Advertisement
Published: August 20th 2016
Edit Blog Post
August 19, 2016
Munich is the capital and largest city of the German state of Bavaria. It is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg and the 12th biggest city of the European Union, with a population of above 1.5 million.
The city is known for its annual Oktoberfest celebration and cavernous beer halls, including the famed Hofbräuhaus, founded in 1589. In the walkable Old Town, Marienplatz is a central square containing landmarks such as Gothic Neues Rathaus (town hall), with a popular glockenspiel show. This a clock tower with little bonhommes that come out and dance to the sound of music.
August 20, 2016
Today we went on a most informative walking tour: Third Reich Tour Hitler's Munich. Munich is the birth place of Nazism. The tour covered all important facts and sites that played a role in the origin of this dark chapter that ended with this beautiful city in ruins. It followed the growth of the movement from its first mass meeting at the Hofbräuhaus, to the failed attempt to seize power at the Felherrnhalle, to the site of mass party rallies and the White Rose resistance movement.
We stood
in the hall where Hitler made his first big speech at the Hofbräuhaus. This building was partially destroyed by allied forces. The city of Munich had made the decision to reconstruct the buildings as they were before the war. The beer hall downstairs is actually the original, however the hall that was on the 3rd floor had to be reconstructed.
The Feldherrnhalle was the scene of a confrontation on Friday morning, 9 November 1923, between the Bavarian State Police and the followers of Adolf Hitler in which the Nazi party attempted to storm the Bavarian Defense Ministry. This was the culmination of the Nazis' failed coup attempt to take over the Bavarian State, commonly referred to as the Beer Hall Putsch. In the ensuing gun battle, four policemen and sixteen marchers were killed. As a result of the failure of the so-called Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was arrested and sentenced to a prison term. During the Nazi era it served as a monument commemorating the death of 16 members of the Nazi party. Any one passing by would have to do the Hitler salute. If you didn't you could be arrested. Some people who did not want to salute,
tried to get around the square by another street. You still had be very careful not to get caught trying to go around. Today on that street some of the stones are gold. See picture.
The White Rose Mouvement was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany led by a group of students and a professor at the University of Munich. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign which called for active opposition against the Nazi regime. Their activities started in Munich in June 1942, and ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo in February 1943. They, as well as other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced unjust trials by the Nazi People's Court (Volksgerichtshof), and many were sentenced to death or imprisonment. Most were in their early twenties. Outside the University some of the stone were replaced by metal replica of the pamplets they were distributing. See additional photos.
Tomorrow JP! T and I will visit the Dachau concentration.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.139s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0587s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb