Moosburg



Münchenerstraße
during the Nazi era. The Nazi Party in Moosburg began in 1922
culminating on March 16, 1923, when a local group of the party was
founded in the city, the first in the entire district.
The Moosburg local group supported the founding of the local branch in
Freising and by 1928 the district management of the Nazi Party was for
the district in Moosburg.


On April 29, 1945 the camp was liberated by a unit of the 14th Armoured Division of the American 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 Nazi period- 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.
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 15 miles 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. Its size and scope provide a microcosmic glimpse into the larger military strategies employed during the conflict. It's essential to comprehend that the German war strategy was dependent not just on the force of arms but also on psychological warfare. Prisoners, especially officers, were often taken to extract crucial military intelligence and to potentially negotiate exchanges. Stalag VIIA, housing over 130,000 PoWs at its peak, was emblematic of this strategic approach. Herein, the camp served as a theatre for psychological warfare where the German High Command tried to influence Allied soldiers' morale and loyalty.
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The town itself shown in the background of this photo taken right after liberation. The accounts of the PoWs also underscore the resourcefulness and resilience demonstrated by the inmates under challenging circumstances. For instance, British, and American PoWs organised a variety of activities ranging from educational classes to theatrical performances to maintain morale and a semblance of normalcy. These activities, as argued by Gilbert, served a dual purpose: they provided a necessary distraction from the hardships of prison life and fostered a sense of camaraderie and shared identity amongst the prisoners. In the context of cultural history, these experiences in Stalag VIIA illuminate the transformative potential of the arts during times of crisis. Gilbert's assertion that the communal activities in the camp allowed for a form of cultural resistance is crucial here. Even under oppressive conditions, these activities upheld a sense of human dignity and hope, offering a nuanced perspective on the resilience of the human spirit during the war.
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.
On the left is the Moosburg concentration camp warden from the Russian video game Death to Spies: Moment of Truth,
where he wears an armband signifying he's from the 5th ϟϟ Panzer
Division Wiking which, recruited from foreign volunteers in Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, the Netherlands and Belgium, had no
connection in reality to Moosburg but would eventually surrender to the
Americans in Austria near Fürstenfeld on May 9, 1945.
On the right and below on the other hand are 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 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. He was also ordered to march south with the captured
officers who had probably been intended to be used as bargaining chips
in possible negotiations with the Allies. Such a march without either
prepared accommodation or food would have meant deadly hardships for the
prisoners. Whilst the crews were to remain in Moosburg, the camp
buildings were to be blown up so that no accommodations could fall into
enemy hands. Instead, both Major Koller and Colonel Burger decided to
hand over the city and the camp without a fight and prevented the
prisoners from being taken away.

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."

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.


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.
Showing the area during the war and how it appears today.
as a new district renamed Neustadt. Such development began from 1948
when Volksdeutsche refugees from across eastern Europe, including the
lost German territory arrived. As in the case in Dachau
when then the concentration camp found itself transformed into a
council estate accommodating mostly expelled Germans from the
Sudetenland, the former Stalag in Moosburg now provided residential and
social space within the former barracks, creating an industrial site and
housing estate from scratch. Today there is a 'Stalag-Neustadt-Museum'
at Hodschager Straße 2 (open only for a couple of hours on Fridays)
dedicated to the history of the development of the area using
photographs, explanatory texts and original objects which is divided
into three sections; during its time as "Stalag VII A;" the American
military government's "Civilian Internment Camp No.6" from 1945-1948 set
up to hold Germans found guilty of criminal activities during the Nazi
regime; and the settlement of refugees and expellees from 1948 leading
to the current district of "Moosburg-Neustadt"
Some surviving vestiges of the original barracks being used, and along Schlesierstraße
For a site devoted entirely to Moosburg: Moosburg Online

Given the considerable growth Moosburg experienced after the war due to the influx of refugees, it's getting harder to find sites with which to compare.

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 but nevertheless conquered the city as summarised below,
apparently being greeted with flowers by the population.
However
any calm quickly evaporated as American troops looted wedding rings and
watches and moved into quarters in private houses with the residents
usually only having an hour to pack their essentials before being
evicted. Soon groups of newly freed prisoners poured into the town and
looted shops such as a military shoe warehouse at the train station
which was entirely cleared out. Freed prisoners tore all the maps from
atlases out of a classroom at the children's detention centre that
provided some orientation for their return home. Farms and private homes
all around the surrounding area were targetted as well with food,
blankets, beds, jars and frying pans taken away. Already on the second
day of looting, seventeen cases of rape were reported as local priests
and chaplains set up shelters for women and girls in the vicarage.
Whilst thne Americans tried to prevent attacks and return stolen items,
they were only able to stem the looting after eight days; it took a
fortnight for the rampage to stop completely.



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.


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."


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 before being 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.


The
birthplace of Josef Furtmeier, one of the mentors of the White Rose, especially Hans Scholl. Sophie Scholl
referred to him as "the philosopher."




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.

Drake Winston with his FC Eichenfeld team after winning the 2019 Sparkasse Cup final in Moosburg against the home side.
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…
Around Freising
It was just outside Freising to the north at the Haidberghof (which I run past very 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.
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.
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.
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The 'CIA Safehouse' nearby |
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 prisoners were marched south down the B 301
federal road. 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.
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 was not 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.
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.

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.

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.
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- these 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.
Hohenkammer


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.

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.



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.

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.
Attenkirchen



A few miles north of the Amper
Memorial
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. He probably died already in the air, as there are no
eyewitnesses when the burning fighter plane crashes Watched the
parachute rise. 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.