In
September 1939, a prisoner of war camp Stalag VII-A was built to
accommodate ten thousands of prisoners. The General Command of the
Military District VII in Munich chose this site between the Isar and
Amper rivers along with the
General Command of the Wehrkreis VII in Munich. Within a fortnight the
camp was ready for the first prisoners who arrived on October 19, 1939.
They were initially housed in tents. In the hall of an adjacent
artificial fertiliser factory a delousing facility was built. Initially, the camp accommodated Polish and Ukrainian soldiers captured in 1939. From
1940 additional barracks were built so that by the summer of 1940, the
area of the camp had grown to 350,000 m². Thus after the Western
campaign in 1940, French soldiers (and members of the Polish armed
forces in France ) were increasingly deported to Moosburg. After the
invasion of the Soviet Union in mid-1941 there correspondingly followed a
large number of prisoners of the Red Army. By the end of the war, the
number of inmates grew to 80,000 (including increasingly Western Allied
aircraft soldiers who had been shot down in the bombing of Germany,
including roughly two hundred generals alone); they were used in
surrounding industries, agriculture and trade whilst Moosburg itself had only about 5,000 inhabitants. Tens of thousands of prisoners of war were housed in subcamps and labour detachments around the area. About
2000 German guardsmen of the 512th Landesschützen battalion were
stationed in their own barracks area between Moosburg and the Stalag.
Due to the presence of the camp the entire surroundings were spared from
allied bombing. 
On April 29, 1945 the camp was liberated by a unit of the 14th Armoured Division of the United States Army under General Charles H. Karlstad, wherein the ordered transfer of the camp occurred almost without a fight.
The
site was converted into a detention centre for 12,000 German civilians
held accountable for their activities during the period of National
Socialism- the "Civilian Internment Camp No. 6". The camp was
released by the Americans in 1948 and served to house German refugees
exiled from eastern areas. It became a new part of the town, named
Moosburg-Neustadt. Three remaining guard barracks were included in the
Bavarian monument list on February 15, 2013.
The entrance to the camp and the site today, and the town itself shown in the background on the right
Moosburg
Stammlager VIIA, 1945. Pictures from Edward J. Paluch 780 Bomb
Squadron. From Fall 1944- Feb 1945 interned in Stalag Luft III.
This town about 20km from where I live was the site of Stalag VII A,
a PoW camp covering an area of 85 acres which also served also as a
transit camp through which prisoners, including officers, were
processed on their way to another camp. At some time during the war
prisoners from every nation fighting against Germany passed through
it. By the time it had been liberated on April 29 1945, there were
130,000 prisoners from at least 26 nations on the camp roster. It was
thus the largest prisoner of war camp in Germany.
Moosburg concentration camp warden from the video game Death to Spies: Moment of Truth,
where he wears an armband signifying he's from the 5th ϟϟ Panzer
Division Wiking. In the centre is Oberst Hans Nepf, Lagerkommandant
1939-1943, and his successor Oberst Otto Burger. The real-life
commandants were no video game villains- Nepf was said to have provided
decent accommodation for both German soldiers and prisoners of war, and
during his time it had been reported that Stalag VII A was "with its
beautiful facilities and facilities the most exemplary prison camp in
Germany". By the time he resigned in 1943, Nepf was said to have been
criticised by Munich-based Nazi authorities for being too decent towards
the prisoners. He would eventually die in September 1952 at the age of
73 years in Garmisch. Burger's time as commandant was certainly the most
demanding and his courage at the end of the war acknowledged by all. He
disregarded the express orders of April
27, 1945 when, at 20.30,
Commander-in-Chief West issued the following order: “The hour of the
decision has come. It's about the last resistance and victory. Mutineers
and deserters must be dealt with ruthlessly. Everyone has a
duty to remove failing officers in order to take the lead themselves."
Instead, Burger followed his own conscience, explaining it to the
prisoners on the
morning of April 28. As Dominik Reither argues,
"[i]n doing so, he refused an order in public and
put his life in danger." Not only did the guards follow the colonel's
lead, but according to reports, citizens of Moosburg are also
starting to hide bazookas or render them unusable in order to sabotage
further fighting.
On the left the funeral procession for two Russian prisoners of war who died on the day the camp was liberated. In
all probability this was a result of the PoWs finding the cellar in
which the Wehrmacht had stored 8,000 litres of wine. The Russian
soldiers in particular got drunk and, already physically weakened, the
consumption of alcohol became a lethal dose. The next day the military
government had to order forty coffins for those who did not survive the
binge. When the Americans closed the cellar, angry prisoners set it on
fire. A farmer's property also burned when he hesitated to surrender a
calf. At the same time, after the second day of the looting seventeen
rapes were reported. City pastors and chaplains then set up shelters for
women and girls in the rectory; it took eight days for the Americans to
contain the looting and another fortnight to stop it completely.
Moosburg concentration camp warden from the video game Death to Spies: Moment of Truth,
where he wears an armband signifying he's from the 5th ϟϟ Panzer
Division Wiking. In the centre is Oberst Hans Nepf, Lagerkommandant
1939-1943, and his successor Oberst Otto Burger. The real-life
commandants were no video game villains- Nepf was said to have provided
decent accommodation for both German soldiers and prisoners of war, and
during his time it had been reported that Stalag VII A was "with its
beautiful facilities and facilities the most exemplary prison camp in
Germany". By the time he resigned in 1943, Nepf was said to have been
criticised by Munich-based Nazi authorities for being too decent towards
the prisoners. He would eventually die in September 1952 at the age of
73 years in Garmisch. Burger's time as commandant was certainly the most
demanding and his courage at the end of the war acknowledged by all. He
disregarded the express orders of April
27, 1945 when, at 20.30,
Commander-in-Chief West issued the following order: “The hour of the
decision has come. It's about the last resistance and victory. Mutineers
and deserters must be dealt with ruthlessly. Everyone has a
duty to remove failing officers in order to take the lead themselves."
Instead, Burger followed his own conscience, explaining it to the
prisoners on the
morning of April 28. As Dominik Reither argues,
"[i]n doing so, he refused an order in public and
put his life in danger." Not only did the guards follow the colonel's
lead, but according to reports, citizens of Moosburg are also
starting to hide bazookas or render them unusable in order to sabotage
further fighting. Given
that the stalag was surrounded by fanatical Nazis officials, his
ability to save the lives of civilians, prisoners and soldiers on both
sides is remarkable and prevented Moosburg from being shelled. After the
war he and his family continued to live in Moosburg until 1957; his
wife worked as a teacher whilst his son Willy- now a lawyer and bank
director in Munich- attended elementary school in Moosburg and later
grammar school in Freising. In 1964 Burger died at the age of 76.
On the left the funeral procession for two Russian prisoners of war who died on the day the camp was liberated. In
all probability this was a result of the PoWs finding the cellar in
which the Wehrmacht had stored 8,000 litres of wine. The Russian
soldiers in particular got drunk and, already physically weakened, the
consumption of alcohol became a lethal dose. The next day the military
government had to order forty coffins for those who did not survive the
binge. When the Americans closed the cellar, angry prisoners set it on
fire. A farmer's property also burned when he hesitated to surrender a
calf. At the same time, after the second day of the looting seventeen
rapes were reported. City pastors and chaplains then set up shelters for
women and girls in the rectory; it took eight days for the Americans to
contain the looting and another fortnight to stop it completely.The GIF on the right shows by contrast former prisoners of war with recently
issued Red Cross food parcels following the liberation of the camp-
a number of buildings are still in use. The cases of Americans and
British Imperial troops were unique in several respects: their countries
were unoccupied by Germany, they held large numbers of German
servicemen in captivity, ensuring the attention of the German
government, and lastly, their status as 'legitimate' signatories to the
Geneva Convention was not called into doubt by Germany (unlike the
Soviet Union or, after 1939, Poland). The inspectors were not just
valued by the home governments as a source of information - their agents
usually argued forcefully for the improvement of conditions of their
charges directly with the Commandants of the camps, and noted in their
reports if their complaints were satisfactorily dealt with at that level
or whether further action would be required at a higher level of
authority.
The
cemetery of the camp was situated here in the south-western outskirts
of Moosburg, an area called Oberreit, among whom 22 or 23 buried were
British. From 1946- 1958 the mortal remains moved to central cemeteries
before finally being closed in 1958 when 866 bodies were exhumed and
reburied at the military cemetery in Schwabstadl near Landsberg. The
bodies of 33 Italians were reburied at the Italian Memorial Cemetery
near Munich. In 1982 the Moosburg City Council purchased a plot at the
site of the old Oberreit cemetery and erected a wooden cross with a
simple stone remembering the dead of Stalag VII A.
In
the autumn of 2014 on the 75th anniversary of the opening of the camp,
this historical marker was relocated at the site, its façade covered by
this bronze plaque but steel helmet remaining above.
Today the municipal authorities have seen fit to place a dog association right next to it...
...whilst in the town itself this memorial, the Heimatvertriebenen,
from 1958 commemorates the Germans' suffering; by 1950 1,931 out of
8,677 Moosburg citizens were refugees fleeing the Soviets. On the right is the view
down the same road, Sudetenlandstraße, then and now. Whilst the layout
is recognisable, today all that remains physically is a single
dilapdiated prisoner barrack and three guard barracks.
Some surviving vestiges of the original barracks being used, and along Schlesierstraße
For a site devoted entirely to Moosburg: Moosburg Online
Nearby
in front of St. Pius church on land devoted to serve as a memorial to
the prisoners of the stalag is this fountain, the Stalag Gedenkbrunnen,
which had been created by French prisoner Antoniucci Volti
in 1942 and set up in 1963. The reliefs are intended to represent the
four great rivers of France- the Garonne, Loire, Rhône and Seine. Volti
himself had been born in Albano, Italy, in 1915, before his family moved
to France in 1920. A book by art historian Christine Fößmeier, "Volti -
A major French artist in Stalag VII A Moosburg," is expected to be
published. Volti attended the École des Arts Décoratifs in Nice and
later went to Paris. After the war he returned to Paris, where his
studio and his works were destroyed shortly thereafter. Moosburg
therefore possesses, as Fößmeier's project description states, "a unique
excerpt from the work of Volti". He continued to work in Paris after
the war, where he died in 1989. Volti's works can be found in the Musée
National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Musée de la Ville de Paris, Albi,
Menton, Nice and Honfleur. 
Soldiers of the Infanterie Ersatz-Bataillon 423 in front of today's
Anton-Vitzthum-Elementary School, shown arriving to eat in the school
yard. The division ended up operating in the Ukraine until January 1944
when the division was encircled near Zwiahel and relocated to the
Eastern Front after a loss-making break from the pocket. There the
division was promptly destroyed due to insufficient combat experience
and training. The survivors were then deployed among other divisions for
the formation of the 363rd Infantry Division and the 394th Field
Training Division which would take over the position of the division in
Ukraine.
The West and South entrances to St. Kastulus during the 1930s and today
Inside
the church during the Nazi era and today. In 1927 the church Oettingen
received a new organ and also a replacement for the bells that had
partially melted down during the First World War when 44 per cent of the bells in Germany alone were lost to support the war effort. As Sir Hew Strachan records at 0:12:32 in the episode 'Germany's Last Gamble' for his outstanding First World War series, such were the "signs
of the increasing scarcity of metal. In a small town near here, a sad
ceremony took place. The church bell, which had rung the people from
cradle to grave for 300 years, was requisitioned. The inhabitants
performed a funeral service for it. The bell was covered with wreaths
and flowers and handed over to the military authorities under tears and
protestations." In the end, these replacement bells themselves had to be
sacrificed in 1942 for armament purposes. It was not until 1954 that
today's seven bells found their place in the bell cage of the cathedral
tower. The interior was renovated in 1937 and 1938 and again in 1971-72.
At the foot of the Johannes tower on Thalbacher straße in a 1935 photograph and today. The rental office across the narrow passage from the tower was
demolished that year. On the right is the tower from the other side on
the High Street during the war and today. During the battle for the town
the Americans fired upon the Johannesturm, where ϟϟ
troops had established a position. The Moosburgers had already broken
off their Sunday service in the neighbouring church and fled to their
cellars. Given that ϟϟ
troops had no heavy weapons and bazookas had been made unusable in
Moosburg, the tanks were able to quickly break their resistance. The
Americans couldn't however prevent scattered ϟϟ
men from blowing up the Isar Bridge nevertheless conquered the city,
apparently being greeted with flowers by the population, of whom nothing
is known regarding civilian casualties.
Hitlerjugend on the left in 1937 and the site today
At the other end of the square is the war memorial and today, the Nazi flags being replaced by the red ensign. The images on the right show Bürgermeister Dr. Hermann Müller in front of the memorial on March 10, 1940. In
1935 there were plans in Moosburg to redesign Münsterplatz for
political rallies by introducing a wide flight of steps leading from
Leinbergerstraße to two "honour temples" and a Gemeinschaftshaus at the
choir of St. Kastulus which would be directly reminiscent of Munich's
Königsplatz although in the end it was never realised.
Moosburg railway station in 1935 sporting the Nazi flag and now
Landstraße
Photo developer Georg Reindl driving the first car in Moosburg- a Kolibri- in 1908 on Weingraben.
Here at Weingraben 17 Albert Kraaz ran a newspaper and magazine shop
until 1969. A sailor during the war, he had been denounced by his
colleagues in 1942 for listening to "enemy transmitters". He was
arrested and suffered physical abuse in Gdansk. He had been freed during
the death march towards Dachau around Altfraunhofen near Landshut; his
wife died in Auschwitz. After the war he denied his Jewish ancestry
having been categorised as a 'half Jew.' A subsequent medical report
written up upon his claim for compensation for suffering under the Nazi
regime almost led him to a psychiatric breakdown after his severe
suffering, describing him as a "[m]entally overwhelmed person, stubborn,
dissatisfied with everything, does what he likes, does not follow
dietary rules, leaves the hospital and comes when it suits him."
During
the Nazi era the Jewish merchant Alois Weiner operated a large
department store in Moosburg on am Gries until 1937 when he moved to
Munich. The GIF on the left shows Auf dem Gries in 1936 and during the 2016 Herbstshau; Alois Weiner's department store in the large building on the left.
He was first sentenced to forced labour in a flax factory for "racial
disgrace" (his partner Klara Brunner was "Aryan" according to the Nazis)
and, because of his Jewish descent, was then deported. In 1945 he was
able to return to Moosburg from the Theresienstadt camp after its
liberation and ran his department store again. He became a town and
district councilor as a member of the SPD since 1918, and was
temporarily the second mayor in Moosburg.
The GIF on the right is looking the other direction in a watercolour by Valentin Ott just before the war.
The chairman of the Jewish community from May 1946 to January 1948, Heinrich Kinas, lived with his wife Lazia at Weingraben 248 (now Münchner Strasse 1). He came from Breslau and was a dentist. He was imprisoned in 1939, and sentenced to forced labour at
the Czestochowa concentration camp. When the camp was liberated on
January 17, 1945, Kinas fled to Buchenwald after the camp was closed
before the death march before coming to Moosburg with his family from
the Feldafing camp. In May 1951 he left Germany for the United States.
Mordcha
Zajf, the last chairman of the Jewish community in Moosburg, at
Weingraben 22 (today number 20) having come from Poland and had also
been employed as a slave labourer from September 1939. After liberation,
he spent a year in hospitals in Munich and Gauting for a year,
presumably suffering from tuberculosis, one of the most common diseases
of the camp. His wife Masza also survived the Holocaust, but their two
children obviously did not survive because they are nowhere mentioned.
One
of the oldest gable-topped houses in Germany shown in a colourised
photograph taken just after the war, and as depicted in a 1941 sketch by
a French prisoner of war interned in Stalag VII A.
My favourite Pub on
Herrnstraße, formerly a bakery, and looking the other way towards
Herrnstraße 293, the second building on the right, where the Jewish
administration was housed after the war from January 1946 to February
1951. In 1948, 248 Jews were living in the town, about 80 percent of
whom came from Poland. They had been through captivity, concentration
camps and death marches for which Moosburg was just a stopover - with
the aim of emigrating to other countries. In fact, persecution of Jews in Moosburg dates back as early as 1338 when Jewish residents were killed. In 1951 there were only 34 Jews left in the city and the community and the former sports club Hapoel Moosburg dissolved. The former property of Nazi official Alfred Heppner and his wife Centa on Herrnstraße 7,
now the site of a flower shop, was given to the Jewish Committee by the
American military government. A synagogue was set up there consisting
of a 41 square metre lounge and a 23 square metre prayer room, as well
as the municipal administration office, another lounge, an anteroom, a
small kitchen and two rooms. There were apartments on the upper floors, where Rabbi Hirsch Gornicky and his family lived in one room.
In 1948, the Heppners demanded the return of their property and brought
legal action against the town, but the Jewish community refused to
provide alternative accommodation. With the dissolution of the Jewish
community in 1950, the synagogue was also cleared. At the end of the
road is the town hall.
When
the Allied forces conquered Germany, they were able to liberate some
tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners. Between 1945 and 1950, however,
the former Third Reich became a temporary place of refuge for about
200,000 Shoah survivors. Besides the prisoners freed from the work and
death camps, these were people who had fled from the Nazis to Russia,
fought in Eastern Europe with the partisans, or in some other way
managed to survive underground. Starting in the fall of 1945, the American
military government set up special Displaced Persons (DP) camps for
them. For a short time, General Eisenhower had even considered
allowing the Jews to set up their own territory in Bavaria. This plan
had been proposed to him by David Ben-Gurion, who was travelling through
occupied Germany at that time. However, a Bavarian Jewish state was
never established. Nevertheless, the Americans conceded wide-ranging
rights of self-determination to the Shoah survivors. The British,
Russians, and French granted no such privileges. Supplies, too, were
more plentiful in the American zone, and so about 85% of all
Jewish DPs settled here, considering their residence, however, as but a
temporary measure. The overwhelming majority believed that their future
would only be guaranteed in a country of their own, convinced that “only
Eretz Israel will succeed in absorbing and healing them, help them
regain their national and human balance.” As the state of Israel would
not be established until 1948, some Jews dreamed also of a new life in
the USA, Canada or Australia.
When
the Allied forces conquered Germany, they were able to liberate some
tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners. Between 1945 and 1950, however,
the former Third Reich became a temporary place of refuge for about
200,000 Shoah survivors. Besides the prisoners freed from the work and
death camps, these were people who had fled from the Nazis to Russia,
fought in Eastern Europe with the partisans, or in some other way
managed to survive underground. Starting in the fall of 1945, the American
military government set up special Displaced Persons (DP) camps for
them. For a short time, General Eisenhower had even considered
allowing the Jews to set up their own territory in Bavaria. This plan
had been proposed to him by David Ben-Gurion, who was travelling through
occupied Germany at that time. However, a Bavarian Jewish state was
never established. Nevertheless, the Americans conceded wide-ranging
rights of self-determination to the Shoah survivors. The British,
Russians, and French granted no such privileges. Supplies, too, were
more plentiful in the American zone, and so about 85% of all
Jewish DPs settled here, considering their residence, however, as but a
temporary measure. The overwhelming majority believed that their future
would only be guaranteed in a country of their own, convinced that “only
Eretz Israel will succeed in absorbing and healing them, help them
regain their national and human balance.” As the state of Israel would
not be established until 1948, some Jews dreamed also of a new life in
the USA, Canada or Australia. 
The
birthplace of Josef Furtmeier (born September 3, 1887), one of the
mentors of the White Rose, especially Hans Scholl. Sophie Scholl
referred to him as "the philosopher."
From
the end of 1918 until May 1, 1919 he was a member of the Communist
Party, and in the spring of 1919 he took part in a communist
demonstration at the Justice Palace in Munich. This, and the fact that
he refused to use the Hitler salute nor joined any Nazi organisation,
led him to be fired in October 1933 on the basis of the law for the
restoration of the professional civil service. Up until 1945 he lived in
Moosburg and Munich, receiving a pension which was small compared to
his last salary. From mid-1941 Hans Scholl got in touch with Josef
Furtmeier about Carl Muth and Alfred von Martin. Sophie and Hans Scholl
met regularly with Furtmeier. Concerning a conversation on June 4, 1942
with Furtmeier, Sophie Scholl reported: "... a three-hour, uninterrupted
and exhausting conversation was held." After the arrest of the leading
members of the White Rose, Furtmeier was held by the Gestapo from
February 28 to March 20, 1943. Furtmeier stated after the war period
how he had talked with Hans Scholl about the legitimacy of the murder of
tyrants. In May 1945 he was appointed mayor of the city of Moosburg and
began investigations into former Nazi party members and against Nazi
divisions. At the commemorative ceremony for the victims of the White
Rose in 1945 in Munich, he gave a speech alongside Romano Guardini. In
1946 he joined the SPD. After 1949 he tried two times to obtain a
promotion as compensation for his dismissal in 1933. This was denied him
by the ministry which claimed that he had been already adequately
compensated. He is buried in the family grave at the cemetery in
Moosburg shown here on the left.
Also
buried in Moosburg (next to a memorial to those killed in the air
bombing) is Koloman Wagner, born April 15, 1905 in Sünzhausen. In 1943
he worked at the Driescher firm producing war materiel when Joseph
Goebbels gave his Sportpalast, or total war, speech to a large and
carefully-selected audience on February 18 1943 calling for total war,
as the tide of the war had turned against Germany. His colleague, Maria
Huber, testified in court that following the speech Wagner repeated
Goebbels's question "Do you want your men to come to the front; do you
want the total war?" and responded with a sarcastic "yes" before stating
that this has "signed your men's death sentence." She went on to say in
her denunciation that the female workers were ashamed by his attitude,
especially given the number of prisoners of war working alongside them.
The Nazi mayor of Moosburg at the time, Dr. Hermann Müller (whose
portrait hangs today in the town hall) declared that "Wagner is, in my
opinion, a man who threatens public morale through his attitude and
lifestyle." Even after the supportive testimony of the company's
management which had testified how Wagner had been responsible for
labour-saving innovations, his fate was sealed. The Attorney General
reported to the minister of justice the enforcement of the judgement on
July 27, 1944: "The execution process lasted 53 seconds from leaving of
the cell; eight seconds from his handover to the executioner until the
fall of the axe. No other incidents or other events of importance
occurred."
Nearby
is the grave of Heinrich Hiermeier. An active member of the communist
party since 1931, he was first imprisoned by the Nazis and held under
'protective custody' in Moosburg from March 10 to May 3, 1933. He
remained an antifascist- it had been reported to district authorities in
January 1936 that although publicly Hiermeier had abandoned his earlier
attitude, it is clear to his work colleagues that he "does not agree
with the current system." By the end of that month he had been arrested
again and on June 23 appeared before the Higher Regional Court in Munich
for apparently planning a treasonous activity before being sentenced to
two years and four months at the penitentiary. It's not clear if was
released the end of his sentence on June 23 1938 but he is recorded as
having died in a camp, possibly one that had used 1000-1200 forced
labourers in the Obersalzberg to work on one of the gigantic
construction projects at the time. Nor is the nature of his death,
recorded on his grave as having been February 19, 1940, other than he
had supposedly been crushed by scaffolding which led to a skull
fracture, internal bleeding and fracture of neck vertebrae. 
The bridge that became the main strategic objective
in the battle between Patton and the German ϟϟ in Moosburg, led by the tanks of Sergeants Claude Newton and William Summers and Lieutenants Hack and Boucher. The
Germans eventually bombed the bridge as Newton’s tank moved into the first span in
order to keep the American
tanks from crossing it. The battle didn't last long however and by the
evening the 14th Armoured Division was established along the Isar.
Behind it were miles-long columns of German prisoners being marched to
the rear and the fields all around with two thousands of Germans
prisoners guarded under lights. Among them lay the burned out German
vehicles caught in the fight that morning with the German dead lying in
grotesque positions as Graves Registration Officers moved among them
preparing for burial and British ex-prisoners of war rode bicycles
through the towns. The bridge has recently been replaced by a new one
seen here.
Next to the bridge is the Gasthof zur Länd, shown in 1941 and April 29, 1945 below. According to author Dominik Reither in his recent book "Zwischen Hakenkreuz und Sternenbanner - Kriegsende und Nachkriegszeit in Moosburg"
which focuses on the period between April 29, 1945, when the Americans
marched into Moosburg and the election to the first Bundestag on August
14, 1949, Moosburg, which had previously been spared major
bombardments, only suffered from them towards the end of the war, when
the front drew closer and low-flying aircraft attacks in the area
increased. Whilst city commander Major Rudolf Koller, camp commander
Colonel Otto Burger and Mayor Hermann Müller had decided not to defend
Moosburg and hand it over to the approaching Americans, ϟϟ units
resisted when the American Army took the city and liberated the camp. 
Reither
writes how there were no dead or wounded in Moosburg during the
invasion but chaotic days of looting, rape and arson by freed prisoners
followed. It
is believed that there were 70,000 to 80,000 people in the overcrowded
Stalag at the end and Reither describes how western prisoners of war
were brought home whilst those from the east remained as displaced
persons in the town as the city administration was rebuilt, a Jewish
community formed, expellees and refugees were taken in and the Neustadt
district came into being on the Stalag site. Reither also addresses
denazification, such as the case of ex-mayor Müller, who after three
years of internment ultimately received a mild sentence and was only
classified as a follower, even though he was a staunch Nazi. Reither's
book also provides insights into the "German Youth Activities"
programme, with which the Americans also got young people off the
streets in Moosburg and led them towards democracy. He describes how
cultural, sporting and leisure activities gained momentum again and
includes anecdotes such as those from the FC Bayern Munich visit, who
made two guest appearances at SpVgg Moosburg in September 1945.
Reither
writes how there were no dead or wounded in Moosburg during the
invasion but chaotic days of looting, rape and arson by freed prisoners
followed. It
is believed that there were 70,000 to 80,000 people in the overcrowded
Stalag at the end and Reither describes how western prisoners of war
were brought home whilst those from the east remained as displaced
persons in the town as the city administration was rebuilt, a Jewish
community formed, expellees and refugees were taken in and the Neustadt
district came into being on the Stalag site. Reither also addresses
denazification, such as the case of ex-mayor Müller, who after three
years of internment ultimately received a mild sentence and was only
classified as a follower, even though he was a staunch Nazi. Reither's
book also provides insights into the "German Youth Activities"
programme, with which the Americans also got young people off the
streets in Moosburg and led them towards democracy. He describes how
cultural, sporting and leisure activities gained momentum again and
includes anecdotes such as those from the FC Bayern Munich visit, who
made two guest appearances at SpVgg Moosburg in September 1945. 
Had taken considerable time to hunt down the site of a Roman villa that had
been excavated just about fifteen miles away back in 1987 before being
covered up again with only this photo giving me the clues as to its
actual location. It's just outside a little town called Mauern north of
Moosburg- the name could come from the Roman "ad murun", and sure enough
Roman bricks were found nearby in Alpersdorf in 2007 is not surprising.
A small thermal bath and a kiln were excavated here. The thermal bath
had underfloor heating and was divided into typical rooms such as
changing room, cold bath, tepid bath and warm bath. Concentrated metal
objects were found in the heating shaft of the praefurnium that were
probably hidden there when the Alemanni plundered the area, but then no
longer picked up. Information about the excavations:
http://www.archaeologischer-verein-freising.de/index.php…
About twenty miles south of Landshut is the tiny town of Dorfen, its Marienplatz shown here during the Nazi era and today.
Erding
Prior
to and during the Second World War Erding was a Luftwaffe pilot
training airfield. It was seized by the United States Army in April 1945
and used as a United States Air Force facility during the early years
of the Cold War.
The Nazi flag flying before the stadtturm and flanking the town's war memorial, today its iron cross now replaced from the top.
The
1941 aviation comedy Quax, der Bruchpilot had several scenes shot in or around
Erding- one can for example recognise the Frauenkircherl on Schrannenplatz in the scene shown above.
Directed
by Kurt Hoffmann and starring Heinz Rühmann, it was set
in the 1930s before the outbreak of the war based on an
aviation story by Hermann Grote about an ordinary man who wins a
newspaper competition that offers free flying lessons. Despite initial
struggles, he gradually shows himself to be a good pilot. It was
followed by a sequel Quax in Africa which was also made during the Nazi
era, but not released until 1947 in Sweden and 1953 in West Germany. The
character inspired Disney to recently 'revamp' the character as Quack der Bruchpilot, although in English his name is given as Launchpad McQuack.The
film is set somewhere in the south of Germany in 1930; the main town is
referred to as Dünkelstätt although at one point on a sign it's stated
as being Dünkelstedt. Otto Groschenbügel, aka Quax, a small employee of a
traffic bureau, wins in a competition providing free sport aviation
training at the aviation school Bergried. Although hooping for a
different prize, he hopes to become famous overnight in his hometown of
Dünkelstätt. Kicked out of the aviation school owing to his behaviour
covering up his cowardice, he is soon advised to stop the course. 
In
Dünkelstätt, where the reason for his speedy return home is unknown,
Quax is celebrated as an aviator. To live up to expectations, and also
out of disappointment that his friend Adelheid was unfaithful during his
absence, he returns to continue his education. Over time, he actually
becomes a disciplined airman and even proves to be talented. As a
reward, he gains the affection of Marianne, who has helped him out of
difficult situations several times. At the end of the film set two years
later, Quax is seen working as a disciplined flying instructor at
Bergried Flying School. The movie itself was shot from May 23 to
September 1941 at the Ufa Atelier Berlin Tempelhof and in Bavaria at the
airfield of Prien am Chiemsee and here at the Erding Air Base , where
the landing on the course was shot. Other parts of the film were shot on
the airfield Kempten-Durach, Germany's highest-lying airfield. During
the filming the stand-in pilot had to be replaced due to a leg fracture
and, due to the war, could not be substituted. Rühmann himself, an avid
sports aviator in real life, flew in all the scenes. Both on the wing
and in front of the cockpit of the Udet U12 a camera from Bell &
Howell was mounted which only allowed for 27 metres of film, which was
just enough for a minute. As a result Rühmann had to take-of fity times
to record the flight scenes. The première took place on December 16,
1941 in the Ufa Palace in Hamburg. 
It was helped by the Werner Bochmann hit song Heimat, deine Sterne
and went on to win the regime's Filmprüfstelle before eventually making
five million Reichsmarks at the box office. Hitler aparently loved the
film and had it repeatedly shown at the Fiihrer's headquarters. A
sequel- Quax in Fahrt (renamed Quax in Africa after the
war in West Germany)- also starring Heinz Rühmann in the lead role was
made in 1943-45 under the direction of Helmut Weiss. As in all Nazi
aviation films, values such as discipline, camaraderie and social
adaptation are highlighted. A special feature of this film is the main
character who, an anti-hero, shows how even an obvious failure can
become a "German hero" - if he meets only one competent leader- thus
when Quax is at his lowest ebb his instructor does not display the usual
authoritarian traits of discipline and obedience but, on the contrary,
demonstrates confidence by making Quax himself a flight instructor.
Through Nazi film policy, the film was also intended to promote the
Luftwaffe, especially as the Third Reich had a particularly high demand
for new blood in this area during the war. The High Command of the
Allied occupying powers banned the film after the war; Rühmann himself
always asserted that he had never felt that he had any propaganda, let
alone military, training.Some scenes set in and around Erding's Schrannenplatz from the film:
Heinz
Rühmann landing in Schrannenplatz at the end of the film. His role in
the 1930 movie Die Drei von der Tankstelle led him to film stardom. He
remained highly popular as a comedic actor (and sometime singer)
throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, remaining in Germany to work
during the Nazi period, as did his friend and colleague, Hans Albers
during which time he acted in 37 films and directed four. After the
Nazis seized power in 1933, Rühmann did not speak openly about German
politics, but instead kept himself as neutral as possible. In 1938 he
divorced his Jewish wife Maria Bernheim who managed before the war to
move to Stockholm, and as a result, survived the Holocaust. His second
wife, Hertha Feiler, whom he married shortly after, had a Jewish
grandfather, a fact that caused Rühmann problems with the Nazi cultural
authorities. Rühmann retained his reputation as an apolitical star
during the entire Nazi era. During the war years, Rühmann increasingly
let himself be co-opted by the Third Reich. The same year as Quax, he
also played the title role in Der Gasmann, about a gas-metre reader who
is suspected of foreign espionage. In 1944, the première of Die
Feuerzangenbowle was forbidden by the Nazi film censor for "disrespect
for authority" although given his good relationships with the regime,
Rühmann was able to screen the film in public. He brought the film to
the Führerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze for a private screening for Hermann
Göring and others. Afterward, Göring was able to get the ban on the
film lifted by Adolf Hitler. As a "state actor", the highest title for
an actor during the Nazi era, Rühmann was not drafted into the
Wehrmacht. 
He
did have to take the basic training to become a military pilot, but for
the Third Reich, Rühmann was more valuable as an actor and he was
spared having to take part in the war effort. In August 1944, Goebbels
put Rühmann on the Gottbegnadeten list of indispensable actors. Rühmann
was a favourite actor of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank, who pasted his
picture on the wall of her room in her family's hiding place during the
war, where it can still be seen today, as well as both Hitler and
Goebbels. Rühmann had a difficult time resuming his career after the
war, but by the mid-1950s, the former comedian had established himself
again as a star, only this time as Germany's leading character actor. In
1956, Rühmann starred in the title role of the internationally
acclaimed picture Der Hauptmann von Köpenick, the incredible true
story of a Prussian cobbler, Wilhelm Voigt, who dressed up as an army
officer and took over the town hall in Köpenick. Rühmann was also the
leading man in the 1960 film version of The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik,
after the novel by Czech author Jaroslav Hašek. He also played the role
of Father Brown in three German films during the 1960s. In 1965,
Rühmann was brought to Hollywood by producer Stanley Kramer for a
supporting role as a German Jew in his all-star movie Ship of Fools. 
His last film was Faraway, So Close! (1993)
by Wim Wenders, in which he played an old fatherly chauffeur named
Konrad. Rühmann died in October 1994, aged 92 years. He was buried in
Berg-Aufkirchen. His popularity with German audiences continues: in
1995, he was posthumously awarded the Goldene Kamera as the "Greatest
German Actor of the Century"; in 2006, a poll voted him number one in
the ZDF TV-show Unsere Besten - Favourite German Actors. Erding proved
an appropriate site for an aviation movie given it provided the location
for Fliegerhorst Erding, a military airfield northeast of the town.
Prior to and during the war, Erding was a Luftwaffe pilot training
airfield. The air base was built in 1935 by the Air Force of the
Wehrmacht. From
1941 it hosted various flying overpass units, such as the transfer
point Erding, the transfer command air group 3, the group South /
aircraft transfer squadron 1 and the airlock airlock commando 2. From
April to December 1944 the 10th (supplementary) squadron of the combat
squadron 51 was stationed here. Only in April 1945 with the III./KG(J)
54 was an active flying unit based at the site which boasted the
Messerschmitt Me 262. After the war the American Air Force occupied and
used Airfield R.91 , according to the then-Allied code designation. From
1949 the 7200th Air Force Depot Wing was stationed on the air base. It
was from Erding that British and American aircraft started to supply
flights in the context of the Berlin Airlift. For this reason the number
of employees increased to 7,512, 2,704 of which were soldiers. 
Nazi rallies, marches and demonstrations in Erding
Looking down Landshuter Strasse, comparing the view after the war and today.
 |
| Spiegelgasse |
On Haager Straße the greatest damage was reported as was the number of killed. The pressure of the detonations destroyed roofs and windows in the Innenstadt- on the Schrannenplatz the pharmacy and the Lehner house burned as shown in the photo here. It had taken days of work by mountain commanders to dig up the buried people. To make matters worse, electricity and water were left non-existent for days. The dead were first placed on the roadside in Hagerstrasse, then brought to the heavily damaged city parish church. The coffins had been stacked on top of one another for reasons of space. Many other towns in Bavaria were bombed that day- Freising, Rosenheim, Dillingen, Augsburg, Neuburg an der Donau and Traunstein. Erding's city archivist, Markus Hiermer, observed that American flying fortresses on April 18 should not have actually thrown their cargo over Erding- "An attack on Pilsen was planned, but it was blown off course. They did everything they could to get rid of their bombs." Nazi air defences had already collapsed in the final phase of the war. Nevertheless, Americans and of course the RAF needed to bombard small towns like Erding to break the Germans' last resistance. Thus the attacks were no longer of strategic importance, but it was seen as an appropriate response to the relentless bombing the Germans had happily initiated and continued against civilian populations from the start of their war, particularly against British cities.
The Stadtturm beside the remains of the church on Friedrich Fischer Straße
From the other side on Kirchgaße
Comparison of the same street during the Third Reich and after its wartime bombing
From the other side on Kirchgaße
Of
course, many other towns in Bavaria were attacked that day including
Freising, Rosenheim, Dillingen, rural districts around Augsburg, Neuburg
an der Donau and Traunstein. In fact, the plan was for the USAAF coming
from Sicily to attack Pilsen but it was blown off, leaving the crews to
do everything they could to get rid of their burden. By now the air
defences had already collapsed in the final phase of the war.
Nevertheless, Americans and British are deliberately bombarding small
towns like Erding to break the Germans' last resistance. The attacks
were of no strategic importance, but it was an answer to the Germans'
bombing of the civilian population. On
April 30 German troops returned through Erding with the last squad
passing ordered to destroy all the bridges. Only the Freisinger bridge,
under which the power lines run to the power plant, was spared because
the master of the works, Georg Pfab, convinced the responsible officer
that Erding could not be allowed to sink into the dark. A day later,
American soldiers entered Erding from the already-taken Eitting: "After
this blaze of fire, the 34th Regiment stormed Erding at 8 am, and at 11
am, the city was in American hands," according to a military report from
the American Army. When the American tanks arrived at Erding on May 1, winter
returned with snow covering the rubble. On May 5, 1945 Army Group G
signed the capitulation order in Haar near Munich ending the area's war.
Comparison of the same street during the Third Reich and after its wartime bombing
Another museum in town occupies the house where Franz Xaver Stahl
was born and which was named after him. Stahl was a painter during the
Third Reich whose paintings of farmlife were bought by Hitler, such as
his "Weidende Kühe" in 1941. He has a street named after him and his
paintings continue to hang in the town hall as well as in the district office and in the canteen of the Bavarian Ministry of Agriculture on Galeriestraße in Munich. In 1931 he moved
into a studio on Nymphenburger Straße in Munich, which he kept until
1944. On June 6 of the same year, some of Stahl's pictures were
destroyed during the fire of the Glaspalast in Munich. From 1937, Stahl regularly participated in the Great German Art Exhibition in
the House of German Art in Munich, the propagandistic exhibition of
Nazi art. From 1937 to 1944, with the
exception of 1939, Stahl represented one or two of his paintings at the
Great German Art Exhibition each year, an unmistakable sign that he had
attained a very prestigious position in the regime. He joined the
Nazi Party in 1941 and 1947 was classified as a "follower" during the
denazification campaign, although the question remains whether Stahl was
a fellow traveller for career reasons or for support of Nazi ideology.
Shortly thereafter, he was appointed head of the animal painting class
at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 1942, the Academy awarded him
the service title Professor. Regardless, his work seemed entirely
focused on animals- horses in the smithy, cows in the pasture, pigs at the trough. 
Even
with his landscapes, a flock of sheep often appear in the background.
In fact, only he only produced about ten portraits, mostly of family
members and close acquaintances which never changed even after Hitler's
seizure of power; up until his death in 1977, his interest had only one
topic: the animal. The earliest document which provides an indication of
his involvement with the Nazis is a receipt from the Nazi treasurer in
the Max II barracks in Munich on January 30, 1939, confirming that Stahl
had paid twelve Reichsmarks to join the party. He was admitted to the
party in 1941 and, in October that year, was appointed as a teacher at
the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he had previously studied. More recently one of Germany's most visible far-right extremists has been sentenced to ten months in gaol for greeting a Jewish interviewer with "Heil Hitler." A judge described Horst Mahler as "utterly incorrigible" after he denied the Holocaust, again, in open court. Mahler is said to have started a conversation for the magazine "Vanity Fair" with "Heil Hitler" and denied the Holocaust. The interview was conducted by the journalist and former vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Michel Friedman, who subsequently filed a complaint after the interview. Since the conversation was conducted in a hotel at Munich Airport, the prosecutor in Landshut and the court in Erding are responsible for the case. "Vanity Fair" justified the ten-page interview as an exposure of German right-wing extremists. Friedman himself has defended his collaboration in the interview against the criticism that he had offered Mahler a forum. Mahler himself was co-founder of the left-wing terrorist Red Army Faction (RAF) and later member and advocate of the right-wing extremist NPD. Most recently, he was convicted in November in Cottbus for giving the Hitler salute and sentenced to half a year in prison without parole.
Isen
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Through
this website I was contacted by Mr. George Fogelson whose father's unit
was in Freising and Moosburg with the 14th Armoured Division. He
directed me to hundreds of remarkable photographs from the 94th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron during
and after the war in the hope that I could recognise some of the sites
shown. Among the locations was Isen, a town I hadn't even heard of
before, about fifteen miles south of Erding. Here is the town's railway
station directly after the war, taken by soldier Hugh West; it's now an
Internet café with the railway line now paved over by the road. Below is
a photo of the Church taken June 1945 and when I visited May 2022.
The
division had been commissioned on November 15, 1942 at Camp Chaffee ,
Arkansas. It began combat operations in the war in southern France after
landing in Marseille on October 29, 1944, where it had largely
defensive duties on the Franco-Italian border. It went on into the
Rhineland, Ardennes and Alsace; on December 17 it advanced across the
Lauter. During Operation Nordwind, it succeeded in slowing down the
German attack against five divisions. This included the Battle of
Hatten-Rittershoffen from January 9 to 21, 1945. On March 5 the Moder
was crossed as was, at the end of the month, the Rhine near Germersheim
and Worms. Moving further into central Europe after Neustadt/Main, many
prisoners of war were freed in Hammelburg on April 6 in Stalag XIII C
and Oflag XIII B. Likewise in Moosburg where over 130,000 Allied
prisoners of war were liberated on April 29 at Stalag VII A, including
around 20,000 Americans. At the Ampfing subcamp in the Mühldorf am Inn
area, the last combat action of the war took place for the unit on May
2, 1945. It was reduced to zero strength on September 16, 1945 but not
deactivated before ending up being named for a total of two Presidential
Unit Citations. .gif)
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Now the Gasthof Klement, this was the HQ for the Americans staying in the town. The photo on the left is marked by A Troop's Hugh West.
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West himself shown with
some local children in Isen; wasn't sure I had the right spot until I
got home and noticed the gate and windows lined up. Beside it is how it
appeared sporting the sign marking the location for the troops' base.
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Sgt. John H. Hepler from Lansing Michigan, 1945 and Münchener Straße today. The photo on the right is looking down the opposite direction, showing the American flag that flew during the occupation.
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Described
in this Nazi-era postcard as Germany's oldest house, the Herderhaus in
Bergham just outside Erding is described by the authorities as
an"ancient ground-floor block with a high thatched hipped roof from the
mid-17th century." With a date of construction listed as being from
around 1650, the Herderhaus is certainly one of the oldest rural houses
in Bavaria. Moreover, it has been in the same place since its
construction and has probably been inhabited for the past four
centuries. The last shepherd lived in the house until 1952 before moving
to a retirement home, where he died in 1967. The interior of the house
is divided into two parts by a corridor, the Flez, on the left of which
is the parlour, kitchen and the room for the children. On the right is a
small sheepfold for half a dozen sheep belonging to Herder himself. At
the north-west corner is the largest room for him and his wife. The hay
was stored upstairs. With no running water, the fountain in front of the
house. Even today there is a well on the site although the well shaft
itself is closed. 
Near
Dingolfing is this memorial commemorating the emergency landing of the
"Reichsluftschiff Z1" on April 1st, 1909. 36 metres in length with a
diametre of 11.65 metres, the aircraft was powered by two four-cylinder Daimler in-line engines,
each with 100 hp which enabled it to reach a top speed of around 45
kilometres per hour. On board was Graf Zeppelin himself, his chief
engineer Dürr and various military personnel and flown by airship
captain Hacker. As a result, the first long-distance flight to Munich
made headlines with houses decked out in flags, children allowed out of
school and postcards printed for the event. Zeppelin arrived in Munich
at around 9.00 but was unable to land because the wind was too strong
and it was therefore driven away to the disappointment of Prince Regent
Luitpold who had been waiting to receive the entourage. Its travel over
Erding led people to travel all directions to see the giant 'flying
cigar' for themselves. Initially, the municipalities of Loiching and
Niederviehbach vied for the plot of land on which the zeppelin actually
landed, until an agreement was reached on the former although this
memorial stone is sited in the community of Niederviehbach on
Staatsstrasse 2074. The monument was restored to mark the centenary of
the landing.
Wartenberg
Now the Gasthaus Bründlhof, from a 1940 postcard when it was the Tirolerstube
and had a photo of Hitler gracing the wall. A year after I took my
photo the building had been demolished to make way for apartment
buildings.
Ismaning
Hometown
of Otto Braun who, under his assumed Chinese name "Li De," was the only
foreigner to have taken part in the Long March with Mao, and might have
even been the original proposer of the idea of embarking on such a
march in an effort to reach the safer interior of China.
The
listed war memorial on Schloßstraße, a stone sculpture about two metres
high in which on a stone altar two standing lions are shown whilst
another lies wounded on the ground next to them. The monument first
commemorates the hundred men from Ismaning who fell in the First World
War. It was inaugurated on May 24, 1924 on the occasion of the 50th
anniversary of the local veterans and warriors club in a solemn act and
is shown at that time and today. The sculpture was designed by Richard
Riemerschmid, then-Director of the School of Applied Arts Munich,
working on a model by the sculptor Wilhelm Nida-Rümelin. The stone works
were executed by R. Gschwender. Originally a ring of iron spears
surrounded the monument. At the decision of the mayor Erich Zeitler ,
these were replaced after the war by stone tablets, on which the names
of the 181 fallen and 89 missing persons of the war are engraved. Every
year on Memorial Day, a memorial service for the victims of the two
world wars takes place at the sculpture.
The
schloß and war memorial then and now. Although the Nazi party had
existed in Ismaning since 1921, no Nazi represented in the Ismaning
municipal council before the March 1933 Reichstag elections which ended
up producing seven Nazi municipal councillors. From June 1933 all
municipal councillors were members of the NSDAP. Benno Hartl, awarded
honorary citizenship during his tenure as mayor from 1922 to 1933, on
May 5, 1933had to hand over his office to Nazi member Korbinian Huber.
Huber remained in office until the capitulation in May 1945. Under
the Nazis Ismaning's associations and organisations were brought into
line and many, from the religious like the Kolpingsfamilie or those
close to the SPD like the "Workers-Cyclists' Solidarity Association"
were banned. The Nazis endeavoured to upgrade the artisan class and bind
it ideologically and so on October 22, 1933, a parade of artisans moved
through the village as every handicraft practiced in the village was
depicted on a decorated wagon and presented by guild signs. The Nazis
also launched construction works; in 1937-38 a settlement of the Upper
Bavarian homestead factory was built on the field between Münchener
Strasse and Isarau. Families who had given up their homes to build the
concentration camp in Dachau or the harness racing track in Daglfing
moved there. The town's sports hallwas created for the Nazi youth
organisations, but later served as accommodation for prisoners of war
and forced labourers, who were employed as workers on the farms and in
many companies. Despite all the propaganda and hidden threats, Nazi
ideology in Ismaning was not as deeply rooted as the party wanted it to
be: only around 156 Nazi members, including 18 women, were counted among
the approximately 4,000 inhabitants in 1945 in the village. In 1939,
the local group leader complained that at the important May Day the
traders and their assistants were completely absent and that only a few
younger farmers had participated. Eventually 270 of the town's young men
fell at the front or were missing with more than 300 taken as prisoners
of war. Ismaning itself was largely spared from the effects of the war
with only a few buildings damaged. In the last days of the war in April
1945, another Nazi training evening took place in the „Deutschen Haus“
(now the Gasthof Hillebrand).
On
April 28 the so-called Freiheitsaktion Bayern called for an uprising on
the radio, but no one from the village became involved. On April 30,
German 'pioneers' blew up the Aschheim Canal Bridge, the bridge to
Unterföhring had already been destroyed two days earlier leaving
Ismaning largely isolated in terms of traffic. At the same time, the
Americans continued from Garching towards Unterdorf and hit the paper
mill. This was considered a warning signal and action was taken: a white
flag was attached to the church tower. When the local Volkssturmführer
exchanged it for a swastika flag, the Americans fired another round.
Someone again dared to raise the white flag, this time without being
threatened by the remaining Nazi authorities.
On
May 1, 1945, the war ended in Ismaning with the invasion of 150
Americans. During the war, refugees and Munich residents who had lost
their homes came to Ismaning in search of food and accommodation. In
1946, in addition to its 4,600 inhabitants, the town housed over a
thousand displaced persons, mostly from the Sudetenland. There were also
other refugees from other regions. Many stayed in Ismaning permanently.
Their integration represents a difficult but, from today's perspective,
a successful chapter in the local history. The street names of the
Bohemian Forest settlement serve as reminders of their former homeland.
Just
outside Ismaning is this listed farm house, located on possibly the
longest village street in the district of Munich, stretching four
kilometres. the In 1905, it was bought by the remarkable widow Therese
Randlkofer Therese Randlkofer who managed to own and develop Dallmayr,
turning it into what is now the largest delicatessen business in Europe
and probably the best-known German coffee brand. She converted the
property into a stately model property and gave it the name "Goldachhof"
- in the style of the little river that runs through the complex.
Randlkofer modernised the system and even had a small E-Werk built in
1906 which was at that time a striking achievement. It exists today,
recently renovated according to the guidelines of monument and water
protection, and can deliver up to 80 000 KWh of electricity per year.
Adolf-Hitler-Platz
in front of the town hall bedecked with Nazi flags as shown on the
cover of Pfaffenhofen unterm Hakenkreuz by Reinhard Haiplik, now in its
third edition. As Haiplik reveals, in the Reichstag election in 1933,
the Nazis achieved its highest election result in Oberbayern with 43.1
percent of the votes in Pfaffenhofen- "indeed by far." As early as 1923,
some of Hitler's adherents from Pfaffenhofen had participated in the
so-called "Marsch zur Feldherrnhalle," otherwise known as the Munich
beerhall putsch. Some ϟϟ
men from Pfaffenhofen made a career, most notably Anton Thumann.
Between 1933 and the end of the war in 1945 there was a lively support
of the ruling regime among the citizens of the city. In this edition
Haiplik was especially concerned about the subject of war criminals: "I
wanted to name the perpetrators and keep the memory of the victims." In
his newly-written chapter titled "Victims of the Holocaust - Individual
Destinies of Murdered Pioneers," Haiplik devoted his focus to Jewish
families, some of whom lived in Pfaffenhofen for decades and became
victims of the Holocaust. Earlier Haiplik had previously written that
there were probably no Holocaust victims from Pfaffenhofen; he has since
determined that several Jewish families lived in Pfaffenhofen until the
1930s before being sent to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to be murdered.
SA men jumping out of a wagon in Munich marked "Burgerbräu Pfaffenhofen" during the Beer Hall Putsch, November 9, 1923; some from Pfaffenhofen took part in the attempted coup. Indeed,
the Nazi movement found supporters in Pfaffenhofen very early on. In
1922 ten of its citizens had become Nazi Party members, attending Nazi
meetings in Munich's Bürgerbräukeller, at which Hitler spoke. The men
from Pfaffenhofen asked Hitler to come to Pfaffenhofen which he did on
September 23, 1922. Hitler spoke in the Müllerbräukeller; less than a
fortnight later on October 4, 1922 the founding meeting of a local Nazi
Party group in Pfaffenhofen took place in the next room of the
Pfaffelbräu. In 1923 there were already 130 Nazi members in Pfaffenhofen
with sixty of them joining the SA. At 2.00 on the day of the Hitler
putsch, a regimental commander arrived at the house local group leader
Wilhelm Hörskens with orders to immediately provide men for the
occupation of Munich. 
According
to a report in the Pfaffenhofener Volksblatt of November 9, 1933,
eighteen men followed this order. According to Hans Niedermayr, whose
father and uncle were involved in the putsch, fifteen men absolutely
wanted to be taken to Munich but the large Müllerbräulastwagen was not
ready for use, and so one had to be content with a smaller car from the
brewery. Only eleven revolutionaries would have found space in it. These
have been drawn. The four people who stayed at home were entrusted with
another task: they were supposed to carry out the "revolution" in
Pfaffenhofen. The Pfaffenhofen putschists' truck only got as far as
Lohof before being driven into a ditch. According to the Pfaffenhofener Volksblatt
of November 9, 1933, the Pfaffenhofeners had fought valiantly and
heroically on the front line; at the time however the same newspaper
actually admitted that they had fled as soon as they heard the first
gunshots. 
The land surveying office on the main square shown left which was used
by the Nazi district leadership from 1933 to 1945. On the day Hitler was
appointed Chancellor the town's ϟϟ
squadron marched through the streets of the town with flaming torches
at 20.00 Five years later, then-mayor Otto Bauer recalled: "What it was
for us when we got the news that Adolf Hitler was Chancellor. Adolf
Hitler is in power! Tears of joy filled our eyes and we enjoined the ϟϟ-Heim to fight again for Adolf Hitler, for Germany's way into eternity." In the March 5, 1933 elections a week after the Reichstag fire the turnout in Pfaffenhofen was 90%.
1, 033 voted for the Nazis, making them the biggest party. In
comparison the BVP received 826 votes, the SPD 570, and the communists
138. In the Pfaffenhofen district, 10,193 citizens voted for the Nazis,
6,854 for the BVP, 1,286 for the SPD, 570 for the KPD, and 816 for the
Bauernbund. This gave the Nazis their best result of all of Upper
Bavaria with 43.1% (other sources claim 50.2%) voting for the Nazis. 
At noon on March 10, 1933, the Nazi flag was raised from the balcony of the town hall as seen on the left.
Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm
Adolf-Hitler-Platz
in front of the town hall bedecked with Nazi flags as shown on the
cover of Pfaffenhofen unterm Hakenkreuz by Reinhard Haiplik, now in its
third edition. As Haiplik reveals, in the Reichstag election in 1933,
the Nazis achieved its highest election result in Oberbayern with 43.1
percent of the votes in Pfaffenhofen- "indeed by far." As early as 1923,
some of Hitler's adherents from Pfaffenhofen had participated in the
so-called "Marsch zur Feldherrnhalle," otherwise known as the Munich
beerhall putsch. Some ϟϟ
men from Pfaffenhofen made a career, most notably Anton Thumann.
Between 1933 and the end of the war in 1945 there was a lively support
of the ruling regime among the citizens of the city. In this edition
Haiplik was especially concerned about the subject of war criminals: "I
wanted to name the perpetrators and keep the memory of the victims." In
his newly-written chapter titled "Victims of the Holocaust - Individual
Destinies of Murdered Pioneers," Haiplik devoted his focus to Jewish
families, some of whom lived in Pfaffenhofen for decades and became
victims of the Holocaust. Earlier Haiplik had previously written that
there were probably no Holocaust victims from Pfaffenhofen; he has since
determined that several Jewish families lived in Pfaffenhofen until the
1930s before being sent to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to be murdered.
SA men jumping out of a wagon in Munich marked "Burgerbräu Pfaffenhofen" during the Beer Hall Putsch, November 9, 1923; some from Pfaffenhofen took part in the attempted coup. Indeed,
the Nazi movement found supporters in Pfaffenhofen very early on. In
1922 ten of its citizens had become Nazi Party members, attending Nazi
meetings in Munich's Bürgerbräukeller, at which Hitler spoke. The men
from Pfaffenhofen asked Hitler to come to Pfaffenhofen which he did on
September 23, 1922. Hitler spoke in the Müllerbräukeller; less than a
fortnight later on October 4, 1922 the founding meeting of a local Nazi
Party group in Pfaffenhofen took place in the next room of the
Pfaffelbräu. In 1923 there were already 130 Nazi members in Pfaffenhofen
with sixty of them joining the SA. At 2.00 on the day of the Hitler
putsch, a regimental commander arrived at the house local group leader
Wilhelm Hörskens with orders to immediately provide men for the
occupation of Munich. 
According
to a report in the Pfaffenhofener Volksblatt of November 9, 1933,
eighteen men followed this order. According to Hans Niedermayr, whose
father and uncle were involved in the putsch, fifteen men absolutely
wanted to be taken to Munich but the large Müllerbräulastwagen was not
ready for use, and so one had to be content with a smaller car from the
brewery. Only eleven revolutionaries would have found space in it. These
have been drawn. The four people who stayed at home were entrusted with
another task: they were supposed to carry out the "revolution" in
Pfaffenhofen. The Pfaffenhofen putschists' truck only got as far as
Lohof before being driven into a ditch. According to the Pfaffenhofener Volksblatt
of November 9, 1933, the Pfaffenhofeners had fought valiantly and
heroically on the front line; at the time however the same newspaper
actually admitted that they had fled as soon as they heard the first
gunshots. 
The land surveying office on the main square shown left which was used
by the Nazi district leadership from 1933 to 1945. On the day Hitler was
appointed Chancellor the town's ϟϟ
squadron marched through the streets of the town with flaming torches
at 20.00 Five years later, then-mayor Otto Bauer recalled: "What it was
for us when we got the news that Adolf Hitler was Chancellor. Adolf
Hitler is in power! Tears of joy filled our eyes and we enjoined the ϟϟ-Heim to fight again for Adolf Hitler, for Germany's way into eternity." 
At noon on March 10, 1933, the Nazi flag was raised from the balcony of the town hall as seen on the left. Later
that year Pfaffenhofen had a second vote on November 12 to vote on
Hitler's policy- 3,070 people from Pfaffenhofen voted 'yes', 62 'no'.
The residents of a now demolished Wallnerhaus on Sonnenstrasse voted
unanimously with "no" with its house ending up being smeared with fæces.
Between
1933 and the end of the war there was active support from the
ruling regime among the city's citizens. Indeed, during the Nazi era some ϟϟ
men from Pfaffenhofen made noteworthy careers including Anton Thumann
who had served in various Nazi concentration camps during the war. He
had joined the Nazi party as member no. 1,726,633 and the ϟϟ
as member no. 24,444 in the 1930s, serving as a guard at Dachau
concentration camp from 1933 onward. Starting in 1937, Thumann was
employed in the Office of Guard Command and ascended to the rank of
Schutzhaftlagerführer in 1940. By early August 1940 he transferred to
Gross-Rosen concentration camp, which at the time was still a sub-camp
of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In early May 1941, Thumann became
the Protective Custody Camp Leader of the now independent Gross-Rosen
camp, under Commander Arthur Rödl. From February 1943 to March 1944 he
was Protective Custody Camp Leader at the Majdanek concentration camp
where, due to his sadism and participation in selections, gassings and
shootings, he was known as the "Hangman of Majdanek". According to Jerzy Kwiatkowski, an eyewitness interned at Majdanek during the time, Thumann
personally executed prisoners and Soviet prisoners of war. He owned a
German Shepherd that he used to bite the inmates. For a few weeks
between March and April 1944 Thumann was at Auschwitz. He appears in the
so-called Höcker Album containing a series of photographs from an ϟϟ
recreation camp, the Solahütte near Auschwitz, which had been
discovered in 2007. In one of the photos shown on the right Thumann is
pictured with Richard Baer, Josef Mengele, Josef Kramer and Rudolf
Hoess.
Thumann
then served as Protective Custody Camp Leader at Neuengamme
concentration camp from mid-April 1944 until the end of April 1945.
Often accompanied by his dog, he was greatly feared in Neuengamme due to
his reputation for abuse of prisoners. As the British closed in on
Neuengamme, the ϟϟ
evacuated the prisoners to prison ships. During the evacuation, 58 male
and 13 female resistance fighters from nearby Fuhlsbüttel concentration
camp were selected to be brought to Neuengamme to be executed on the
orders Georg-Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr. With the participation of Thumann, these prisoners were hanged between April 21 and 23, 1945
in a detention cell. When some continued to resist, Thumann threw a
hand grenade through the cell window. Under the command of Thumann and
Wilhelm Dreimann, the last 700 prisoners remaining at Neuengamme were
forced to dispose of bodies and cover up the traces of the camp. On
April 30, 1945 the prisoners were then sent on a death march with the
aim of reaching the area of the Flensburg government. At the end of the
war Thumann was arrested by the British and put on trial before a
British military tribunal in the Neuengamme Camp Case No. 1 in Hamburg.
Thumann and thirteen other defendants, including Wilhelm Dreimann and
Max Pauly, the Commandant of Neuengamme, were
charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court handed
down a guilty verdict on March 18, 1946 and sentenced eleven of the 14
defendants to death by hanging on May 3, 1946, including Thumann,
Dreimann and Pauly. The death sentence was carried out by British
executioner Albert Pierrepoint at Hamelin prison on October 8, 1946.
Adolf-Hitler-Platz then and now, renamed Hauptplatz, with the rathaus on the right
The Brauerei Bortenschlager sporting the Nazi flag and today, a K&L clothing shop.
Karl Riemer spent the entire time of the Nazi rule from 1933–1945
in the Dachau concentration camp. He fled from the camp on April 26,
1945. He succeeded in getting through here to Pfaffenhofen, some fifty kilometres
away and already in American hands, by April 29. The American town
commandant there assured him immediate help for the prisoners in the
Dachau concentration camp. Karl Riemer was unaware that the order for
liberating the camp had already been given on the morning of his
arrival.
Some views of the town before the war and today
The "Moosburger Hof" run by Josef Rath which was the birthplace of the SPD regional association of Bavaria.
After the war they would coordinate with the occupying Americans in
the tracking and investigation of Nazis and former activists. In October
1945, the parties took part in their first public action in the
district having already met in secret in July and August, going so far
as to develop their presence in Pfaffenhofen. Significant leaders of the
SPD before 1933 such as Wilhelm Hoegner met several times in the
“Moosburger Hof”, which by then was now run by the Social Democrat Sepp
Rath. Here those responsible set the course for the re-establishment of
the SPD at the Bavarian state level and prepared the party for the local
elections a few months later.
Master
baker Heinrich Wagenknecht prevented the Ilm Bridge, shown here from
around 1935, from being blown up when the Americans invaded on April 27,
as they approached Pfaffenhofen on a broad front in a southerly
direction. The XIII. ϟϟ-Armee-Korps and the 17. ϟϟ-Panzergrenadier-Division
„Götz von Berlichingen“ subordinate to it (mentioned later below in
regards the massacre of some of its members), began to withdraw to the
area south of Pfaffenhofen. In doing so, they secured the road between
Ingolstadt and Munich and the autobahn to the south in order to prevent
surprise attacks by American units. The following incident, described by
Otto Stumm, possibly prevented a tougher confrontation over the town of
Pfaffenhofen:
Army Group H, which was deployed in our area and to which a great many units of the Waffen ϟϟ belonged, was commanded by General of the Infantry Schulz ... Oak leaves adorned the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. His wife had been living here with her one-year-old daughter as an evacuee for some time on the Schleiferberge. On the night of April 27-28, 1945, General Schulz ordered the commanders of the troops under him to go to Mr. Prechter's hunting lodge, which was located in the community of Sulzbach im Walde, on the way from Wolfsberg to Menzenbach to undertake the general withdrawal order to the Isar-Amperlinie near Munich. Did tactical reasons prompt him or did he want to spare his wife and child the horrors of a bombardment and the probable destruction of Pfaffenhofen? Only he knows.
In front of the bridge remains this fountain dated 1934, its swastika removed but leaving no mistake as to what it represented
It
wasn't until the summer of 1944 that Pfaffenhofen did suffered direct
bombing, with waves of enemy bombers having flown over to target
Augsburg or Munich. The first bombs fell on neighbouring fields without
causing any damage. Later, lighter bombs were dropped over the forest on
Niederhauser Weg near what is now Marienfried. In July 1944 a USAAF
bomber had to make an emergency landing near Pfaffenhofen with the plane
crashing in Rehgräble leaving six of the crew killed ( two crew members managing to jump out and land in the farmyard of Xaver Spleiß in Erbishofenand)
summarily buried. When the Americans occupied Pfaffenhofen in 1945 they
forced Nazi Party members to exhume the corpses, whereupon the dead
were brought to back to the US. Two crew members of the bomber jumped
off and landed in the yard of the farmer Xaver Spleiß in Erbishofen.
Sergeant Thomas received them and brought them to Weissenhorn the next
day. As
the fighting was getting closer to Pfaffenhofen, between April 18 and
22 alone the town's sirens sounded 53 times to warn of impending air
raids, making it impossible to distinguish whether a pre-alarm, major
alarm or the all-clear was being sounded. Despite this, lessons were
still being taught in schools.
In
total only one person had died from air raids whilst numerous civilians
and soldiers would be killed by the shelling of the city by the ϟϟ and from defensive battles on April 28, 1945 conducted by the ϟϟ, Wehrmacht and remnants of the Volkssturm. In 1953 19.2% of the population was still displaced.
On
the right shows an address by an American official on the occasion of
the reopening of the motorway bridge near Geisenhausen in 1945. Apart
from this partly destroyed but quickly repaired motorway
bridge, hardly any major damage had occurred in the district. In the
first weeks after the war, bus routes could be put into operation again,
whereby the petrol, which was scarce for the general public, was mainly
reserved for systemically relevant professional groups such as
entrepreneurs, doctors or the Red Cross. Up to autumn 1945 the transport
system was structurally largely at the pre-war level and formed a basis
for the later economic development although it was the lack of vehicles
and petrol that most stood in the way of it. Between 1978 and 1979, the
Autobahndirektion Südbayern widened the highway on three lanes in each
direction causing it to be slightly altered from how it orginally
appeared.
Based on burials in the local cemetery, at least sixteen children died in the small camp of Uttenhofen (Bavaria) during the six months of its existence between fall 1944 and spring 1945. We have no records indicating the total number of babies born in this camp, however, or how many could have died and been buried on the campgrounds (as witness statements indicate) without being mentioned in any records.
Scheyern
Nearby
Scheyern Abbey, resting place of Bavarian dukes and duchesses Otto I,
Agnes von Loon, Ludwig der Kelheimer, Otto II and Agnes von
Braunschweig, then and now. The site is historically significant as one
of the origins of the Bavarian ruling house Wittelsbach; Joseph
Peruschitz, a victim of the sinking of the Titanic, was the abbey's
Benedictine priest. During the war Scheyern was a location of the air
signal corps of the Luftwaffe. Immediately after the war the American
Air Force's listening units were housed in Scheyernand would grow in
importance as the Cold War developed. Until the Schyren barracks were
abandoned in 1993, Scheyern was also the location of the Bundeswehr
although air defence units of the German Air Force have been stationed
here since 1958.
Nearby
Scheyern Abbey, resting place of Bavarian dukes and duchesses Otto I,
Agnes von Loon, Ludwig der Kelheimer, Otto II and Agnes von
Braunschweig, then and now. The site is historically significant as one
of the origins of the Bavarian ruling house Wittelsbach; Joseph
Peruschitz, a victim of the sinking of the Titanic, was the abbey's
Benedictine priest. During the war Scheyern was a location of the air
signal corps of the Luftwaffe. Immediately after the war the American
Air Force's listening units were housed in Scheyernand would grow in
importance as the Cold War developed. Until the Schyren barracks were
abandoned in 1993, Scheyern was also the location of the Bundeswehr
although air defence units of the German Air Force have been stationed
here since 1958. 
