Authors: Roger Moorhouse
bles, and even in our flat the noise is ear-splitting.’15
Despite their size and grim grandeur, the flak towers were only the
most visible part of an enormous and highly sophisticated ring of
defences around the German capital. Since 1940 Berlin’s air defences
had been systematically upgraded, with a central command centre,
located within the Zoo tower. They were remarkably complex,
consisting of two primary rings of defences surrounding the city – an
outer searchlight ring approximately 50 kilometres from the city centre
and an inner flak ring around 30 kilometres out. Interspersed between
them were smoke generators, which could send a pall of thick, grey
smoke many miles across the city, obscuring large parts of it from
view.16 Within Berlin itself, many main streets, boulevards and mili-
tary installations were strung with camouflage netting, so as to make
them difficult to identify from the air. This tactic was also applied to
some of the city’s waterways, which could otherwise serve as a vital
point of reference for enemy pilots. The Lietzen Lake in Charlottenburg,
for instance, was disguised to make it look like a suburban landscape.
The mainstay of the city’s defences, however, was its flak crews.
By 1943, there were around 100 batteries in and around the capital,
each containing searchlight units, radio telemetry, and on average,
between 16 and 24 individual artillery pieces.17 Though a variety of
weapons were used, at the heart of each battery was the venerable
88mm gun, known as the
acht-acht
, or ‘eight-eight’. Developed during
the First World War, and combat-tested during the Spanish Civil War,
the ‘eight-eight’ was arguably the most famous artillery piece of the
Second World War. With its distinctive outline of recoil tubes framing
a long, tapering barrel, it saw action in every branch of the German
military and in every theatre – from the high seas to the Russian steppe
and the deserts of North Africa. Mounted on a tank chassis or pulled
on a wheeled carriage, it would earn a fearsome reputation as a ‘tank-
killer’, but it was designed to serve primarily as an anti-aircraft weapon.
Usually operated by a crew of eleven, the ‘eight-eight’ boasted a
360º traverse and could fire up to fifteen rounds per minute – one
every four seconds. Its range, too, was impressive, reaching nearly
15 kilometres in the horizontal plane, and almost 10 kilometres when
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berlin at war
fully elevated.18 In its anti-aircraft role, it fired a 16-pound shrapnel
shell, which could be timed to explode at a specific altitude, where-
upon anything within around 200 metres of the detonation risked
significant structural damage.
Given the sheer size of the capital’s air defences, the system required
large numbers of personnel to operate the guns and searchlights.
Though there was a core of trained cadres from the Luftwaffe, and
some ancillary units – such as Italians and Soviet POWs – drafted in
from elsewhere, many were so-called
Luftwaffenhelfer
or
Flakhelfer
–
‘flak helpers’ – fifteen- to sixteen-year-old boys, often plucked straight
out of school and thrust into the front line of the air war. One of
their number, Hans-Detlef Heller, described the composition of an
average battery crew:
A gun detachment consisted of nine men: the gun commander and
three layers, who aimed the gun and set the fuses in the shells; two
soldiers to load and fire the weapon; and four people who brought up
the ammunition. The layers were
Luftwaffenhelfer
. The loading and firing
of the gun was done by proper soldiers. And the job of carrying the
shells up from the bunker was done by Russian POWs.19
These distinctions became increasingly elastic, especially as the war
progressed, and by its later stages many a flak gun was being operated
almost exclusively by young
Luftwaffenhelfer
and POWs. Training for the
crews was rather perfunctory, consisting of little more than a couple of
weeks practising on site with the battery that they would later serve.
One of those called up to a flak battery recalled his first day on the job:
‘Since 8 o’clock this morning’, he wrote in his diary,
I am a
Luftwaffenhelfer
. . . a loader in battery No. 1, Flak Tower section 123 . . . We are all fifteen or sixteen years old, only the platoon leader,
Corporal Ullrich, is an experienced artilleryman . . . He takes photos
of us for our passes. In the afternoon the battery commander, Lieutenant
Küttner, addresses us . . . [and] we receive our uniforms from the quar-
termaster . . . In the evening, we swear an oath to the Führer, Adolf
Hitler and to Greater Germany. The swastika flutters in the breeze, as
we gaze to the east and swear loyalty until death.20
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313
Such young men would form the backbone of the capital’s defences
against air attack.
Beyond this offensive capacity, however, most of the emergency public
building work begun in the autumn of 1940 had been defensive in nature,
consisting of protective bunkers and shelters for the civilian population.
The plans, which were contained in the so-called
Sofortprogramm
issued
by Hitler on 10 October 1940, had been rather vague, stating merely
that ‘protection measures’ were to be undertaken in those residential
areas with insufficient provision of shelters, and that ongoing public
works projects, such as road-building, were to be exploited for the
creation of secure underground installations.21 However, in private meet-
ings and briefings over that autumn, the sheer enormity of Hitler’s
vision became clear. In Berlin alone, he declared, between 1,000 and
2,000 bunkers were to be built, each one capable of housing a minimum
of 100 civilians. In addition, further bunkers were to be constructed for
the use of the government’s ‘essential’ personnel, as well as for schools,
museums and administrative buildings. Bunkers were also to be
constructed for the capital’s hospitals, main railway stations, diplomatic
buildings and large industrial concerns. Prominent hotels such as the
Adlon and the Kaiserhof were to follow suit.
The
Sofortprogramm
lacked nothing in ambition. It identified some
92 cities and towns as potential targets and aimed to protect over
35 million civilians in more than 6,000 bunkers. In total, it was esti-
mated that the programme would consume 200 million cubic metres
of reinforced concrete, a figure that would correspond to around
twenty years’ normal supply to the German construction industry.22
It would become the largest public works project in history.
The types of bunkers and shelters constructed under the
Sofortprogramm
spanned the spectrum. In Berlin, however, because of
the sandy soil and the prohibitive cost of excavation, the majority
of the bunkers built were
Hochbunker
, built above ground level, rather
than below it. The ‘Railway Bunker’ close to the Friedrichstrasse Station
in central Berlin was typical of this sort; standing over 18 metres tall
with small windows set in bare concrete, it was faintly reminiscent of
a Mesopotamian ziggurat. Its five storeys were divided into more
than a hundred rooms and were designed to offer shelter for up to
2,500 civilians, although the number using it in the later years of the
war would be significantly greater.
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berlin at war
To accommodate Hitler’s vision there were also a number of short
cuts that could be taken. As in wartime London and Moscow, the plat-
forms of the underground system provided a ready shelter for many
Berliners. Yet in addition, a number of air raid shelters were also built
into the network of tunnels, voids and shafts that are integral to under-
ground and subway stations. The best example of this type of shelter
– preserved to this day as a museum – is that at Gesundbrunnen
U-Bahn Station to the north of the city. Accessed via the platform or
through a door in the station concourse, the shelter is a ramshackle
warren of different-sized rooms, with interconnecting stairwells and
passageways. Due to its rather improvised construction, and the fact
that it did not have the requisite thickness of concrete in the roof, the
shelter could not technically be called a bunker, but its forty or so
rooms gave protection for around 1,500 Berliners.23
Some Nazi engineers were more imaginative still. The
Achsenkreuz
tunnel network constructed beneath the Tiergarten as part of Speer’s
‘Germania’ project provided a ready shelter for thousands of Berliners.
Many more found refuge in the city’s gasometers, which were
converted by the addition of reinforced walls, a three-metre thick
concrete roof, ventilation equipment and an independent generator.
Each one could safely house six thousand civilians spread across six
floors.
The ambitious plans of the
Sofortprogramm
inevitably fell victim to
the icy blast of reality. When the more pressing military need of the
construction of the Atlantic Wall laid claim to Germany’s finite supply
of concrete, the number of bunkers initially foreseen for Berlin was
halved to one thousand; of these, just under half were actually
constructed.24 As a result of such cuts, the official provision of space
in purpose-built bunkers for civilians in Berlin never exceeded a total
of 60,000 spaces, corresponding to only a tiny percentage of the popu-
lation.25 It would be easy to imagine, therefore, that for the majority
of Berliners the
Sofortprogramm
was rather a dead letter. But this was
not the case.
While it is true that the majority of Berliners endured the most
intensive period of Allied bombing from the ‘comfort’ of their own
cellars, it would be wrong to assume that the city’s purpose-built
bunkers were only used by a minuscule minority. For one thing, the
stated capacities of bunkers were generally ignored – especially as
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315
the air war intensified – and many of them were found to accom-
modate up to four or five times their designated capacity. Moreover,
many public bunkers and shelters were erected around the city centre,
to be used by those passing through the capital or working nearby. A
stay in a
Sofortprogramm
bunker, therefore, even if only for a few hours, was an experience that very many Berliners would have endured.
The bunkers were well equipped. Of necessity, they were fitted
with gas-proof doors, not only as protection against chemical attack,
but also because of the concern that other noxious gases and smoke
could be drawn into the shelter during an air raid. In addition, bunkers
required sophisticated ventilation systems with their own independent
power supply, as well as hand-operated air pumps. Those built into
the underground train system, meanwhile, often had vents that would
utilise the air pressure from the trains passing below to circulate fresh
air around the site. An easy method of checking air quality in the
bunkers was by using three small ‘tea lights’ – known as ‘Hindenburg
lights’ – which would be lit and placed at head height, waist height
and floor level. If the uppermost candle went out, it was a signal to
those in the room to man the air pumps.
Beyond such necessities, bunkers tended to be rather Spartan.
Peculiarly, all bunkers – even those that were purpose-built – were
divided up into small rooms. In this way, it was thought, outbreaks
of panic could be contained during a raid, as each ‘compartment’
would contain someone able to keep their fellows calm. There were
few creature comforts. The rooms were fitted out with simple wooden
benches, perhaps some bunks for children, and the odd slogan painted
onto the bare concrete walls reminding Berliners to obey the rules.
Electric lighting was usually provided, and when it failed candles, tea
lights and the liberal use of phosphorescent paint ensured that people
could find their way about. In some locations, entire walls would be
painted in this way, and it was said that one could even read a news-
paper in the eerie half-light.
Medical and sanitary facilities were basic. Most larger bunkers had
toilets and those that did not have a mains water connection could be
supplied with ‘turf toilets’, in which a ‘flush’ of peat would absorb
odours and maintain some semblance of hygiene. Medical rooms were
also common in larger bunkers, usually consisting of little more than
a couple of drop-down bunks, a medicine cabinet and a resident nurse.
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berlin at war
A few bunkers had more elaborate healthcare provision, especially
those attached to Berlin’s hospitals, or the seventy or so ‘mother-and-
child’ bunkers that were specifically reserved for those with infants
and small children.
Initially, access to the bunkers was controlled by the distribution of