Freiheitsaktion Bayern | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of World War II and German resistance | |||||||
Münchner Freiheit (Munich Freedom), the street named to commemorate the Bavarian Uprising. | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
Germany | Bavarian Rebels | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Local Nazi Commanders | Rupprecht Gerngroß | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
Unknown | 420 fighters | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
1+ | 58 casualties |
Freiheitsaktion Bayern was an attempt in 1945 to overthrow the Nazi regime in Munich, the capital of Bavaria. While the revolt was a failure from a military point of view, it did prevent the further destruction of Munich and sped up the collapse of the Nazi regime in the city. [1] [2] [3]
In the final days of the Second World War, on the morning of 28 April 1945, Rupprecht Gerngroß, the general of the Bavarian rebels, ordered the occupation of the radio transmitters in Schwabing-Freimann and Erding. After the successful occupation, he broadcast messages in multiple languages, encouraging soldiers to resist the Nazi regime. He proclaimed a hunt for the golden pheasants (German:Jagd auf die Goldfasane), this being a popular nickname for NSDAP officials due to the color of their uniforms, and encouraged people to display white flags from their homes as a sign of surrender. The rebels also managed to occupy the Munich city hall and the headquarters of the Völkischer Beobachter and Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten , two newspapers vital to the Nazi propaganda.
However, the news of Munich's liberation were premature. Gerngroß's attempt to stop further bloodshed was quickly crushed by the Nazi and SS units still loyal to the collapsing regime. Paul Giesler, Gauleiter of the Gau Munich-Upper Bavaria was personally involved in putting it down. While Gerngroß escaped into the mountains, many others of his movement did not and more than forty were executed hours before the liberation of the city. [4]
While unsuccessful in liberating Munich that day, the rebels could successfully save a number of lives through their actions.
The prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp were supposed to be sent on a death march south with their SS guards to be used as labourers in the Alpenfestung . His broadcast triggered an uprising in Dachau and the SS left in panic, abandoning the inmates who were liberated by the arriving US forces soon thereafter. Gerngroß is credited with saving the city of Munich from further destruction, and is therefore considered to be the leader of the only successful putsch against Hitler. [5] His announcement of the end of the Nazis in Munich led many German soldiers to desert the lost cause and the US forces arriving in Munich on 30 April experienced virtually no resistance when taking the city. [6]
In Götting (near Bad Aibling), the teacher Hangl and the priest Grimm decided to hoist the Bavarian flag at the steeple (instead of the swastika flag, called by the priest the "red hanky") although urged by an officer to remove the flag, they didn't obey. An SS officer later that day arrested both, and they were shot shortly afterwards.
On 2 May 1945 the village was liberated by American forces.
Dachau was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. After its opening by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, Romani, German and Austrian criminals, and, finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. The Dachau camp system grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps, which were mostly work camps or Arbeitskommandos, and were located throughout southern Germany and Austria. The main camp was liberated by U.S. forces on 29 April 1945.
Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, Duke of Bavaria, Franconia and in Swabia, Count Palatine by the Rhine, was the last heir apparent to the Bavarian throne. During the first half of World War I, he commanded the 6th Army on the Western Front. From August 1916, he commanded Army Group Rupprecht of Bavaria, which occupied the sector of the front opposite the British Expeditionary Force.
Franz Bonaventura Adalbert Maria Herzog von Bayern, commonly known by the courtesy title Duke of Bavaria, is the head of the House of Wittelsbach, the former ruling family of the Kingdom of Bavaria. His great-grandfather King Ludwig III was the last ruling monarch of Bavaria, being deposed in 1918.
The Feldherrnhalle is a monumental loggia on the Odeonsplatz in Munich, Germany. Modelled after the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, it was commissioned in 1841 by King Ludwig I of Bavaria to honour the tradition of the Bavarian Army.
The Bavarian Soviet Republic, also known as the Munich Soviet Republic, was a short-lived unrecognised socialist state in Bavaria during the German revolution of 1918–1919.
Gustav Ritter von Kahr was a German jurist and right-wing politician. During his career he was district president of Upper Bavaria, Bavarian minister president and, from September 1923 to February 1924, Bavarian state commissioner general with dictatorial powers. In that role he openly opposed the government of the Weimar Republic in several instances, including by ceasing to enforce the Law for the Protection of the Republic. He was also making plans with General Otto von Lossow and Bavarian police commander Hans von Seisser to topple the Reich government in Berlin. In November 1923, before they could act, Adolf Hitler instigated the Beer Hall Putsch. The three turned against Hitler and helped stop the attempted coup. After being forced to resign as state commissioner general in 1924, Kahr served as president of the Bavarian Administrative Court until 1930. Because of his actions during the Beer Hall Putsch, he was murdered during the Nazi purge known as the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934.
Adolf Maislinger was a member of the German Resistance and was a survivor of Dachau concentration camp.
Paul Giesler was a German Nazi Party politician and SA-Obergruppenführer. From 1941, he was the Gauleiter of Westphalia-South, and he was appointed to the same position for the Gau Munich-Upper Bavaria in 1942. From 2 November 1942 to 28 April 1945, he was also Ministerpräsident of Bavaria. He was responsible for multiple acts of brutality, which included killing opponents of the regime in southern Germany. Giesler was also named in Hitler's Political Testament as Interior Minister, replacing Heinrich Himmler, in the short-lived Goebbels Cabinet. He committed suicide together with his wife in the closing days of the war in Europe.
Antoinette Roberte Sophie Wilhelmine, commonly referred to as Antonia, was the last Crown Princess of Bavaria before World War II. By birth, she was a member of the Luxembourgish House of Nassau-Weilburg as the child of Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg and Infanta Marie Anne of Portugal. Antonia was a survivor of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Franz Ritter von Epp was a German general and politician who started his military career in the Bavarian Army. Successful wartime military service earned him a knighthood in 1916. After the end of World War I and the dissolution of the German Empire, Epp was a commanding officer in the Freikorps and the Reichswehr. His unit, the Freikorps Epp, was responsible for numerous massacres during the crushing of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. He was a member of Bavarian People's Party, before joining the Nazi Party in 1928, when he was elected as a member of the German parliament or Reichstag, a position he held until the fall of Nazi Germany. He was the Reichskommissar, later Reichsstatthalter, for Bavaria, and a Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party. During the Nazi era, Epp, who had participated in the Herero and Namaqua genocide as a young man, shared responsibility for the liquidation of virtually all Bavarian Jews and Romas as the governor of Bavaria.
The Gau Munich–Upper Bavaria was an administrative division of Nazi Germany in Upper Bavaria from 1933 to 1945. From 1930 to 1933, it was the regional subdivision of the Nazi Party in that area.
Rupprecht Gerngroß was a German lawyer and leader of the Freiheitsaktion Bayern or FAB, a group involved in an attempt to overthrow the Nazis in Munich in April 1945.
The Münchner Freiheit is a square in Munich's Schwabing, near the English Garden. It is a popular tourist attraction, especially during winter when one of Munich's largest Christmas markets takes place.
The Freikorps Oberland was a voluntary paramilitary organization that, in the early years of the Weimar Republic, fought against communist and Polish insurgents. It was successful in the 1921 Battle of Annaberg and became the core of the Sturmabteilung (SA) in Bavaria while several members later turned against the Nazis.
The Bavarian monarchy ended with the declaration of a republic after the Anif declaration by King Ludwig III on 12 November 1918 as a consequence of Germany's defeat in the First World War. Monarchism was thereafter particularly strong between 1918 and 1933, when an attempt was made to either make Crown Prince Rupprecht king or general state commissioner in an attempt to forestall the rise of the Nazis to power in the state.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Munich:
Max Troll was a German communist-turned-informer who betrayed hundreds of Bavarian communists to the Bavarian Political Police, a forerunner of the Gestapo, between 1933 and 1936. Troll spent a short time in Dachau concentration camp and served in the German Army during World War II. After the war he was sentenced to ten years in jail for his role as informer and released after five, in contrast to his Gestapo handlers who were not prosecuted.
The Bavarian Political Police, BPP, was a police force in the German state of Bavaria, active from 1933 to 1936. It served as a forerunner of the Gestapo in Bavaria, the secret police during the Nazi era, and was predominantly engaged in the persecution of political opponents of the Nazis.
The Dachau Uprising was a revolt of Jewish prisoners in 1945 against Schutzstaffel (SS) guards in Dachau concentration camp during World War II. It happened during the Freiheitsaktion Bayern uprising against the Nazi regime.
Wilhelm Schmid was a German military officer and an SA-Gruppenführer in the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's paramilitary organization. He held high level positions in the Supreme SA Leadership and as an SA field commander in Bavaria. From 1933 to 1934, Schmid also was a deputy of the Reichstag. He was arrested and executed during the Night of the Long Knives.
{{cite web}}
: |last=
has generic name (help)