War time Munich 1939-45

I have a son doing his IB and the second world war is one of his topics, Being British I have recieved the standard obviously ever so slightly one sided interpretation. I have always been interested in the way the ordinary folk coped with the every day horror of living through this period and especially when told from a German perspective.

I would like to visit places in the Munich area that can reflect war time experiences of the Munich people, I have recentely read about the White Rose movement and find this sort of history fascinating and a diary of a Jewish proffesor written during 1942 which recalls daily survival of circumstances beyond belief.

Ant tips? the other problem is I am just beginning to learn German.

Pst... Dont mention the war!

Fun fact! [img]http://www.keithball.net/img/smileys/emot-eng101.gif[/img]

It was actually Helmut Eisernkopf, a Munich resident, that invented the Iron Umbrella in May 1944 to help deflect shrapnel from Allied bombing.

Better late then never I suppose!

An Iron umbrella truly the man was a genius interesting though

Get yourself a copy of the Sophie Scholl film; she was the 'leader' of the White Rose Society.

Three places:

1. Odeonsplatz - In 1923, when Hitler staged the failed Beer Hall Putsch he took a bullet on Odeonsplatz, as did a load of other Nazis. The beer hall is gone, but Odeonsplatz is unchanged - you can even see the mark on the side of the monument there where there used to be a plaque remembering the Nazis that were shot (as you look at the thing with the lions on, it's on the left hand side, as though walking toward the Opera or whatever it is down there )

2. The building Sophie Scholl threw the pamphlets in that she was arrested and executed for is on the right hand side of Ludwigstr. when you're heading into MUC from the Siegestor - the staircase is unchanged. There's a monument inside - it's students only, but just walk in like you own it and you'll be fine.

3. Dachau - 'nuff said.

The Nazi bigwigs hid in the cellars of the Nockerberg brewery.
So the working class areas of Giesing and Glockenbach got the shit bombed out out of them.

The Volkshochschule has some interesting walking tours on related subjects sometimes.

I'd be glad to hear if there were any "Edelweiss Pirates" in Munich like there were in NRW.
There was more resistence than just Sophie Scholl.

there's a load of stuff about the resistance in this Wikipedia article, including lots of links sending you to info on the White Rose movement and the Edelweißpiraten, among others.

If you want buildings and such, Königsplatz is also a good place. It's where the big parades took place - the ones you see in the old black and white newsreel clips - and there were loads of Nazi party buildings around there. There's an information board just opposite the Lenbachhaus telling you what was what (in English and in German, but the map is back to front on the English side).

And watch the Sophie Scholl film, as well.

Used to be lots of pics inside Marienkirche or St Peter's of the effects of the bombing, don't know if they are still there ?

Look around the edges of Koenigsplatz - some of the Nazi built stuff is still there, but covered by bushes. Or do a search on here for even more info - inclusing on 'Flak Towers' which are quite interesting.

pics in churches are still there. i always inlcude them in my tourist tours...

lots of history in Munich check this site out.

which one, St Peters?

Topic crosslink: Munich during World War 2 - Websites about the Third Reich etc.

Thanks everybody, The site givern by Moonboat is really good, did I read when I do tours Planetmoni any thing in the offing I have done the usual frauenkirche type trips but would like to meet/tour with an expert(lunch on me)based on this subject.

just an idea... (as i wonder about this subject matter and when my sons have to do it)

you could somehow link both sides. british bomber crew (buried neer tegensee) from one of the raids on münchen. and the people who suffered at the other end here on the ground. human interest like. otherwise there is a guidebook now out (in german) about building and stuff in munich from 33-45. covers most things but isnt really any good on depth of the human asspect.

Schweyerer ? is the historian that wrote it ??? He's has a number of books out and I've done walking tours with him through the VHS.

It's the entrance hall to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. Just behind the end wall of the hall is a "museum" about the White Rose - it is open to the public. It is a short way down the right hand corridor (with your back to the main door) - the entrance is a few metres on the left. Well worth a visit, especially if you have seen the film.

when i talk of tourist tours i mean friends coming from overseas and i make them walk around munich center for 2 hours and explain the little i know... sorry.

This is the best I can do right now, there is something I cannot recall at the moment like Statt-Führung. Scroll down to the end of the page for a tour description.

There is a 'Reich' tour though I think. I might do it next time I'm in town.
EDIT: Yeah, kinda like hauptstadt der Bewegung, only it's more to do with the nazis viz their architecture, which is just a bit boring.

as opposed to nazis viz their human rights record which is just a bit depressing

I don't know if this is of specific use to the project, but I have a fabulous book called Hitler and Munich: A historical guide to the sights and addresses of Munich important to Adolf Hitler, his followers and his victims, by Brian Deming and Ted Iliff, Anton Plenk Verlag Publishers, ISBN 3-922590-46-2.

There are lots of listings by address of things like the aforementioned Beer Hall Putsch, University building where the White Rose were arrested, etc., as well as where Hitler lived, where he had lunch, where the old synagogue was, etc. Also a city map with the locations numbered, and lots of photographs.

I bought the book at Wordsworth here in Schellingstrasse a few years ago, but you might be able to get ahold of it in a library collection.

I live in Ramersdorf and thought that would have been a pretty quiet neighborhood during the war, but I have since learned that I was wrong. There were lots of factories out here on Rosenheimer Strasse that were bombed. It must have been terrifying to live here during the war. I got this information from attending an open house of the Ramersdorf historical archives and talking to some of the people who were here, and looking at their old photos. Fascinating.

Fabulous site Moonboot, never seen so many pics together.

I was lucky enough to be given a tour of Munich and all the important sites and where events happened by my Munich born ex-wife in 1984 and i have to say her words and compassion for both sides live still in my consciousness. I think it's vital to get a balanced view from someone whose family lived through those times and not the standard allies " they were bastards" viewpoint.

My sister did the Third Reich walking tour (in English) with her boyfriend as he's keen on his history and said it was very good. The guide really knew her stuff. You should be able to find info on it in thr Toursit Information place.

Great information everybody, on Gideons comment re the Bomber crew angle, I own a farm House in a place called Three Oaks in East Sussex England and during 1941 a German Dornier Bomber was forced to land on the farm after being shot up by a Spitfire as it returned from a raid on the London docks.

I got details of the Spitfire pilot and his log along with reports from the local farmer who knew that the crew were 3 in number two of which were taken prisoner and served out the rest of the war as pow's and the third bailed out over the Hastings coast during the fight with the Spitfire and he was never found.

My neighbour actually has part of the Dornier Bomber (the armour plating located behind the pilots head mounted on the seat). I have tried to find out the names of the Dornier crew in order to discover what actually happend to them but have drawn blanks so far.

I know this sort of detail bores a lot of people but I have to admit I am fascinated by the question what happend to these men whilst I try and imagine what I would of done if I had been born during this time.

Finally I will check out all of the sites and materials listed and would love to join a tour / trip around Munich with a giude. To have been givern a tour with somebody with actual experience must have been very moving.

It's a funny old world Clive. On one side my paternal grandfather was a civilian hero of Dunkirk (he rescued a couple of thousand off the beaches over 4 days with a Thames passenger launch) and my materal grandfather was the co-pilot of the lead Horsa into Arnhem. On my wife's side, both her grandfathers died on the Eastern Front. Her father hardly knew his father. I still don't know how I'm going to explain all this to my son when he's old enough.

Anyway. Take a good close look at the U-Bahn station at Goetheplatz. This was original dug in 1941. Defeat meant that all work on the Munich underground halted until the 1960s.

I also have seen reverse blanks dug up from a filled-in cellar on Arnulfstr. of Nazi posters and information on the RAFs capabilities and aircraft IDs.

My ex-bosses father was a young ME109 pilot. He's was a POW in England and (if he is still alive) is a scream of hilarity to be with in a biergarten.

My former landlady lived in Munich during the war. I didn't really ask her about 'Life During Wartime' but she did mention that after the war, once the 'Amis' moved in, she did a lot of work for them like washing their clothes, fixing their socks, etc. She said they were really nice and woudl give them food sometimes. I never had the guts (or the German) to ask her for more details.

Most of the older apartment buildings in Munich were re-built by hand from the rubble by the female population of the city. Madame Sin seems to know quite a bit about this aspect.

Perhaps the free city tour on foot tomorrow, mentioned on the home page would be worth a shot then.

Sin what an interesting and complex backround you have if I was you I would have to know more, for my self my father was a regimental Sargent Major in the 8th Army and his life seemed to have been incapsulated within this period.

Seemingly the bad times faded but living life in such intensity was never repeated, he always had an inbuilt respect for his adverseries something I always admired.

Kitkat, wish we could fathom the memories of such an interesting landlady, I had heard that Munich was rebuilt from the rubble by the Munich women,

similar book to cinzia's available at amazon.
Hitler and Munich -- lots of others in that category too. Brian Deming wrote a bunch of them.

The one cinzia has is at the Monacensia, part of the münchner statbibliothek.

@Clive,

I wrote a 130,000 word manuscript over the 7 days of my grandfather and great uncle's lives from Kingston-upon-Thames to Dunkirk and back. It took 12 years of interviews and research (I can even tell you all the tides, etc.) The method of writing was inspired by seeing 'Das Boot' for the first time. Nobody seemed interested, so it has sat collecting dust for the past 7 years.

My mother has only just discovered what her father got up to in the war. You see... he never came home. He committed bigamy and had a second family in Basingstoke. She can't find a death certificate, so the old bugger may even still be alive (and 91). His father, the bare-knuckle boxer and Boer War vet, 'Tiger' Foster (from Esher - same place as Johnny English) lived until he was 96... so it's a pissabolity.

These women were known as the Trümmerfrauen. There's also an interesting book called Rama dama which shows a lot of photos depicting the rebuilding of Minga after the war. It translates into räumen tun wir in hochdeutsch - literally "let's clear up!". Worth a look!

Or check this out!

Königplatz was the meeting point for trucks taking part in the "Rama dama".

I know this is going to be attacked, but I read somewhere that the women in Munich were so sex-starved during the war they kept pestering the Allied POWs to such an extent that the POWs complained to the German guards. Sounds like Munich to me. I think the same thing happened in Blighty also.

Feckless girls

Hi Sin
What an interesting story I would love to know more any copies of your manuscripts kicking about I really rate the sort of effort it must of taken for you to have completed such an important record. I am sorry for the delay in replying but I have only just got back

No problem.

Yes, I have most of the second version of the manuscript, and all the data I collected over the years; interviews, photographs, charts, plans, tidal reports, logs, radio transmissions and a ton of stuff courtesy of The Imperial War Museum, The National Maritime Museum and Naval Records. I've even gone as far as studying film taken from Stukas, frame-by-frame, trying to pinpoint the boat working at the beaches.

My problem is that I was young when I wrote it, and I feel that my writing is better now with experience. I would like to return to the first style of writing again, which was to tell the story colloquially with footnotes to assist the reader in understanding the Thames-Cockney spoken. In the second version I changed the ending to omit the boat's story. My grandfather, great-uncle and mate were told to abandon the boat on the beach at La Panne and escaped back to Ramsgate aboard a Tilbury mud-hopper. In the first complete version, the last 8 or so chapters switch back and forth between the three men's journey home and the boat's discovery by a party of French Army engineers, rudimentary repairs, escape, close call with an E-Boat, stranding on The Goodwins, rescue by Ramsgate tug and dumping in Pegwell Bay, plus a full explanation of the following months and what became of the boat.

One day - when I have time - when the kids have gone.

The second, shorter version I have as a word.doc

There are some books showing pictures of bombed Munich (quite impressive really) - just ask at your local library, they'll probably have something.
If I remember correctly there're also pictures at the Stadtmuseum.
My great-aunt told me that she had to walk from Ramersdorf to Rotkreuzplatz (where she was apprenticed to a butcher) in winter since public transport had broken down because of the bombing. When she arrived there her hands were so frozen that she had to put them into the still-warm corpse of an animal which had just been slaughtered (no idea if that's true ).
For an excellent rendition of life in war-time Munich I'd recommend the TV-series "Löwengrube" (also available on DVD) - one of the best TV-series ever, in my opinion.

I have noted all the sites and sources that everybody has been kind enough to post and welcome more. Any anecdotes are very welcome. I am really looking forward to some facsinating trips to Munich, it might even help me to learn German.

First stop Stadtmuseum I fear due to my lack of German this may be a picture gazing experience.

She was obviously lucky. I've heard a first-hand account from a woman who was raped at 11 years old by an American Soldier and apparently the Russians were much worse.

I've also spoken to a Jewish concentration camp survivor from Poland (where exactly I don't know) who apparently was quite beautiful in her time. She had a good voice and was spared death and on one occasion rape because she could entertain the Nazis with her voice and therfore got preferential treatment.

Rape is a nasty side effect of war, systematic rape was perpetrated on the eastern front (not encouraged by the American soldiers - though who knows what really happened except those who were there.)

Absolutely - rape certainly did take place in the British and American zones of control, but after Berlin fell rape became far more than just systematic - it reached epidemic levels within days and wasn't controlled for quite a while - figures don't exist for the number of rapes that took place, but 100,000 is probably a conservative estimate of the number of victims.

Sorry I was editing while you were responding. I am guessing the western front certainly had its share of rapes (and other atrocities) but you hear about the situation on the eastern front more, especially Berlin.

@Jimbo,

somewhere I've seen a book about the rape and murder of young Bavarian girls immediately after the end of the war. There were several thousand cases, including a few tried and executed GIs. I'll ask Madame Sin what it was called (never read it because reading in German is something I only do when absolutely necessary).

Sin, you might try showing your manuscript to a few editors or professional writers to see whether the material is publishable, or if it needs work, what should be done. The topic is famous and your perspective sounds unique.

At the very least, be sure it's preserved in organized form for your offspring and other relatives. I have made siblings, nieces, and nephews quite happy at Christmastime with a CD of scanned family photos going back to the 19th and early 20th century, as well as a transcribed conversation with my father about his wartime activities (he was a lieutenant on a US Navy troop ship in the Pacific theater). Now he's gone, but his story is not.

An anecdote I heard from someone who lived through the Nazi era: Just behind the Feldherrnhalle at Odeonsplatz, there's a little alley connecting Residenzstr. and Theatinerstr. It's called Viscardigasse, but it used to be known by the locals as "Drueckebergergasse", and my acquaintance always referred to it by that name. "Drueckeberger" is a slang expression for someone who tries to avoid his duty ("sich druecken"). Hitler ordered that everyone passing the Feldherrnhalle had to give the Nazi salute as they walked by, as a tribute to the Nazi sympathisers who had been killed at that spot in the "Beer Hall Putsch" of 1923. Many people practised a kind of passive resistance by making a detour down the Viscardi (or Drueckeberger) gasse, to avoid passing the Feldherrnhalle and having to salute.

Yes, GT, that's well known now from the guidebooks, and included in the Third Reich tours.

But what's never been clear to me is, did they rub the lion's nose in front of the Residenz FIRST, or did they just cross the street to duck down Viscardigasse, and skip the nose rubbing?

And how many years' bad luck do you get if you don't rub the lion's nose?

On the train home yesterday, I briefly caught sight of three quite large memorial stones, all marked with the star of David.
These stones were grouped together in about an acre of woodland adjacent to the train track just beyond Geltendorf station (west of Munich).

I was curious to find out what these stones commemorated. Now I read that they are there to commemorate the deaths of over 1200 mostly Jews who were being taken by train to Dachau in April 1945 having been evacuated from nearby 'Krankenlagers'. Their deaths were largely the result of repeated attacks on the transport by allied fighters (morning of 27th April), and the misguided efforts of the germans to use the open wagons as 'human shields' for their flak guns.

More at Der Bahnhof Geltendorf im Dritten Reich (1933 - 1945).