Hi Shane,
I'm delighted that our colleague, Chen, was able to locate the very photo that I remembered from the recent past! It does speak volumes on how the Allied Occupation Forces as well as the Munich citizenry viewed the end of WWII for them.
As I have mentioned in previous notes, the eagle and swastika designed by Curt Schmid-Ehmen for the Mahnmal in the Feldherrnhalle was a larger version of the pair of eagles/swaz on standards that he designed and produced as decorations for the main entrance of the Braunes Haus, and a pair of these eagles were cast and mounted flanking the wrought iron gates there in/about 1931, when that NSDAP HQ building opened for business. Just as the eagle atop the Mahnmal was a unique design, so too were the two at the Brown House; identical to the Mahnmal though smaller. Indeed, I have never seen any other version of that design, made either by Schmid-Ehmen or any other artist, and the Mahnmal eagle/swaz was quite different from the Hoheitsadlern at the Luitpold Arena in Nuremberg. In fact, that earlier design more closely resembled the eagle/swaz atop the DE Standards. What I have always wondered was: what happened to the two eagles/swaz from the entranceway to the Braunes Haus? I can only imagine how valuable one or both of those eagles would be if they were found today!!
As to the destruction of the Mahnmal in the summer of 1945 -- and of all the other buildings and monuments throughout Nazi Germany -- as I understand it, it was either the Allied occupying forces in each area, or the Nazis themselves (to a lesser degree) who destroyed most of the major buildings and monuments as the war came to an end. (I am thinking of Julius Schaub's journey from Berlin to the Obersalzberg in late April of 1945, at Hitler's command, that brought final destruction to the Berghof and many of its contents, though the whole area had been severely bombed by the British earlier that month.
While much had been done by Goebbels' organization to give the impression that the German people stood as one behind their Führer, right up till the end of the Third Reich, I think that perhaps most of the common people who lived through the incessant Allied bombing and the war on the ground were happy to see an end to the destruction and terror that every day and night brought to them. I think many came to see that Hitler and the NSDAP were the cause of their starvation, injury and death, and any further association with the symbols of Nazism were not seen as 'works of art to be treasured for the ages' but of the cause of terrible suffering and death to countless German families. None of us lived through those times in Germany, and that is perhaps how we can see those symbols today as 'works of art,' but if we had had the personal experience of what those symbols meant to many in Germany and the grief and sorrow of the war dead, we might perhaps be less objective today.
Don't get me wrong: I have enjoyed studying and collecting this period since I was 14 or 15 years old and I enjoy it just as much today, but I can never allow myself to gloss over what these symbols meant to an earlier generation...no matter how beautifully they were designed and how skillfully they were produced.
Br. James
I'm delighted that our colleague, Chen, was able to locate the very photo that I remembered from the recent past! It does speak volumes on how the Allied Occupation Forces as well as the Munich citizenry viewed the end of WWII for them.
As I have mentioned in previous notes, the eagle and swastika designed by Curt Schmid-Ehmen for the Mahnmal in the Feldherrnhalle was a larger version of the pair of eagles/swaz on standards that he designed and produced as decorations for the main entrance of the Braunes Haus, and a pair of these eagles were cast and mounted flanking the wrought iron gates there in/about 1931, when that NSDAP HQ building opened for business. Just as the eagle atop the Mahnmal was a unique design, so too were the two at the Brown House; identical to the Mahnmal though smaller. Indeed, I have never seen any other version of that design, made either by Schmid-Ehmen or any other artist, and the Mahnmal eagle/swaz was quite different from the Hoheitsadlern at the Luitpold Arena in Nuremberg. In fact, that earlier design more closely resembled the eagle/swaz atop the DE Standards. What I have always wondered was: what happened to the two eagles/swaz from the entranceway to the Braunes Haus? I can only imagine how valuable one or both of those eagles would be if they were found today!!
As to the destruction of the Mahnmal in the summer of 1945 -- and of all the other buildings and monuments throughout Nazi Germany -- as I understand it, it was either the Allied occupying forces in each area, or the Nazis themselves (to a lesser degree) who destroyed most of the major buildings and monuments as the war came to an end. (I am thinking of Julius Schaub's journey from Berlin to the Obersalzberg in late April of 1945, at Hitler's command, that brought final destruction to the Berghof and many of its contents, though the whole area had been severely bombed by the British earlier that month.
While much had been done by Goebbels' organization to give the impression that the German people stood as one behind their Führer, right up till the end of the Third Reich, I think that perhaps most of the common people who lived through the incessant Allied bombing and the war on the ground were happy to see an end to the destruction and terror that every day and night brought to them. I think many came to see that Hitler and the NSDAP were the cause of their starvation, injury and death, and any further association with the symbols of Nazism were not seen as 'works of art to be treasured for the ages' but of the cause of terrible suffering and death to countless German families. None of us lived through those times in Germany, and that is perhaps how we can see those symbols today as 'works of art,' but if we had had the personal experience of what those symbols meant to many in Germany and the grief and sorrow of the war dead, we might perhaps be less objective today.
Don't get me wrong: I have enjoyed studying and collecting this period since I was 14 or 15 years old and I enjoy it just as much today, but I can never allow myself to gloss over what these symbols meant to an earlier generation...no matter how beautifully they were designed and how skillfully they were produced.
Br. James
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