Berlin at War (66 page)

passes to the most deserving cases, such as those without adequate

shelter in their own cellars. In time – and especially with the renewed

RAF attacks from 1943 – such restrictions were ignored, but some regu-

lations were still applied. Foreign labourers, prisoners of war and Jews

were not generally permitted to enter the bunkers and the presence

of service-age men was often frowned upon, as it was popularly consid-

ered that they should be out fighting the enemy, rather than huddling

among the women and children.26 However, the degree to which such

selections could be effectively carried out – with the sirens wailing

and a throng of civilians all pressing for entry – is open to question.

In any case, there were often ways around the checks. Frenchman

Marcel Elola perfected the art of gaining entry into Berlin bunkers

simply by looking for a woman struggling with a couple of children,

whom he would then assist. With a child on his hip, or in his arms,

and a German housewife at his shoulder, he was rarely questioned.27

Most of his fellows, meanwhile, would hope to get into one of the

U-Bahn stations, where one might at least find a secure spot on a plat-

form or a stairway on which to sit out the raids. Many foreigners in

the capital did not even have that luxury. Those who were considered

racially ‘undesirable’, such as Soviet POWs and Poles, had to make

do with simple slit trenches, dug in whatever patch of open ground

they could get access to.

The majority of Berliners simply made for their cellars. They were

all well drilled. Though they had only faced minimal bombing since 1941,

everybody in a block had a task to fulfil and the cellars were often very

well equipped, in sharp contrast to the often rather makeshift provisions

of the earlier period of the war. Though still a child, Lore Kastler had

already been taught first aid, how to use a gas mask and how to extin-

guish incendiaries. The shelter beneath her parents’ home in Pankow

was similarly well prepared:

the ceiling was strengthened with planed tree branches. There were

benches, chairs, a covered billiard table for the bags and cases. There was

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317

shelving with provisions and bottles of water, and a large metal bath tub

full of shimmering water. Furthermore, there was a bucket of sand,

gloves, towels, blankets, candles, matches, bandages, gas masks, steel

helmets and torches with batteries. Outside on the fence, there was a

sign ‘Air Raid Shelter’.28

So, when the bombers returned to Berlin in the early months of

1943, the city could rightly claim not only to be the best defended

capital of the belligerent nations, but also to have made the most

comprehensive provision for the protection of its citizens. It remained

to be seen how well those defences would stand up to the renewed

attentions of the RAF.

In the event, after the shock of the raid on 1 March, the air war once

again settled down into something like the routine of the earlier

phase of the conflict. There was the novelty of nuisance raiding by

RAF Mosquitoes, whereby a couple of speedy fighter-bombers would

either select a specific target or would attack at random, in the process

causing panic on the ground and sending thousands of Berliners scram-

bling for shelter, but beyond that Berlin saw only a couple of major

raids that spring and summer.

For all the apparent calm, however, there were reasons for disquiet.

Most importantly, it would not have escaped the attention of some

Berliners that the numbers of aircraft involved in the early raids of

1943 far exceeded those that had been seen in the opening phase of

the war. Whereas previously Berlin had been attacked by barely a

couple of dozen aircraft at the most, now RAF forces over the city

numbered well into the hundreds. Moreover, the advent of the remark-

able Avro Lancaster heavy bomber provided a marked increase in both

the range and the capacity available to RAF crews. Some Berliners

must have feared that it was only a matter of time before the capital

would be exposed to a truly catastrophic raid.

Events further west that summer would have done little to calm

Berlin nerves. In late July 1943, Hamburg was hit by a series of

concentrated day and night raids, while German defences were

paralysed by the first operational use of ‘Window’ radar jamming.

With ambient temperatures already high due to a spell of fine, dry

weather, and the city’s narrow streets of wooden buildings bearing

318

berlin at war

the brunt of the bombing, the resulting firestorm tore through the

city, consuming everything in its path. In the aftermath, about

half of Hamburg was laid waste with more than 40,000 civilians

killed.29

The shock in Germany was almost palpable. As an SD mood report

noted glumly: ‘the fact that one city after the next can be attacked

and razed to the ground weighs like a nightmare on the people and

makes a considerable contribution to a general feeling of insecurity

and helplessness’.30 Such sentiments were made all the more imme-

diate for Berliners by the realisation that they were a certain target

for a similar attack. Hans-Georg von Studnitz summed up the feeling

of looming inevitability:

Hamburg was heavily bombed the night before last and again last night.

Twenty-four hours previously Hanover was attacked in broad daylight.

This morning a hundred and twenty four-engined American bombers

were flying on Berlin, but later turned away to Magdeburg . . . we are

at the mercy of our enemies.31

The sense of foreboding was only heightened when Hamburg’s

thousands of evacuees and refugees were sent, via Berlin, to the

comparative safety of the east. On the way, they inevitably shared

their horror stories with anyone who would listen. Ursula von Kardorff

noted the stories then doing the rounds in the capital: ‘entire districts

of Hamburg are said to have been engulfed in a sea of flames’, she

wrote, ‘people stuck in melting asphalt, asphyxiated by the firestorm’.32

She also noted the paranoia that often resulted. A nurse on the ward

where she was recuperating after an operation kept running up to the

hospital’s roof, from where she claimed to be able to see the dim

orange glow of Hamburg burning in the distance. Each time she

returned, she would mention darkly that the hospital’s cellar was hardly

equipped to serve as a shelter.33

The official reaction also betrayed a sense of fear. An immediate

evacuation was ordered of all the capital’s most vulnerable inhabitants:

children under fourteen and those women not employed in war-related

work. Even Goebbels was brutally honest in his assessment of the

situation, writing in his diary on 1 August 1943:

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319

As a result of the experiences of Hamburg, a whole host of decisive

measures must be taken in Berlin. . . . The population is requested to

dig protective trenches, new orders are being published in the press

regarding civil air raid protection, the evacuation has already been set

in train. It is clear that these measures will cause tremendous nervous -

ness in the capital, but there’s nothing we can do. We must take these

necessary steps, regardless of the popular mood.34

The result – temporarily, at least, was chaos. Not only were the

railheads jammed with traumatised refugees from Hamburg, but their

numbers were swollen by Berliners desperate to get out of the city

before the bombers returned. Helmuth James von Moltke described

the situation in Berlin in a letter to his wife:

I have come back to a madhouse. . . . Everything is in a process of total

dissolution . . . Yesterday morning Dr Goebbels favoured his subjects with

[a] leaflet, which expresses sheer panic. Not a word of confidence, of

comfort, no call for calm and composure . . . no intimation that the

authorities have made arrangements to protect the population and to

provide for those who have suffered. Nothing but fear and panic.35

The Hamburg Raid had come at the end of a catastrophic month

for Germany, in which defeat in the Battle of Kursk on the Eastern

Front had coincided with the collapse of Italy, her closest ally, and the

resignation of Mussolini. Unsurprisingly, therefore, SD reports that

summer confirm the profound damage done to German confidence:

The air raid on Hamburg is generally regarded as a catastrophe, far

exceeding previous attacks in western Germany in its harshness and

extent, [and] in combination with the sudden evacuation of women

and children from Berlin . . . has strengthened the feeling of heading

towards an annihilation, which only a section of the population will

be able to avoid.

In response, some called for revenge attacks, by the Luftwaffe or

via the much-rumoured ‘secret weapons’ that were thought to signify

a restoration of German fortunes. Others concluded that the evacu-

ation measures amounted to an ‘official admission of powerlessness

320

berlin at war

against air attack’. Many, it seems, laid the blame directly on the Nazi

regime, which they accused of ‘negligence’, ‘bragging’ and ‘fobbing

the people off with promises’.36

A few managed to resist the ensuing hysteria. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich

heard the broadcast ordering the evacuation early one morning that

August:

a hoarse voice rattles out . . . ‘Men and Women of Berlin! . . . The

enemy is ruthlessly continuing his aerial terror against the German

civilian population. It is urgently desired, and is in the interest of every

individual who is not obligated for professional or other reasons to stay

in Berlin – women, children, pensioners, and those who have retired

from active life – that such persons move to regions less subject to air

attack.

Still groggy with sleep, Andreas-Friedrich asked her partner, Andrik,

if he had heard it too. He had. ‘I’ll stay here’, she declared firmly. ‘So

will I’, Andrik replied, rolling over with a yawn.37

Dieter Borkowski, meanwhile, saw it all as a great adventure. ‘[The

evacuation] doesn’t affect me’, he wrote in his diary. ‘As I am almost

15, I count as a grown-up.’ He was keen to stay in Berlin. ‘Mother will

be happy’, he added, ‘as at least she will have one of us at home. After

all, soon I’ll be a real man and can look after her during the raids. . . .

This “air war” seems to be getting exciting.’38

It certainly was. It took a couple of months for the feared attacks to

materialise – that autumn saw only nuisance raiding by small numbers

of Mosquitoes and a couple of unsuccessful larger-scale raids – but by

November the RAF had returned. In fact, something rather audacious

was in store. Arthur Harris, the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber

Command, was planning something that had never been attempted

before: to bomb an opponent into submission through the use of air

power alone. Mindful of the RAF’s improved capacity, and its various

tactical and technological advantages that had been in evidence over

Hamburg and elsewhere that year, Harris planned a knockout blow on

the German capital – to cause such chaos and destruction that the Nazi

regime itself would collapse. As he explained in a letter to Winston

Churchill that November: ‘We can wreck Berlin from end to end. It will

cost us 400–500 aircraft. It will cost Germany the war.’39

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321

The RAF offensive began on the night of 18 November 1943, when

over four hundred Lancasters launched a largely ineffectual raid on

the capital, hampered by poor visibility. Four nights later, however,

on the 22nd, they returned. This time, more than 750 planes hit Berlin,

concentrating their attacks on the western districts of the city from

the Tiergarten and Charlottenburg out to Spandau. The following

night, they were back again; then again three nights later, when the

north-western suburbs of Reinickendorf, Siemensstadt and Tegel

were especially badly hit.

The ‘Battle for Berlin’ had begun. Within just over a week, the

German capital had been subjected to four major RAF raids, each one

of which was larger, more concentrated and more deadly than anything

the city had experienced before. In that week alone, about half a

million Berliners were left homeless and nearly 10,000 were injured.

The fact that only 3,758 were killed was testament to the extent and

quality of the city’s civilian air defences.40

Eyewitnesses were astonished by the sheer extent of the destruction

wrought in the German capital. Many recalled the west of the city as

a ‘sea of flames’, with entire streets ceasing to exist. Barbara Wenzel

described the damage in a letter to her brother:

You cannot imagine the pile of rubble that is Berlin! Between the Zoo,

Wittenbergplatz, Lützowufer, Einemstrasse there is hardly a habitable

house still standing. The diplomatic quarter is all burnt out; Hansaviertel

and Moabit are in ruins, and it’s the same in Alexanderplatz, and from