I'll Never Step a Foot in Poland

Today was another walking tour: the Third Reich tour around Munich.  Munich was the launching place and power base for the Nazis.

Our tour commenced outside the Town Hall and our guide captured our interest with his opening statement.  The buildings of this tour geographically are not laid out in a way that suits the chronology of the historical events.  Eric, an American who came to Germany ages ago, has spoken to the Munich Mayor, who refuses to change things and, as he was reelected, Eric feels his cause is not looking good.  


And so we were off.  We were led through the front entrance to a large courtyard at the back.  This was one place the young artist Adolf had stood to paint his postcards.  Eric gave us an overview of the early life of this Austrian.  When his proposed life as an artist did not eventuate, politics became a passion.  "If only a young woman had distracted him," our guide lamented.


We went to the beer hall, where Hitler gave his first major speech.  Climbing the stairs to the first floor reception area the party hired, I remembered walking in Rome in 2003 along a road that both Caesar and Cleopatra had travelled.  That felt really special, to be retracing their steps. Knowing Hitler had tread these same stairs did not give me the same glow.

Apart from now having a stage at one end, we were told the beer hall is  ,pretty much in original condition.  One young New Yorker had been to this beer hall without knowing its dark past.

We learned that a brown uniform was used by German troops in their colonies.  After WW1 they 
 were forced to relinquish such land, so later a warehouse full of brown uniforms was acquired cheaply by this growing political party. 

Weapons handed in after WW1 in Bavaria was overseen by a man later in the party, who had 
"retained" enough in a stockpile to later arm the brown shirt thugs.

Walking along talking to a US tourist about antisemetism, this man told me he was Jewish.  I was so engrossed in talking to him, we realised we were not lined up with our tour group, but with a large group of German school children, out on an excursion on this last day of school before summer holidays!

We heard how their first attempt to grab power, the beer hall revolt, had failed and went to the spot where the troops set up the roadblock, killing 16 Nazis, that collapsed the coup.  Hitler's subsequent prison term for treason he used to write his manifest.  

One memorial we visited was a tomb honouring the Bavarian dead of the first world war.  The 
inscription refers to fallen  heroes.  On the opposite wall, the inscription after 1945 had a very different tone. A huge number was listed as "missing", lost on battlefields with Russia.

"This is an example of Germany's ambiguity towards acknowledging their past,"  explained Eric.  We had arrived at a small, grassy triangular area that was set aside as a permanent memorial to victims.  An eternal flame burns inside a cage.  What is clearly a calm place to reflect and remember has no park benches to sit snd do so.  A tree planted years ago on the corner is now so large it obscures the flame from the road.

 
Yet overall, as with our Dachau guide, Eric praised the German government for all they have done is creating and maintaining memorials.  He too asked us to name one other country that erects
memorials to acknowledge their past misdeeds.  "Where is the memorial to 250 years of slavery in America?"


Over the road now stands a large bank.  Only a plaque attests to its grisly past.  It was built as a retirementpalace for King Ludwig I, when he was forced to step down after a scandolous affair with Lola Montez!   It later became the headquarters of the Geheimen Staatpolizei, the feared GESTAPO.  

Along the way we saw new areas of Munich which were just enchanting.  Wonderful squares, gardens and more beautiful buildings.  One one, a former palace of Ludwig the First, renovations are underway, but the facade has been covered with a large covering showing how the building looks.

Our tour finished at Munich's Hochschule fur Musik and Theater, in Arcisctrasse, which was the Nazi party headquarters.  Even though Berlin was the country capital, Hitler kept the headquarters here where his rise to infamy began.  

On the facade is still the pole from which hung their flag  and you can see the marks in the wall where their eagle emblem once was attached.


We entered this huge building and learned it was inside that the "appeasement agreement" was finally signed, which was suggested by Mussolini but infuriated Hitler as he was ready for war. 


Eric told us of German payments to concentration camp survivors.  One man was nodding so I asked him why.  Because his mother still receives a regular payment.  More recently large Germany companies which had used slave labour during the war, contributed billions which the German government matched, in reparations.  I asked what made this happen, as they would not initiate such a fund on their own.  Eric's succinct answer was, "A New York lawyer with a class action suit."


Several men on the tour had U.S. Jewish family members who died, or survived, the camps.  One man's grandfather died in Dachau.  His mother and father both survived Auswich.  Another man's grandfather died in Auswich.  The topic of  the culpability and subsequent denial of surrounding countries was raised.  Places like Hungary and Poland actively rounded up Jews, handing them over to the Nazis, yet have not todate acknowledged their guilt.

One man, a gentle looking older man, told me fiercely, "I'll come back to Germany, but I will never step a foot in Poland."

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