Persecution and resistance in the National Socialist state

Since 1933 the opponents of the National Socialist regime were systematically followed, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, driven to suicide and killed. On the basis of an order of the 28th of February 1933, arrests were carried out without judicial proof. Between March 1933 and August 1934, 4661 persons were arrested by the Gestapo in Hamburg. They were imprisoned in the council office building, in the prison by the Holstenglacis, in the penal institution Fuhlsbüttel or in concentration camps, for example in Wittmoor near Glashütte, in Sachsenhausen or Ravensbrück. From December 1938 the concentration camp Neuengamme was built, which together with it‘ s outer camps became the central prison for north Germany. About 55.000 of the 106.000 prisoners from various countries, lost their life here.

The first measures of persecution were directed against communists and then against the social democrats. These tried to establish underground movements, also with support from abroad, help victims of persecution, distribute pamphlets and hold secret meetings, but until 1936 they were always discovered and destroyed. The judicial authority and the supreme courts in Hamburg served particularly severe sentences, 399 mostly political opponents were executed by the Holstenglacis.

As well as political opponents, the National Socialist regime also persecuted committed christians, handicapped people, gypsies and homosexuals, as well as all those who did not fit into their racist ideology or were possible opponents. The brutal persecution of the Jews began in 1933 by boycotting their shops, exclusion and isolation, through which most of them were forced to emigrate. In 1935 the rights of the Jews were revoked. In the night of the Pogrom from the 8th to the 9th of November 1938, the extermination of Jews began, their shops and Synagogues were destroyed, up to February 1945 they were transported in 17 deportation trains to Eastern Europe and were killed there. Of around 20.000 Jews in Hamburg almost 10.000 were killed, in 1945 only approximately 600 still lived in the city.

From 1941, once again various groups of resistance formed in Hamburg amongst others, communists and progressive students, who often paid for their efforts with their lives.


Hamburg in the 20th.century (1)
-    Imperial Germany and the Struggle for Voting Rights
-    Life in Wilhelmine Germany
-    The Mobile City
-    International Port and Economic Center
-    Revolution in Hamburg
-    Democracy and its Enemies
-    A Decade of Economic Crisis
-    Greater Hamburg
-    Life Under the Swastika
-    The Abolition of Democracy
-    Towards a War Economy
-    Persecution and resistance in the National Socialist state
-    Hamburg at war
-    Destruction by Fire Storm

Hamburg in the 20th.century (2)