Nazi Germany

Due to the Nazi Party's practice of Gleichschaltung, Stuttgart's political importance as state capital became totally nonexistent, though it remained the cultural and economic center of the central Neckar region. Stuttgart, one of the cities bestowed an honorary title by the Nazi regime, was given the moniker "City of the Abroad Germans" in 1936.^[88][89][90] The first prototypes of the Volkswagen Beetle were manufactured in Stuttgart, according to designs by Ferdinand Porsche, by a design team including Erwin Komenda and Karl Rabe.^[91][92]
The Hotel Silber (English: Silver), previously occupied by other forms of political police, was occupied by the Gestapo in 1933 to detain and torture political dissidents.^[93] The hotel was used for the transit of Nazi prisoners of conscience including celebrities like Eugen Bolz, Kurt Schumacher, and Lilo Herrmann to their inevitable deaths in concentration camps. The nearby court at Archive street (German: Archivstraße) 12A was also used as a central location for executions in Southwest Germany, as the headstone located in its atrium dedicated to the 419 lives lost there recalls.^[94] Participants of the Kristallnacht burned the Old Synagogue to the ground^[95] along with the relics contained within and also destroyed its Jewish cemetery.^[96] The next year the Nazi regime began the arrests and deportation of Stuttgart's Jewish inhabitants, beginning with the entire male Jewish population of Stuttgart, to the police-run prison camp at Welzheim or directly to Dachau.^[97] Other Jews from around Württemberg were brought to Stuttgart and housed in the ghetto on the former Trade Fair grounds in Killesberg. As the Memorial at Stuttgart North records,^[98] between 1941 (the first train arrived 1 December 1941, and took around 1,000 men to Riga) and 1945, more than 2,000 Jews from all over Württemberg^[98] were deported to Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and the ghettos at Riga and Izbica. Of them, only 180 held in Internment survived the Shoah.^[99][100]
Stuttgart, like many of Germany's major cities, was savaged throughout the war by Allied air raids. For the first four years of the war, successful air raids on the city were rare because of the capable defense of the city by Wehrmacht ground forces, the Luftwaffe, and artificial fog.^[101] Despite opinions among some Royal Air Force members that day-time air raids on the city were suicidal,^[101] substantial damage to the city's industrial capacity still occurred, such as the 25 August bombing of the Daimler AG plant in 1940 that killed five people.^[101] With the war increasingly turning against the Third Reich, more and more troops were pulled from the defense of the city in 1943 to fight on the Eastern Front.^[101] In 1944, the city center was entirely in ruins due to British and American bombers that could now more easily attack the city. The heaviest raid took place on 12 September 1944, when the Royal Air Force, dropping over 184,000 bombs – including 75 blockbusters – leveled Stuttgart's city center, killing 957 people in the resulting firestorm.^[101] In totality, Stuttgart was subjected to 53 bombing raids, resulting in the destruction of 57.7% of all buildings in the city,^[e] the deaths of 4,477 denizens, the disappearance of 85 citizens, and the injury of 8,908 more people.^[101] The Allies lost 300 aircraft and seven to ten enlisted men.^[101] To commemorate the city citizens who died during the war, the rubble was assembled and used to create the Birkenkopf.
The Allied ground advance into Germany reached Stuttgart in April 1945. Although the attack on the city was to be conducted by the US Seventh Army's 100th Infantry Division, French leader Charles de Gaulle found this to be unacceptable, as he felt the capture of the region by Free French forces would increase French influence in post-war decisions. Independently, he directed General de Lattre to order the French 5th Armored Division, 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division and 3rd Algerian Infantry Division to begin their drive to Stuttgart on 18 April 1945. Two days later, the French forces coordinated with the US Seventh Army and VI Corps heavy artillery, who began a barrage the city. The French 5th Armored Division then captured Stuttgart on 21 April 1945, encountering little resistance.^[102] The city fared poorly under their direction; French troops forcefully quartered their troops in what housing remained in the city, rapes were frequent (there were at least 1389 recorded incidents of rape of civilians by French soldiers),^[103][104] and the city's surviving populace were poorly rationed.^[105][f] The circumstances of what later became known as "The Stuttgart Crisis" provoked political repercussions that reached even the White House. President Harry S. Truman was unable to get De Gaulle to withdraw troops from Stuttgart until after the final boundaries of the zones of occupation were established.^[107] The French army remained in the city until they finally relented to American demands on 8 July 1945 and withdrew. Stuttgart then became capital of Württemberg-Baden, one of the three areas of Allied occupation in Baden-Württemberg, from 1945 until 1952.