Frankfurt am Main and National Socialism. Rule and repression, economy and society, culture and memory

To date, there has been no recent account of Frankfurt am Main’s history between 1933 and 1945. This is the starting point for this volume, which examines the implementation of Nazi rule in various areas of municipal politics and administration as well as the transformation of the economy and society. It also looks at urban planning, cultural developments and National Socialist image policy. On the other hand, the dynamization of violence against those groups that had been oppressed and fought against as “community strangers” since 1933 is traced. In Frankfurt, too, the racially motivated exclusion and persecution was primarily directed against Jews; almost all members of the large Jewish community were victims of the Nazi mass murders in the Holocaust. Sinti and Roma, homosexuals and other groups, who were often only able to eke out an existence on the margins of society, suffered a similar fate. Just how long the propaganda of the Nazi regime was effective can be seen in the unwavering loyalty of large sections of the population, even when large parts of Frankfurt were reduced to rubble in the bombing campaign.