1945: End of the war in Offenbach

In Offenbach, the war had already ended on March 26. Infantrymen and tanks of the US Army moved into the city via Sprendlinger Landstraße without a fight. By late afternoon, they were standing on the Main. Wehrmacht engineers had already blown up the bridge to Fechenheim the day before. A few shells crossed the river, American shells from Offenbach, German shells from the Frankfurt side. Then suddenly there was silence. The war moved away from Offenbach. What remained were rumors, worries about shelter, about food for the next day and about relatives who were still caught up in the maelstrom of the ongoing fighting.

Among the missing was a group of Offenbach youths who had been mobilized by the staggering regime as a last resort. American tanks caught up with them in Upper Franconia. For some of these boys, the adventure ended pleasantly. The Americans unceremoniously loaded them onto trucks and transported them home. A number of the scattered boys, however, walked to Offenbach in the dark and preferably through the woods. The then 15-year-old Lothar F. from Bismarckstraße, who does not want to give his full name, no longer knows how long it took him to get home. But he was lucky enough to find his parents' home intact in the largely destroyed city.

It was a city without public life. A military government had set up shop in the district court building on Kaiserstrasse and immediately imposed curfews, during which no one was allowed to be seen on the streets. Streetcars had not been running since the beginning of March. Newspapers did not appear. Workplaces had been bombed or abandoned, school lessons and postal services had ceased. There was no longer a German judiciary and no German police force. Contemporary witnesses remember how they found protection from American soldiers against attacks by now liberated foreign forced laborers. The Americans had set up a food depot for them in the passages under Offenbach's main railway station. Foreigners passing through on their way home were given food from army stocks.

The period between March 26 and May 8, 1945 is remembered by many as a time of standstill. But new life was already sprouting in the supposed vacuum. The Americans appointed the civil servant Fritz Reinicke as provisional mayor. Political veterans from the Weimar Republic, many of whom had suffered imprisonment and humiliation, met to discuss a new policy. Former trade union leaders, including Wilhelm Weber and Wilhelm Buckpesch, were probably the first to seek permission from the military government to organize.

In the bourgeois camp, a discussion circle formed around the physician Dr. Hermann Frühauf and the educationalists August Hammerstein and Dr. Friedrich Grünewald. The circle is a root of the Offenbach CDU. On April 14, the left-wing socialist Heinrich Galm, who had been bombed out in Offenbach's Bachstraße, swung himself onto his bicycle from emergency quarters in the Odenwald to make himself available to the military government in Offenbach. Here, the later founder of a "Workers' Party" (AP) became something of a local political advisor to the city commander, Major Sheehan. Galm would have liked to have been appointed Lord Mayor, but he left the Odenwald a few days too late. He turned down the opportunity to become police director because he would then have had to wear a uniform. At least that's what we read in his memoirs. Galm then became a member of a committee appointed by the Americans, the "Mayor's Advisory Committee". It met for the first time on May 3 in the district administration office on the corner of Herrnstraße and Große Marktstraße. Politically unencumbered dignitaries of various colors participated in the committee, especially in the procurement of food and firewood. But they also employed former National Socialists to clear the rubble.

Also on May 3, "Amtliche Mitteilungen für die Stadt und den Landkreis Offenbach" (Official Notices for the City and District of Offenbach) appeared in print for the first time, written by the Offenbach city administration. Until then, an army loudspeaker van had been the only source of information. In many cases, radios had to be handed in to the occupying forces right at the beginning. Those who still had a set could no longer listen to German stations. The only important source was Radio Luxembourg, an Allied station. The later founded station "Radio Frankfurt", from which Hessischer Rundfunk emerged, was also an institution of the US military government.

Perhaps the tender beginnings of commercial activities can also be seen at this time. A sales outlet for leather goods had already been opened in the German Leather Museum on April 26. However, it only served members of the occupying forces. For manufacturers in the Offenbach area, this opened up access to raw material warehouses and the start of production.

At the turn of April and May, American posters were stuck to the walls. They showed photos of piles of corpses that liberators had found in German concentration camps. Passers-by looked at the pictures in silence and bewilderment. They had known a lot and suspected more, but not the full extent of the terror. Some onlookers thought the photos were enemy propaganda. But they only said so in whispers.

Finally, on May 12, the street names were de-Nazified. Adolf-Hitler-Ring became August-Bebel-Ring, Adolf-Hitler-Park became "Waldpark", which is now called Leonhard-Eißnert-Park. Residents of Hermann-Göring-Straße had to get used to the address Rathenaustraße, and the post office was no longer located at Horst-Wessel-Platz, but at Aliceplatz.

Amidst all this, the armistice of May 8 went almost unnoticed. A glance at the first issue of the Official Notices from May 3 shows what Offenbachers were more concerned about. In it, the Lord Mayor prepares for increasing privations that will hurt. This did not only apply to the supply of food. The housing shortage would also lead to "unprecedented conditions", Reinicke worried. After all, it wasn't just the air raids that had robbed people of their homes. Now even intact apartments had to be cleared for the occupying troops. On Waldstraße, entire blocks of flats were evicted.

There was also another problem. The Lord Mayor summed it up in a single sentence in the Official Notices on May 3: "The failure of social insurance providers of various kinds is forcing the city to impose severe restrictions here too".

So the joy at the end of the war was not unclouded. There was no longer any need to fear bombing and the Gestapo. One could hope and dare to make courageous beginnings. But there was heavy baggage to carry on the road to the future.Lothar R. Brown