacht in 1938, the shop windows of the three Jewish shops in the town were shattered and the owners subsequently imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp for several weeks. After their release, most of the Jews emigrated. Eduard and Frieda Heilbron last lived in a so-called Judenhaus in Wiesbaden, where Eduard Heilbronn died of a heart attack. His wife Frieda was deported to Theresienstadt and later murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp. Their daughter Irene survived, managing to emigrate to Colombia with her husband Kurt Wartzki and their children. The last Jewish resident, Fanny Kahn, was forcibly relocated to Oberdorf am Ipf in 1941, later deported and also murdered in. In 2005 a street in Aalen was named in her honour. Of the town's Jews who were murdered, Yad Vashem, records the names of Leopold Elter; Eduard, Frieda and their son Willi Heilbronn; and Fanny Kahn.
In Aalen, there are sixteen stolpersteine memorials located at seven different sites. One at Bahnhofstrasse 23 names Siegfried Pappenheimer as one of those children saved by the British before the war through the kindertransport in 1939. Another on Hofherrnstrasse 28 commemorates Karl Schiele, a member of the Communist Party who had taken part in protests against the Nazis and was arrested on March 20, 1933 and taken to one of the first concentration camps, the Heuberg camp. He was imprisoned until April 11, 1933. After the war began, he listened to foreign broadcasters; a sports teammate betrayed him under torture and Schiele was arrested on March 6, 1940 at his workplace. The Stuttgart Special Court sentenced him to twenty months in prison. His wife, who had refused to testify against him, was imprisoned in Gotteszell for ten months. He arrived at the notorious moor camp in the Emsland and was released in June 1942 - seven months after the end of his sentence, emaciated to the bone and with tuberculosis. The camp administration dubbed him an 'unusable subject'. He did not recover and died after a long illness on April 3, 1944 in the Isny sanatorium. After the war his widow managed to have his sentence posthumously overturned and he was officially recognised as one persecuted by the Nazi regime. She lived in poverty in Dewangen and died in 1991.
In August 1934, the Nazi consumer exhibition Braune Messe took place in Aalen. This was primarily intended to serve as a platform for local handicrafts to present themselves and their products. Similar events had already been held in Nördlingen and Schwäbisch Gmünd during the year. In 1936, a riding and driving school for the military was stationed in the city, an army supplies office and an ancillary equipment office were set up and housed an ancillary army ammunition facility. In 1935, the incorporation of neighbouring towns began. In the town's hospital, the deaconesses who had previously worked there were increasingly being replaced by sisters of the National Socialist People's Welfare. At the same time in the course of the Nazis' so-called racial hygiene programme, around 200 people were forcibly sterilised there; three are recorded on the town's stolpersteine as having been murdered in the T-4 euthanasia programme.
In September 1944, the Wiesendorf concentration camp, a satellite camp of the Natzweiler/Alsace concentration camp, was set up in Wasseralfingen for 200 to 300 prisoners who had to do forced labour in industrial companies in the area. By the time the camp was closed in February 1945, sixty prisoners had died. Between 1946 to 1957 the warehouse buildings were demolished although I was able to still see its foundations still in place on Moltkestrasse 44/46 as seen on the left. In addition, prisoners of war as well as women and men from countries occupied by Germany were concentrated in several labour camps who were forced to work for the armaments industry in large companies such as the Swabian ironworks and the Alfing Keßler machine factory.
A flag-bedecked Adolf-Hitler-Platz (now Bahnhofplatz) showing a red swastika-adorned railway station on May Day 1939. In general, Aalen was largely spared from the war although the station would not survive unscathed. It was not until the last weeks of the war that air strikes led to the destruction or serious damage to parts of the city, the train station and the other railway facilities. On April 1, Easter Sunday, Aalen experienced one of the heaviest air raids of the war when American fighter-bombers first attacked targets in the city. This began a series of air strikes that lasted more than three weeks which culminated on April 17, 1945, when American Air Force bombers bombed the auxiliary armoury stationed in Aalen and the railroad facilities. 59 people were killed, over half of them were buried, and more than 500 left homeless. 45 buildings, 33 of which were residential, and two bridges were destroyed and 163 buildings, including a couple of churches, were also damaged. Five days later, the Nazi regime in Aalen was deposed by the American armed forces.
What particularly drove me to visit Aalen was the Limesmuseum, located on the site of the largest Roman equestrian fort north of the Alps. The size of the fort indicates that it was garrisoned by the ala II Flavia milliaria, the only ala milliaria of the province. Indeed, the elite mounted unit, the ala miliaria, is what gives Aalen its name. In May 2019, after two and a half years of renovation and closure, it was reopened with a newly designed permanent exhibition with over 1,200 original finds. The main focus is on the relationship between Teutons and Romans and the understanding of borders. In the main rooms on the ground floor, visitors are forced to interactively learn about seven people who lived in Roman Aalen 1,800 years ago using specific archaeological objects and get to know their living conditions better. For me, this completely ruined the experience as one can't walk anywhere or view some of the spectacular pieces in peace- such as the masked cavalry helmet found during the expansion of the Limes Museum and the huge Osterburken Mithras relief- without setting off a cacophony of sound effects- horses, for example- and loud voice overs that could not be shut off. 
 At the staff building, the principia, with a modern statue of Hadrian despite the fort being built during the 160s as part of the military reorganisation and expansion of Marcus Aurelius; the dendrochronological records fall in the period between 159 and 172. An impressive number of sixteen building inscriptions have been found  from Aalen, all datable to the Severan dynasty. The fort was operational until the middle of the 3rd century and evidence from coins indicates that the fort was destroyed following the reign of Aemilian, in the years after 253/254, although there have been two disputable coins issued under Emperors Valerian and Gallienus that have also been found.
 Part of the Roman fort has been incorporated in the town cemetery in which is located St. Johann's Church, one of Aalen's oldest buildings, dating back to the 13th century. Located directly in front of the former porta praetoria, the main gate of a Roman camp, the Roman stone blocks which were reused at the time to build it can be clearly seen in the area of the foundation. The excavation in 1997  whose preserved remains are shown here and from the same spot today offer valuable insights into the history of Aalen in the early Middle Ages. For example, it was discovered that the church was not the oldest building in this location. The articles found date back to the seventh and eighth centuries. It appears that around this time, directly on the road in front of the former main gate of the garrison, a residential building or an early monastery cell was located here. The oldest parts of the buildings 1 and 2 belong to this era as well as a number of graves nearby which were excavated at the start of the 20th century. The present-day church itself was built sometime around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Work was carried out on Building 2 at the same time, also using stones from the fortress as building material. On the western corner there was a Roman inscription to the goddess Minerva which is now in the Limes Museum.
 
Konstanz am Bodensee
During the war and today, little changed. Because it almost lies within Switzerland, directly adjacent to the Swiss border, Konstanz was not bombed by the Allied Forces during the war. The city left all its lights on at night, thus fooling the bombers into thinking it was actually part of Switzerland after the erroneous bombing of Schaffhausen on April 1, 1944. The districts on the right bank of the Rhine, which are clearly separated from Swiss areas by the Seerhein, continued to be darkened, but were not attacked despite companies like Degussa and Stromeyer.  
As early as 1933, SA men prevented visitors to Jewish shops and medical practices from entering. Signs on benches, shops, inns and at the Horn outdoor swimming pool excluded Jews from use and visiting. The systematic persecution of the Jews began in 1935 with the Nuremberg Laws. Jews then sold their residential and commercial buildings at low value and emigrated. From 1938, "Aryanisation sales" were only possible with state approval, after the deportation in 1940 the property was expropriated and auctioned. On October 22, 1940, 110 Jews from Constance were deported to the Gurs concentration camp in southern France, the last eight to Riga, Izbica and Theresienstadt from 1941 to 1944. A Reich flight tax of 25% was levied. In the first arson attack on the Konstanz synagogue in 1936, the building was saved by the volunteer fire brigade. The damaged seven Torah scrolls were buried in the Jewish cemetery. On the Reichskristallnacht the Konstanz synagogue was set on fire by members of the Allgemeine ϟϟ, section XIX Konstanz, under ϟϟ senior leader Walter Stein. The fire department was not allowed to fight the fire this time. On the contrary, attempts were made to open the synagogue's roof hatches in order to give the fire better traction. The synagogue was then blown up by the ϟϟ disposal force III./ϟϟ standard Germania from Radolfzell and sixteen male Jews were brought to the Dachau concentration camp. A Jewish property tax was levied in 1938. Until 1939, some families in Constance managed to escape to Switzerland, British Palestine, England, the USA, Argentina and Asian countries. The Swiss cantons of Lake Constance sealed themselves off. 433 Jews lived in Constance in 1933, 120 in 1940. On the evening of November 8, 1939, Georg Elser was arrested in Constance when he tried to flee to Switzerland after having previously placed a bomb in Munich to kill Adolf Hitler. Jews, prisoners of war, forced labourers and German deserters attempted to flee the Saubach. Escaping by jumping over the Saubach was possible until 1938. From the end of 1939, a border fence was erected on the Swiss side from Kreuzlinger Zoll to the Wiesenstrasse crossing and from the railway line to the lake to prevent refugees. 
 
Weingarten
  The Basilica of St. Martin and Oswald. During Nazi Germany Weingarten was incorporated into Ravensburg; after the war, the rival cities were separated again.  
 
Schloss Sigmaringen 
Following the Anglo-American liberation of France, the French Regime was moved from France into Schloss Sigmaringen. The princely family was forced by the Gestapo out of the castle and moved to Schloss Wilflingen. The French authors Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Lucien Rebatet, who had written political and anti-semitic works, fled to Sigmaringen with the Vichy government. Céline's 1957 novel D'un château l'autre, describes the end of the war and the fall of Sigmaringen on April 22, 1945 and was made into a German movie in 2006, called Die Finsternis. Relocated to Sigmaringen in the summer of 1944, the Vichy government no longer had any relevance.  On September 7, fleeing the advance of the Allied troops in France whilst Germany was in flames and the Vichy regime no longer existed, a thousand French collaborators (including an hundred officials, a few hundred members of the French militia and militants of the collaborationist parties and the editorial staff of the journal Je suis partout), came here. Pétain and Laval were led away according to what they said had been "against their will" by the Germans in their retreat in August 1944 and resided there until April 1945. The government commission, chaired by Fernand de Brinon and supposed to incarnate the continuity of the Vichy regime, was formed, composed of former members of the Vichy governments, but some who followed Petain to Sigmaringen refused to participate. Visitors were even obliged to present a piece of identification, since they were entering French territory. This "Sigmaringen government" lasted until April 1945. Petain, his suite, and his ministers, though on "strike," lodged in the castle whilst the rest were housed in schools and gymnasiums, transformed into dormitories, and in the few guest rooms and hotels in the city, such as the Bären or Löwen, which received the most prestigious guests, including the writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline in the book D'un château l'autre. The exiles in the city's shanty houses were hardly able to live in summer, but especially in the winter under the rumbling of Anglo-American bombs and an intense cold which reached -30°C in December 1944. On the approach of the Allies in April 1945, most of them exiled themselves: Petain was taken by the Germans in a fashion to the Swiss border, Laval fled to Spain, Brinon took refuge in the surroundings of Innsbruck, whilst others found refuge in Northern Italy.
Postwar, some 10,000 French were executed for collaboration with the Germans, including Laval. Pétain, stripped of his rank, was condemned to death, but de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life in prison. Despite de Gaulle’s ridiculous efforts to cast France during the war as a nation of resisters, the four-year-long Vichy regime left a legacy of shame and controversy that still shames France today. 

Ravensburg
Irving in Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (30) writes how Goebbels played "the huge cathedral organ" in the cathedral shown in the background in 1918 for two other students he had travelled the area with. During the war, Ravensburg was strategically of no relevance. Ravensburg did not harbour any noteworthy arms industry (unlike nearby Friedrichshafen with its large aircraft industry), but was home to a big aid supplies centre belonging to the Swiss Red Cross; so no air raid destroyed the historic city centre. During the Nazi era 691 patients from the Weißenau psychiatric clinic were murdered as victims of "euthanasia." The Sinti resident in the city were first interned in the Gypsy Forced Labour Camp, thirty-six Sinti were deported in 1943 with 29 of them murdered in Auschwitz. The few Jews who had settled in Ravensburg had been forced to flee with some murdered as victims of the Holocaust.
The town hall then and now, with Nazi functionaries in front of the entrance in 1938 and today

Nazis intimidating those thinking of shopping at the Jewish-owned Kaufhaus Landauer, and stolperstein at the site today, remembering the murdered Landauers.

Böblingen
 
Flughafen Böblingen. On April 9, 1932 Hitler spoke at this airport that was later used by the USAAF after the war. Some buildings remain, on the right is the reception building dating from 1925. During the First World War, the Böblingen military airfield was inaugurated on August 16, 1915. Subsequently, it was of decisive importance for the further development of the town that Böblingen became the seat of the Landesflughafen for Württemberg in 1925 making Böblingen the "Brücke zur Welt" (bridge to the world). At the end of the airfield, Böschinger aviation pioneer Hanns Klemm set up his company "Leichtflugzeugbau Klemm" at the end of 1926. Until the war, this became the most important industrial city in the region.
The St. Dionysius church in 1943 and today. The air attack by Allied air forces in the night of October 7-8 1943 destroyed most of the old town with the town church, the castle and the town hall. There were many dead and injured. Through this and other bombings, about 40 per cent of the built-up area had been destroyed during warfare and nearly 2,000 people were homeless.

Hardheim
 
The schlossplatz in front of what is now the Erfatal-Museum

Ludwigsburg

 The courtyard in use by the Wehrmacht and today. In 1921, Ludwigsburg became the largest garrison in southwest Germany.

The synagogue in the town was destroyed by the Nazis during Reichskristallnacht, the pogrom of November 1938. Two years later the Nazi propaganda film, Jud Süß, was filmed in Ludwigsburg. The film was based on a historical figure, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, who was executed in Stuttgart in 1738; Oppenheimer lived in Ludwigsburg. 
During the war, the city suffered moderate damage compared to other German cities. There were 1500 deaths. It was the home of the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag V-A from October 1939 till April 1945. After the war, there was a large displaced persons camp which housed several thousand mainly Polish displaced persons until about 1948. After 1945 until the middle of 1946, there was also an allied internment camp for war criminals in Ludwigsburg and the U.S. Army maintained the Pattonville barracks on the edge of town, large enough to have its own American high school. The land was returned to Germany in 1994. 


Freistett
The memorial to the Franco-Prussian War remains between the town hall and the church
The rathaus at the turn of the century and today, appearing as it did when redesigned in 1933/34.
The former site of the town's Jewish cemetery; the last burial had been of Gustav Bloch from nearby Rheinbischofsheim in 1939. Due to declining membership, the Jewish communities in Freistett and Rheinbischofsheim were combined in June 1935 and the synagogue attended Freistetter Jews was henceforth in Rheinbischofsheim. The synagogue in Rheinbischofsheim was finally demolished in 1953.

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.

Schloß Kapfenburg
 
During the time the castle served as a Gauschule, which was a training centre for local government employees, in this case for the NSV (NS-Volkswohlfahrt, the Nazi welfare organisation).

Waldhilsbach
The Gasthaus zum Röss'l sporting the Nazi flag during the war and today. It's still in operation on Heidelberger Straße 15 with its thirteen rooms. Waldhilsbach was, already before war, a commuter community, as the agricultural land of the district and the forest work in the Heidelberg city forest did not provide a sufficient agricultural livelihood. This development continued after the war, when the community received around 200 refugees, many of whom settled here. Since the end of the 1950s, agriculture no longer had any economic significance. The economic development was hampered by the unfavourable traffic conditions and the cramped conditions in the district but given its location on the southeastern slope of Königstuhlscholle on the southern edge of the Buntsandsteinodenwald, surrounded by idyllic fields and meadows with numerous fruit trees, it's become a notable tourist hub.

Bräunlingen 
The stadttor on the former Robert Wagner Straße, named after the Gauleiter of Baden. The SA was established in Bräunlingen in 1931. During the Nazi era the Jewish-owned Kaufhaus Zimmt on Blaumeerstraße 13 was increasingly boycotted. To keep some customers, Fritz Zimmt hanged up a sign reading "Entrance also from behind". On the street in front of the Zimmt department store was scrawled 'The Jews are our misfortune'. A few younger workers of the Ortsgruppenleiter attacked Zimmt in the Hasenfratz hairdressing salon leaving him beaten with his teeth knocked out. The local newspaper would report how the shop, "which was temporarily owned by the Jews, has now received another Aryan successor." Zimmt fled, before which he had hoped to entrust his dog to the neighbours, going so far as paying the dog tax two years in advance only to have his dog eventually shot. On February 18, 1939, he and his family first travelled to Genoa, then by ship to Shanghai. Fritz Zimmt died in 1945.
In July 1940 Robert Wagner, now in charge of Alsace, and Josef Bürckel, Gauleiter of the Saar-Palatinate and Chief of the Civil Administration in Lorraine, both pressed Hitler to allow the expulsion westwards into Vichy France of the Jews from their domains. Hitler gave his approval. Some 3,000 Jews were deported that month from Alsace into the unoccupied zone of France. In October, following a further meeting with the two Gauleiter, a total of 6,504 Jews were sent to France in nine trainloads, without any prior consultation with the French authorities, who appeared to have in mind their further deportation to Madagascar as soon as the sea-passage was secure.

Lörrach 
 Café Binoth, now the Drei König, on the former Adolf Hitler Straße. Early during the period of the Weimar Republic, there was growing social unrest in Lörrach starting on the 14th of September, 1923 which left three dead, many injured, and several examples of hostage abuse. The economic slump also led to the authorities and the administration being unable to carry out urgent construction projects. It was around this time the Nazis grew in support. The Nazi Party in Lörrach had existed since 1922. However, during the 1920s the Weimar Republic was rather difficult to gain a foothold, although there was also anti-parliamentary propaganda in Lörrach with the German nationalist journal Der Markgräfler run by Hermann Burte. After the Nazi seizure of power, Reinhard Boos was appointed mayor of Lörrach in 1933. Boos, who built and strengthened the Nazi party in Lörrach with great enthusiasm, subsequently taking part in the defeat of the trade unions and the opposition parties. From 1938 onwards, Boos played a leading role in the actions against the Lörrach Jews. During the November pogroms of 1938 several men gained access to the synagogue and destroyed them. The destroyed Gotteshaus was then demolished. Lorrach remained comparatively undamaged during the Second World War thanks to the geographical distance to the fronts. On April 24, 1945, French troops occupied Lörrach, adding to its humiliation.

 Amstetten

 
Adolf Hitlerplatz and today 

Nagold
The Hotel Post on Adolf Hitler Straße and today. Nagold was the home of Emilie Christine (Christa) Schroeder, one of Adolf Hitler’s personal secretaries before and during the war.  Schroeder would argue that she was never a Nazi but simply worked with Hitler. In 1945, she was originally considered to be a war criminal but was later reclassified as a collaborator and released days later, on May 12, 1948. As early as 1924, Nagold was a Nazi base of support in which, according to voting statistics, 19.4% of the population voted for the Nazis that May. Comparatively, the Nazis captured just 6.5% of the vote nationwide, and a mere 4.1% in Baden and Württemberg during the same election. After the war, the town had the shame of falling within the French occupation zone until 1947. Right-wing parties in Nagold have been successful in the postwar period. In the state election in 1968 , the candidate of the NPD was elected by the second count in the state legislature. The NPD is possibly the party most aligned to the Nazis today, and according to the Federal Constitutional Protection Report of 2012, the objectives of the NPD are "incompatible" with the democratic and constitutional characteristics of the Basic Law due to their "anti- pluralistic, exclusionary and anti-egalitarian characteristics." The ideological positions of the party are "expressing a closed right-wing extremist worldview." In addition, the candidate of the REP succeeded in 1992 and 1996 to collect on the second count in the state legislature. Since 2007 however, the party is no longer listed in the constitution protection report as being a right-wing extremist party.
 
Gengenbach
Adolf-Hitler-Straße in a Nazi-era postcard with the 13th century Obertorturm in the background, and from the same site today. Eduard Mack had served as the town's mayor from 1
921–1933 when he was removed from office upon the Nazi seizure of power. According to the local newspaper Der Kinzigtäler from June 27 of that year Mack had been taken into protective custody in the Offenburg gaol for "inflammatory speeches against the NSDAP." He was replaced by Franz Geiger, a master tin maker and local group leader of the Gengenbach branch of the Nazi Party. He in turn was replaced by Nazi member Anton Hägele during the whole duration of the war.
 
 Bad Cannstatt
The Rosensteinbunker outside Stuttgart then and now. The town saw, as with towns across Germany, egregious violence towards its Jewish population. On January 28, 1936, the Stuttgart district court sentenced the Jewish insurance official Edwin Spiro from Taubenheimstrasse 60/2 to six months in prison after being charged with violating the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour", which stipulated in §2: "Extramarital traffic between Jews and nationals of German or related blood is prohibited." After the pogrom night in 1938, he was arrested again with tens of thousands of other Jews and incarcerated in the dreaded Welzheim concentration camp until January 31, 1939. The synagogue in Cannstatt was set on fire by the head of the fire station, two firefighters and some Nazis during Reichskristalnacht. On that night of November 9, 1938, Ida Carlebach from Dürrheimer Straße 5 and her eleven-year-old neighbour Margarete Carle witnessed the fire at the Cannstatt synagogue. Margarete Carle reported that her father came to the children's room with the call "Children are on fire!" From where they were, the flaming synagogue on König-Karl-Straße was easy to observe. In fact, the sparks flew almost towards the house. With the synagogue's destruction, Ida Carlebach committed suicide on November 27, 1938 and her house became 'aryanised' in March 1939.

The Nazi flag flying in front of Schloss Rosenstein when it served as a war museum during the Nazi era. After its destruction during the war in 1944, the castle was rebuilt in 1955-1956 and turned into a museum for natural science. Between 1990 and 1992, the building was renovated and adapted to the requirements of a modern museum.

 Hechingen 
Adolf-Hitler-Platz, now Obertorplatz
Located 37 miles south of Stuttgart, during the start of Nazi rule most of the businesses in Hechingen were in Jewish hands and were closed or 'aryanised'. Much of the architecture of the city was destroyed or damaged by Nazi attempts to build air raid shelters in public buildings. Here is St. Johnnes Kirche, from an 1880 engraving and today.

The rathaus, shown here in 1940 and today, was so damaged that it had to be destroyed.  
Marktplatz then and now
Many industries, including DEHOMAG, a predecessor of IBM, were relocated to Hechingen from damaged areas of Germany, such as Berlin. Parts of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were also relocated there.  In April 1945, American troops entered Hechingen and took over the atomic research laboratory and nuclear reactor. Many of the physicists were interned in Farm Hall in England and tried over the following years. Many of the scientists went on to have successful postwar careers for instance; on 15 November 1945 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Otto Hahn had been awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei." 
The town has completely restored its nineteenth-century synagogue, shown here in 1937 and today. As recently as June, 2018 the Jewish cemetery which had only been reopened after considerable refurbishment was targetted by vandals. Perpetrators knocked over and destroyed one tombstone whilst throwing a second, smaller tombstone over the newly renovated cemetery wall, damaging it. Unlike previous attacks- the last attacked a quarter century earlier- there had been no right-wing extremist graffiti found although Michael Kashi, a board member of the Jewish community in Württemberg which  owns the cemetery, says one does not need swastikas to identify targeted anti-Semitism. "You can see that someone did this on purpose. Unfortunately, we experience this again and again and everywhere." The town mayor, Philipp Hahn, stated how "awareness of the Jewish past in Hechingen is important to me and to the local council. Such vandalism is loathsome." The desecration had been discovered on Saturday by employees of the specialist company Kiris-Bau from Freudenstadt, which was renovating the crumbling surrounding wall on behalf of the city of Hechingen. The Jewish community, which was informed by the city, immediately filed a complaint with the Hechingen police against unknown persons - even if Michael Kashi's hope that the perpetrators would be caught is rather low. "A few months ago the facade of the synagogue in Ulm was damaged. There is even video surveillance there, and yet the crime has not yet been solved." 

Heilbronn
 In front of the town hall in July 2022 and when it was bedecked in swastikas. Richard Drauz became Heilbronn's Kreisleiter in 1932. He was also elected to the Reichstag from 1933 on (when the town voted 31.6% Nazi- considerably lower than the national average) and pushed hard for the Gleichschaltung of the Heilbronn clubs and press in Nazi Germany. On March 7, 1933, the SPD-newspaper "Neckar-Echo" was last published with the title "Forbidden"; the printing shop on the site of a shopping centre today was occupied on March 12 and made to print the Nazis' "Heilbronner Tagblatt." The Nazi takeover was celebrated for the first time on March 16, 1933 in the town council in which only 17 of its thirty town councillors were present after three KPD city councils were deprived of their office, two SPD councillors beaten and prevented from entering the town hall, and eight forced into protective custody. On that date applications such as the renaming the alley Adolf-Hitler-Allee were accepted whilst nevertheless refusing to deprive the Jewish lawyer Max Rosengart and Jewish city councillor Siegfried Gumbel of their honorary citizenship.
The town hall sporting swastikas and today
On July 28, 1935, the port was opened in a canal off the Neckar, and 1936 saw the Autobahn between Heilbronn and Stuttgart completed. Economy and infrastructure were booming in Württemberg, and Heilbronn was at the logistic centre of it all. As the result of a district reform on October 1, 1938, Heilbronn became the seat of the newly created Heilbronn County and regained independent city status. At the same time the previously independent communities of Böckingen, Sontheim, and Neckargartach were annexed, and with 72,000 residents Heilbronn then was the second largest city in Württemberg. The port turned into an important transfer station on the Neckar and one of the ten largest interior ports in the country.  On November 10, 1938, the Heilbronn synagogue was destroyed during the Kristallnacht. Soon thereafter the Jewish community was all but eliminated.  Starting in 1942  the salt mines in and around Heilbronn were used to store art and artefacts from Germany, France, and Italy. Similarly, important producers of the war industry were moved into the mine shafts. The expansion of the shafts was undertaken by labour brigades of the concentration camp branches in Kochendorf and Neckargartach. From Heilbronn all the way to Neckarelz numerous subterranean complexes, some of them gigantic, were constructed; on November 20, 1942, the Heilbronn Bureau of Labour had 8,000 forced labourers registered in its district.  
In front of the Nazi eagle still remaining on Rosenberg Bridge; the other side as another eagle with the date 1939-1939.
In front of an example of the
the only wartime high-rise bunker in Heilbronn located at the Theresienwiese and a similar type from Rüsselsheim for comparison. It was built by Dyckerhoff & Widmann on behalf of the Air District Command VII (Munich) in October 1940. Clad with sandstone on the outside, the municipal slaughterhouse was intended to be the main user, which is surprising given the very military equipment of the building.Of the ten floors, six were designed as crew rooms for 42 men each. Each of these crew rooms was equipped with two toilets, a sink, three bunk beds with three floors and lockers. On the lowest floor was the filter and ventilation system, a water pressure boiler with a well, two diesel tanks and a 50 HP diesel unit from MAN. The generated voltages of 400 volts and 62 volts were converted using a separate transformer. The entrances were on the second and third floors and were accessible via stairs and a catwalk leading across the street to the slaughterhouse. In the event of an air alarm, the building could accommodate around a thousand people. After the war it served as emergency accommodation for a short time before it was closed in 1948.
In 1940 allied air raids began, and the city and its surrounding area were hit about 20 times with minor damage. On September 10, 1944, a raid by the allies targeted the city specifically, in particular the Böckingen train transfer station. As a result of 1,168 bombs dropped that day, 281 residents died. The city was carpet-bombed from the southern quarter all the way to the Kilianskirche in the centre of town. The church was burnt out.  The catastrophe for Heilbronn was the bombing raid on December 4, 1944. During that raid the city centre was completely destroyed and the surrounding boroughs heavily damaged. Within one half hour 6,500 residents perished, most incinerated beyond recognition. Of those, 5,000 were later buried in mass graves in the Ehrenfriedhof (cemetery of honour) in the valley of the Köpfer creek close to the city. A memorial continues to be held annually in memory of those that died that day. As a result of the war Heilbronn's population shrank to 46,350.  After a ten-day battle, with the allies advancing over the strategically important Neckar crossings, the war ended for the destroyed city, and it was occupied by the Americans on April 12, 1945. Local Nazi leader Drauz became a fugitive because of executions of American prisoners of war he had ordered in March 1945. He was eventually arrested, tried, and hanged by the Allies in Landsberg on December 4, 1946.
   
 The Nazi flag flying atop the Kiliansturm for the first time January 30-31, 1933 and the resulting damage to Kilianskirche after the war. Already on September 10, 1944, the roofs of the choir, the northern side nave and the sacristy were destroyed by fire bombs during an American air attack. On October 12, 1944, an airmine destroyed the windows, parts of the chimneys, the southern spiral staircase, and part of the the high altar. On December 4, 1944, the church was almost completely destroyed during the air attack on Heilbronn. The western tower and the northern Chorturm burned out, whilst the choir with net vault, the gallery and the organ were completely destroyed. In April 1945, strong American artillery fire continued to inflict further damage, particularly on the West Front. 
As of today, anti-Semitism has made reappearance, especially with the huge influx of Muslims by the Merkel government with the latest attack occurring at 21.45 on Christmas Eve 2017 when the three-metre-high Hanukkah Menorah in the alley of Synagogengasse had been vandalised with several lamps and their glass cartouches knocked off.

Obertürkheim
 
Just outside Stuttgart is the Gasthaus Ochsen shown here sporting Nazi flags and today, in the centre of Obertürkheim.
 Künzelsau
Oberen Marktplatz with Nazi flags and today.
Oberen Marktplatz with Nazi flags and today
There had been a Jewish community here since the 14th century; by 1933 there were still 65 Jews living in the town. Anti-Jewish riots broke out in the city as early as March 1933 when, on the 20th, SA men under the leadership of SA Standartenführer Klein from Heilbronn carried out a "weapons search" among Jewish citizens and opponents of the Nazi regime. Jewish teacher Julius Goldstein, who would manage to emigrate to the United States with his wife and two children in 1939, was dragged to the town hall by SA men and was so abused that the iron synagogue key he was carrying in his pocket broke in two. The head of the Jewish community, businessman Max Ledermann, died of a heart attack whilst visiting Goldstein at the time. Another community member, David Furchheimer, committed suicide as a result of the incident. As the years went on due to the consequences of increasing disenfranchisement and the consequences of the economic boycott, some of the Jewish residents emigrated or moved from Künzelsau. The synagogue, dating from 1907, was destroyed during the Kristallnacht as the last of the Jewish shops were either closed or 'aryanised'. Until the final deportations in 1941 and 1942, the Jews still living in the town were forced into a few "Jewish houses" and were used for forced labour, including in the city quarry. The Jewish community was dissolved on July 12, 1939.  Whilst some of the town's Jews were able to emigrate, the majority were deported to the death camps with only the merchant Sigbert Baer surviving the Nazi era.
  
Esslingen
Adolf-Hitler-Platz, now Rathausplatz during the Christmas market. The eagle-adorned war memorial from the First World War remains in place. On November 9, 1918, the day the Kaiser was forced to abdicate and the country became a Republic, workers' demonstrations were held. A Workers 'and Soldiers' Council was elected. In 1919 communist workers took over the city. A military intervention from the Stuttgart government cost sixteen people's lives and forced the return to rest. As early as 1922 a branch of the Nazi party was formed here. In 1933 the town council of Esslingen was dissolved by the Nazis in the course of the so-called co-operation. In 1935, Esslingen am Neckar was declared a "city district" on the basis of the German municipal regulation. In the course of the administrative reform, the former Oberamt Esslingen was transferred to the Landkreis Esslingen in 1938 and extended by a number of areas. 
Above all, a few municipalities came to the Kreis area on the Fildern (formerly Amtsoberamt Stuttgart) and in the Schurwald. In the Reichspogromnacht (more commonly known as Kristallnacht) the Esslinger Synagogue was desecrated. Jewish citizens were deported to the East for extermination. The "Israelitische Orphanage and Educational Institution Wilhelmspflege" was demolished in 1939 and converted into a plaque commemorating the plague. The last Jewish home director Theodor Rothschild was murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944. Some of Esslingen's victims of the Nazis are now commemorated as elsewhere in German towns by Stolpersteine. On April 22, 1945, Esslingen was occupied by American soldiers. During the war, sixty houses were completely destroyed in Esslingen, seventy five heavily damaged, 260 were moderately damaged, and 1236 slightly damaged. 
The Gypsy is and remains a parasite on the people who supports himself almost exclusively by begging and stealing. . . The Gypsy can never be educated to become a useful person. For this reason it is necessary that the Gypsy tribe be exterminated . . . by way of sterilisation or castration.
Esslingen Chief of police in letter to the chief administrative officer, 1937