NSDAP Kreisleitung flag for sale. The NSDAP, early to middle 1930s, flag, for 'Osnabrück Stadt' with fine silver wire fringing, dark brown velvet canton with black border, and white,  chain stitched wording, 'Osnabrück Stadt'

Typical for the early to middle 1930s, the flag has a black, mobile swastika charge, on a white, cotton-silk, roundel. The flag rings are no longer present 

Condition report: The NSDAP flag is in excellent overall condition, free from any major mothing. The flag rings now missing, leaving each red cotton reinforced ring holder present, but slashed, presumably when the flag cloth was removed from the wood staff. 

Provenance: The NSDAP flag was acquired by a member of the British 4th Royal Tank Regiment in 1945. Retained by the family until 2012.

Historical background to Osnabrück in the 20th Century: Politically, Osnabrück in the 1920s was a bastion of support for the Social Democrats and the Catholic Centre Party. However, in the Reichstag elections of September 1930, the Nazi Party received the highest
percentage of votes in the city (nearly 28%), exceeding all the other parties. This was a significant increase on their electoral performance of 1928, when only 3.7% of Osnabrückers had supported the party. During the campaigns prior to the two federal elections of 1932, both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels made speeches before crowds of thousands in the city.

Following the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, Osnabrück saw the implementation of National Socialist economic, political, and social programmes. These resulted in economic growth for ethnic Germans who did not run afoul of the new regime, and the town went from over 10,000 unemployed in early 1933 to an actual labour shortage by 1938. The city suffered heavy bombing during the war, but was rebuilt after it ended in 1945.

The war ended in Osnabrück on 4 April 1945, when the XVII Corps of Montgomery's Second Army entered the city with little resistance. Leading Nazis fled the city and the British appointed a new mayor, Johannes Petermann. However, power rested chiefly with the occupiers, represented locally by the military governor, Colonel Geoffrey Day. Relations between the occupiers and the people of Osnabrück were generally peaceful, though tensions existed; some small fights broke out between British soldiers and local youths and some Osnabrückers resented the relationships that developed between the occupiers and local women. Additionally, the British took over more than seventy homes for their own use by the middle of 1946. Amidst shortages, the black market thrived and became a main focus of police activity.

After World War II, when West Germany realigned its states, the city became part of the new state of Lower Saxony in 1946. The British continued to maintain a garrison near the city and it was the largest British garrison in the world at one point, housing some 4000 troops and employing around 500 local civilians.

Note: Kreis level NSDAP flags rarely appear on the market. This example, being the flag of a major German city, is of particular historical importance.