Indirekte Kontrolle. Burgomaster Petersen, Colonel Armytage und die Ziele der Besatzungsherrschaft (PD Dr. Helmut Stubbe da Luz)

In the organizer's words:

The Allied expeditionary forces had explicitly intended to liberate the countries occupied by Germany as well as the citizens of the United Nations, who were regarded as displaced persons, as previously "deported" (as it was often called in German) into the sphere of influence of the Nazi state. The victors also explicitly did not act as liberators towards the local population, and they were probably only regarded as such by a minority here. They took over state power and began with measures of demilitarization, denazification, decentralization and democratization. The dismantling and handing over of certain factories was primarily intended to compensate Allied states for their war costs.

The German people were to be put on the path to democratic "self-government" under Allied control, starting at the level of cities and municipalities, so that they could "in due course take their place among the free and peaceful peoples of the world" (as stated in the Potsdam Agreement of the three major victorious powers of August 2, 1945).

The documents and illustrations on display relate to the first post-war months in Hamburg - up to the turn of the year 1945/46. The department of the British Military Government, which was only gradually becoming familiar with the city, and the local administration, which was in a state of upheaval, were fully occupied with keeping track of the fluctuating population and providing it with the bare necessities. At the same time, however - and sometimes in competition with each other - the central political objectives of the occupation had to be tackled.

The exhibition is accompanied by a scholarly volume with the same title: Befreite und Befreier? End of the War in Hamburg 1945, accompanying the exhibition in the library of the Helmut Schmidt University, April 15 to November 28, 2025, edited by Helmut Stubbe da Luz (Schriften der Bibliothek der Helmut-Schmidt-Universität), Hamburg 2025.

There will also be an extensive accompanying program with the participation of the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung.

Responsible: Eike Pockrandt, Dr. Sabine Bamberger-Stemmann