8. Mai 1945 (English version)

The deepest turning point in German and European history

No other event has shaped the history of Germany and Europe as much as the Second World War. It is true that earlier wars also claimed millions of lives, changed borders and buried political systems. But never before had “total war” subjected everything to its laws and never before had the crimes systematically committed against the civilian population been so barbaric.

In 1945, Germany lay in ruins as a completely defeated country after the global conflagration it had unleashed and the murder of millions of Europe's Jews, and was divided up among the four major Allied victorious powers. A country that had declared war on the civilized world under the Nazi dictatorship and lost its reputation as a cultural nation first had to find its place in the international community again.

Despite the deep cut and the repeatedly cited “zero hour”, which assumes a complete new start from 8 May 1945, this image has been criticized in more recent times. For there were also less visible continuities, both positive and negative. On the one hand, the new democracy was able to build on the experiences of the Weimar Republic; on the other hand, many important positions in politics, science, the judiciary and administration in the young Federal Republic were occupied by people who had already held positions of responsibility during the Nazi era.

On 8 May 1945, the Second World War ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht. According to conservative estimates, the catastrophe triggered by National Socialist Germany and its criminal government with the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 claimed 60 to 65 million victims. Around six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

The military defeat liberated Germany from fascism through the Allies and gave the country the chance to make a new start. However, this soon developed differently in the three western occupation zones than in the Soviet zone.

The exhibition is dedicated to the local aspect of the end of the war and the course set for a new beginning in Fulda from Easter 1945 until the election of a democratically formed town council in May 1946.

The bombing war unleashed by Germany with area raids on major cities such as Warsaw, London and Rotterdam added a new dimension to the war, causing mass deaths. In response to the Allies, German cities were subjected to fierce air raids designed to break the morale of civilians.

Around 1,600 people were killed in almost 60 attacks on Fulda and the surrounding area. The main targets were the railway facilities and the rubber works. On 27 December 1944, 707 people were killed in the Krätzbachtunnel. Both entrances to the tunnel had been buried by air raids, making the shelter a deadly trap. No other German air raid shelter had so many victims in a single day.

Overall, Fulda suffered more deaths from bombing raids in relation to its population than almost any other German city.

Fulda was occupied by American troops five weeks before 8 May 1945. Between Maundy Thursday (29 March) and Easter Monday (2 April), units of the 3rd US Army advanced into the city from the west. In Niesig and Horas, they encountered little German resistance on Easter Sunday. On the morning of 2 April, American soldiers appeared in front of the Hauptwache, the command post of the Fulda combat commander Hoffmann, who was taken prisoner with his staff. There were still isolated firefights in the south of Fulda. After the Americans had clearly threatened to reduce the town to rubble in the event of further resistance, it was possible to achieve a surrender without a fight, not least thanks to the efforts of the Lord Mayor Dr Franz Danzebrink. Leading National Socialists such as the mayor Karl Ehser fled.

When the American armed forces set foot on German soil in March 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, as supreme commander, issued Proclamation No. 1 to the German people. ‘We come as a victorious army: but not as oppressors’ was the central message. The aim of the Allies was to destroy National Socialism and German militarism.

A look at Fulda shows how the programme was implemented at a local level. Immediately after the occupation of the city, a notice was issued to the civilian population. Under threat of severe penalties in the event of non-compliance, it was ordered that the orders of the military government had to be followed to the letter.

From June 1945, the military government set up in Fulda had a resolute leader in Major Charles Russe, who ran things with a firm hand right from the start.

In contrast to many larger cities, Fulda did not suffer a total loss of its buildings and infrastructure as a result of the bombing raids. Nevertheless, the problems of the first reconstruction phase were enormous. Around 200,000 cubic metres of rubble and debris had to be cleared away, a task that almost nobody could avoid.

Of the 3,248 houses in the city, only just over 53% were left undamaged, and almost 10% were completely destroyed. Public buildings such as the City Palace, the cathedral and St Michael's Church were also badly hit.

The most pressing problem right from the start was finding housing. While there were 3,000 fewer flats in Fulda after the end of the war than in 1939 due to the destruction, the number of people living here had increased by around 10,000 due to refugees, displaced persons and evacuees.

In the first few weeks after the occupation of Fulda, the occupying power left the existing staff in the companies and authorities to keep business running. However, from June 1945 onwards, a rigid ‘denazification’ programme was implemented, which was to lead to the dismissal of all employees who had supported the Nazi state.

In 1945, 4,211 people were still employed in the public sector in Fulda on 1 January and 3,008 on 28 June. Over 1,200 people were dismissed during this period, with the Reichsbahn accounting for the largest share, losing 1,064 workers, including 615 forced labourers.

By the end of September 1945, the ‘purge wave’ had led to the dismissal of 113 employees in the city of Fulda, including 32 teachers alone. In 1945, 770 redundancies were announced in the entire area of the city of Fulda, including industry, trade and crafts.

In a first message to the population under the motto ‘Everything for our dear Fulda is the watchword!’, the new Lord Mayor Erich Schmidt appealed to the responsibility of each individual in the reconstruction of the city in July 1945. His overriding goal was to ‘return to the great family of nations’ as soon as possible.

Despite all the tensions with the military government in the first phase of reconstruction, Schmidt very soon succeeded in gaining respect and building up a relationship of trust with the military government. Despite all the personnel changes, he was able to build on a motivated city administration.

Nevertheless, there were major tensions between the population and the occupying power, particularly at the beginning, especially with regard to the quartering and confiscation of living space.

An important goal of the Allies was that Germany should never again pose a threat to the world. To this end, the spirit of militarism and Nazism was to be eradicated as far as possible through ‘re-education’.

The adult education centres (VHS) played a decisive role in the field of adult education. The municipal VHS, which opened in May 1946, was to make its contribution to ‘re-education’. Together with the ‘Amerika-Haus’ in Rabanusstraße, which was founded in 1948, it familiarised the people of Fulda with Western culture through cultural events.

A return to democracy also meant the licensing of free press organisations. Heinrich Kierzek, who enjoyed the trust of the Americans because of his opposition to National Socialism, was the first to receive permission to publish a newspaper, which officially appeared for the first time on 31 October 1945 under the name ‘Fuldaer Volkszeitung’.

After the war, Fulda not only had to take in members of the occupying forces as well as refugees and displaced persons from the eastern territories. Uprooted people (‘displaced persons’) also gathered in the town. These were often deported forced labourers, but also Jewish people who had survived the Holocaust.

In September 1946, the city administration calculated for the military government that 44,631 people were living in Fulda. In addition to the regular population of 34,840, there were 4,260 displaced persons from the German eastern territories, 2,700 members of the occupying forces and over 2,800 ‘displaced persons’ who were unable to return to their homeland, mostly Poles, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians, as well as 150 Jewish people who had been stranded in Fulda during their flight.

For the ‘displaced persons’, Fulda was mostly just a transit station, where they were looked after by the city through a specially established ‘care centre’.

The Jewish community of Fulda, which still had around 1,100 members in 1933, ceased to exist when the last Jews living here were deported on 5 September 1942. The synagogue had been burnt down and the old Jewish cemetery in Rabanusstraße was taken away from the community and used for other purposes.

Immediately after the end of the war, Jews who had survived the Holocaust and who had been brought here by fate returned to Fulda. Very few of them came from East Hesse.

Among those stranded were Frania Broner from Katowice, who had survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, and Hans Neumann from Breslau, who came to Fulda after an adventurous escape through half of Europe and North Africa. After their marriage, they both set up a textile business here. Hans Neumann was chairman of the Jewish community until his death in 1972.

The aim of the occupying power was to gradually grant Germans political rights from the bottom up. The first participatory body to be set up was a citizens' committee on 12 September 1945, consisting of 12 people and including only one woman, Berta Rauscher. This committee was to make the wishes of the population heard by the military government.

The committee was dissolved on 15 November 1945. It was replaced by a citizens' council appointed by the military government, which consisted of 16 volunteers, including Sigrid Büttner, again only one woman.

The licensing of the parties took place at the same time. On 5 October 1945, the later CDU applied for the registration of a ‘Christian Social Union’, which was approved as a party on 18 October, limited to the city and district. It can be assumed that the other parties were authorised at the same time.

After the political parties at municipal and regional level had been granted a licence, the four parties represented in the city and district of Fulda, namely the CDU, SPD, LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) and the KPD, went public with a resolution on 19 November 1945. In it, they proclaimed the union of all four parties into an ‘anti-fascist united front’.

In it, they expressed their will ‘that Nazism and militarism be eradicated with all its roots and that the outrageous crimes with which Hitlerism profoundly desecrated the German name be atoned for’. At the same time, every effort should be made to ‘fill our entire public life with a democratic spirit’.

Never again in Fulda's post-war history have the otherwise opposing political tendencies been as close as they were then.

Schools played a major role in ‘re-education’. It was no coincidence that many teachers were dismissed for political reasons. The basics of democracy were only to be taught by those who were politically untainted. The directors were instructed to give all teachers important teaching principles. These consisted of a ban on topics that glorified militarism and nationalism. Also, no policies were to be favoured in schools that made distinctions according to race and religion. Physical education was no longer allowed to be equivalent to military training.

Cultural life emerged again relatively quickly, characterised in particular by the adult education centre and numerous guest concerts in the Stadtsaal. The first cinemas, such as the Union Theatre at Friedrichstraße 24, opened in 1946.

The integration of around 14 million Germans who were expelled from their homeland between 1944 and 1946 is one of the greatest achievements in post-war Germany. From the end of the war, Fulda was the destination of unorganised refugees who arrived alone or in small groups. On 22 February 1946, the first mass transport of displaced persons arrived in Fulda in 40 railway wagons from the Sudetenland. The former Wahler factory at Rabanusstraße 23 had been set up as a reception centre.

In three further trains in August and September 1946, the town of Fulda received 1,200 people each from Mährisch-Schönberg, Müglitz and Leitmeritz. At the census at the end of October 1946, 5,521 ‘refugees’ were already registered in the town, 3,461 of them from the Sudetenland alone (62%). In view of the general hardship situation, the accommodation of displaced persons did not always go smoothly and was by no means a success story in Fulda right from the start.

The Hessian municipal elections in January 1946 were a first step on the road to democracy, with the CDU winning over 80% of the vote in the Fulda region with a turnout of just under 92%, followed by the SPD with 8.2% and the KPD and LDP with less than 1%. The CDU also emerged as the clear winner in the 1946 district elections. It won 26 out of 31 seats, with the remainder going to the SPD.

On 26 May 1946, a new municipal council was elected in Fulda, as in the eight other independent towns in Hesse. With a relatively high voter turnout of 77%, the CDU received 63.8% of the vote, the SPD 22.2%, the LDP 8.9% and the KPD 5.1%. As the blocking clause was 15%, only the CDU with 24 seats and the SPD with eight seats had representatives in the city council. On 1 August, the constituent assembly elected Dr Cuno Raabe as Lord Mayor.