Offenbach during the Second World War
After the European powers had initially reacted to Hitler's aggressive foreign policy with appeasement (appeasement policy), England and France issued a declaration of guarantee for Poland on March 31, 1939. Poland had long been in Hitler's sights and the German army marched into Poland on September 1, 1939. The Second World War had begun.
A few weeks earlier, the "Offenbacher Nachrichten" newspaper had announced a major air raid alert for June 13, 1939 under the headline "As in an emergency". Among other things, no vehicles were allowed to enter the city during this trial alert. Only ten weeks later, an emergency occurred elsewhere: While the "home front" initially seemed hardly affected by the events in Poland, the first bombs fell on the city just one year later.
The bombing also hit a major project planned for the post-war period, which was intended to "bring together Offenbach's entire sporting life in a large community facility" on Rosenhöhe. Professor Werner March, architect of the Berlin Olympic facilities, was to have realized this.
The German civilian population was largely spared the immediate consequences of the Blitzkrieg victories over France, Denmark, Norway and Yugoslavia, as well as the beginning of the attack on the allied Soviet Union in June 1941, until the air war expanded.
Bombing raids on the city, including in December 1943, on March 18, 20 and 22, 1944, on November 5 and December 11, 1944, on January 8 and February 17, 1945, took a heavy toll in terms of human lives and damage to buildings. Large parts of the city center, the castle, the Büsingpalais, churches, schools and factories lay in ruins.
In addition to the city center, the outskirts were also increasingly affected. Almost one million cubic meters of rubble was accumulated: 467 people died, including 53 forced labourers and prisoners of war.
A total of around six to seven thousand prisoners of war and forced laborers were deployed in Offenbach's industry due to the war-related labor shortage. The people, who mainly came from Poland, Ukraine, France and the Benelux countries, were housed in around 100 camps under inhumane conditions.
The Allied bombing campaign, intensified after the declaration of "total war" by Goebbels (1943), only achieved the desired results to a limited extent. Instead of the hoped-for massive rebellion against the regime, the attacks against civilian targets tended to weld those affected together. The determination resulting from such feelings (fear, conviction and lack of alternatives) led to German resistance by all means, especially on the Eastern Front, while the Allies in the West - since the successful landing in Normandy (1944) - were able to achieve rapid successes.
In Offenbach, streetcar services were suspended on March 7, 1945, and two days later the city was bombed for the last time. The regime-loyal "Offenbacher Nachrichten" appeared for the last time on March 24, and on March 25, retreating German troops blew up the Main Bridge, which had remained intact until then: the next day, on March 26, 1945, American troops from the 6th Armored Division and the 90th Infantry Division marched in. They found the city almost 40 percent destroyed. The Second World War finally came to an end on May 8, 1945 with the unconditional surrender.