Authors: Roger Moorhouse
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
reaping the whirlwind
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
reaping the whirlwind
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