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Uniformierung & Ausrüstung

Infantry Regiment Herwarth von Bittenfeld (1st Westphalian) No. 13

Almost all branches of the armed forces were also represented in the garrison at Münster. Some formations were particularly closely associated with the city of Münster as their garrison, namely: the Infantry Regiment Herwarth von Bittenfeld (1st Westphalian) No. 13, the 2nd Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment No. 22, and the Westphalian Train Battalion No. 7. While the Infantry Regiment Herwarth von Bittenfeld (1st Westphalian) No. 13 enjoyed great popularity especially among the urban bourgeoisie, the Westphalian nobility served in the Cuirassier Regiment von Driesen (Westphalian) No. 4 and the replacement recruits came in particular from the rural milieu.

Kriegsgeschichte

The Prussians are coming - The first occupation of Münster by the Prussians (1802 – 1806)

Kochendörffer describes the territorial situation of Westphalia around the turn of the century (1800) as follows: "If we look at a historical map of Westphalia from the beginning of the 19th century, the colourful mixture of territories from which today's Province of Westphalia is composed immediately stands out, many of which were legally sharply separated from one another: there are the two ecclesiastical principalities Münster and Paderborn, which in particular gave Westphalia its character, the former forming mainly today's Regierungsbezirk Münster, reaching to Prussian East Frisia, Paderborn to the east, which during the 17th and 18th centuries was several times, but only through the person of the common bishop, connected with Münster; then the Prussian "provinces" Mark, Minden and Ravensberg, Tecklenburg and Lingen, partly spatially separated from each other, also far removed from the heartlands of the Prussian monarchy and always regarded by its politics only as outposts, as compensation objects, furthermore the Electorate of Cologne's possessions, the Duchy of Westphalia and the Vest Recklinghausen, further south Siegen and the counties of Wittgenstein, then not yet belonging to Westphalia, and sprinkled into these compact territories counties e.g. Steinfurt, Rietberg, Gemen, Limburg, Dortmund, Herford, while from the north the related Osnabrück pressed in like a wedge between the Prussian provinces and the Münster upper and lower prince-bishoprics ...." (pp. 98/99).

Kriegsgeschichte

Münster before and after the destruction in World War II. Photographs from a private photo album.

World War II originated from the criminal National Socialist (Nazi) regime and was carried out by German soldiers and other units (e.g., police battalions or SS and SD task forces), bringing combat operations, destruction, expulsion, deportation and the systematic murder of Jews and other population groups in labor and concentration camps across much of Europe. German war crimes also included the deliberate bombing of civilian targets, for example the Dutch port city of Rotterdam on 14 May 1940 or the English industrial city of Coventry on 14 November 1940. However, this war violence returned to Germany as Allied air superiority grew in the further course of World War II and developed into a systematic bombing campaign against German cities. Münster, too, as an important military center and a major transport hub for rail and canal connections, was the target of devastating American and British air raids. The first bombing raid on Münster took place on 16 May 1940. In total, from mid-May 1940 to the end of March 1945, 102 air raids were carried out against Münster, for example by 230 bombers on 10 October 1943 in two waves of attack. In the hail of tens of thousands of explosive bombs, incendiary stick bombs and incendiary canisters, the historically grown cityscape largely disappeared. As a result, more than 90% of the building stock in the city center was destroyed. By the end of the war only 25,000 people were living in the city; in 1940 there had still been 140,000 inhabitants. It is estimated that the air raids cost approximately 1,600 lives.