Aspects of National Socialist Municipal Policy

Walter Schuster

It was precisely the efficient administrative organisation of the towns which was especially suited to putting the intentions and measures of the Nazi leadership into practice – including the exclusion and persecution of minorities. So the fight against „anti-social elements“ and measures against „racially inferior“ people, as well as issues in cultural policy, with which one could apparently uncontroversially manipulate the population to the ends of National Socialism, were focal points of municipal policy right up to the end of Nazi rule.

The structural changes and construction measures which Hitler especially intended for his „home town“, presented a particular challenge for the city administration. The employment of forced labour in the greater Linz area is to be seen as closely connected to these cirumstances.

The City Council actively recruited, supervised and disciplined foreign workers. Along with prisoners of the concentration camps and prisoners of war, it was the foreign civilians, drawn upon for forced labour, who enabled the maintenance of the city's infrastructure, allowing local workers to be sent to the front as soldiers.