Berlin at War (33 page)

the journalists were providing information to Germany’s enemies about

military targets in the capital. By mid-September 1940, barely two

weeks after they had started, the bombing tours were officially

cancelled. As Oechsner recalled:

I went on the last of these bomb tours on September 11th. As usual,

we traipsed from hospital to hospital, none of which had sustained any

damage worth mentioning, and when we found bomb craters in the

streets we were promptly informed of the existence of some unsus-

pected hospital or children’s home a hundred or so yards away, ‘which

without a doubt this bomb was meant to hit’.40

The real story that day was in what the Propaganda Ministry decided

not to show – the damage sustained in the Wilhelmstrasse, in the

administrative heart of the Nazi state. ‘What the Nazis had originally

tried to laugh off as a joke’, Oechsner wrote, ‘had now become a

serious matter.’41

Already in that autumn of 1940, the government had revealed plans

for a massive public works programme to build air raid shelters and

to overhaul air defence provisions across northern Germany. Hitler’s

Sofortprogramm
, or ‘Emergency Programme’, envisaged a network of

public bunkers in Berlin, Hamburg and other major cities, which would

provide protection for the civilian population. In addition, existing

shelters and cellars were to be reinforced and brought up to a minimum

safety standard. Finally, three enormous flak towers were to be built

in the capital, which would not only each provide safe shelter for eight

thousand civilians, but also serve as the cornerstones of a reorganised

and strengthened air defence system. Berlin would emerge as the best-

defended and best-protected city of the war. Never, in the field of

human conflict, would so much concrete be poured in response to so

few incendiaries.

Until those plans were realised, however, Berliners got on with their

lives and made the best of the facilities that they had. Though the

raids were not yet especially heavy or concentrated, Berliners were

nonetheless well prepared. The original Air Protection Law had, after

a taste of things to come

147

all, been in force since 1935 and most households would have received

at least rudimentary training in air raid procedure.

Responsibility for ensuring the public’s adherence to such procedures

fell to the
Luftschutzwart
, or ‘air raid warden’, who was in charge of

each block or group of houses. His role was a vital one, encompassing

the maintenance and provision of each cellar, as well as ensuring the

cooperation and compliance of those civilians under his authority. He

supplied leaflets advising each household on procedures and require-

ments and, in those first months of the war, was primarily concerned

with bringing ‘his’ cellar up to the required safety standard. To this end,

he allocated tasks to the various households under his supervision:

sandbags had to be sewed, filled and stacked, placards had to be made,

signs had to be painted and cellar windows had to be boarded and

sealed.

Inside the cellar, benches and sometimes bunk beds were supplied

as well as all the essentials required for self-defence: first-aid kits,

buckets of water for fighting fires, sand for extinguishing incendiaries,

shovels for clearing debris, and axes and picks in case a cellar should

be blocked in by rubble. Structural alterations were sometimes

required. Ceilings, for instance, had to be reinforced with wooden

beams and stays. Partition walls to neighbouring cellars also had to

be furnished with a ‘breakthrough’, an area of deliberately weakened

brickwork, which could be smashed down to effect an escape to the

neighbouring cellar in the event that the entrance should be blocked

or otherwise rendered impassable.

Lastly, there was the protocol for the raid itself. Those who had

paid attention to the instructions they had been given would have

known that, when the alarm sounded, they were required to turn

off the water, gas and electricity and open the windows and doors,

while observing blackout discipline. Then they were to proceed,

briskly but calmly, to the cellar, taking with them only a small,

prepared suitcase containing essentials, such as a gas mask, a change

of clothes and any important documentation. There they were to

sit out the raid, maintaining order and calm, and wait for the all-

clear to sound.

So much for the theory. For many, the reality could be rather

different. Berlin’s growing complement of foreign and forced labourers,

for example, often faced a difficult task getting into air raid shelters

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berlin at war

at all, and those who succeeded could face insults and prejudice from

the Germans already there. Fred Oechsner recalled the sometimes

highly charged atmosphere. ‘I ceased going down to the cellar of my

apartment house altogether, partly because of the boredom of having

to sit around in the cold for four or five hours at a stretch . . . and

partly because the neighbours made rather pointed remarks about

“your British friends up there”.’ This difficulty was echoed by another

American journalist, Henry Flannery, who recalled the following

exchange in an air raid shelter:

I was standing by a pillar when one of the young soldiers staggered up.

‘I heard you talking English’, he said . . . ‘I used to be in England’,

the soldier continued. ‘I was there for a year – played a piano in an

orchestra. I liked it, liked the people, had a grand time.’ Then he stiff-

ened, leaned towards me, shook his finger in my face. ‘But now,’ he

cried, ‘it’s war, and I hate the English. I don’t want to do anything with

them, except kill them.’

The conditions, in an air raid shelter surrounded by drunken Storm

Troopers, were not the best in which to defend the English. I merely

answered that I could understand his feelings, and tried to determine

which wall to move to.42

Berlin’s Jews also faced considerable difficulties. In most cases, they

were not permitted to enter the communal air raid shelters at all, and

were obliged to congregate in the hallways of their buildings, where

they were at much greater risk. Occasionally, however, and especially

where a building had numerous cellars, one room might be given over

for their use. However, the extent to which ordinary Berliners enforced,

or even knew about these measures, is questionable. In one instance,

a woman explained to her air raid warden that her building had two

cellars: one was always crowded and the other was comparatively

empty, so she usually took the quieter one, which in any case had a

‘more cheerful’ atmosphere. ‘But don’t you know?’ the air raid warden

replied. ‘Those are for Jews.’43

For many, the sound of the air raid siren, wailing across the city, was

something to which they would never grow accustomed. In fact, the

signal consisted of three separate sounds. The first – three long tones,

of a constant pitch – served as a warning, while a single, long, constant

a taste of things to come

149

tone served as the all-clear. The main siren, meanwhile, was a ‘menacing

howl’, which would emanate from countless locations dotted around

the city. It was a sound that one eyewitness described as ‘a cacophony

of loud and quiet sirens . . . an asynchronous concert. A nasty sound,

up and down from too high to too low. It fairly chased one out of bed.’44

Christa Becker recalled how ‘The siren seemed much louder at night.

When they had tested in the daytime, it felt less threatening and was

muffled by the noise of the city. But at night its angry howl echoed

terror from house to house.’45

Some took the siren as the signal to begin their well-rehearsed

routine, preparing their property for the possibility of being bombed.

One Berliner recalled how well-drilled his household was:

When the siren began its warlike howl, we flung ourselves out of bed,

as though the devil himself were after us, and hurried, half-asleep to

our allotted tasks: wake Puppi from the sleep of the innocent, open

the curtains, up with the blackout roll, window open, shutters folded

back, doors open, mains fuse out, mains water off . . .46

For others, just the experience of being woken and of stumbling

down into the cellar in the early hours was distressing. Gisela Richter

was one of those who found that the worst aspect of the air raids

was the lack of sleep: ‘I would never have thought that sleep could

be so sweet, and how the whole body suffers when you don’t get

enough of it.’ Consequently, Gisela sought to stay for as long as possible

in her bed, sometimes until the flak was already firing, before finally

conceding to go down into the cellar. There she would be received

by her nemesis – the
Luftschutzwart
, Frau Schumm – with a withering

look. In time, her sleep deprivation grew so bad that Frau Schumm

was forced to adopt new tactics:

she would stamp up the steps and ring our doorbell. I would answer

that I was coming, and . . . would go back to sleep. Finally, Frau Schumm

was given a key, and she would come right up to my bed, shake me

awake, and then stand there for as long as it took for me to get up . . .

In those days, my nerves were so shot that sometimes I didn’t care

what would become of me, I just wanted to sleep!47

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berlin at war

The cellars themselves could be surprisingly well appointed, with

cots and bunk beds and space for their inhabitants to read, play chess

or do their knitting. In time, themed board games were even devel-

oped to keep children occupied, while simultaneously reinforcing the

principles of air raid procedure. Some cellars, however, though func-

tional, were often damp and offered few creature comforts. One Berliner

described his in the most unflattering terms as ‘a gloomy and unstable-

looking construction, supported on crooked beams, where people

perched on ramshackle seats, wrapped up against the cold, and listened

anxiously to events outside’.48 The prospect of spending any length of

time in such places was one that few greeted with any enthusiasm.

Others complained of the boredom. One young Berliner detested

the cellar of his block with such a passion that often neither his mother

nor the local air raid warden was able to persuade him to go down

there. ‘It stank’, he recalled,

it was damp, cold and dark with a pile of mouldering potatoes in the

corner. Worst of all, there was nothing that we could do. We were so

bored. We children could not run around, we had to sit still. I hated

it, and just wanted to stay in my bed in our apartment. I made such a

scene when the siren sounded that my mother had to practically drag

me down the stairs.49

The boredom and the stench of potatoes were the least of most

people’s worries. The experience of a raid could really shred one’s

nerves. As one Berliner recalled: ‘it was calm in the cellar, nobody said

a word, but we could feel the fear’.50 Christa Becker described one

raid in the autumn of 1940:

People looked different that night. Faces were grey. The sparse light

from the bulb allowed no colour. Some people were in their night

clothes, wrapped in robes or coats hastily thrown over bed-warm

bodies . . .

A violent shudder convulsed our building. The walls of our shelter

shook. A few boxes fell from their shelves . . . A fearful silence followed.

Sentences stopped in mid-stream. Instinctively we ducked

.

.

.

‘Varroom!’ the walls shook.51

a taste of things to come

151

Despite the hardships, however, most Berliners got on with life and

in some cases a new spirit of friendship and community grew directly

from the shared experiences: it was, as one Berliner summed up, ‘a

difficult time, we had to stick together, we had to help each other’.52

For some, the air raids provided an opportunity to meet one’s neigh-

bours, to chat or to gossip; advice could be sought or given, assistance

requested. Others made more intimate contacts. An increase in promis-

cuity certainly accompanied the air raids, and many a relationship had

its first seed sown in the damp, sweaty environment of a shelter or

cellar.

That autumn William Shirer made a new acquaintance when he

found himself seated next to William Joyce, alias ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, in

the cellar beneath the Berlin radio headquarters. Joyce, a renowned

fascist and senior member of Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF),

had fled Britain as war loomed in 1939 and had surfaced in the German

capital where he was immediately set to work making English-language

propaganda broadcasts. As neither Shirer nor Joyce had any particular

desire to see out the raid in the cramped shelter, the two stole past

the guards and proceeded to Joyce’s room. Shirer described his

companion in curiously ambivalent terms, mentioning both the