80 YEARS OF THE END OF THE WAR. An exhibition of the Cultural Office of the City of Fulda and the Vonderau Museum. Free admission.
8 May 1945
End of the war, liberation, new beginning
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.
Hugo Sallmann, one of the first traffic policemen after the war, regulates traffic at the Leipzigerstraße / Kurfürstenstraße junction in 1945/46.
Fulda in the bombing war
Around 1,600 people lost their lives 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 Krätzbach tunnel. No other German air raid centre 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.
On 11 and 12 September 1944, the buildings at Gemüsemarkt were completely destroyed. On these two days alone, more than 500 people died in Fulda as a result of the bombing raids.
Easter 1945 – End of the war in Fulda
Fulda was occupied as early as Easter 1945. On 2 April, American soldiers appeared in front of the Hauptwache, the command post of the Fulda combat commander Hoffmann, who was taken prisoner. There was still sporadic German resistance in the south of Fulda. Not least thanks to the efforts of Lord Mayor Dr Franz Danzebrink, it was possible to achieve a surrender without a fight. Leading National Socialists such as the mayor Karl Ehser fled.
US Army soldiers approaching the Hinterburg at Easter 1945.
US-American occupation
In March 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, as supreme commander, issued Proclamation No. 1 to the German people. 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. From June 1945, the Fulda military government had a resolute leader in Major Charles Russe, who ran things with a firm hand right from the start.
Im »Fuldaer Mitteilungsblatt« vom 26. April 1945 wird die »Proklamation Nr. 1« verkündet.
Rubble clearance and housing shortage
Fulda did not suffer a total loss of its building stock as a result of the bombing raids. Nevertheless, the problems of the first reconstruction phase were enormous. Just over half of the houses were damaged. Public buildings such as the city palace, the cathedral and St Michael’s Church had also been badly hit. The most pressing problem right from the start was finding housing.
‘Fuldaer Volkszeitung’ from 1 August 1939.
Denazification
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 led to the dismissal of many employees.
At the city of Fulda alone, 113 employees were dismissed by the end of September 1945, including 32 teachers.
The most prominent victim of ‘denazification’ was the mayor Dr Franz Danzebrink, who was still freely elected in 1930 and was removed from office on 25 June 1945.
‘Everything for our dear Fulda’
In July 1945, Lord Mayor Erich Schmidt appealed to the responsibility of each individual in the reconstruction of the city under the motto ‘Everything for our dear Fulda is the watchword!’. His 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 soon succeeded in gaining respect and establishing a relationship of trust with the military government.
Fuldaer Nachrichtenblatt from 11 July 1945.
Against the spirit of Nazism – Reeducation
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 as part of ‘re-education’.
Adult education centres played a decisive role in the field of adult education. Together with the ‘Amerika-Haus’, founded in 1948, they familiarised the people of Fulda with Western culture through cultural events.
The Amerika-Haus in the area of today’s KARL department stores’ in Rabanusstraße, 1949.
Displaced Persons
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 city. These were often deported forced labourers, but also Jewish people who had survived the Holocaust.
In September 1946, there were over 2,800 ‘displaced persons’ in Fulda, including 150 Jewish people, who were looked after by a municipal care centre.
As a Jew from Fulda who survived the Dachau concentration camp, the head of the municipal care centre, Max Gerson, was himself persecuted by the Nazi regime.
Fulda as a place of refuge for Holocaust survivors
The Jewish community of Fulda, which still had around 1,100 members in 1933, died out with the deportation of the last Jews living here 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.
Extract from a list of the members of the Jewish community in 1906. Only a small proportion came from Fulda.
Building democracy ‘from below’
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 consisting of 12 people on 12 September 1945. Its task 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.
The military government confirms the members of the Citizens’ Council.
‘Never again fascism’
After the political parties at municipal level had received a licence, the four parties represented in the city and district of Fulda, namely the CDU, SPD, LDP and the KPD, went public with a resolution on 19 November 1945. In it, they proclaimed the unification of all four parties into an ‘anti-fascist united front’.
Never again in Fulda’s post-war history were the otherwise opposing political tendencies as close as they were then.
Report on the anti-fascist proclamation in the Fuldaer Volkszeitung of 24 November 1945.
School and culture
Schools played a major role in the ‘re-education’ process. The foundations of democracy were only to be taught by those who were politically untainted. Headmasters were instructed to ban all teachers from teaching subjects that glorified militarism and nationalism.
A cultural life emerged again relatively quickly, characterised by the adult education centre and guest concerts in the town hall.
Ankündigung für ein Konzert im Europa-Kino in der Rabanusstraße.
The integration of displaced persons
Since the end of the war, Fulda had been the destination of refugees arriving alone or in small groups. The first mass transport from the Sudetenland arrived here on 22 February 1946. The former Wahler factory at Rabanusstraße 23 was set up as a reception centre.
In August and September 1946, 1,200 people from Mährisch-Schönberg, Müglitz and Leitmeritz were transported to Fulda in three further trains. In view of the general hardship, their quartering did not always go smoothly.
The ‘Fuldaer Volkszeitung’ of 27 February 1946 reports on the first transport of displaced persons.
Free elections as a sign of the return to democracy
On 26 May 1946, the first city council was elected in Fulda after the war. 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.
In May 1946, Dr Cuno Raabe (1888-1971), who had been a member of the resistance against the Nazi regime, was elected Lord Mayor of Fulda.
