efforts proved insufficient, and the Prussians decided to bypass Kronach and march south. In 1803, as a result of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg was secularized, and Kronach was made part of the Electorate, later Kingdom of Bavaria. Kronach lost some of its privileges, and its town walls and fortress were no longer seen as modern or necessary, with parts of the former being reused or demolished. In 1853, Kronach got its first rail line, and in 1866, its first train station. Today, it is a stop on the Franconian Forest Railway. In 1897, it was connected to the Bavarian telephone network. During the First World War, the Fortress was the site of an officers' prisoner of war camp, in which, among others, a young Charles de Gaulle was interned from July 20 to November 21, 1917. Following two attempted escapes from the fortress, he was transferred to Ingolstadt Fortress. Kronach also hosted a hospital for wounded soldiers. Due to its proximity to the early NSDAP stronghold of Coburg, Kronach fell under the influence of the Nazi Party early on. The first Nazi State Diet Fraction in Germany was founded at a hotel in Kronach, in the presence of Adolf Hitler, Julius Streicher, Hermann Esser, and other Nazis on July 28, 1925. The local SS division, founded later the same year, was one of the first in Germany. After years of steady Nazi growth, the town was fully put under the party's control in March 1933. The Jewish community of Kronach, which had existed since at least the 14th century and numbered 35 individuals in 1933, was destroyed by Nazi persecution. Synagogue services were ended in 1936, with the building being sold to the town, and the remaining Jewish families were deported starting in 1938. Those who did not emigrate were mostly murdered in concentration camps in 1941 and 1942. The Subcamp Gundelsdorf, a subcamp of Flossenburg Concentration Camp, was situated in Gundelsdorf, today a town quarter of Kronach. Around 100 Polish Jews were imprisoned there and used as forced labor for the Luftwaffe. From 1942 to 1944, the Fortress was also used as a forced labor camp, originally producing industrial porcelain for Rosenthal and, by war's end, producing the Messerschmidt Me 163 Komet in a specialized facility built into one of the Fortress' bastions. Kronach was not subjected to mass air raids, and most of the town survived