The 20th century history of the city of Landsberg is much more than just the history of a German city. The special role of Landsberg in the history of National Socialism and its consequences between 1923 and 1958, put Landsberg into the spotlight of German history and into history books.
During his imprisonment in Landsberg in 1923/1924, Adolf Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf”.
As of 1933, Landsberg presents itself as "Hitlertown" and “City of the Führer". The former Hitler cell becomes a National Socialist’s place of pilgrimage. In 1937, the city is officially declared "City of the Youth". Following the Nuremburg Rallies in 1937 and 1938, delegations of the Hitler Youth march from Nuremberg to Landsberg, for the final rally of the "Confessional March of the German Youth”
Not far from the place where Hitler wrote his doctrine of racial fanaticism in 1923/1924, his criminal and perverted theories became a horrible reality. In eleven concentration camps that formed the Kaufering concentration camp complex, the manpower of 23,000 mainly Jewish inmates was systematically exploited. The concentration camp prisoners themselves called the camps "cold crematoria". 6,334 concentration camp prisoners were hastily buried in mass graves around Kaufering and Landsberg.
Many of the war criminals arrested in the American zone were to be punished for their actions in the prison in Landsberg. The same prison where Hitler put down in writing his National Socialist ideology was designated as War Criminal Prison No. 1 by the United States Army's Military Police (MPs). 248 war criminals, including Oswald Pohl, Otto Ohlendorf and Paul Blobl, were executed here until 7 June, 1951.
And in 1945, after the liberation of the concentration camps, one of the largest DP camps (displaced persons camp) was established in Landsberg.
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