Baden-
Freiburg
Adolf-Hitler-Straße and the Martin Gate in Freiburg in the thirties, now Kaiser-Josef-Straße. Of Freiburg, Hitler described it as one "from which all joy is lacking" whose
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer": The Siegesdenkmal and Münsterturm in April, 1938.women have addressed me in so ignoble a fashion that I cannot make up my mind to repeat their words. It's on such occasions that I become aware of the depth of human baseness. Clearly, one must not forget that these areas are still feeling the weight of several centuries of religious oppression.
(288) Hitler's Table Talk
A group of SA-men in front of the rathaus on March 6, 1933.
Gaukulturwoche in the Münsterplatz in October 1937.
Nicolaikirche under the Hakenkreuzfahne and today. On May 1, 1933 Freiberg churches held a "Patriotic Celebration." Reverend Paul Gotthelf Schwen wrote in the community newsletter of St. James "that God sent Adolf Hitler as the saviour to us."
The Synagogue on Freiburger Werthmannplatz was destroyed like so many others on the Riechskristallnacht, November 8-9 1938.
Bertoldstrasse in 1875 and today
Wartime damage
Bertoldstrasse in 1875 and today
Wartime damage
The memorial on the left is beside the new synagogue whilst the 'stumbling blocks' remind passers-by of those killed by national socialism.
Denazification at Freiburger Universität:
However the reichsadler has been scrubbed away completely from the main campus of St. Jerome University.
The swastika remains on the grave of Wilhelm von Biberstein, as well as the Nazi legend "And You Have Won in the End."
Adolf-Hitler-Platz
during the war and today. Karlsruhe was the birthplace both of
Generalfeldmarschall Walter von Reichenau, born 1884, and of Dr. Hans
Frank, born 1900, Reich Minister from 1934 to 1945 and Governor-General
of Poland from 1939 to 1945; he was hanged in Nuremberg in 1946.
Hitler gave a speech here on March 3, 1928. In 1944 the Festhalle was destroyed in an air raid and left as a ruin until it was blown up on November 4 1952 to make way for a dispiriting new hall.
Heidelberg
SA marching over the alte brücke past Heidelberg schloss from the cigarette card album Kampf um's Dritte Reich (28), and the complex today.
Stuttgart
Stadt der Auslandsdeutscher (City of the Abroad Germans)
Denazification at Freiburger Universität:
The original legend above the entrance, Dem ewigen Deutschtum, is still legible.
The swastika remains on the grave of Wilhelm von Biberstein, as well as the Nazi legend "And You Have Won in the End."
Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg)
Heidelberg
SA marching over the alte brücke past Heidelberg schloss from the cigarette card album Kampf um's Dritte Reich (28), and the complex today.
Hitler in front of the Europäischer Hof where he spent the night March 31 1935 before moving on to Stuttgart, and the hotel today.
Schwetzingen
Just west of Heidelberg, the castle of Schwetzingen can be seen behind the Wehrmacht marching through the town in 1944. Schloss Schwetzingen had been the summer residence of Prince-Elector Carl Theodor (1724–99).
Schwetzingen
Panzer Kaserne, later home to the American Army as Tompkins Kaserne
Stuttgart
Stadt der Auslandsdeutscher (City of the Abroad Germans)
On
the left is Hitler visiting Stuttgart on April 1, 1938. Both photos
show the end of Königstraße looking at Stuttgart Central Station then
and now. On that day Hitler took advantage of the rejoicing due to the anschluss when he arrived at 3:00 p.m. on April 1, Hitler arrived in Stuttgart on a special train.
In the City Hall, the Mayor Dr. Stroelin greeted Hitler at a reception held in his honour. Hitler replied to this welcome in a short address, emphasizing that the concept of a Greater Germany was nowhere as lively and vibrant as in Stuttgart, “the city of Germans living abroad.” At 9:00 p.m., Hitler delivered another campaign speech at a mass rally in Stuttgart. Following the “party narrative,” he again turned to the events in Austria: “We have all forgotten what it means to be compelled to live outside of the German Volksgemeinschaft!”
Doramus (1079) The Complete Hitler
People marching past the Stuttgarter Polizeipräsidium May 1, 1933. It would later become the Gestapo Headquarters from 1937 to 1945, even after being bombed in September 1944. As late as 13 April 1945 four prisoners in the cellar were hanged by the Gestapo. On 22 April at 11 o'clock the mayor, Karl Strölin, officially transferred the city to Karl Strölin to the French commanding general.
When French troops occupied Stuttgart – which was meant to form part of the American Zone as the capital of Württemberg – the Americans ordered them to leave. De Gaulle refused, saying he would stay put until the zones were finalised. The French were causing problems in the Levant too, and in an act of bravura against the Italians (who had taken back Haute Savoie and Nice during the war) they occupied the French- speaking Val d’Aosta. The American solution was to offer them some bits of Baden and Württemberg while keeping the lion’s share for themselves...French soldiers’ behaviour in Stuttgart, where perhaps 3,000 women and eight men were raped, was thought to have added to American fury at their overstepping their lines. [R. F. Keeling (Gruesome Harvest, Chicago 1947, 56–7) gives the official figure as 1,198, but the Germans thought it more like 5,000.]
MacDonogh After the Reich The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation
The French took a terrible toll in their zone, by forced seizure of food and housing, and by physical violence including mass rapes, in Stuttgart and elsewhere. The famine went on for years. The churches flew black flags. The children were too weak to play. The official ration in the French zone in January 1947 was 450 calories per day, half the ration of the Belsen concentration camp, according to the writer and theologian Prince zu Lцwenstein.James Bacque (94) Crimes and Mercies
Königsbau in 1940 and today
The Bismarckturm outside the city
The Bismarckturm outside the city
Tübingen
The market square with the rathaus in 1936 and today
The rathaus then and now from the other side
Münzgasse looking towards the Stiftskirche
The Synagogue on Boerneplatz, in flames on Reichskristallnacht 1938, and a memorial on the site today
The University
The Synagogue on Boerneplatz, in flames on Reichskristallnacht 1938, and a memorial on the site today
Next to the museum on Wilhelmstraße 3 lived Hugo
Löwenstein, the first Jewish business man in the city to sell is business in the autumn of 1933 after Nazi intimidation. He later emigrated to British Palestine.
The barracks gate of the Burgholzkaserne on Reutlinger Straße in 1939 and today.
The hotel Zum Hanskarle on the corner of Kaiserstraße and Österbergstraße.
The main railway station then and now. This was the station where 1,000 Württemberger Jews were deported to Stuttgart.
The Tübinger post office on the corner of Hafengasse and Neuer Straße.
The lower Schlosstor with and without the weather vane
View from the south of Tübingen towards Neckar and Galgenberg
Looking at the old and new Neckar bridge
The old brewery Waldhörnle on Schweizerstraße and its replacement today
Grabenstraße has changed completely in the last century
Herrenberger Straße with the Guesthouse König with the university mental hospital where the wife and I stayed in 2007 overlooking the town
Radolfzell
The rathaus on the day Hitler was appointed Chancellor- January 30, 1933 and today.
Ulm
A reichsadler still remains above the doorway of an office building, its removed swastika inviting graffiti.
When
Hitler's train stopped here on the way to the front at the start of the
Great War, Hitler posted a card to his landlord, Joseph Popp, writing
"best wishes from Ulm on my way to Antwerp."
It was at Ulm that, according to Martyn Housden (60) in Hitler: Study of a Revolutionary?, that
[t]he quintessence of Hitler’s deception of respectability became manifest during the trial of the Ulm officers which took place in September 1930. The episode showed that he remained as much of a revolutionary agitator as ever. It was one of the most important political events in the life of the Weimar Republic and a ‘milestone’ in the development of the party. At stake was much more than the actions of the three junior army officers who were accused of treason on account of setting up National Socialist cells within the army. Eventually the three received sentences of 18 months’ imprisonment. But in the midst of weighty accusations, Hitler took the stand. His testimony, made once again in the full glare of the national press, rambled across the history of his party. Its main thrust was as follows: "I have not created an instrument in order to implement a violent revolution. I have organised nothing to implement it. Our party is not the mouthpiece of a German revolutionary movement. The propaganda which we practise, is a mental/spiritual revolutionising of the German Volk, a transformation to a new ideology, which at the very least is as gigantic as the transformation to Marxist thinking or the transformation from feudal state to a democratic–parliamentary system. The NSDAP wants a perfectly new ideas world, to construct a completely new state. It cannot occur to me for one second to fight against a state with a consolidated army and a police force. Violence is not necessary for our movement."
With
a total height of 161 metres, the steeple of Ulm Münster is the
tallest in the world. Construction began in the late 14th century, was
suspended in 1553 and finally completed from 1844 to 1890. The town was
reduced to rubble by Allied bombs in 1944, sparing the Münster.
The city's bomb damage from the cathedral and gargoyle from top of cathedral today.
Anti-fascists vs. neo-nazis in Ulm during May Day 2009
Ravensburg
Nazi functionaries in front of the rathaus entrance in 1938, and the rathaus today
Nazis
intimidating those thinking of shopping at the Jewish-owned Kaufhaus
Landauer, and stolperstein at the site today, remembering the murdered
Landauers.
Eitel, Peter Ravensburg im Dritten Reich. 1997
Eitel, Peter Ravensburg im Dritten Reich. 1997
Schwäbisch Hall
Nazi eagle decorating a branch of Sparkasse
Adolf-Hitler-Strasse in 1942 and today, its name reverted back to Hauptstrasse
March 21, 1943 and today showing the Wasserturm
The schloss seen at the end of Kurpfalzstraße in 1943 and today.
The Jesuitenkirche on Schillerplatz, 1943 and today
Some tough nuts suspected of major war crimes were kept in the old penitentiary in the pretty town of Schwäbisch Hall near Stuttgart. Here prisoners were subjected to some particularly nasty forms of interrogation. Old boys included SS commanders Sepp Dietrich, Fritz Kraemer and Hermann Priess, all of whom denied issuing orders to shoot prisoners of war. Seventy-four SS men were finally arraigned for the massacre of American servicemen at Malmédy, but many of their confessions were subsequently withdrawn because they said they had been extracted under torture. One of the last to break was the cigar-chewing SS officer Jochen Peiper, who was suspected of being chiefly responsible for the massacre. The Americans had used methods similar to those employed by the SS in Dachau. ...The screams of the prisoners in Schwäbisch Hall could be heard throughout the little country town. The torturers were not all American: they included vengeful Polish guards like those mentioned by Salomon. The archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joseph Frings, kept a tally of reports of American brutality.MacDonogh (406) After the Reich
Offenburg
Adolf-Hitler-Strasse in 1942 and today, its name reverted back to Hauptstrasse
Mannheim
March 21, 1943 and today showing the Wasserturm
The Nationaltheater just before its destruction in 1943 and today as it was rebuilt in 1957 at Goethe Place rather than in the same location as the original National Theatre, based on the designs of the architect Gerhard Weber.
The former Zeughaus (now a museum).
Rexingen
The monument overlooking the town was built in 1933 and officially inaugurated in 1937. Shortly before the war ended the swastika was removed and in 1952 replaced with a cross.
