More remaining Nazi sites around Freising

More sites around Freising (still need to figure out how to organise this section...)

It was just outside Freising to the north at the Haidberghof (which I run past every week) in the hamlet of Pettenbrunn that Major Alois Braun chose as a base for the anti-Nazi Freiheitsaktion Bayern (FAB). In early April 1945 here at the Haidberghof (shown on the left in 1935 and today), the Major met with members of the FAB which consisted mainly of members of the military in Freising, Munich and Moosburg, who had also reached out to civil society groups and even American intelligence in Switzerland. It wasn't until the night of April 27-28 that they initiated any action involving the removal of higher military personnel and the Gauleiter of Munich and Upper Bavaria before, based on a ten-point programme, a transitional government would be established. With leaflets, newspaper and radio, the public was called upon for support. In the end, nearly 440 soldiers were involved.
The radio station in Ismaning was taken over under the command of Lieutenant Ludwig Reiter with a hundred to 150 men and tanks, and from 6:00 the FAB was able to transmit within a radius of more than 100 kilometres, declaring that the FAB had "fought the power of government" and called for support from listeners. In Munich and elsewhere south of the Danube, 78 actions took place involving some 990 participants who responded to this FAB call for action. Governor Ritter von Epp (who had been involved in the Boxer rebellion in China and the first act of genocide in the 20th century against the Herero in German SW Africa, and Nazi member since 1928 when he got elected to parliament, later acting as Reichskommissar and Reichsstatthalter for Bavaria in 1933) had responded hesitantly and had been brought at night to Haidberghof, meeting Major Brown and several officers.

The 'CIA Safehouse' nearby

However, von Epp left the isolated farm in the morning unconvinced. He was later arrested on Giesler's orders after being associated with the Freiheitsaktion Bayern, led by Rupprecht Gerngroß. However, Epp had not wanted to be directly involved with the group as he considered their goal - surrender to the Allies - a backstabbing of the German army. In total 57 people were arbitrarily executed whilst other activists managed to escape and hide. After the war, Major Braun worked in the Bavarian Ministry of Education as an elementary school consultant. From 1947 he founded the "Archives of the resistance movement set up by order of the Bavarian State Chancellery." The documents, which were collected there and are now kept in the Munich Institute for Contemporary History, contain a great deal of important information about the construction of a missile site. If one stands in front of the tombstone of the Holzer family at the site and look north-east, one can roughly make out the spot where the building stood on the opposite hill. 

Nearby is the "Active radar search device for the operational service" - ARED, the official name of the German Air Force's airspace surveillance.

Here, just outside Freising in Dürneck where I cycle past everyday to get to work, is where Ferdinand Marian died in a road accident in 1946 in the evening of August 9, 1946 on Münchner Strasse. Just south of Freising's town limits as the city police officer on duty Sieber entered into his report log the following day, a car went off the road and collided with a tree. The two passengers, Karl Hermann from Prague and his fiancé Erna Ladislava, were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. The driver died at the scene of the accident; this was the then well-known actor Ferdinand Marian.. He had been the star of history’s most incendiary film, Jud Süß despite having had an half-Jewish daughter from his first marriage and whose second wife had been married to a Jew whom Marian hid in his house. Apparently he had been driving to Munich drunk with a borrowed car to collect denazification papers that with the permission by American film officer Eric Pleskow that would have allowed him to work again, having celebrated this news just beforehand.

Other sources suggest that the accident was suicide although I can't find any support for this claim. The fact that there were already efforts to allow Marian to act again offer suppot against it. His losing fight to not appear in the film was the subject of the German-Austrian movie Jud Süss - Film ohne Gewissen of 2010. The actor Ferdinand Marian feared that he would no longer be cast by the Reichsfilmkammer, which is why he did not dare to turn down the role. In the period that followed, he also appeared in other National Socialist propaganda films, such as the anti-British film "Ohm Krüger" about the Boer War in southern Africa. As a result, he was further promoted by Joseph Goebbels and ultimately saved from military action in the war. After 1945, these connections to the Nazi propaganda apparatus led to his being banned from working for life by the Allies.

Kloster Wies during the Great War and today. Further down by about a kilometre is the town Tüntenhausen. In its church cemetery is this grave to victims of a death march near the end of the war which began on April 25, 1945 when roughly 850 prisoners were marched south down the B301 (Münchener Straße). The prisoners, guarded by men of the Waffen ϟϟ, were on their way from Buchenwald, Herbruck and Flossenbürg to the concentration camp in Dachau. Tüntenhausen's pastor Josef Schmid wrote in his report to his bishop on July 15, 1945 that on April 27, shortly after noon, around 850 Buchenwald concentration camp prisoners were driven through the village with two other prisoners who died in Hospital 1004 on Freising's Domberg coming from the Straubing prison. They had come from Zolling towards the direction of Freising. The prisoners had suffered abuse continuously on every occasion with footsteps, butts, and strokes. In a courtyard near Erlau north of Freising there was a basket with fodder potatoes on which some of the starving men rushed. There was a commotion with the armed guards who were used by four inmates to escape. Two of them were found starving to death in a barn days later and have recently been identified as Polish farmer Adolf Lodowski and Russian Sergei Petrow. They were buried with six soldiers and two ϟϟ members who had fought with American soldiers on April 29 at the Amper near Zolling. The burial occurred around 14.00, lasting about 30 minutes, with five-10 villagers and an unspecified number of ϟϟ guards present. The focus was rapid burial to keep the march moving. A memorial stone, erected by the Freising diocese on June 15, 1985, stands in the cemetery near the church entrance. The unveiling ceremony, attended by approximately fifty locals and diocesan representatives, lasted one hour, with speeches focusing on remembrance. The stone’s inscription reads, “Zum Gedenken an die Opfer des Todesmarsches 1945.”

The former site of the memorial to the west of Freising in this village church of Hohenbachern shown left; no trace of it remains today.

Just outside Hallbergmoos is this 1.20 metre high memorial on which is written in bronze letters "In memory of the prisoners' march of April 29, 1945. Alberto Labro † May 8, 1945". It is intended to stand on the path of the march, disturbing it as it commemorates the so-called death march of around 300 concentration camp prisoners coming from Neufahrn which ended in Hallbergmoos/Goldach. At the same time, a march of thirty to 40 prisoners from the Straubing prison was underway. The escaped Labro, formerly Mayor of Longwy in northern France, later died in the Loibl estate, where he had found shelter. His body was eventually exhumed in November 1946 and transferred to his hometown. He had been sentenced to five years in prison for 'favouring the enemy' and was then transferred from Brussels to Rheinbach and Kassel to Straubing. From here, Labro had to start the march towards Dachau concentration camp on April 24, 1945 together with around 3,000 other prisoners. On April 29, Albert Labro gained freedom in Hallbergmoos - and died in a stable nine days later. The fate of Albert Labro is described in detail by local historian Karl-Heinz Zenker in his 120-page book "The Victims of the Death Marches in the Freising District in Spring / Summer 1945" in Collection Sheet 36 of the Heimat- und Traditionsverein Hallbergmoos in which he also describes the fate of Dutch lawyer Johann Backhuysen-Schuld who had escaped to schloss Erchingen on May 2, 1945 only to die in Freising hospital of general severe exhaustion and circulatory paralysis. 

 An older Drake Winston beside the Hallbergmoos war memorial at Theresienstraße 7, one of the oldest of its kind in the Freising district. It consists today of a granite stele supporting an obelisk and two bronze lions, flanked by two inscribed steles. It was built by the Hallbergmoos Krieger- und Soldatenverein in 1873, the oldest association in the community. Not much is known about the association, because in the Third Reich all such warriors' associations were united at the Kyffhäuser Conference on May 7, 1933 in Berlin within the Kyffhäuser Bund, which sealed the end of all independent state associations. It was not until the Control Council Act of October 1945 that all Nazi organisations were dissolved and declared illegal, including the NS Reichskriegerbund. The memorial's ceremonial consecration took place on July 7, 1907 at the former location in front of the forester's house at the corner of Leopold-Theresienstraße. The old photo in the GIF shows the original monument, probably after the Great War, with the main teacher Lindermaier, the keynote speaker, together with his two sons. One of them bears the Iron Cross 2nd Class and the Bavarian Order of Military Merit. The cost of the memorial amounted to 945.42 Reichsmark and consisted of donations from Goldach of 208.50 Reichsmarks and Hallbergmoos of 174.60 Reichsmarks. The rest came from private individuals and other districts. The war memorial was extended to include the two columns decorated with lions for the fallen of the First World War; on June 10, 1923, the memorial with the two lions was inaugurated.

At the Ritterturnier held every year on the Pentecost weekend in June on the meadows at the Hausler Hof just outside Hallbergmoos where a knights' tournament is held. I've visited many and although small, this is a great event. The tournament course consists in the middle of a long, coloured railing which separates the two riding arenas. Seconds after the starting call, the horses gallop towards each other as the knights in the saddle have their lances at the ready and their sights on the enemy's shield. When the lance hits, it shatters loudly with a knight needing three points to win, unless the opponent falls off his horse beforehand. Throughout the weekend knights demonstrate their weapons and explain how knights-errant may have once lived. Of course, a family-friendly programme of music and juggling is part of the market activity on the meadows.  Besides the large market, a stage programme involving acrobatics and music takes place, and Viking ships circling the lake, offering free trips to visitors although they were cancelled when we went in 2023. A handicraft and grocer's market with around fifty stalls accompanies the events. The high point of both evenings will be the knights, who will put on a fire show on horseback on Saturday and Sunday at around 21.30.

Also just outside Freising but to the east is the 'Naturfreunde' centre in Hangenham overlooking the area which hosted the Nazis in 1933. The Naturfreunde, or 'Friends of Nature', is an international movement committed to the protection of nature. Founded in Austria in 1895, it expanded to Germany shortly thereafter. By the early 20th century, Naturfreunde centres were established throughout the country, becoming popular hubs for nature enthusiasts, social reformers, and political activists. However, with the rise of the Nazi regime, these centres were faced with unique challenges and pressures. Under the Nazi regime, the Naturfreunde centres underwent significant transformations. Steven B. Bowman argues that these transformations were primarily driven by the regime's intentions to manipulate public opinion and control societal institutions. Naturfreunde centres, which had traditionally been known for their politically left-leaning views and commitment to social and environmental justice, were targeted for 'cleansing'. According to Bowman, this was part of the wider Nazi policy of Gleichschaltung or 'coordination', which aimed at bringing all aspects of German life under the control of the Nazi Party. Despite Bowman's argument seeming comprehensive, Richard J. Evans maintains that while there were indeed attempts at manipulating the Naturfreunde centres, it wasn't solely due to the Gleichschaltung policy, instead contending that the Nazi regime saw these centres as potential platforms for propagating its own ideology about the significance of 'Blood and Soil' – a racially driven environmental ethos, and the volkisch connection to the land. The centres were seen as strategic platforms for indoctrinating the youth and spreading Nazi ideology among the populace.
Despite these transformations and pressures, Naturfreunde centres also served as pockets of resistance against the Nazi regime. Marcus Funck's work, 'Naturfreunde in the Nazi Era', gives valuable insight into this aspect by positing that the Naturfreunde centres, due to their historical commitment to social and political reform, harboured dissenters and acted as discreet nodes of the resistance movement. Evans corroborates Funck's argument, asserting that Naturfreunde centres, due to their historically egalitarian and left-leaning ethos, were likely to be fertile ground for the resistance movement. However, Evans also points out the danger in overstating the level of active resistance these centres could offer, given the level of surveillance and repression by the Gestapo and the fear of reprisals.

Regardless of the levels of resistance, the Nazi regime's suppression of the Naturfreunde centres was ultimately successful. According to Bowman, the regime's strategy of suppression was two-pronged: infiltration and violent repression. Agents from the Gestapo infiltrated the centres, reporting any signs of resistance, while overt signs of dissent were brutally crushed. Many Naturfreunde members were arrested, and the centres were either repurposed or closed. Marcus Funck provides a more detailed account of the suppression through accounts of specific instances of arrests, closures and even the execution of some Naturfreunde members. This intensifying repression forced the centres into a grim struggle for survival, and many eventually went into dormancy or complete dissolution.

Memorial in Aign about twenty miles north of Freising to the murdered crew of an American B24 bomber, the Gawgia Peach (42-52709), which crash-landed near Sillertshausen in the district of Freising on June 13, 1944 during a bombing mission to the Milbertshofen Ordnance Depot in Munich, by German ME 109s. Almost all members of the ten-man crew managed to rescue themselves via parachute only to have three of them- Dennis Griggs, Theoron O. Ivy and Robert Boynton- murdered by the Nazis. On the right is a photo of the crew of the 831st Squadron- The second man in the front Row is Boynton; Theoron Ivy is second to the right alongside flight engineer Francis Winners. Griggs, the copilot, is third in the back row next to pilot Herbert Frels who, in 1999, received the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism from then- Texas Governor George W. Bush. At the time Frels had been loaded into an ambulance and taken to the Freising hospital (where my son was born) where he would stay for two months before going to a PoW camp. Boynton was murdered on the ground by Nazi officials, as was Griggs who was killed by enraged German villagers after parachuting down to safety. It is believed that Ivy was killed several days later by the same group of Nazis.

As Kevin Hall concludes in his study Luftgangster over Germany: The Lynching of American Airmen in the Shadow of the Air War,

If the historiography is accurate that a similar number of British war crime trials investigated the mistreatment of a comparable number of downed British airmen, the occurrences of Lynchjustiz committed against downed British and American airmen in Germany conservatively exceeded 600. However, the American and British war crime trials that investigated Lynchjustiz focused largely on the occupied areas of West Germany. Accounting for a large dark figure, which includes cases of Lynchjustiz that occurred in what became the German Democratic Republic, it is likely that there were at least 1,000 cases of Lynchjustiz against Allied airmen within Germany’s postwar borders. However, hundreds of cases remain overlooked, especially those in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Poland. Preliminary research on violence against American airmen in the aforementioned nations concluded that Lynchjustiz occurred most often in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. This is reasonable given the increased number of airmen shot downed over these countries, the presence of German military and security forces, ardent collaborators, as well as civilians affected by the radicalised air war (tens of thousands of pro-Allied civilians died in bombings during the war). Taking into consideration Lynchjustiz committed against all Allied airmen throughout Europe results in a conservative estimate of 3,000 cases of mistreatment. Considering this, along with accounting for airmen abused in PoW and concentration camps and during death marches at the end of the war, it is likely that roughly one out of every ten Allied airman that survived being shot down was mistreated.

The incident served as the subject of a documentary by Marcus Siebler

 

Neufahrn bei Freising

 

Neufahrn was the site of a satellite camp men's camp where, on April 10 1945, exactly 500 prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp were brought where they occupied a total of twelve residential barracks. No further barracks that had already been built on the other side of the street were occupied until the end of the war. There were also three functional barracks and outside the camp barracks for the guards. The camp was surrounded by a high fence and was illuminated by tall light poles. Within the enclosed area the prisoners were expected to create a 1700-metre-long runway between Dietersheim and Eching for airplanes linked to the airbase at Schleissheim. They also had to dig cover holes for the guards - tiny dots on aerial photos taken by the USAAF. The inmates had to work with pickaxes and shovels, but eight of them were also harnessed to wide leveling shovels. Aerial photos from April 1945 documents where the Dachau subcamp was located in Neufahrn, one of which is attached to the new memorial at Dietersheimer Strasse 56 which was officially inaugurated on April 29, 2017, exactly 72 years after the liberation of the camp. These photos show the visible traces that the war left in Neufahrn, shown above superimposed with how Neufahrn looks today from a satellite map. On Samweg shown on the left, for example, the spot where an American military plane crashed right next to a residential building can be discerned. One local, Andreas Stegschuster, still remembers the event when, as a seven-year-old, he was at home with his siblings in his parents' knitting factory on today's Samweg when suddenly an American plane crashed right next to the house, and the children saw the burned body of the pilot. According to him, "[h]e had a wedding ring on one finger, but when we came back later, the finger and the ring were gone." Further down Dietersheimer Strasse there were other barracks in the immediate vicinity of the subcamp, but they were no longer occupied.

Where the local school is currently located on Fürholzer Weg there were bunkers and barracks for air force helpers and the ϟϟ. Meanwhile the impacts of emergency drops can be seen in southern Neufahrn - near the gravel pit that later became a football field and is now a residential area. The nearly 500 prisoners in the Dachau subcamp were liberated by the Americans. During the last weeks of the war they were supposed to build a runway for Nazi planes near the road. 

 Neufahrn historian Ernest Lang interviewed witnesses who related how two farmers had thrown potatoes over the fence for the starving prisoners and were then threatened by guards. An enlargement of the aerial photograph attached to the monument shows twelve symmetrically arranged barracks for the prisoners and to the south of them functional barracks as well as outside the fence accommodation for the guards and next to them cover holes, similar to those in the heather. Until recently, there were remains of the building's foundations which had been discovered during the excavation for the new building area. During his research, Lang came across a letter with which the municipality had raised an objection to the construction of the runway, asking for it to be moved one kilometre south or else "the best potato-growing areas would be destroyed" and the site would be at risk if the nearby runway were targeted by attacks. The runway was never finished; on the aerial photo, only a 350-metre-long, partially paved strip of earth can be seen. The further course was already marked out when the Americans occupied Neufahrn. After the liberation, the prisoners were looked after by the local farmers, the youngest being 18 years old. Eventually the prisoners left the place although the camp elder, Josef von der Bank, stayed, starting a family in Neufahrn and was a founding member of FC Neufahrn. The situation in nearby Dietersheim was much worse given the many ϟϟ men present and the heavy guns from the flak batteries ready to fire. At 2.30 in the morning an American infantry division approached from Eching on the road and across the heath. A machine gun was set up at the crossroads in the middle of the village and was firing as fighting took place on the outskirts of the village. Eventually around an hundred German soldiers were taken prisoner and six ϟϟ soldiers killed. The parish was plundered by Russians, Poles and the concentration camp prisoners who were housed in Neufahrn with looting continuing in the weeks after the invasion and even up to August, especially in the farmhouses with Dietersheim especially suffering. Apparently American soldiers also acted violently in some houses and forced people to deliver food with bicycle theft a common occurence. Pigs were stolen from several farmers a branch of the Oberpollinger company in Munich was completely looted.

 The prisoners at Neufahrn were also supposed to build another airfield at Garchinger Heide, but it was never finished although they did manage to remove the soil for the slope. It's at Garchinger Heide that a remarkable archaeological site in Eching is located- two groups of bronze age burial mounds dating between 1800- 1000 BCE. Thirteen of the more than fifty barrows were opened which contained nine skeletons as well as jewelery, weapons and ceramics which are now in the archive of the Prehistoric Collection in Munich. In the early Middle Ages, the locals created raised fields on the barren soil, the remains of which can still be seen in the east of the nature reserve. Through use as general pastureland for sheep, cattle, goats and pigs or as one-cut meadows until the end of the 19th century, the low-growing, lean limestone grassland that characterises the landscape was created, only occasionally interrupted by hedges and trees. The conversion to arable land began after the common land was divided up among the local farmers towards the end of the 19th century. Between 1907 and 1914, the Bavarian Botanical Society bought 23 hectares of land to prevent it from being converted to arable land. The area was not officially designated as a nature reserve "Garchinger Heide" until 1942, but in the last months of the war in 1945, forced labourers from the Dachau concentration camp began removing the top layer of gravel by hand to create a 40 metres wide and 300 to 400 m long runway for the Schleissheim military airport. Foxholes of around 1 m² were dug next to the runway, and are still half a metre deep today. 

Took my second attempt to find a reconstructed Roman milestone after work.  It's remarkable as it refers to 'Novivaro' which apparently was the Roman name for Neufahrn- I can't find any info about the site anywhere online and yet Google knows to translate it as such. German Wikipedia states that the first documented mention of Neufahrn can be found in 804 AD with the name “Niwiwara”, which means something like “among the newly settled families” so this really makes no sense to me. This milestone commemorates the Römerstrasse which was built here in the 1st century AD. It led towards Neufahrn with a junction to Garchinger Heide and had a connection to the provincial capital Augsburg (Augusta Vindelicorum). Around 200 AD, Emperor Septimius Severus had many such roads in the province of Raetia renovated.  

It reads:  IMP CAESAR L-SEPT SEVERVS-PIVS PERTINAX-AVG-ARAB ADIAB-PARTHICVS-MAX PONT-MAX TRIB-POT-VIIII IMP-XII-COS. II. PROCOS VIAS-ET-PONTES REST AB-AVG-M P-LXII A-NOVIVARO-M P-III 

Translation: Emperor Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Pertinax Augustus, the great victor over Arabs, Adiabes and Parthians. Chief priest, tribune for the 9th time, consul for the 2nd time, proconsul restored roads and bridges.  From Augsburg 62 Roman miles, from Neufahrn 3 Roman miles.

Hohenkammer

Schloss Hohenkammer in kreis Freising, flying the Nazi flag. The influence of the Nazis on the residents of the almost five hundred inhabitants of the village was considerable. When the rural communities in kreis Freising were brought into line in April 1933, the estate inspector of the castle estate and provisional base manager of the Nazi Party in Hohenkammer, Josef Münsterer, became a member of the town council and its second mayor. The Nazi Party and SA had moved into the castle with the swastika flag hoisted above, becoming the most important employer in the village. Those who did not go to the party had to worry about being hired. On July 29, 1945, the Seidenberger Spiritual Council reported how "[i]n recent years, the NSDAP has exerted a strong influence on Hohenkammer and the surrounding area, particularly in terms of school, the growing youth, and all those who were associated with Hohenkammer Castle: Workers, women, and so on. All Hitler laws were strictly implemented, especially at school. Even worse was the party's influence on the continuing education school, which was used for party political events. The castle authorities exerted enormous pressure on the population…. "

The church as it appeared in a Nazi-era postcard franked in 1942.

A recent exhibition titled "Hohenkammer in the Nazi era, names instead of numbers - life stories from the village resistance" held in the Alte Gaststube on the grounds of the castle celebrated the reistance of three school boys from Hohenkammer, Korbinian Geisenhofer, Thomas and Anton Held and Thomas Groß, who refused to submit to the Nazis in 1933. Geisenhofer and the Held brothers were declared opponents of the Nazis. Whether Thomas Groß came to the Nazi authorities because of his own political convictions or because of his friendship with Geisenhofer and the others isn't clear, but even before the Nazis came to power in Bavaria, boys from Hohenkammer had split into opponents and supporters of the Nazis.
On the morning of June 30, 1933, Groß, together with Geisenhofer and Thomas Held, were arrested by the village constable Friedrich Stoller and taken to the Freising District Court Prison. That day, the three were transferred to the Dachau concentration camp as “protective prisoners”. The night before, from June 28th to 29th, a solstice celebration had taken place in Hohenkammer. As in many other places, it was organised by the SA, Nazi Party and Hitler Youth to celebrate the success of the Nazis to win over the youth. The day after the celebration in Hohenkammer, Münsterer wrote to Special Commissioner Lechner in Freising: “Everyone is thrilled with the beautiful course of the celebration. Only a red opposition group has been working against us for weeks by all means. This morning, to our greatest surprise, we were able to find the KPD's sickle and hammer on the concrete road in the middle of town, painted with red oil paint. The same signs were also found on a pillar at the garden entrance of a member of the party. We could not determine who the perpetrators were, but we ask the following people, known as ringleaders, to move in.” The names of the three boys then followed. It is uncertain whether the three really had anything to do with any graffiti as they always denied the accusations of the Nazi authorities that they were communists, and no evidence was presented.
Nevertheless, even after they were released from Dachau months later, they made no secret of their opposition and in 1934 got into a fight with members of the SA and ϟϟ at the sports school that had been set up in the schloß, followng a parish dance organised at the Riesch inn In Unterwohlbach by boys from Hohenkammer who had not joined the party or the SA. When the ball was over, a delegation from the military sports school was waiting for the boys resulting in a fight as a result of which Anton and Thomas Held and Geisenhofer were arrested and sent to the concentration camp for the second time. Unlike his friends, Thomas Groß was lucky enough to be released after a few days in prison as stated in a letter from the political police to the commandant of the concentration camp from July 3, 1933 stating that he had left the same evening Has been released in protective custody. Although the district office of Freising tried on July 18 to prevent his release, Groß was able to return home, no doubt due to his brother-in-law, Johann Neugebauer, serving as an ϟϟ troop leader in Munich. The day after the arrest, he had written a letter to the commander of the political police in Munich and Himmler himself, asking for Thomas Groß to be released n his letter, emphasising that Groß had never been a KPD member but in fact had even expressed a wish"to join the SA." The brother-in-law confirmed the close friendship with Geisenhofer, but claimed that political motives had not played a role citing Groß's family's links with the Nazis Party as evidence and how in 1932 Groß would occasionally hand out leaflets that Neugebauer had sent him during the election campaign. On April 29, 1938, Groß died at the age of 26 in the hospital in Pfaffenhofen due to stomach complications and was buried in his father's grave.

 

Allershausen

  For Allershausen the war ended suddenly in quick succession starting at 8.15 when the 17th ϟϟ Panzer Grenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" departed the area followed twenty minutes later by the sight of white flag on the church tower. This was particularly dangerous given that a member of the division shot and killed the mayor of Burgthann, twenty kilometres southeast of Nuremberg, shortly before on April 17 after he had raised white flags as a sign of surrender. Mayor Andreas Fischer, who had been in office since 1935, was ordered to remove the flags again. When he refused, he was shot by a soldier from the division. In fact, a later trial against the soldier was discontinued in 1958 because he had acted according to the law applicable at the time, the so-called flag order which had been issued in April by Himmler, according to which every male person from a house on which a white flag was hung was to be shot immediately. This allowed members of the Wehrmacht and ϟϟ to simply execute civilians without a court martial and in arbitrary vigilante justice although already by 8.45 American tanks were entering the town. 

 

Drake Winston investigating wartime ruins along the Isarweg bicycle route towards Munich at Mintraching (Grüneck) bei Neufahrn. It was a few yards away on April 29 that, whilst around 30 to 40 inmates of the Straubing penitentiary moved through Goldach towards Mintraching in the afternoon, machine gun fire in front of the Isar bridge occurred. According to reports from pastor Franz Josef Roßberger from Eching and Dr. Joachim Birkner from Goldach, at around 2:30 p.m. a single armoured car from the American Army freed a group of about 250 prisoners from the Straubing prison, which had been moving on the road from Freising to Munich, and brought it to Eching. This group had also been observed by Ludwig Gilch from Mintraching. Another thirty to forty inmates of the Straubing penitentiary moved through Goldach towards Mintraching that afternoon. After the machine gun fire, the group disbanded, the guards disappeared and the prisoners were housed in the surrounding farms.

Zolling

Nazi-era postcard of the town showing how much has been developed since the war when American troops moved from Zolling on April 29, 1945 to Freising. Such development can also be seen in the area around the war memorial, again shown during the Nazi era and today. On April 27, 1945, between 13.00 and 15.00, the Buchenwald death march of approximately 850 prisoners) passed through Zolling. At least three prisoners died from exhaustion or execution by ϟϟ guards, as noted in a 1946 Freising district office report. The bodies were buried in a shallow roadside ditch by ϟϟ personnel, taking less than twenty minutes per burial, with 10-15 guards present and no villagers involved. The focus was quick disposal to conceal evidence. A memorial stone, placed by the Zolling historical society on September 10, 1990, stands along a rural path off the B301. The unveiling ceremony, attended by thirty residents and officials, lasted 45 minutes, with speeches on victim anonymity due to missing records. The stone’s inscription reads, “Für die Opfer des Todesmarsches aus Buchenwald, April 1945.”

 

Attenkirchen

 

A few miles north of the Amper. On April 26, 1945, at approximately 16.00, a death march of 200 prisoners from a Dachau subcamp passed through Attenkirchen. One prisoner was executed by ϟϟ guards for attempting escape, as documented in a 1947 report by historian Marco Grätz. The body was buried in a shallow forest clearing by 5-7 guards, taking 15 minutes, with no locals present. The focus was rapid concealment. A memorial stone, erected by the Attenkirchen community on November 11, 1995, stands near the forest edge. The unveiling ceremony, attended by 40 residents and officials, lasted 50 minutes, with speeches on local accountability. The stone’s inscription reads, “Zum Gedenken an den ermordeten Häftling, April 1945.”

Memorial in the woods outside Massenhausen to Kurt Willi Schmidt, born on July 15, 1924 in Gera, Thuringia. The non-commissioned officer died at this point in the municipality of Fürholzen near Neufahrn bei Freising, with his ME 109 G6 fighter plane was shot down during a dogfight with an Allied bomber group. He had four siblings; one of his brothers died of war injuries, the other committed suicide after the war ended. Kurt's fate remained with his mother and long unknown to his sisters, since the father kept the news of Kurt's death secret, to the mother's hopes that at least one of her sons would go to war had survived not to destroy. Kurt died on April 24, 1944, at just 19 years of age in Fürholzen in the district of Freising. The young non-commissioned officer flew a Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6 on that day to intercept an American bomber squadron moving to Munich, where he was shot down. The plane wreck was finally found 69 years after the crash by local historians under the direction of Marco Grätz and Ernst Keller who managed to identify Kurt Schmidt as a pilot using the nameplate of the aircraft. His surviving sisters learned about the discovery only after the investigators appealed to a local newspaper to contact them. A memorial stone was erected at the crash site on the occasion of Kurt's 70th anniversary of death, erected by the Krieger- und Soldatenverein Massenhausen/Fürholzen/Hetzenhausen. His final resting place is in the war cemetery at Schönau near Berchtesgaden. 

Two miles south of Niederhummel are the remains of a Roman road.