Authors: Roger Moorhouse
honk”’.9
A few saw the legislation as a business opportunity. For a fee, entre-
preneurs and small businessmen offered advice on how best to meet
the new requirements. Sales of kerosene lamps, thick card and blackout
curtains multiplied, and some who had previously struggled to make
a living selling items such as roll-shutters suddenly saw demand hugely
outstrip supply. Big business was not slow to get in on the act either.
The German chemical giant BASF, for instance, developed an additive
called Lumogen, which would lend luminescence to almost any colour
of paint, as well as to dyes, polishes and waxes. One report enthused:
‘He who cleans his shoes with Lumogen and crosses the street in the
dark, will see them all lit up.’10
Some ordinary Berliners received the blackout with similar enthu-
siasm and a few commentators were even moved to lyrical outbursts
by the sudden darkness that descended on a previously brightly lit and
colourful metropolis. The writer Carl Haensel may have set the mood
with a newspaper article in which he described the blacked-out capital
in the most romantic tones – from the ‘Morse-code’ of the street
markings to encounters with other pedestrians ‘like ships passing in
the night’. Berlin, he rhapsodised, was like a ‘city of dreams’ bathed
in a soft half-light that liberated the imagination. He claimed that he
had no desire to return to the garish brightness of the ‘old world’.11
Another Berliner recalled in her diary how brightly the stars seemed
to shine over the city. ‘We see stars over Berlin for the first time’, she
wrote, ‘not paling behind gaudy electric signs, but sparkling with clear
solemnity. The moon casts a milky gleam over the roofs of the town.
Not a spark of electric light falls upon the streets.’12
Most other observers eschewed such purple prose, but were no less
enthusiastic. One eyewitness recalled the party mood that descended
on the city in the early weeks of the blackout, with sightseers crowding
the city centre:
a deadly necessity
37
The streets, which otherwise would be quiet so late at night, were over-
flowing with a happy, excited crowd keen to experience the blackout.
This unusual darkness was the cause of great amusement and some
incidence of violence. One heard giggling, curses and laughter. The
huge buses, with their blue-painted windows, rocked along the narrow
gorge of the Friedrichstrasse like enormous sea-monsters.13
Yet, whether they liked it or not, Berliners had little choice but to
comply with the order. To help them, the government produced an
official booklet in 1939, entitled
Verdunkelung – Aber wie?
, ‘Black out –
But how?’, which contained a host of tips, suggestions and sketches
showing how the order might best be implemented. ‘Nobody’, it
reminded its readers,
should say that the chink of light escaping from his dimly lit room is
not dangerous, or that it doesn’t matter if the blackout measures leave
a little gap, through which a tiny shaft of light can shine. If many
thought that way, then the lights would be clearly visible from high-
flying aircraft, and pilots would know for sure that they were over a
poorly blacked-out city.14
Propaganda posters also reminded Berliners to be on their guard.
Perhaps the best known was produced in 1940. Above the silhouette
of a person standing in an undarkened doorway, an RAF bomber
appears to dive out of the clouds, with a grotesque skeleton riding
atop its fuselage, holding a bomb which it is about to hurl down onto
the house below. It bore the chilling reminder: ‘The enemy sees your
light – black out!’
For those who still contrived to forget their duty, air raid wardens
were always on hand to remind them, patrolling the streets and bellowing
‘Lights Out!’ at those who contravened the blackout order. Wardens –
who were usually Party members – also had the power to inspect all
blackout measures in any property within their jurisdiction. Repeat
offenders were publicly humiliated. As an initial punishment, wardens
affixed a placard to the offending property bearing the words ‘This
House Is Poorly Blacked Out’, reminding the building’s inhabitants that
compliance was a communal responsibility and warning that they could
endanger the entire district. The placard would only be removed when
38
berlin at war
all apartments, the stairwell and the rear of the building were satis-
factorily blacked out.15
Subsequent transgressions might earn the offenders a visit from the
authorities, or a personal lecture from the local air raid warden. In
time, a fine would be levied by the authorities, specifying the date
and time of the offence, and even the particular window that was
insufficiently blacked out. The standard fine was 10 Reichsmarks, which
was to be paid within a week. The impecunious, however, could opt
instead for a two-day stay in a police cell.16 In extreme cases, offenders
were liable to have their electricity supply cut off for eight days.17 The
most persistent among them could even earn themselves a spell in a
concentration camp.
For many, however, the greatest risk from the blackout did not come
from the threat of prosecution. A spate of accidents in that first autumn
of the war swiftly highlighted the dangers involved in the sudden
switch to darkness. In September 1939, Berlin police reports concluded
that nine out of ten accidents involving trains had been directly caused
by the blackout.18 A serious rail crash in Berlin that autumn was also
attributed to the new legislation. On the evening of 8 October, an
intercity train overran a set of signals before ploughing into the back
of a commuter service near the Gesundbrunnen Station in the north of
the capital. In the mêlée that followed, the wreckage caught fire and
twenty-four passengers were killed. The accident was initially attrib-
uted to the driver’s inattention, combined with the new and difficult
conditions of the blackout. However, when the driver was subse-
quently cleared of negligence, only one cause remained.19
Berlin’s roads were not much safer. Driving in such conditions was
fraught with danger. Cars crawled along the street, picking their way
through the darkness, while other vehicles appeared as scarcely visible
hulks with only pinpricks of light emanating from their darkened
headlights. In open squares, such as Wilhelmsplatz or Potsdamer Platz,
it was not unusual for drivers to become completely disorientated as
they lost sight of the rooftops and trees that might mark the approx-
imate direction of the road. In consequence, though most private
traffic had disappeared from the streets with the outbreak of war, due
to the strict rationing of petrol, road accidents rose by 82 per cent in
Berlin between August and November 1939. And although an increase
in alcohol consumption was considered to be a contributory factor in
a deadly necessity
39
that rise, the blackout was deemed to be the dominant cause. In
October, 28 out of 33 serious traffic accidents were attributed to the
new legislation; the following month, it was found to have been respon-
sible for 12 out of 15 road deaths.20
Curiously, the high rate of deaths did not fall, as the city grew used
to the new measures. Rather, it continued to climb, reaching new heights
in winter, when the public’s exposure to the enforced darkness was
greatest. In January 1940, for instance, 43 of the 162 accidental deaths
registered in Berlin were attributed to the blackout;21 in December that
year, the rate was 75 out of 221.22
Aside from the evident dangers on the city’s streets and railways,
the blackout was implicated as a factor in a number of crimes. Police
files suggested that Berlin’s criminals saw the darkness as an opportun -
ity rather than a nuisance. Most prominently, a spate of widely publi-
cised murder cases in the autumn of 1939 caused alarm and fascination
in equal measure. One of them concerned a man who had apparently
murdered his wife in a fit of rage. To dispose of the evidence, he
bundled the body into a packing case, which he perched on the back
of his bicycle. Under cover of the blackout, he then rode across the
city to dispose of the corpse in the Havel River.23
The second case was more gruesome. In early October 1939, a
dismembered female body was discovered in three locations across
the city. The arms and legs were found in the stairwells of apartments
on Elsässerstrasse and Auguststrasse, while the torso – minus its head,
breasts and internal organs, which were never found – was discovered
at the Circus Busch on Monbijouplatz. It later transpired that the
victim; one Käthe Kessler, an eighteen-year-old girl from Breslau, had
been murdered in a crime of passion. The murderer – who had dismem-
bered the body with a pocket knife and disposed of the head by baking
it in his oven – confessed to two similar murders under interrogation
and was duly sentenced to death. His attempt to conceal his victims’
identities, by scattering their remains across the capital, had certainly
been aided by the blackout.24
The incidence of mugging, robbery and crimes against property also
showed a marked increase in that first winter of the war.25 In late
December 1939, for instance, three Czechs – named Zikmund, Oplatek
and Zalenka – were sentenced to death for a spree of crimes in the
German capital. They had stolen from a shop window in Tempelhof
40
berlin at war
and snatched a handbag from a passer-by in Leipziger Platz. In both
instances, the news report stated, they had ‘exploited the blackout’ in
carrying out their crimes.26 The following month, another mugger, Karl
Ratzke, was executed for committing a street robbery under cover of
darkness. He had escaped with a mere 18 Reichsmarks.27
The blackout certainly came as a boon for Berlin’s prostitutes. Not
only could they escape arrest easier, the enterprising among them could
even turn the new legislation to their advantage. As one observer recalled:
‘certain girls made easy pickups . . . even the old girls, the wrinkled
ones, stood on street corners with their ugly features safely hidden in
the darkness and shone their flashlights on their legs in invitation’.28 The
downside was that women were also more liable to be raped than before.
Indeed, in the first year of the war, fully thirty-five rapes would be
reported in the capital, a dramatic increase on the previous year’s figure.29
In consequence, the enthusiasm and bravado shown by some
Berliners in the first few weeks of the blackout soon dissipated, and
most began to feel uneasy about travelling through their city at night.
Women, especially, tended to stay at home, but the unease was
universal. As one commentator noted:
walking home in the dark is not only adventurous but distinctly
uncomfortable . . . Many Berliners are saying to themselves, ‘I don’t
want to come home in the dark’ and have given up going out at night
for this reason . . . It is no fun to walk down the Friedrichstrasse or
Unter den Linden in darkness so complete you scarcely see your hand
before your face.30
One of the most common and peculiar effects of the blackout was
that it made people whisper and speak in hushed tones. The silence
that resulted was all-pervading, seemingly deepened by the accom-
panying darkness. It could be profoundly unnerving. ‘At night’, an
American visitor reported,
the silence deepens. To drive in the main streets in the blackout is like
driving through a dark country lane. The buildings are completely
blotted out and no sound issues from the invisible doors and windows.
Groping along the tunnel-like streets you almost never hear a voice.
Other gropers are just shadows and footsteps.31
a deadly necessity
41
According to some commentators, there was another, rather more
sinister, consequence of the blackout. One socialist critic, for instance,
complained that the darkness had encouraged ‘the unmistakeable symp-
toms of a collapse in moral standards’ in the city, and that drinking
and ‘pleasure-seeking’ had increased exponentially once the lights had
been turned off.
From all parts of the city, it is reported that bars . . . of all types are
suddenly being placed under exceptional pressure. In this way, the face of
the city centre is being changed. Everybody remarks with astonishment,
that they have never in their lives seen so many drunk people on the
streets as at this difficult time.32
An American commentator agreed, concluding that the blackout
represented the suspension of civilised life in the capital. ‘Civilisation’,
he wrote, ‘has turned back a century or more and Edison’s electric
lamp may just as well be the foolish pipe-dream it was considered to
be fifty years ago.’33
Though such prognostications of doom were doubtless exagger-
ated, it should come as no surprise that the capital felt a sense of