The November Revolution of 1918 led to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the end of World War I. With the departure of the imperial family into Dutch exile, Potsdam lost its function as the Prussian residence city, though it retained the prestigious title for many years. The Prussian crown assets were initially confiscated and, after the "Hohenzollern Settlement" of 1926, transferred to the newly established "Administration of the State Palaces and Gardens."
Many of the citizens of Potsdam still felt politically and culturally connected to the Prussian monarchial rule, which was particularly reflected in the election results: In the city council, which now met in the newly freed City Palace, the right-wing conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) held the strongest faction from 1919 until the last free municipal elections in early 1933. The DNVP also received the most votes in the Reichstag and Prussian state parliament elections in Potsdam until the early 1930s, significantly exceeding the national average. In the neighboring, more industrially shaped Nowawes, which was granted city rights in 1924, the Social Democrats consistently gathered the most votes.
Many Potsdam residents were skeptical of the Republic and rejected the new parliamentary democracy. After the monarchy ended, national conservative circles began to stylize the former residence city and, in particular, the Garrison Church, as a memorial to what they viewed as a glorious Prussian-German military tradition. From the mid-1920s, right-wing conservative and paramilitary groups increasingly chose Potsdam as a site for nationalist rallies. They typically marched in the tradition of past military parades at the Zeppelin field, the Bassinplatz, or the Lustgarten and held memorial services in the Garrison Church.
Potsdam had also lost its significance as a garrison city. The Treaty of Versailles limited the size of the Reichswehr to 100,000 men. The military units stationed in Potsdam shrank by more than a third of their original strength. Numerous new military monuments and the newly established Garrison Museum in the Marstall served as reminders of past, supposedly successful times.
While the city’s society leaned politically backward, the municipal administration pursued modern urban development plans. Numerous new residential areas were developed in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Stadtheide settlement (Brandenburger Vorstadt), the Eigenheim settlement (Teltower Vorstadt), the Sandscholle settlement (Nowawes/Babelsberg), the Gagfah settlement (Babelsberg), and the settlement at Schillerplatz, which became the NS model project "Friedrichstadt." In 1927, the city had also created a central memorial at the Zeppelin field for the 1,664 Potsdam citizens who had fallen in World War I. With the inauguration of the tram line from the main station to Rehbrücke in 1932, the southern parts of the city were now connected by “the Electric.”
The 1929 Great Depression hit the traditional civil service and administrative city of Potsdam less hard than other cities. Nevertheless, the National Socialists steadily gained support here in the early 1930s. The Gleichschaltung of the city parliament took place in late summer 1933, but the resignation of the right-wing conservative mayor was only forced by the Nazis in early 1934.
Due to the symbolic importance of the former imperial residence city, the Garrison Church, like no other building, became the ideal venue for the solemn opening of the Reichstag, which had not been freely elected on March 5, 1933. The propagandistically charged state act on March 21, 1933, became known as the “Day of Potsdam” in history and is considered a symbolic staging of the alliance between old Prussianism and the young National Socialist movement. Tens of thousands of people wanted to witness the event, which was broadcast live across the country by radio.
Taking advantage of the high profile, the city's tourist campaigns focused entirely on this event. The Tourist Association lured thousands of excursionists from Berlin to Potsdam daily with the exaggerated slogan "The Birthplace of the Third Reich." The Nazi regime attempted to establish the city as a center for National Socialist education through the establishment of a NAPOLA school, the Reichsführer School of the Labor Service, and the training schools of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls.
With the reintroduction of universal conscription in 1935, new barracks and military schools were built on Pappelallee. The Potsdam garrison grew again to 15,000 military personnel. The incorporation of the city of Babelsberg (Nowawes) and the towns of Bergholz-Rehbrücke, Drewitz, Fahrland, Geltow, Golm, Grube, Krampnitz, Neu Fahrland, Sacrow, and Nattwerder made Potsdam a large city. The area of the city doubled, and the population rose from 53,400 in 1918 to over 135,000 at the start of World War II in 1939.
The first bombs fell on Potsdam in June 1940, but from 1943 onwards, there were increasing instances of misdrops or emergency drops over the city. Workers who had been drafted to the front were replaced by forced laborers during the war in Potsdam as well. By 1944, there were over 70 larger and smaller camps throughout the city area, housing more than 18,000 forced laborers from 21 nations. After years of discrimination and persecution, the remaining Jewish residents of Potsdam were deported to concentration camps in 1943, where they were murdered. The Nazis had already desecrated, damaged, and expropriated their synagogue on November 9, 1938.
Resistance against the Nazi regime also took shape in Potsdam. More than 50 men and women from the resistance group of July 20, 1944, had lived and worked in the city. Among them were 20 officers who had been members of the prestigious Potsdam Infantry Regiment 9 during their careers, including Henning von Tresckow and Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg, who had joined the circle around Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, the group that carried out the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944.
Until the bombing raid on the night of April 14–15, 1945, the city had largely been spared from major war damage. In less than half an hour, Allied air forces dropped 1,716 tons of bombs over Potsdam that night, killing around 1,600 people. However, the demolition of the key Havel bridges by German units could no longer stop the advancing Soviet Red Army, which entered the city at the end of April 1945, thus ending the war and the Nazi dictatorship in Potsdam.
Author: Dr. Johannes Leicht (Geschichtslotsen)
