The war is fought with ever intensifying brutality. Although the German offensive in the Soviet Union was stopped with the early onset of winter in October 1941, Hitler orders the Wehrmacht to advance to Stalingrad.
“The enemy was beaten wherever she showed”, a German propaganda leaflet reads. But when frost turned to thaw, fighting in Russia came to an almost complete halt and supply lines collapsed.
In the meantime, openly doubting the “Endsieg” (final victory) is getting increasingly risky: as early as in May 1940, special courts decide on the punishable offence of “Wehrkraftzersetzung” (undermining the defence power). In these special courts, the defendants had no remedy available. Very often, convictions resulted in death penalties.
Timeline General
- 20 January: At the Wannsee-Konferenz, 13 undersecretaries and a high number of high-ranked party and SS-functionaries discuss the “industrial” extermination of the European Jews. This conference is led by Reinhard Heydrich, the person in charge of the “Endlösung der Judenfrage” (Final Solution to the Jewish Question).
- July: The “Aktion (Operation) Reinhardt” is underway, executing the systematic murder of more than two million East European Jews.
- 16 July: Hitlers headquarters “Wolfsschanze” is moved from Rastenburg in Eastern Prussia to Winnytsia in the Ukraine.
- 22 July: The deportation of the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto into the extermination camp Treblinka begins.
- 20 September: Propaganda minister Goebbels is upset: after the German team lost a 2-3 to Sweden, he is of the impression that the crowd of 100,000 had been more “interested in that game than in the conquest of some town in the East”.
Timeline Hamburg
- 3 April: The ministry for armament and ammunition asks the city of Hamburg to terminate the contract for the sport facilities of FC St. Pauli, since the area would be required for the – still in existence today – high bunker to be built on Heiligengeistfeld.
- May: Instead of heading for Eastern European ghettos, the deportation trains from Hamburg go directly to the extermination camps.
- 30 May: Hitler appoints Reich Governor Karl Kaufmann as Reich commissioner for the German maritime navigation.
Timeline Persons
1 May: The Secret State Police (Gestapo) orders Paul Lang and his wife Lieselotte to move into the “Judenhaus” (Jews’ house) located in Heinrich-Barth-Straße 17.
- 22 November: Karl Miller is in the German national team to play the last international game during the war (5-2 against Slovakia in Bratislava). According to a chronicle, the Germans are greeted with “abusive calls and boos”.
- 1942: Otto Wolff gets himself a second “aryanised” real property formerly owned by a Jewish citizen: a building at the Elbchaussee. He also becomes member of the Hamburger Ratsherrnversammlung (councilmen’s assembly, a sort of “pseudo-parliament”).