For the World War II buff, this sidebar identifies a few of places Adolph Hitler frequented In the Bavarian capital. Guided walking, bus and bike tours are noted in our "Munich Info" section.
Subscriber Bob Gillespie, of Lake Bluff, Illinois, has been a frequent visitor to Germany since the late '40s. He is also an amateur historian with an expertise on World War II and Germany. We thank him for submitting these notes on the 20th century's leading villain and his connection with the city of Munich.
When Adolf Hitler came to Munich in 1913, he took lodgings with a tailor named Popp who lived in Schwabing, at Schleissheimerstrasse 34. The building was destroyed in the war and a shabby apartment house now stands there.
After military service in 1919, he rented a modest apartment in what was then a lower middle class neighborhood, near the Max Monument. The building, at Thierschstrasse 41, remains much as it was when he lived there. It is about 300 feet south of the monument at the intersection of Maximillian and Thierschstrasse. For obvious reasons there is no marker or other indication he ever lived there. He remained there, in genteel poverty, until after he became prosperous off royalties from his best-seller, Mein Kampf, written while he was in prison at Landsberg in 1924.
With these funds, he moved to the fashionable Prinz Regentenplatz neighborhood where he settled in a large apartment on the second floor of Number 16. This remodeled building still stands and is currently occupied, somewhat ironically, by the neighborhood police station. It was here that his niece Geli Raubal was shot to death in 1930, an incident that was covered up at the time. Many historians suspect Hitler was sexually obsessed with the young woman and shot her in a jealous rage. She had been dating a young Jewish man. Hitler held title to this building until his death in 1945.
The Party headquarters, the Brown House, was demolished by the Bavarian government after the war, much as the Burgher and other buildings in Berchtesgaden were demolished in 1952 so they could never become shrines to Hitler or the NSAPD.
Other Munich buildings closely associated with Hitler include the Haus der Kunst, near the Odeonsplatz, where he often entertained; the Feldherrnhalle by the Palace where he was almost killed in 1923 as he, with General Ludendorff, led the famous putsch march; and the Circus Krone where he often spoke at party rallies.
Munich would clearly like to forget its association with Hitler. As far as I know, there is no recognition given anywhere to his life or presence there.
For more information on Hitler in Munich, visit Geoff Walden's outstanding “Third Reich in Ruins” Website.
(A final note. Probably the place yet standing that is most closely associated with Hitler is the Hotel Dreesen in Bad Godesberg, beside Bonn. This was one of his most favored places and it was where the meeting with Chamberlain took place in 1938, resulting in the surrender of the Sudentenland to Germany, the appeasement pact, and, later, the war. For a short time after the war, it was Eisenhower's home and headquarters. The numerous references to Bad Godesberg in histories of the time all took place here. And it is a very, very nice hotel, right on the edge of the Rhine.)
