Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945

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In late August 2007, all hell broke loose. The Canadian War Museum announced that, in response to pressure from veterans’ groups, it was going to alter a plaque describing actions of Bomber Command during the Second World War. The plaque, drafted by Museum officials, had read:

The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command’s aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war.

In altering the plaque, the Museum did what it swore it would never do: rewrite history in the face of public pressure. And, in doing so, it unleashed a fury of controversy. Some observers condemned the decision as craven, revisionist, and even Orwellian. Others responded with equal force, accusing the Museum’s critics of arrogance, insensitivity to the veterans, and a lack of patriotism. Hate mail filled inboxes, and the bloggers were active for weeks. The redrafted text, three times as long as the original, satisfied the veterans and their supporters, but did so at the expense of obscuring the history that the original was meant to explain.

These events provoked such strong feelings because the history of Bomber Command is Canadian history. During the Second World War, forty thousand Canadians served in Bomber Command, making this country by far the second-largest contributor to the British bombing campaign. One-quarter of these Canadians, ten thousand young men, lost their lives. Throughout the war, Canadians permeated the Royal Air Force (RAF). They served as individual volunteers in RAF squadrons, from 1940 as distinct Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) squadrons serving in the RAF’s five operational groups, and from 1943 as a distinct operational group (6 Group) made up solely of RCAF squadrons and paid for by the Canadian government. By the end of the war, Canadians comprised some 25 percent of Bomber Command’s operational aircrew. While Canadians were also found in other parts of the RAF, 80 percent of the fifty thousand RCAF graduates who served overseas were in Bomber Command.

The controversy over the Canadian War Museum’s decision – and, more importantly, the history behind it – is a window into questions that matter today. How can we judge the role that bombing played in the Allied victory? What role does morality play in the execution and evaluation of war? Does it make sense to apply today’s moral standards to decisions taken in wartime? Joseph Goebbels famously said that “we all end up as the greatest heroes or the greatest war criminals.” History, in other words, is written by the winners. How can we ensure, for this generation and subsequent ones, that Goebbels is not proved right retrospectively?

The debate on the bombing war has carried on, with pauses, for decades, and it will continue. All authors would like to believe that their argument will be the last word on their topic of choice, but they know – or should know – that it won’t be. As that debate rolls on, it is important to bear in mind that an evaluation of the effects and the morality of the Canadian, British, and American bombing war can cast no aspersions on the bravery or sincerity of the young men who chose to serve in Bomber Command, still less on the memory of ten thousand Canadians who died over Europe. It is to their bravery and that of tens of thousands of others in the army and the navy that we owe our ability to debate these issues free from intellectual and political tyranny.

1889
Hitler is born Nietzsche goes mad

1918
Hitler weeps in an uncontrollable rage The Royal Air Force is formed

1943

1.The day Hamburg died

July 27, 1943

At 4:30 p.m., a young boy, Ernst-Günther Haberland, was playing in a bleak courtyard. His mother came to fetch him; they were going to the air-raid shelter early. She collected the family’s most important documents, dressed herself and her son in as many clothes as they could wear, and put a rucksack on his back. Her husband was at work and she could not get word to him. They left their flat at Götenstrasse, 55 at 5 p.m. and headed to the Berliner Tor (the Berlin Gate), just a few blocks north.

Their neighbourhood was Hammerbrook, a working-class district about two miles southeast of the city centre. The architecture was characteristic of turn-of-the-century Germany. Most buildings were blocks of four- or five-storey houses. The apartments at the front of these houses were populated by the relatively affluent. The flats at the back were dark and small. They housed the poor. Some eighteen families lived in each house. Between 1928 and 1932, unemployment in the neighbourhood had more than quadrupled.

Ernst-Günther and his mother needed to get to the air-raid shelter at the Berliner Tor. The building, called a Winkel (tower shelter), had been built in 1939. It was a multi-storey bunker with curved outer walls and a peaked, oval roof. Many air-raid shelters were made of solid concrete and looked like massive rectangle blocks, but the one at Berliner Tor was covered in brick. It was almost attractive. There were two large main doors made of steel, with steps leading up to them. From outside, it looked like a windmill without the sails. The outer walls were just over three feet thick at the base (and about half that near the apex); the roof was nine feet thick. Inside, the shelter’s services – heating and electricity, toilets, running drinking water, and ventilation – were all contained in a central column-like structure. Between the column and the outer walls were rows of wide, backless benches just a few feet apart. A spiral staircase led down to a deep basement and the floors below. In all, some six hundred people could fit into the bunker, but it was always far too full.

Ernst-Günther and his mother took their places. The majority of people there were women, children, and old men. Each shelter had an air-raid warden, often Wehrmacht soldiers, members of the SS, or Hitler Youth who had sought safety from the bombs. Most of the other young men were away fighting at the front. Soon, all the benches were taken and the aisles were also full of people standing. Sometime after 8 p.m., there were around one thousand people inside and the massive steel door was closed and sealed. Latecomers hoping to enter were left standing on the steps.
Inside, it was horribly uncomfortable. People had barely any room to move. They made stilted conversation. The atmosphere was hot and stale, and everyone was overdressed. They were allowed only one bag in the shelter, so they wore layers of garments. Those who had not drunk enough liquid soon felt desperately thirsty; those who had drunk too much were in need of the toilet. No one dared give up their seat, knowing it would not be there when they returned.

As Ernst-Günther and his mother made their way to the bunker, a thirteen-year-old girl, Elfriede Bock, was at home with her family. Like Ernst-Günther, Elfriede was a native of Hammerbrook. She was raised by a harsh mother and a distant father who made it clear to her that he had wanted a son. “I had no idea,” she said sixty years later, “that women could have any value.” The Nazis told her they could, and did: as mothers, they were Germany’s future.

Elfriede’s father came home at 5 p.m., earlier than expected. He ordered his wife and daughter to pack their things and get ready to go to the shelter. Elfriede’s mother looked startled, and in her strong Hamburg accent she said, “Why? It sounds like we will never come back to this apartment again.” Elfriede’s father barked, “Just do what I say and be quick about it.”

Elfriede and her mother left the apartment at 8 p.m., stepped out onto the Süderstrasse, turned right toward the Berliner Tor, and followed the path taken by Ernst-Günther and his mother a few hours earlier. Elfriede was lightly clothed and carried a cardigan. Everything else was in her suitcase in the basement of the house. At Heidenkampsweg, the street showed the scars of stray bombs that had fallen two nights earlier. City workers were clearing the sidewalks and climbing ladders to inspect the roofs for damage. The air was dusty, hot, and stifling.

Outside the shelter, they met Elfriede’s friend Kuttl and went in together. Elfriede had hoped they could secure a good spot, but the shelter was already full, and all of the benches were taken. People were pushing past them looking for a place to sit. Elfriede heard a group of women nearby frantically chatting. They spoke of a raid on Hamburg two days earlier, of a thousand planes over the city, fifteen hundred bodies, and tens of thousands fleeing the city. Elfriede viewed such reports as nonsense, though she wondered about the fifteen hundred bodies. She thought, It must have been horrible to be trapped in a cellar for three hours. But so many airplanes? Almost a thousand? Impossible. The Allies couldn’t have so many. No fear! “Men, hold tight, the Führer will get you out!” (Jungs, haltet aus, der Führer haut euch raus!) That’s the message he sent to the soldiers in Stalingrad. . . . If only these women would shut ­up.

They would. At 12:41 a.m., the first alarm rang out over the city, followed by a second at 12:50 a.m. Elfriede heard the bombers fly over, seemingly toward Berlin in the southeast. The airplanes soon turned, though, and the roar grew louder. The wishful belief that the city would be spared lasted only a few seconds. The bombers turned toward southwest Hamburg.

At 8 p.m., as Elfriede was leaving her apartment for the bunker, a boy from an even poorer background, Werner Wendland, was finishing a swim with three friends in the canal. It was close to the river and a favourite spot for working-class boys from the neighbourhood. The streets were hot and dusty, and the three of them walked back laughing, shoving each other and thinking about supper. Back on his street, Stresowstrasse, Werner saw people with backpacks heading toward the bunker, pushing bicycles overloaded with belongings. He asked them what they were doing. “There will be a huge air-raid tonight,” came the response. The boys laughed it off. Until then, every large attack had been followed by a period of calm or nothing more than nuisance raids.

Werner returned home and told his parents the story. They decided to wait and see how the night would unfold. When the first air-raid warning rang out over the city, his father told Werner to go to the shelter, promising to join him afterwards. Ten minutes later, Werner, his mother, and his sister joined a neighbour and her daughter. They guessed that the Berliner Tor bunker would be full and went instead to a smaller shelter down the street. An hour later, Werner’s father had still not arrived. Following a tip given by his neighbours, Werner went to the nearby air-raid bunker. It was so full that there was no chance of pushing past the crowds to reach his father. Just then, the roar of planes above became louder, and he saw the marker flares gliding down against the night sky. Werner thought, If this gets worse, my mother and sister will need my help more than my father. He headed back to the shelter.

He had barely arrived when the first bombs exploded. The floor of the cellar heaved and then fell. The walls cracked. Dust filled the air. Water spurted out of cracked pipes. People moaned and sometimes cried out. Others prayed. Werner thought about his father.