Former Nazi Sites in Czechoslovakia (outside Prague)

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Hitler crosses the Wildenau border from Germany into Sudetenland with his troops on October 4 1938, half a mile from Asch.

Olomouc (Olmütz Stadt)

 
Adolf-Hitler-Ring at the Marktplatz in front of the Marienpestsäule

Looking the other way towards Adolf-Hitler-Ring

During the Second World War, most of the town's ethnic German residents sided with the Nazis; the German-run town council renamed the main square after Adolf Hitler. World War II brought a rise in anti-semitism and attacks on the Jews that reflected what was happening in Germany. On Reichskristallnacht (10 November 1938), townspeople destroyed the synagogue. In March 1939, city police arrested 800 Jewish men, and had some deported to the Dachau concentration camp. During 1942–1943, ethnic Germans sent the remaining Jews to Theresienstadt and other German concentration camps in occupied Poland. Fewer than 300 of the town's Jews survived the Holocaust.  After Olomouc was liberated, Czech residents took back the original name of the town square. When the retreating German army passed through the city in the final weeks of the war, they shot at its 15th-century astronomical clock, leaving only a few pieces intact (these are held in the local museum). In the 1950s, the clock was reconstructed under the influence of Soviet government; it features a procession of proletarians rather than saints. After the war, the government participated in the expulsion of ethnic Germans from the country, following the Allied leaders' Potsdam Agreement, which redefined the Central European borders, although many of these people's families had lived for two centuries in the region.

Liberec (Reichenberg Stadt) 
This was the home town of the founder of the Sudeten German Party (SdP) Konrad Henlein, born in the suburbs of Liberec. Whilst he declared fidelity to the Republic, he secretly negotiated with Adolf Hitler. In 1937 he radicalised his views and became Hitler's puppet in order to incorporate the Sudetenland into Germany and destabilize Czechoslovakia, which was an ally of France and one of the leading arms producers in Europe.  The city became the centre of Pan-German movements and later of the Nazis, especially after the 1935 election, despite its important democratic mayor, Karl Kostka (German Democratic Freedom Party). The final change came in Summer 1938, after the radicalisation of the terror of the SdP, whose death threats forced Kostka and his family to flee to Prague.  In September 1938, after two unsuccessful attempts by the SdP to stage a pro-Nazi coup in Czechoslovakia, which were stopped by police and the army, the Munich Agreement awarded the city to Nazi Germany and it became the capital of the Sudetengau region. Most of the city's Jewish and Czech population fled to the rest of Czechoslovakia or were expelled. The important synagogue was burned down. During a rally in December 1938, Hitler laid out the future of the Hitler Youth.
After World War II the town again became a part of Czechoslovakia and nearly all of the city's German population was expelled following the Beneš decrees. The region was then resettled with Czechs. The city continues to have an important German minority, consisting of anti-Nazi Germans who were active in the struggle against Hitler, as well as Germans from Czech-German families and their descendants. Liberec also has a Jewish minority with a newly built synagogue and a Greek minority, originating from Communist refugees who settled there after the Greek Civil War in 1949.

 

The town house at Adolf-Hitler-Platz. It was here that, for the last time in his life, Hitler gave an election speech on December 2, 1938. He spoke on the topic of the upcoming December 2 supplemental elections to the Reichstag. Hitler arrived in the capital of the Sudetenland at around 2:00 in the afternoon. First he toured the House of Trade and the city theatre, then continued on to the City Hall, where a reception was given in his honour. After a welcome by the Mayor, Hitler thanked him in a short address in which he emphasized his intention to transform Reichenberg, within a few years, into “a truly beautiful stronghold of the Movement.”
At a mass rally that evening, Hitler delivered his big election speech. He began with the obligatory “party narrative,” which even his regular listeners found comparatively long. However, he stood before thousands of Sudeten Germans, who heard him speak for the first time and adored him as though he were a godlike figure. They still possessed a faith in him which the people in the old part of the Reich had incrementally lost over the course of his six-year rule.
In front of the Sudeten Germans, Hitler could indulge once again in an orgy of verbosity. He listed his achievements of the past twenty years of his life, crowning his description with the following:

“National Socialism does not stand at the end of its road, but at the beginning!” 

 

Konrad Henlein Platz, named after a leading Sudeten German politician in Czechoslovakia. Upon the German occupation he joined the Nazi Party as well as the SS and was appointed Reichsstatthalter of the Sudetenland in 1939. He was head of the German gymnastics movement (Deutsche Turnbewegung) in Czechoslovakia from 1923 until 1933, when he appeared as leader of the Sudeten-German Home Front (Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront), which became the second strongest party in the Czech chamber in 1935. On April 24, 1938, he unavailingly demanded autonomy for the Sudeten-German areas. He visited Adolf Hitler on September 1 and two weeks later, when a revolt broke out in the Sudetenland and martial law was ordered, presented the Czech government with an ultimatum for the withdrawal of that order. The Czech government having ignored his ultimatum, he issued a proclamation demanding the cession of the Sudeten-German territory to Germany; the government suspended his party for treasonable activities; Henlein fled to Germany to escape arrest and established a Sudeten-German “Free Corps,” which engaged in skirmishes along the frontier as the German-Czech crisis approached its climax. On Oct. 1, 1938, after the four-power conference at Munich had ceded the Sudeten-German areas to Germany, Henlein was appointed by the German government commissioner (Reichskommissar) for the Sudeten-German territory, later regional party leader (Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter) of Sudetenland. At the end of World War II, he committed suicide while in Allied custody by cutting his veins with his broken glasses. He was buried anonymously in the Plzeň Central Cemetery.

Františkovy Lázně (Franzensbad)

Adolf Hitler Platz with the Kurhaus. Until their expulsion in 1945 the majority of the population of the city was German- on 1 December 1930, the city had 2,473 inhabitants (74 of them Czechs), on 17 May 1939 it was 3,784 and 22 May 1947 2,282. The First World War and its end in 1918 with the resulting unresolved issues arising of international law in the establishment of Czechoslovakia, as well as the subsequent inflation of the monetary currencies, the world economic crisis after 1928 with mass unemployment all had a detrimental effect on Franzensbad and its fame began to fade. At the end of the Second World War in 1945 the spa was almost at a standstill. The influx of cash-paying spa guests remained unfulfilled. Due to the so-called Beneš decrees, a large part of the German-Bohemian landowners and property owners were expropriated and the spa facilities were nationalised. Those forcibly displaced left largely for Bavaria and Thuringia.

Varnsdorf (Warnsdorf)

The former Straße der SA. Prior to the end of the Great War, Warnsdorf was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Following that war, the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye incorporated it, together with the region of Bohemia, into the new country of Czechoslovakia. Following the end of the Second World War, its ethnic German population was mostly expelled to Germany, and the official spelling of its name was changed from the German "Warnsdorf" to the Czech "Varnsdorf".  Great sympathy was shown to the Sudeten German Party led by Konrad Henlein. In 1935 Henlein spoke here to 12,000 people, followed the next year by Klement Gottwald who attracted less than half that. Konrad Henlein visited Varnsdorf 1938 at a time when he and his party increased their aggressiveness leading to skirmishes with members of the financial guard which saw on September 22, 1938 two of its members killed. The next day the Czechoslovak army entered Varnsdorf, the same day they withdrew behind the defensive line at Stožecká. September 30 1938 the Munich Agreement was signed leading, on October 2, 1938 to the German occupation. Events of the war years of 1939-1945 the city virtually untouched; in Varnsdorf saw no fighting and the town was never bombed, although from November 1944 daily air alarms were conducted. After 1943 Varnsdorf was flooded with refugees from bombed German cities and from the Eastern Front. Before the end of the Second World War in 1945 there was a public execution Rudolph Posselt, a German who refused to return to the German Army on the Eastern Front. By the end of the war Varnsdorf was the site of several hundred forced labourers; two of whom on April 11, 1945 were sentenced to death by hanging.

Cheb (Eger)

 

Adolf-Hitler-Platz then and now

Little has changed with the town hall in the foreground
On March 3, 1919 on the occasion of the elections held in Austria, a popular uprising led to the shooting dead of two people took place in Eger. This was a result of the terms of the 1919 Treaty of St. Germain which triggered civil unrest between the Sudeten German population and the new Czechoslovak administration, just as in the rest of the Sudetenland. As elsewhere, protests in the town – now officially named Cheb – were eventually suppressed by force.One day after the signing of the Munich Agreement, Eger was occupied by German troops on October 1.  On October 3, Adolf Hitler visited the city and was enthusiastically welcomed by the population. On May 1, 1939, the town resigned from the administrative district of Eger and formed her own district. At the same time, the municipality of Matzelbach was annexed. Eger gave his name to the western part of the three government districts in the Reichsgau. The President's office was located in Karlovy Vary.

Ethnic Germans in Cheb greeting Hitler with the Hitler salute after he crossed the border into the formerly Czechoslovak Sudetenland in 1938. Active History has an excellent lesson based on this photo- “The Mystery of the Crying Woman” – A Sourcework Analysis Starter. The American National Archives provides this cropped photo and this caption: "The tragedy of this Sudeten woman, unable to conceal her misery as she dutifully salutes the triumphant Hitler, is the tragedy of the silent millions who have been `won over' to Hitlerism by the `everlasting use' of ruthless force."  This History of the Sudetenland page has the same photo, but also another image (also cropped) which shows more of the original, and has this caption: "Overcome By Emotion — Three Sudetenlanders, one overcome with emotion as she raises her arm in a Nazi salute, pay homage as the Wehrmacht enters the border town of Cheb, October 1938."  A letter to Time Magazine (Nov. 12, 1945), written by Lieutenant Earle A. Cleveland, discusses the emotional state of the depicted woman: "The sobbing woman with arm outstretched in Nazi salute has been consistently interpreted as a symbol of forced obedience to the German conquerors of Czechoslovakia ... The picture was snapped by a German press photographer and first appeared in the National Socialist newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, in the fall of 1938, shortly after the Sudeten 'Anschluss.' The Nazi explanation was that here were portrayed the intense emotions of joy which swept the Sudeten Germans as Hitler crossed the Czech border at Asch and drove through the streets of the nearby ancient city of Eger, 99% of whose inhabitants were ardently pro-Nazi Sudeten Germans at the time.

Hitler driving through in victory in October, 1938.  His very first speech in the new territories was here on October 3 in the Eger market place and already was anything but friendly. He immediately announced to the Sudeten Germans that they, too, must fulfil new duties—naturally of a predominantly military nature—since, after all, he had with alacrity “drawn his sword” in their defence: 

Egerlanders! Today, for the first time, I may greet you as my Egerlanders! Through me, the entire German Volk greets you! At this moment, it not only greets you but the entire Sudeten German territories which will, in a few days’ time, belong to the German Reich in its entirety.
This greeting is at the same time an avowal: never again shall this land be torn from the Reich! This Greater German Reich is protected by the German shield and by the German sword. You yourselves form part of this protecting umbrella. From now on, like all other Germans, you will have to do your part. It is a cause of great pride for all of us that each and every German son will participate not only in Germany’s joy, but also in our duties and, if need be, in our sacrifices as well.
For you, this nation was willing to draw the sword! And you will all be willing to do likewise wherever German lands or the German Volk be threatened. In this community of will and fate, the German Volk will, from now on, mould its future. And no power on earth will ever be a threat to it again! And so all of Germany, from East to West, from North to South, stands prepared to stand up for each other.
There is great happiness in all of Germany these days. Not only you feel this, it is felt by the entire nation which rejoices with you. Your happiness is the happiness of the seventy-five million who have made up the Reich until now, just as your sorrow was their sorrow until a few days ago. And thus you step forth onto the path leading to Germany’s great future! In this hour, let us thank the Almighty who has blessed our paths in the past, and let us pray to Him: may He lead us forth onto the path of righteousness in the future as well.

 

The Reichs Arbeits Dienst (RAD) in the main square in 1938

With the Roland fountain

Austrian National Socialism and hence German National Socialism can trace its origins to Cheb when Franko Stein transferred a small newspaper (Der Hammer) from Vienna to Cheb in 1897. There he organized a German workers congress called the Deutschvölkischer Arbeitertag, which published the 25-point program. Sand gate near Ohře river  The terms of the 1919 Treaty of St. Germain triggered civil unrest between the Sudeten German population and the new Czechoslovak administration, just as in the rest of the Sudetenland. As elsewhere, protests in the town – now officially named Cheb – were eventually suppressed by force.  On 3 October 1938, the town was visited by Adolf Hitler ; shortly afterwards German troops marched into the Sudetenland and seized control. From 1938 until 1945 the town was annexed to Germany. On 1 May 1939, the town split away from the surrounding district to form its own municipal district together with the settlement of Matzelbach, and gave its name to the most westerly of the three administrative regions of the Sudetenland. The administrative seat of the Regierungspräsident lay in Karlsbad, however.  After the end of the Second World War, Cheb was again part of Czechoslovakia. Cheb was liberated by the 97th Infantry Division of the US Army on 25 April, 1945.  Most of the German-Bohemian population was expelled in 1945 due to the Beneš decrees. The assets of the German inhabitants were confiscated by the Beneš decree 108, the property of the Protestant church was liquidated by the Beneš decree 131, and the Catholic city churches were expropriated in Czechoslovakia. Many new citizens from Central and South Bohemia, Moravia, Czech repatriates, Slovaks and Roma moved to Cheb. These new citizens and their descendants have since become the largest part of the population. In 1954, the city of Amberg in Germany took over the patronage for the displaced Sudeten Germans from the city and the district of Eger. In the time of the German division Cheb was the place of family meetings because of its geographical proximity to both German states. 

In 1897 Cheb gave birth to German National Socialism, which later evolved into the Nazi party. Hitler visited here in 1938, just before German troops seized control of the surrounding Sudetenland. Payback came with the 1945 expulsion of Cheb’s German population of 30,000. Now, significant Vietnamese, Slovak and Roma populations reflect Central Europe’s evolving demography in this town that sits astride the traditional, historical and cultural fault line between Germany and the Czech Republic.

Lonely Planet (203)

Sokolov (Falkenau a. d. Eger)

 

Adolf-Hitler-Platz, now Staré náměstí. From 1938 to 1945 the town was one of the municipalities in Sudetenland. Under pressure from the Hitler regime, the Western powers forced the Czechoslovak government in the Munich Agreement to assign the Sudeten Germans to the German Reich in 1938. As a result of the agreement Falkenau on the Eger became a part of the Reichsgaus Sudetenland. The town belonged to the same district of Falkenau on the Eger and was assigned to the new government district Eger with the seat of the government president in Karlovy Vary. On May 1, 1939, a reorganisation of the partly divided sections of the Sudetenland was carried out. After that, the district of Falkenau on the Eger remained in its previous borders.  This state remained until the collapse of the German Reich at the end of the Second World War. On 16 October 1940 bombs fell on Falkenau, which hit the cemetery instead of the chemical factory. In another air attack on April 17, 1945, some hundred Falkenauers died. Falkenau now received the name Falknov nad Ohří. During the Nazi era in Sokolov the concentration camp Falkenau was erected in Sokolov as the outskirts of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, the inmates of which were liberated by the U.S. 1st Infantry Division on May 6, 1945. One of the main men of the division (known as the "Big Red One") commanded 14 citizens of the town, whose inhabitants claimed that they had not known anything about the outside camp, to retrieve, dress, and bury the corps found in the camp at the Dorffriedhof . The infantryman Samuel Fuller, later known as an actor, screenwriter and director, recorded these events with a 16mm camera. In 1948, this German-sounding name was changed to Sokolov ("Falke" = Czech "Sokol").

 

Looking at St. Jakob's church from the other direction along what was Straße der SA 

 
The Kreishaus in 1940 and today

Mariánské Lázně (Marienbad)

 Adolf-Hitler-Straße then and now

Marienbad remained a popular destination between the wars even though the First World War meant a cut in numbers. However, from 1920 after the establishment of Czechoslovakia, the cure was revived and in 1929 the record number of 41,000 spa guests was reached. Until the middle of 1931, the Czechoslovak government carried out its plans to eliminate the sole power of the Tepl Abbey in Mariánské Lázně. The baths and baths were presented to a mixed commission of representatives of the state, the city and the Tepl monastery. After the occupation of the Sudetenland, Marienbad belonged to German troops as of October 1, 1938, as a consequence of the Munich Agreement, until the end of the Second World War, to the Reichsgau Sudetenland. The war represented a decisive turning point since it meant the provisional end of international visitor demand. The synagogue built in 1884 was destroyed by the National Socialists in the Reichskristallnacht in 1938. The site of the demolished synagogue remained undeveloped ever since. On April 27, 1945, nearly 1,000 Jewish concentration camp prisoners from the Buchenwald camp (in the Rehmsdorf concentration camp) were killed in and around the Marienbad station. They died partly from exhaustion and partly from MG-firing from Soviet aircraft.  The city was not destroyed during World War II.. After WWII, the ethnic German population of the town was forcibly expelled according to the Potsdam agreement, thereby emptying the town of the majority of its population. After the communist coup-d'état in 1948; it got sealed off from most of its foreign visitors. 

 

The Hotel Bohemia on Adolf Hitler Straße and today, Hlavna trida

Nýřany (Nürschan)

The Church of Saint Procopius on Adolf Hitler Platz during the Nazi regime and today. After the Munich agreement, the city was annexed to the German Reich in 1938 and was part of the Mies county until 1945. In 1939, Nurzh had 4040 inhabitants. In the last days of the war in April 1945, on the railway line from Plzeň to Taus, deaths were carried through the city with about 4,000 political prisoners in 50-60 closed and open wagons. On May 5, 1945, Nureman was occupied by soldiers of the 3rd US Army. Near the end of the war one transport of death was surprised by an airstrike and about hundred of prisoners managed to escape. They were chased by SS-Guards and local Germans and either killed on the spot or executed at the place called Humboldtka.

 Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad Stadt)
The large German-speaking population of Bohemia was incorporated into the new state of Czechoslovakia in accordance with the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. As a result, the German-speaking majority of Carlsbad protested. A demonstration on 4 March 1919 passed peacefully, but later that month, six demonstrators were killed by Czech troops after a demonstration turned unruly.
In 1938, the Sudetenland, including Carlsbad, became part of Nazi Germany according to the terms of the Munich Agreement. After World War II, in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, the vast majority of the people of Carlsbad were forcibly expelled from the city because of their German ethnicity. In accordance with the Beneš decrees, their property was confiscated without compensation.

 
View of the Imperial Hotel and Diana Tower during the Third Reich and today

Krnov (Jägerndorf)

Hermann Göring Platz (now Market square) and St. Martin church. One day before the proclamation of Czechoslovakia on 28 October 1918, the city was occupied by the Czechoslovak Army. With the establishment of the Czechoslovakian Administration, the town was officially named Krnov and became the administrative centre of the district of the same name. The world economic crisis in the early 1930s led to the decline of many of the city's businesses. On 1 December 1930 there lived 23,464 inhabitants, of which 90 per cent were Germans. In the course of the Munich Agreement, German troops occupied the city in October 1938, which was then renamed Jägerndorf to become the seat of the county of the same name. This was in April 1939 subordinated to the newly formed Reichsgau Sudetenland. Until the census on May 17, 1939, the population had increased to 25,522.

Hitler speaking in front of the townhall

Hitler came here on October 7, 1938 where he was greeted by Göring and Colonel General von Rundstedt upon his noon arrival. In this square the Führer spoke of his determination to fight to the end and emphasised the strength of the German Wehrmacht:

While one might rob three or six million Germans of their rights and oppress them, no one can, in this world, bend eighty million Germans to his will. [—]
On October 10, the swastika will fly over even the last morsel of the Sudetenland. Then this region will finally be freed, and it will be a Reichsgau and part of the German nation for all time to come!

After 1938, the Jewish community, which consisted of about 600 members, was expropriated with the help of a part of the German population and partly carried away in concentration camps. These included important personalities of the city, such as the textile manufacturers Wilhelm and Jakob Bellak, the textile traders Geiringer und Schulhaber, the producer of the herbal liqueur Altvater Siegfried Gessler, the teacher at the Staatsrealschule Siegmund Langschur, doctors and lawyers. About 80 per cent of these have fallen victim to the Holocaust, and a small part has escaped. A retransfer of their property after the war was extremely difficult. In the 2001 census, not a single inhabitant of Krnov was admitted to the Jewish community. Expulsion of the German population On May 6, 1945, two days before the end of World War II, Soviet troops occupied Jägerndorf, then the city returned to Czechoslovakia. After the end of the war there were anti-German measures by national Czech militia and revolutionary guards. In June some of the German inhabitants were interned in three camps, and most of them were expelled to Germany by 1946. Their assets were confiscated due to the Beneš decrees. Restitution of the confiscated assets has not been affected by the Czech Republic. The city was re-populated mainly by Moravians, Sinti, Roma and communist civil war refugees from Greece.

Orlová (Orlau)

Adolf Hitler Platz

 Following the Munich Agreement, in October 1938 together with the Zaolzie region it was annexed by Poland, administratively organised in Frysztat County of Silesian Voivodeship. The village was then annexed by Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II. After the war it was restored to Czechoslovakia. In 1946 the villages of Lazy (Łazy), Poruba (Poręba) and Horní Lutyně were administratively joined to the town. Widespread coal mining, especially during the communist era, had a devastating impact on the town, its buildings and architecture, especially in Lazy. Many buildings in Orlová were demolished, including the Polish grammar school built in 1909. The architectural character of the town was completely changed.

 Lanškroun (Landskron)

 Adolf Hitler Platz

  The Gymnasium Lanškroun decorated in Nazi flags and slogans. 
In 1938 Landskron was occupied by German troops as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, according to the Munich Agreement.  On May 9, 1945, the day of the end of World War II in Europe, Soviet troops entered the city. 
On May 17, 1945, Czech partisan units held court in Landskron, and many Germans were tortured to death.  Until the expulsion of most of the German-speaking population from the Czechoslovakia in 1945 through the so-called Beneš decrees, the majority of population of the town had been German: in 1930, there were 6497 inhabitants and among these 83% were German and 17% Czech. By now, most of the inhabitants are Czech.

Litoměřice (Leitmeritz)German troops in parade formation in front of the castle October 12 1938. In the final stages of World War II, German troops retreated to escape the advancing Red Army. Czech resistance took control of the castle on 27 April 1945, and after a few days they started negotiations with the German commander about the terms of his surrender. The Wehrmacht capitulated in the night after 8 May, but German troops fled on 9 May, just before Soviet troops entered the town on May 10, 1945. Most of the German population of the town was expelled by the so-called Beneš decrees in August 1945, along with about 2.5 million other former Czechoslovak citizens of German ethnicity.    In Early April 1945 the ϟϟ evacuated thousands of Jews--mostly on foot--as Allied and Soviet forces pressed in from the east and west. Evacuees were taken to camps at Bergen-Belsen, Germany; Dachau, Germany; Ebensee, Austria; Leitmeritz, Czechoslovakia; and Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. The operation was rife with daily beatings and murders as well as deaths from starvation and typhus. Thirteen hundred Jews were eventually evacuated on foot from Vienna; only 700 reached their destination, the Gusen, Austria, camp, alive.

Adolf Hitler Ring, now the Marktplatz

Chateau Klecany

Ceska Kamenice (Kamnitz)
In spring 1944, the Rabstejn sub-camp of Flossenburg was created here, with a capacity of 600 prisoners. At the end of the war, 1,500 inmates were incarcerated in the camp. The camp provided workers for the nearby underground aircraft factory in the town of Janská, 3 km west of Česká Kamenice. The number of inmate deaths is not known due to the destruction of all camp documentation. The foundations of camp buildings remain visible, along with a memorial and historical overview

Adolf-Hitler-Platz and today

Komotau (Chomutov)

Adolf-Hitler-Platz and today

 Chomutov, in the 1930s part of the Sudetenland, had a population between 50% to 75% ethnically German. A very small Jewish population, 444 in 1930 (1.3% of the total population), came under increasing pressure, and Chomutov was declared "judenrein" on September 23, 1938 by the increasingly pro-Nazi forces. A week later, Chomutov and the surrounding districts were occupied by war-time Germany as part of the 1938 Munich Agreement. This broader, northwestern border area of what is the modern-day Czech Republic was annexed by Germany and reorganised as the Reichsgau Sudetenland. The German population, the Sudetenland being one of the most pro-Nazi regions of the Third Reich, was expelled after 1945 with great brutality.

Adolf-Hitler-Platz October 19, 1938 and today

Schulplatz, now Husovo náměstí

Marktplatz at the start of the Great War, July 29, 1914 and now

Komerční Banka then and now

Hutbergwarte, now the Hotel Partyzán

Ringplatz, now Kostel sv.Ignáce

Prager Strasse

Café Habsburg ( Restaurace Hradčany)

Steigasse, now Ruská ul

Herrengasse, now Revoluční ul

 
The Gymnasium during the Nazi era and now

 The church portal

Städtische Parksäle then, Městské divadlo now

Bratislava (Pressburg-Pozsony)

 
Adolf-Hitler-Platz then and now

Pressburg celebrating the birthday of Adolf Hitler by renaming Masaryk Square Adolf Hitler Square, April 20, 1939. Bratislava was declared the capital of the first independent Slovak Republic on March 14, 1939, but the new state quickly fell under Nazi influence. In 1941–1942 and 1944–1945, the new Slovak government cooperated in deporting most of Bratislava's approximately 15,000 Jews; they were transported to concentration camps, where most were killed or died before the end of the war. Bratislava was bombarded by the Allies, occupied by German troops in 1944, and eventually taken by the Soviet Red Army on April 4, 1945. At the end of World War II, most of Bratislava's ethnic Germans were helped to evacuate by German authorities. A few returned after the war, but were soon expelled without their properties under the Beneš decrees, part of a widespread expulsion of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe.

Jirkov (Görkau) 

Konrad Henlein Straße then and now. Starting in 1933, the Sudeten-German Homefront (after 1935 Sudeten German Party) under the leadership of Konrad Henlein began to intensify its activities in the city until it reached its goal of integrating the Sudetenland into the German Reich from 1933 to 1945 in 1938. In 1945, after the expulsion of the German-Bohemian inhabitants, the town was settled with the Czech population.

The cinema remains in operation
 
The stadtkirche in 1938

Dobřany (Wiesengrund)

 

Adolf-Hitler-Straße and today. After the Munich Agreement the town in the district of Mies became part of the Reichsgaus Sudetenland. Because of its importance as the seat of an administrative court, Dobrzan was one of the few places in the Sudetenland that received a new name. The German name Dobrzan earned the suspicion of Nazis because of their Slavic origin was replaced in 1939 by the fictitious name Wiesengrund. Children and adolescents with mental disabilities were murdered in the children's department of the town's psychiatric institution. In the night of April 16-17 1943, British bombers erroneously dropped bombs on the meadows in an attack on Pilsen. On May 6, 1945, troops of the 3rd US Army occupied the city.  After the end of the war the expulsion of the approximately 2000 German inhabitants to the western occupation zones, which was concluded on April 16 1946, took place.

Aš (Asch)

Hotel Löw (now Goethe) on Adolf Hitler Straße and today. 

After the fall of the monarchy of Austria-Hungary at the end of the First World War in 1918, a soldiers' council of the newly founded Czechoslovakia occupied the political power in Asch and rejected the demands of the German party from Eger for connection to Bavaria in memory of the affiliation of the area to the Nordgau. Inflation in 1923 and a global economic crisis in 1929 and 1930 made it difficult for the textile industry in Asch. In the run-up to the Sudeten crisis, a Sudeten-German freikorps occupied the city in March 1938. In May 1938 the Sudeten-German party of Konrad Henlein, who had been a teacher for a long time in Asch, received the majority of the votes cast. According to the Munich agreement, Reichsdeutsche troops arrived in Asch on 3 October 1938. The dictator Adolf Hitler himself came over the border crossing Selb-Asch into the city. The city came to the administrative district Asch, Regierungsbezirk Eger in the Reichsgau Sudetenland and was incorporated into the German Reich. Most of the ethnic Czech inhabitants (1930: 113 / 0.5%) left the city of Asch, which had about 23,000 inhabitants in 1939.   

The town on October 3, 1938,  immediately after the Munich Agreement, when troops of the German Wehrmacht crossed the border with Czechoslovakia and annexed vast areas of the neighbouring country. Their invasion in the border town of Asch took place "peacefully", because a "Freikorps" had already been founded by the 98% German population, 14 days before, and assumed power leaving a barrier against possibly advancing Czech troops at the narrowest point with only a few miles between Bavaria and Saxony in the Asch district. At the end of the Second World War on April 20, 1945, Asch was occupied by US troops on the advance to West Bohemia. In November 1945, Asch came under Soviet military administration after handing over Russian-Soviet occupation troops. In June 1945, Czech groups began to dispossess and take possession of German property owners and owners. As a result of the expulsion of the German Bohemia, the number of inhabitants of Aš decreased by about half after the end of the war. 

Cieszyn (Teschen)  

Adolf Hitler Platz, now Marktplatz. 

During the Great War the army command, specially formed for the war, was set up here in the summer of 1914 under Archduke Friedrich of Austria-Teschen, the command centre of all Austro-Hungarian forces. At the end of November 1916, under the new Emperor Charles I, the focus of the fighting had now moved to the south of the double monarchy, into a Friedrichs castle in Baden near Vienna.  When, at the end of the First World War, the sovereign Czechoslovakia, which was established on October 28, 1918, emerged, Teschen fell between the fronts of the Polish-Czechoslovak border war. Both countries claimed the economically strong region without a regulation in the autumn of 1919 in the Treaty of Saint-Germain. Although the Teschen National Council had decided to join Poland in October 1918, and the Polish government had already issued the Sejm elections for the city of Teschen, Czech soldiers marched into Teschen on January 23, 1919, causing several deaths on both sides would have.  Only an arbitration by the victorious powers ended the conflict in July 1920. The city of Teschen was divided along the Olsa, the old town with the historic Burgberg came to Poland, Czechoslovakia had to settle for the western suburbs. The Polish part, Cieszyn, was integrated into the Autonomous Province of Silesia with the capital Katowice.  In 1921, Cieszyn had 15,268 inhabitants, of whom 9,241 (60,5%) of Poland, 4,777 (31,2%) Germans, 1014 (6,6%) Jews, 195 (1,3%) Czechs. In 1931, the city had 14.707 inhabitants, of whom 12.145 (82.7%) were Poles, about 12% were Germans and about 8% Jews. T

The Munich Agreement of 1938, with which Czechoslovakia was extorted, took Poland as an opportunity to occupy the Teschen country on 2 October 1938. Thus the divided city was reunited and designated as the administrative seat of the newly formed Polish county Cieszyn (Powiat cieszyński). However, Polish rule lasted only eleven months, because in the Polish campaign at the beginning of the Second World War, the Wehrmacht occupied the Teschen circle in September 1939. On October 26, 1939, the town of Cieszyn, now again called Teschen, was named Teschen. In spring 1945 the district was occupied by the Red Army. In the same year, the frontier of the Potsdam Agreement restored the division of the city into a Czech and a Polish part. 

Brno (Brünn)

Filmed at Šilingrovo náměstí 2 from the terrible American television production Hitler: Rise of Evil during which someone, for no discernible reason or logic, seems to be chased through the main railway station on Munich and somehow fall out a window from somewhere. 

Other scenes were filmed in the town centre, including a reenactment of the Beer Hall putsch attempt

Regardless, during the German occupation all Czech universities including those of Brno - the second largest city in the Czech Republic by population and area, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia- were closed by the Nazis. The Faculty of Law became the headquarters of the Gestapo, and the university dormitory was used as a prison. About 35,000 Czechs and some American and British prisoners of war were imprisoned and tortured there; about 800 civilians were executed or died. Executions were public. Between 1941 and 1942, transports from Brno deported 10,081 Jews to Theresienstadt concentration camp. At least another 960 people, mostly of mixed race, followed in 1943 and 1944. After Terezín, many of them were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, Minsk Ghetto, Rejowiec and other ghettos and concentration camps. Although Theresienstadt was not an extermination camp, 995 people transported from Brno died there. After the war only 1,033 people returned.

 

 Industrial facilities such as arms factory Československá zbrojovka and aircraft engine factory Zweigwerk and the city centre were targeted by several Allied bombardment campaigns between 1944 and 1945. The air strikes and later artillery fire killed some 1,200 people and destroyed 1,278 buildings. After the city's occupation by the Red Army on 26 April 1945 and the end of the war, ethnic German residents were forcibly expelled. In the so-called Brno death march, beginning on May 31, 1945, about 27,000 German inhabitants of Brno were marched forty miles to the Austrian border. According to testimony collected by German sources, about 5,200 of them died during the march. Later estimates by Czech sources put the death toll at about 1,700, with most deaths due to an epidemic of shigellosis. At the beginning of the Communist era in Czechoslovakia, in 1948, the government abolished Moravian autonomy and Brno hence ceased to be the capital of Moravia. Since then Moravia has been divided into administrative regions and Brno is administrative centre of the South Moravian Region.

Jablonné v Podještědí  (Deutsch Gabel)

After the Second World War, the German-speaking population was expelled from the town in the direction of Zwittau. Their assets were confiscated by the Beneš decree no.108, the assets of the Protestant church were liquidated by the Beneš Decree no.131, and the Catholic Churches were expropriated within Czechoslovakia.