During the liberation of Europe, the Battle of Aachen was a significant battle conducted between Allied and German forces in and around Aachen, Germany. The battle took place in October 1944. Aachen was the first city on German soil to be captured by the Allies. You will discover many iconic sites and stories in the city, including the location of the Aachen special courts, the Oppenhoffallee Monument and the traces of war at St. Foillan Church.

Germany

The photo, taken on 11 May 2023, shows the entrance of St. Folian with the wounds of the past visible here.​ 

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​As a newspaper that had been published since January, the Aachener Nachrichten was the only newspaper in Germany able to report on the end of the war.​  As a work of the U.S. Federal government, the image is in the public domain in the United States.

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Photograph of the bunker at the corner of Saarstraße and Wittekindstraße with a view of both side walls (21.02.2023)​ ​​

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The liberation of Aachen

​​Annelies 'Anne' Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt/Main on 12 June 1929, and died in Bergen-Belsen in 1944. She became known through the posthumous publication of her diary by her father. Since then she has been perceived as representing persecuted and murdered children.Anne's private records cover a time period from 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944. Not only do they give the reader insight into the adolescent's daily life in hiding in Amsterdam, but they also describe the life of the Jewish Frank family before their long and carefully planned escape from Germany in 1933. The city of Aachen played a central role in this journey. Since 1932, Anne's parents, Otto and Edith Frank (née Holländer), had been considering leaving Germany as their daily lives and professional opportunities were increasingly affected by the strengthening National Socialist policies. Otto, who worked in the banking industry, decided to follow the advice of his brother-in-law. He gave up the apartment in Frankfurt and left to build up a new professional existence in Amsterdam, in order to be able to offer his family a new livelihood there.To this end, the family separated for several months. During this time, Anne and her older sister Margot initially lived with their mother in Frankfurt at Otto's mother's house. Then, from September 1933 to 7 December 1933, they lived on the 1st floor of the house at Pastorenplatz 1 in Aachen with Edith's mother, Rosa. Anne herself stayed longer in Aachen, remaining at the house with her grandmother until 16 February 1934, even after her sister and mother moved to Amsterdam to join her father in December 1933. Although in her diaries Anne later described strong affection for her grandmother Rosa, according to a former neighbouring Jewish boy her stay in Aachen was determined by loneliness, especially in the period after her sister had left.​After the Reichsprogromnacht in 1938, the family also tried to get grandmother Rosa out of the country to Amsterdam. In March 1939 they succeeded in doing so. In January 1942, after a long illness, Rosa Holländer died in Amsterdam.

Anne Frank's stay in Aachen

​​After Aachen was liberated in October 1944, the US occupation authorities tried to get everyday life in the city going again. For them, this also included ensuring that the local population could once again keep themselves informed via a German-language newspaper.​So while in the rest of Germany the propaganda of the National Socialists still prevailed until May 1945, in Aachen a first newspaper controlled by the US occupying power appeared from 24 January 1945: the Aachener Nachrichten. Media history was thus written in Aachen. There was no comparable local newspaper permitted during this immediate post-war era in any other German city.The licence to publish the newspaper was given by the US authorities to two people who were far removed from National Socialism. Alongside the journalist Otto Pesch, the Social Democrat and printer Heinrich Hollands acted as editor. A conscious decision had been made against Catholic or bourgeois people in order to counter the city administration. It was also clear that the new editors were to contribute to the development of a democratic culture with their newspaper. And indeed, there were frequent conflicts between the city government and the Aachener Nachrichten.Nevertheless, the Aachener Nachrichten remained the only newspaper permitted in Germany in the immediate post-war period. However, remarkably Hollands' name was not allowed to appear in the paper because his son was still fighting in the Wehrmacht and acts of revenge against him had to be feared.

An Independent Newspaper in Germany

​​After long, heavy fighting, the city of Aachen was occupied in October 1944. Just ten days later, the US military authorities installed a new city government with German civilians at its head. The large city, which by then had only about 10,000 inhabitants, was ruled by Mayor Franz Oppenhoff, who was assisted by nine other Mayors. However, they all belonged to bourgeois circles with strong Catholic beliefs. Workers, on the other hand, were not represented at the top of the city - this applied even to representatives of the Catholic labour movement.The military government initially had no problem with this composition, as the proposal for Oppenhoff's appointment had come from the Bishop of Aachen. Since the American authorities saw the Catholic Church in particular as the bearer of resistance against the Nazis, they had great confidence in the new city leadership. This was especially because it could only work under American supervision anyway and, above all it was important for the occupying power to ensure an orderly everyday life behind the front.​However, it did not take long before fundamental criticism of the work of the newly appointed Aachen city government arose. Above all, the Department of Psychological Warfare of the 9th Army of the US Armed Forces took offence at the circumstances. Saul K. Padover, a history professor who had emigrated from Austria to the USA as a child in the 1920s, was particularly bothered by the lack of diversity in Aachen's city leadership. It did not reflect Padover's understanding of democracy, as it did not reflect the whole composition of the population. He saw it instead as a clique of upper-class notables, most of whom had been active in political Catholicism before the Nazi era. A democratic spirit, which the PWD wanted to establish in Germany, was not evident in the city's leadership.​Therefore, numerous American newspapers reported on the "Aachen Scandal". According to the reports, readers in the USA must have thought that under a disinterested occupying power, a group of anti-democratic forces was trying to prevent the occupied city of Aachen from becoming democratic. It was only after these newspaper reports that the military authorities removed numerous former Nazi bigwigs from the administration. However, they left Oppenhoff in the position of Mayor, until his assassination by a Werewolf-Kommando from the leftover Nazi Germany on 25 March 1945.

“Aachen Scandal”: Aachen Town Hall

​​In the shadow of the UNESCO World Heritage Aachen Cathedral is St. Foillan&nbsp;City Church. From the 12th century onwards, this was the church for the citizens of the city, and throughout this time it was repeatedly affected by fires. During the Second World War, however, the building was almost completely destroyed.St. Foillan&nbsp; was quickly rebuilt in the early post-war years, and by 1958 the shape that is visible today had been created. However, on the front of the church, directly on the narrow lane leading to the cathedral, there is still visible damage that was caused by violence during&nbsp;the Second World War. The building damage, which was inflicted during bombardments and fighting during the liberation of Aachen, was deliberately left unrepaired.​Today, they are wounds of the martial past. Chipping on the plinth shows how badly the church was damaged in the fighting. However, because most of the damage is at ground or knee level, most people no longer notice these traces of the Second World War.

Wounds of the past: St. Foillan Church

​​​The judiciary system played a significant role in National Socialist Germany, steadily expanding and strengthening the power of the Nazis. Once the war started,&nbsp;judges working in the judicial system were invoked as soldiers of the "Inner Front". The concept and legitimisation of Special Courts was taken from the Weimar Republic. The purpose of them was mainly to try political crimes, and they thus became instruments to eliminate political opponents quickly and confidently.Based on the Sondergerichtsverordnung (Special Courts Ordinance) of 21&nbsp;March 1933 (which after the Reichstagsverordnung was a step further towards eliminating the rule of law), Special Courts were established in every higher regional court district. The aim of this was to secure and stabilise the Nazi regime. Initially, this made Cologne the next competent court for the Aachen district. However, due to the increasing number of judicial cases a separate Special Court was established in Aachen in 1941.Following the steady expansion of the courts' jurisdiction, the start of the war and the Kriegssonderstrafrechtverordnung (Special Wartime&nbsp;Criminal Law Ordinance (KSSVO)), which had already been passed, finally led to an almost unlimited expansion of special jurisdiction. This included draft evasion, incitement to desertion and self-mutilation, as well as decomposition of military strength. Other political punishment provisions followed. In addition to the expansion of jurisdiction, procedures were also increasingly 'simplified'. For example, arrest warrants could not be challenged, and the accepting of evidence could be refused if the court concluded that it was no longer relevant to the clarification of the incident.Towards the end of the war, due to the Allies'&nbsp;approach the Aachen Special Court was transferred first to the nearby city of Düren, and then to Siegburg. The last surviving document from the court office is dated 30&nbsp;January 1945. A unique feature of the files from the Aachen&nbsp;Special Court is that some of them were continued after the end of the war, continued in another court, re-evaluated, or closed.​​

Aachen Special Courts

​​Oppenhoff was born on 18 August 1902, and from 1933 was a lawyer in Aachen, known for defending priests and Jews. The Nazis were unhappy with Oppenhoff and he had been warned by high-ranking National Socialist officials several times because of his actions. Oppenhoff also worked for the armaments company Veltrup, which helped him avoid being drafted into the military. In September 1944, when the American troops were near Aachen and the city was largely destroyed, Oppenhoff reached out to the American forces. After the withdrawal of German troops on 31 October 1944, he was appointed as mayor by the military.Oppenhoff knew that, as long as the war was not yet over, his life was in danger. Despite this he chose to cooperate with the victorious powers. Unfortunately, on 25 March 1945 he was murdered in front of his home on Eupener Straße by a Werewolf-Kommando squad. The five attackers included a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Although the attackers were caught, the exact individual responsible for the kill was never discovered, but Oppenhoff was surely a victim of the National Socialist dictatorship. He was buried in the Aachen Eastern Cemetery.To remember him, a monument made of 13 concrete pillars was built in his memory, with the following quotes:​"Judge not, that ye be not judged." - New Testament&nbsp;​"Man is free. The individuality of man is transformed into freedom." - G. Büchner&nbsp;​"Love thy neighbour as thyself." - Leviticus&nbsp;​"Silence can become a crime." - Kurt Schumacher&nbsp;​"Our generation is a guilty generation to a very great extent." - Alfred Oelp&nbsp;​"The dignity of man is inviolable." – §1 Grundgesetz (Basic Law Germany)&nbsp;​"One can only overcome fate through understanding." - Hermann Hesse&nbsp;​"Not only the deed but also suffering is a path to freedom." - D. Bonhoeffer&nbsp;​"The imprisoned truth torments." - Rosa Luxemburg&nbsp;​"Sixth Commandment: Thou shall not kill." - Hebrew Bible&nbsp;​"If he has not fought alone and is defeated, the enemy has not yet won." - Berthold Brecht / C. v. Ossietzky&nbsp;​"Love your enemies, bless those who curse you." - New Testament​&nbsp;

Oppenhoffallee Monument

​​​Haus Löwenstein, located on Aachen's market square, is one of the city's most famous buildings. It was likely built in the 14th century and is one of the few buildings from that period still standing today. It is believed that the house was once used both for residential purposes and as an Inn.​At the beginning of the 20th century, the house was united with the neighbouring house, Zum Wolf. During the Second World War, Haus Löwenstein was damaged. In 1969, the house was acquired by the city and restored by the city conservator Leo Hugot, who made significant structural changes. In the process, Haus Löwenstein and the house Zum Wolf were again visually separated, although today they still share the same entrance. Hugot strove to restore the house to its Gothic form, although he had no historical plans or illustrations. For this reason, his renovations were viewed quite critically at the time. The historic facade, however, stands in marked contrast to Hugot's interior design of Haus Löwenstein which is, in keeping with the early seventies trend, done in brutalist style.This approach is characteristic of the reconstruction of destroyed cities in Germany. Immediately after the end of the war, reconstruction was influenced by a lack of space and was subject to the maxim of restoring important infrastructure and creating housing as quickly as possible. As a result, many historic buildings initially underwent only makeshift repairs and were not comprehensively renovated and restored until the 1960s or 1970s. &nbsp;​Subsequently, they were often re-purposed, as was the case with Haus Löwenstein. The new design of the interior made it possible to use the building for the city administration, a purpose which it still serves today along with a large hall for press conferences and space for the marketing department.Haus Löwenstein is thus emblematic of a particular era of German reconstruction: historic building fabric was preserved after the war, but at the same time changed and re-purposed.

Löwenstein House (Haus Löwenstein)

​​During the Nazi regime, the city health department of Aachen was housed alongside the city administration in the Haus Grenzwacht. It was responsible for implementing the Nazi's law for the prevention of genetically diseased offspring, which aimed to promote Nazi racial hygiene and included compulsory sterilisations of people with disabilities.The government doctors in Aachen requested hundreds of such sterilisations for those they deemed "inferior". From 1941 to 1945, with the help of the health department, people with disabilities and sick individuals from Aachen were deported and then systematically murdered in operations such as Action T4. Many were also abused in cruel human experiments, disregarding ethical principles. The Wege gegen das Vergessen (Ways Against Forgetting) project remembers the participation of Aachen government doctors in these crimes with a memorial plaque attached to the western tower facade of Haus Grenzwacht.​

Border Guard House

​​The deportations of Aachen's Jewish residents began with their forced relocation from their homes and apartments to collection camps. One of these camps was located on Grüner Weg. From there, the Jewish victims were driven under SS and police supervision to the nearest tram stop.They were then taken to Aachen Central Station with special trains. There, the deportation trains, made up of goods wagons, were already waiting for them. Often, the trains first went to Düsseldorf, where trains from various places were assembled into a large transport. Everything was organised, including the transportation costs. According to the third-class tariff, the victims were charged 4 Reichspfennige per person and kilometre. Usually the trains, which consisted of up to 45 goods wagons, were occupied by 1,000 people.​By the end of the war, 2,000 to 3,000 people were crammed into the goods wagons. Four people per square metre. Without adequate nutrition, without toilets. The journeys took days: how the people in the wagons coped is hard to imagine. During World War Two, all Jewish citizens of Aachen who had not fled to safety beforehand&nbsp;were deported. A total of seven transports left from Aachen to concentration and extermination camps. The deportations in Aachen started in March 1942 and ended in September 1944.In October 1944 the central station was heavily fought over&nbsp;during the liberation. The 1st and 30th American infantry divisions had taken the heights south and west of Aachen, leading to an attack on Aachen. After intense fighting that resulted in partial destruction of the train station, on 21 October 1944 the military conflict in Aachen ended. Following this, the central station was quickly rebuilt as it was the needed by the Allies for logistical reasons.

Aachener Hauptbahnhof (Aachen Central Station)

​​The house at the corner of Pippinstraße and Rolandstraße in Aachen is a significant site in Aachen's history, as it is believed that the city's final declaration of surrender was signed there. On 21 October 1944 at 12:05, Colonel Gerhard Wilck signed the city's surrender declaration. The first major German city was thus&nbsp;liberated from the Nazi dictatorship. Wilck was commander of the 246th People's Grenadier Division and the last city commander of Aachen as of 12 October. He had tried in vain to defend the city from the Allied troops. Even though Wilck and his predecessor, General Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, had been trying since 10 September 1944 to convince the supreme army command to abandon the city, this proposal was brusquely rejected. Wilck was obliged not to voluntarily&nbsp;surrender an inch of ground to the enemy and to hold the city to the last man. The battle for Aachen had mainly propagandistic purposes, since strategically speaking the city was almost meaningless.​When the German troops were pushed back to a single bunker, U.S. officer John Corley presented Wilck with an ultimatum: surrender or destroy the city. At Corley's office, on the corner of Pippinstrasse and Rolandstrasse, Wilck initially refused to sign the surrender declaration, fearing for his family, who did not live in Aachen. Corley then poured him a glass of whiskey and again urged him to surrender. But Wilck continued to refuse. Only after the third glass of whisky did Wilck sign the declaration and then, with the remaining 3,473 German soldiers, was placed in captivity. Today, the house is used as a residence.​

House on the corner of Pippinstraße / Rolandstraße

​​After the first air raids on German territory in 1940, an "urgent programme for the protection of the civilian population" was initiated. This classified Aachen as a particularly endangered city due to its location. On this basis, in January 1941 the first work on air-raid shelters began. High bunkers were preferred as they required less costs and materials. For camouflage reasons, the bunkers needed to blend in with the surrounding buildings as much as possible. With 15 high bunkers, some of which were built as a ring around the medieval city centre, Aachen was the city with the highest bunker density in terms of population among the cities surveyed in the German Reich.The bunker at the corner of Scheibenstraße and Wittekindstraße, within sight of the medieval Ponttor, was built from 1941 onwards according to designs by the Finance Construction Office. For this construction, as for all other bunkers in the city area, prisoners of war were used from December 1941 onwards (at the latest). In this case, they came from the Prisoner of War Construction and Labour Battalion 25. From 1942, the three-storey building with a pentagonal base was used as a civilian shelter. Due to the unusual ground plan for bunker buildings, the often polygonal rooms were grouped around a triangular staircase. However, with only 250 berths in an area of 655 m2, the bunkerwass one of the smallest but at the same time most expensive shelters of this kind in the city. Why the shelter was still built in this form is not documented.From 1946 to 1948, the building served as emergency accommodation for about 40 families. Later, the building was intended for de-sheltering (the removal of protection installations to make it&nbsp;fit for modern-day alternative use, for example as an event venue). The plans and estimated costs for this de-sheltering are known (approx. 520,000 DM), but the work was never carried out, for unknown reasons.​In 2003 the building, which is privately owned, was listed by the city of Aachen as an example of Germany's architectural history under Nazi rule. The floor coverings, air-raid doors, metal doors to individual rooms and some sanitary rooms have been preserved to this day. Later additions can be easily recognised as such. Wall breakthroughs and demolitions on the upper floors have created larger rooms. Of the original technical installations, the heating system and a turbine of the ventilation system have been preserved to this day. The building can usually only be visited from the outside.​

​​High-rise bunker

​​Shortly after the war began, on 12 May 1940 the first air raid on Aachen took place. By the time the fighting for Aachen began on 12 September 1944, (with the crossing of the western border and the attack on the Westwall on 15 September), a total of 2,364 people had been killed in 64 smaller and five large attacks. In addition, the city itself was also severely damaged.After more than five weeks of fighting in the city, some of which was fought from street to street with tanks and artillery, 43% of the city's approximately 14,000 houses were completely destroyed, and another 40% damaged. Of Aachen‘s 68 churches and chapels, 25 were destroyed and 43 others severely damaged. The historic town hall was also in ruins, as the last medieval residential buildings had fallen victim to the destruction. Although Aachen Cathedral had been badly damaged by bombing, its basic substance had been preserved.For the buildings in Annastrasse, the destruction of the Annakirche, Aachen's oldest Protestant church, was particularly well documented. The church burnt out in a bombing raid on 14 July 1943, and in April 1944 the pastor's house and parish hall were hit. However, the greatest destruction in Annastrasse, to which the south wall and tower of the church also fell victim, was the result of artillery fire during the Battle of Aachen.​Reconstruction of the city began as early as November 1944. The first priority was to rebuild housing, initially on a makeshift basis, as up to 5,000 people a week returned to the city very soon after Aachen's surrender. Discussions about the goals and implementation of reconstruction, especially the treatment of architectural monuments, continued into the 1980s. By then, most of the destruction of the war had been erased from the cityscape. However, where no new buildings were erected and areas were instead used as, for example, car parks, the remains and imprints of destroyed buildings can still be seen today.​

The liberation of Aachen

Photos

Sites and stories along the route

Anne Frank's stay in Aachen

An Independent Newspaper in Germany

“Aachen Scandal”: Aachen Town Hall

Wounds of the past: St. Foillan Church

Aachen Special Courts

Oppenhoffallee Monument

Löwenstein House (Haus Löwenstein)

Border Guard House

Aachener Hauptbahnhof (Aachen Central Station)

House on the corner of Pippinstraße / Rolandstraße

High-rise bunker

A gap in the buildings on Annastraße: Remnants of Wartime Destruction

The liberation of Aachen

Photos

Sites and stories along the route

Anne Frank's stay in Aachen

An Independent Newspaper in Germany

“Aachen Scandal”: Aachen Town Hall

Wounds of the past: St. Foillan Church

Aachen Special Courts

Oppenhoffallee Monument

Löwenstein House (Haus Löwenstein)

Border Guard House

Aachener Hauptbahnhof (Aachen Central Station)

House on the corner of Pippinstraße / Rolandstraße

​​High-rise bunker

A gap in the buildings on Annastraße: Remnants of Wartime Destruction

High-rise bunker