Adolph Hitler in Paris France

Posted on by Thor

Adolf Hitler made a quick three-hour surprise visit to Nazi-occupied Paris on June 23, 1940, shortly after France signed an armistice. Accompanied by architect Albert Speer, sculptor Arno Breker, and architect Hermann Giesler, he toured landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and Napoleon’s tomb, calling it the “greatest and finest moment of my life”.

Arno Breker was a German sculptor who is best known for his public works in Nazi Germany, where he was endorsed by the authorities as the antithesis of degenerate art. He was made official state sculptor and exempted from military service. One of his better known statues is Die Partei, representing the spirit of the Nazi Party, which flanked one side of the carriage entrance to Albert Speer’s new Reich Chancellery. Ninety percent of Breker’s public works were destroyed during the bombings of Germany toward the end of the war.

Arno Breker’s sculpting career flourished after WWII. Breker was offered a commission by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, but Arno refused, saying “One dictatorship is sufficient for me”. He continued to receive commissions for sculptures, producing a number of works in his familiar classical style, working for businesses and individual patrons. He also produced many portrait busts. Albert Speer was a German architect who served as Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct structures, including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg.

In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for Berlin. In this capacity he was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that evicted Jewish tenants from their homes in Berlin. Speer became a close friend and ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and served 20 years in prison.

After the war, Speer was among the 24 major war criminal defendants charged by the International Military Tribunal for Nazi atrocities. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for the use of slave labor, narrowly avoiding a death sentence. Having served his full term, Speer was released in 1966. Speer was intimately aware of and involved in the Final Solution, evidence of which has been conclusively shown in the decades following the Nuremberg trials.

Kristallnacht accelerated Speer’s ongoing efforts to dispossess Berlin’s Jews from their homes. From 1939 on, Speer’s Department used the Nuremberg Laws to evict Jewish tenants of non-Jewish landlords in Berlin, to make way for non-Jewish tenants displaced by redevelopment or bombing. Eventually, 75,000 Jews were displaced by these measures. Speer denied he knew they were being put on Holocaust trains and claimed that those displaced were, “Completely free and their families were still in their apartments”. He also said: ” … en route to my ministry on the city highway, I could see … crowds of people on the platform of nearby Nikolassee Railroad Station. I knew that these must be Berlin Jews who were being evacuated. I am sure that an oppressive feeling struck me as I drove past. I presumably had a sense of somber events.” Matthias Schmidt said Speer had personally inspected concentration camps and described his comments as an “outright farce”. Martin Kitchen described Speer’s often repeated line that he knew nothing of the “dreadful things” as hollow—not only was he fully aware of the fate of the Jews, he actively participated in their persecution.

Also with Hitler on this day was architect Hermann Giesler and a few Military officers. Giesler was entrusted by Hitler with the reorganization of the entire city of Linz. Beginning from 1942, he worked on plans and a large model for the Danube Development of the Banks. In August 1943, Giesler was appointed as a deputy to the Reichstag for electoral constituency. Starting from 1944, he also worked on designs for the cultural center, which Hitler regarded with particular interest.

In 1945, Giesler initially was arrested by the U.S. military and interned as a Nazi, and charged in 1946. In 1947, he was indicted by a U.S. military court for war crimes in the concentration camp Mühldorf, a subcamp of Dachau. Giesler was sentenced to life imprisonment, but on May 6, 1948 his sentence was reduced to 25 years imprisonment. On July 7, 1951, it was lowered once again to twelve years. Giesler was freed on October 18, 1952.

April 19, 1945: Iserlohn Germany

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On April 19, 1945, my father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken and his C-Company of the 75th Infantry Division were relieved by elements of the 313th Infantry Division. The 75th was then trucked to several locations in the Ruhr Valley for reassembly, and then sent to Iserlohn Germany. The town east of Iserlohn was Hemer which was the site of Stalag VIA, a large POW Camp. Rather than fighting a battle after the successful capture of the Industrial Ruhr Pocket, the 75th was now tasked with occupation duty.

On the evening of 13 April 1945, the United States Army began bombing the city of Iserlohn Germany. The bombing continued for three days. The bombardment lasted nearly three days but caused only minor damage.

The events of WWII are indelibly etched in the minds of the residents of Iserlohn who lived through the years of the Nazi inhuman racial ideology. The Nazi drive for conquest and annihilation cost countless lives. The exact number of Iserlohn residents who lost their lives due to Nazi doctrine are unknown. Municipal statistics report 776 fallen soldiers and 137 civilians killed by air raids and artillery fire. These numbers do not account for those who died in captivity, nor the number of Jewish residents who were deported from Iserlohn and murdered in concentration camps.

A synagogue was built in Iserlohn in 1829. It was destroyed on the Night of Broken Glass November 9, 1938. The building had to be demolished. The first Jewish deportation began on October 28, 1938. In 1941 the Jewish community that remained was moved to Kluse 18 and deported from there to to the industrial extermination camps of Auschwitz and Theresienstadt Germany.

Because of its metal industry, Iserlohn produced war-relevant products, including brass components, specialized light metal castings for ammunition, and hardware for Stick hand grenades. With every industrial building converted for armaments production. The town was a prime target for Allied bombing.

Iserlohn was therefore a prime target of Allied Air Strikes. The need to take protective measures for the population became apparent by 1943. Construction of the air-raid shelter tunnel under the Supreme City Church began at the end of 1943. This church is an emblem of the city of Iserlohn and also part of its coat of arms. The Supreme City Church in Iserlohn, which dates back to roughly 1350, survived the destruction of World War II.

With an originally planned length of 500 to 550 meters, the air raid shelter was supposed to be able to accommodate up to 6,600 people. By the end of the war, the tunnel had only reached a length of around 200 meters offering refuge for 2,000 residents.
Iserlohn was home to 5 military barracks and other military installations. The old style half-timbered homes were particularly vulnerable to Allied incendiary bombings. The town had 46,000 residents in 1943.

Prisoners of war from Stalag VI-A in Hemer Germany were used for construction. These same workers were not allowed to enter the tunnel during the Allied air raid attacks. Jews were also prohibited from entering the shelter. The Forced Laborers, many of them Russian and Polish, were literally worked to death. The forced laborers were expected to drill and chisel into the rock for 5 meters a week. Drilling operations had to stop due to the appearance of fissures and cracks in the clay. The loose clay and slate offered  unreliable protection against bombings. With only room for one third of the residents, fights broke out for the right to enter the tunnels, resulting in overcrowding.

At midday on April 16, 1945, in Iserlohn, a Jagdtiger Tank Battalion led by Wehrmacht commander Albert Ernst, assembled for its final roll call before surrender to the U.S. 99th Infantry Division. American Major Boyd McCune lead the negotiations, which were eased by the fact that Ernst spoke English   . The Germans lay all their weapons on the pavement of the Iserlohn city market square as the Americans watched.

The air raid shelter construction ended on April 16, 1945 when American forces occupied the city.

Bodelschwingh Germany: Zeche Westhausen

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Bodelschwingh is just a 7 minute drive south of Mengede, on the North West outskirts of Dortmund Germany. My father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken was leading C-Company in the 1st Platoon of the 75th Infantry Division. Their goal was to secure and cut off the western approaches to the city of Dortmund.

Dortmund has been bombed to the point of being a pile of rubble, but it became clear that the Germans were determined to hold on to this industrial stronghold with absolute radical determination. Dortmund was considered the Pittsburgh of Germany. Dortmund had been early supporters of the Nazi party. The large industries profited from forced labor and producing the fuel and armaments that fed the German war machine.

In 1933 the Jewish population in Dortmund was about 4,000. In 1935 local citizens boycotted Jewish businesses. By August 1938, the Jewish population dropped to 2,600. In October 1938, the government dismantled the synagogue. In November 1938, riots collectively known as Kristallnacht took place, as mobs destroyed Jewish businesses and homes in Dortmund’s city center. Within days, 600 Jews were arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen, near Frankfurt Germany, where 17 died and the survivors paid fines before the Nazi’s released them.

By May 1939, only 1.444 Jews remained in Dortmund. Some escaped Germany shortly after the start of WWII, leaving only 1,222 Jewish Dortmund residents by June 1940. They were not allowed to use public facilities such as bomb shelters or use radios or televisions. Eventually the Jews were confined to “Jewish Houses”. This made it easy for the Nazis when they began the Final Solution.

Between 1940 and 1945 Dortmund was a rally point for the deportation of Jews to death and forced labor camps. The Nazis gathered eight separate groups of 500 or more Jews in Dortmund and sent then to the camps. The larges group between 700 and 800 were removed in April 1942. They were sent to Belzec death camp in Poland where they all were killed.

Zeche Westhausen was a coal mine in Dortmund, Germany. During WWII it was active and utilized forced labor, particularly from the Soviet Union. Germans considered Soviets to be subhuman, and they would literally starve them and work them to death. German miners between the ages of 18 to 35 were drafted into the army and thus slave laborers took their places in the mines. By 1944, over 40% of the Ruhr mining workforce consisted of forced laborers, totaling around 163,000 people.