Текст книги "Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943"

Автор книги: Keith Lowe

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Appendix I

Tables of Statistics

Appendix J

Aircraft Specifications

Appendix K

Financial Cost of the Hamburg Bombings

British and American

Aeroplanes lost

USAAF

14

@$500,000

$7,000,000

RAF

87

@$350,000

$30,000,000

Total $37,000,000

Crews lost

USAAF

13

@$120,000

$1,560,000

RAF

87

@$58,000 (approx)

$5,000,000

Total $6,560,000

Gasoline consumed

USAAF

375,000 gals

@ 23c

$86,250

RAF

3,095,000 gals

@ 23c

$711,850

Total $798,100

Bombs dropped

USAAF

998

500#G.P.

@ $94

$93,800

416

250#inc.

@ $75

$31,200

680

100#inc.

@ $50

$34,000

Bombs dropped

RAF

9478

2000#G.P. (or equiv)

@ $200

$1,895,600

Total $2,054,600

Total cost $46,412,700

[Source: ‘Cost of Destruction of Hamburg’, Statistical Control Division, Office of Management Control, 1 September 1943; Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Base, Alabama, Microfilm A1107, 1654–6]

German

Damage to public buildings

140,000,000RM

Damage to military structures

48,000,000RM

Damage to stations, post offices and telephone exchanges

19,000,000RM

Damage to major industrial plants

200,000,000RM

Damage to residential housing and smaller plants

22,643,000,000RM

Total 23,050,000,000RM

Equivalent in US dollars (1943)

$9,220,000,000

[Source: United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Hamburg Report]

Notes

The following abbreviations have been used throughout:

BBSU

British Bombing Survey Unit

BG

Bombardment Group

FZH

Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg

Hamburg Police Report

Secret Report by the Police President of Hamburg (as local Air Protection Leader) on the heavy air raids on Hamburg in July/August 1943 [Geheim. Bericht des Polizeipräsidenten in Hamburg als Örtlicher Luftschutzleiter über die schweren Grossluftangriffe auf Hamburg in Juli/August 1943]

IWM

Imperial War Museum

NSDAP

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei: (National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party)

SPD

Sozialdemokratische Partei: Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany)

USSBS

United States Strategic Bombing Survey

Introduction

1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil(London, 2003), maxim no. 146, p. 102.

2 Hans Erich Nossack, Der Untergang(Hamburg, 1981), pp. 18–19. Nietzsche’s idea of gazing into an abyss was used as a central theme in this classic account of the Hamburg firestorm.

3 For a much longer discussion of this German reaction to the war, including Stig Dagerman’s observations, see W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, trans. Anthea Bell (London, 2004).

4 According to the BBSU, Dresden suffered 1,681 acres of destruction, as compared to Berlin’s 6,427. In Hamburg, a much smaller city than Berlin, 6,200 acres were completely destroyed during the course of the war – 75 per cent of the city’s total built-up area.

5 Coventry was attacked dozens of times during the war, but the only major attack occurred on 14–15 November 1940, when 600 people were killed and 800 injured. Casualties at Hamburg were some seventy-five times greater.

6 The exception, of course, was the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 – a threat that, thankfully, never materialized. During the Second World War, however, Cuba was an American dependency; and at the time of writing, more than fifteen years since the end of the Cold War, Cuba’s ability to pose a threat to the United States has been vastly reduced.

Part One

1    City on the River

1 According to Eckart Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg(Hamburg, 2002), p. 413.

2 Major fires struck Hamburg in 1284, 1684, 1842 and 1943. See ibid., pp. 38, 170, 393–406, 545. For the Great Fire of 1842, see also Hans Brunswig, Feuersturm über Hamburg(Stuttgart, 2003), pp. 129–34.

3 While the Hanseatic League was based around western Germany and the Baltic, it also had offices in cities as far away as Bruges, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Staveren, London, Bergen and Novgorod. See Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, pp. 45–8.

4 For descriptions of these three fires, see ibid., pp. 38, 170 and 545.

5 See Anna Brenken, Hamburg:Metropole an Alster und Elbe(Hamburg, 2001), p. 24; and Klessman, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, p. 228.

2    The Anglophile City

1 Wilfred Owen, ‘Strange Meeting’. In this poem Owen describes a descent into a subconscious ‘hell’, where a forbidden empathy between the German and British enemies can at last be voiced.

2 Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich (München, 1993), vol. II, 12 August 1943.

3 See Eckard Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg(Hamburg, 2002), pp. 157–8.

4 For a fuller account of the city’s involvement in the Napoleonic Wars, see David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon(London, 2002), vol. II, pp. 133–4; vol. III, pp. 61–2, 90, 142. See also Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, pp. 312–17, 349.

5 Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, p. 414.

6 It was not only the rich who had close ties with Britain. For example, when Hamburg’s dock workers went on strike in 1896 to protest against their shocking working conditions, British-based dock workers sent 30,000 Marks to Hamburg to support them. See ibid, p. 481.

7 For conditions in the slum districts of Hamburg, and also figures on emigration to the United States, see ibid., pp. 442–50.

8 HAPAG were founded in 1847 by August Bolten, and began steam services across the Atlantic in 1856. See Anna Brenken, Hamburg: Metropole an Alster und Elbe(Hamburg, 2001), pp. 68–9.

9 Hamburg’s international airport at Fühlsbuttel became a civil airfield in July 1912. During the First World War it temporarily became the headquarters of the German Army’s Airship Division, before a more permanent station was erected at nearby Nordholz. See Basil Clarke, The History of Airships(London, 1961), pp. 56, 92.

10 The Canadians followed Britain into the war against Germany in 1914, while the United States remained neutral. For a description of Canadian fears that German Americans would attack the Canadian capital at Ottawa, see Lee Kennett, A History of Strategic Bombing(New York, 1982), p. 37.

3    City of Rebellion

1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore (Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 83.

2 For a summary of events in Hamburg during the November 1918 revolution, see the website of the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte at http://www.hamburgmuseum.de. See also Eckart Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, (Hamburg 2002), pp. 535–6.

3 Gerhard Schultze-Pfälzer, Hindenburg:Peace – War – Aftermath(London, 1931), p. 175.

4 General Sir Leslie Hollis, KCB, KBE, Random Reminiscences, typescript memoir, IWM Department of Documents, 86/47/1.

5 See Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, p. 538.

6 See Richard Bessel, Nazism and War(London, 2004), pp. 9–14. See also Robert G. L. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany 1918–1933(Cambridge, Mass., 1952).

7 See Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, p. 538.

8 By the terms of the treaty of Versailles, Hamburg was required to hand over the bulk of its merchant fleet to the Allies as war reparations, and its trading links with overseas countries were suspended. See ibid., p. 559.

4    The Rise of the Nazis

1 Hermann Okraβ, Hamburg bleibt rot(Hamburg, 1934), p. 207.

2 Ibid., p. 202. Okraβ gives a full rendition of the legend of this beer-hall battle, which took place in the Am Stadtpark pub (pp. 201–7). An English translation is available on the German Propaganda Archive website at http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/okrass.htm

3 Eckard Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg(Hamburg, 2002), p. 539.

4 In 1932 the NSDAP had 51 seats, the SPD had 46, and the KPD just 26. See ibid., p. 539.

5 Victor Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933–1941, trans. Martin Chalmers (London, 1998), p. 6 (10 March 1933).

6 While the Nazis received almost 44 per cent of the vote in the elections of March 1933, the Nazi vote in Hamburg never exceeded 39 per cent. See Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, p. 539.

7 On 1 January 1935 the NSDAP had 46,500 members in Hamburg, or 3.8 per cent of the population. Many more Hamburgers were members of the party’s sub-organizations. See the website of the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte at http://www. hamburgmuseum.de/e/htm–e/textversion/t-20jhd-1-10.html (last viewed 30 March 2005).

8 See Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, p. 587.

9 ‘Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich,’ v.23.3.1933 (RGB 1.IS.173), available at http://www.documentarchiv.de/ns.html

10 See ‘Hamburg Police Battalions during the Second World War’, by Struan Robertson, at http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035//police101.html (last visited 4 August 2006).

11 Wiebke Stammers interview, IWM Sound Archive 9089/07.

12 Ibid.For some examples of such textbooks see the German Propaganda Archive at http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ww2era.htm

13 For more on the persecuted Hamburg jazz and swing movement, see Detlev J. K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany:Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life(London, 1989), pp. 166–7, 199–201; see also Earl R. Beck, Under the Bombs: The German Home Front 1942–45(Lexington, 1986), pp. 17, 52–3.

14 This law was officially named the ‘Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour’, and was passed on 15 September 1935.

15 See Richard Bessel, Nazism and War(London, 2004), pp. 70–71.

16 Klaus Behnken (ed.), Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (SOPADE) 1934–1940(Frankfurt am Main, 1980), vol. 5, pp. 1352ff. See also Detlev J. K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life(London, 1989), p. 59.

17 In the years after political parties were banned, the Communists and the SPD tried repeatedly to establish underground movements to help the victims of persecution. They were almost invariably found out and destroyed, and many of the members were executed beside the Holstenglacis. See ‘Persecution and resistance in the National Socialist state’ on the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte website.

18 Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg, On the Other Side, trans. and ed. Ruth Evans (London, 1979), pp. 27–8.

19 Quoted by Richard Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich(Oxford, 1994), p. 189.

20 See Werner Johe, ‘Im Glanz der Macht: Hitler in Groβ-Hamburg’ in Heinrich Erdmann (ed.), Hamburg und Dresden in Dritten Reich: Bombenkrieg und Kriegsende(Hamburg, 2000), p. 15; and ‘Towards a War Economy’ on the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte website.

21 Along with Altona, Wandsbek and Harburg-Wilhelmsburg came the municipalities of Bergstedt, Billstedt, Bramfeld, Duvenstedt, Hummelsbüttel, Lemsahl-Mellingstedt, Lohbrügge, Poppenbüttel, Rahlstedt, Sasel, Steilshoop, Wellingsbüttel, Lokstedt, Cranz, Altenwerder, Preussisch-Finkenwerder, Fischbek, Frankop, Gut Moor, Kirchenwerder, Langenbek, Marmstorf, Neuenfeld, Neugraben, Neuland, Rönneburg, Sinstorf and Curslack. Conversely, Hamburg handed over several of its traditional outlying properties to LandPrussia, such as Cuxhaven, which lay sixty miles away at the mouth of the Elbe.

22 Hitler took a special interest in the construction of a new Hamburg, but his plans were never completed. See Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich(London, 1970), p. 407. Illustrations of the architect’s models can be found in Johe, ‘Im Glanz der Macht’, pp. 13–25.

23 Between 1925 and 1939 he came here no fewer than thirty-three times. In the last three years before the war he made six visits. See ibid., p. 13.

24 The Robert Leywas originally launched as a Kraft durch Freude(the Nazi leisure organization ‘Strength through Joy’) ship, but it was so constructed that it could easily be converted into a troop carrier, as it was in 1939. See ibid., pp. 15–16.

25 Speech quoted in the Hamburger Tageblatt, 14 February 1939. See also ibid., p. 23.

5    Hamburg Prepares for War

1 Bertolt Brecht, ‘To Those Born Later’, from Poems 1913–56(London, 1987).

2 See Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945:Nemesis(London, 2000), pp. 200–221. Kershaw quotes, for example, William Shirer, an American correspondent in Berlin, who wrote at the end of August 1939 that he doubted the Nazis would actually go to war ‘with a population so dead set against it’.

3 Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg, On the Other Side, trans. and ed. Ruth Evans (London, 1979), p. 27.

4 These figures and the accompanying description of air-raid precautions in Hamburg are taken from the Hamburg Police Report, UK National Archives, AIR 20/7287, p. 2.

5 Ibid., pp. 1–12.

6 Ibid., p. 99.

7 Eva Erna Coombes interview, IWM Sound Archive 16789/2.

8 Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, trans. and ed. Louis P. Lochner (London, 1948), 16 May 1943, p. 301.

9 Wolff-Mönckeberg, On the Other Side, p. 37. Despite the many warnings, there had only been seventy raids up to this point; see Hans Brunswig, Feuersturm über Hamburg(Stuttgart, 2003), p. 451.

10 For the conscription of women, restriction of vacations and longer working hours see Earl R. Beck, Under the Bombs: The German Home Front 1942–45(Lexington, 1986), pp. 40, 45; and Goebbels, Diaries, 25 January and 11 December 1942, pp. 15, 178.

11 Goebbels, Diaries, 23 April 1942, p. 131.

12 Wiebke Stammers interview, IWM Sound Archive 9089/07.

13 Ibid.

14 Else Baker interview, IWM Sound Archive 18582.

15 Hannah Kelson interview, IWM Sound Archive 15550/5.

16 Goebbels, Diaries, 17 April 1943, pp. 258–9.

17 Beck, Under the Bombs, p. 53.

18 For example, when the Americans and British defeated Rommel and turned their attention to Sicily, Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg expressed the hope that the British and Americans would hurry up and win the war: On the Other Side, p. 66.

19 Between July 1942 and July 1943 there were only fourteen raids on the city; most were merely nuisance raids performed by a handful of bombers. See Brunswig, Feuersturm, pp. 453–4.

20 Hamburg Police Report, pp. 1, 97. It is possible that the chief of police wanted to deflect any blame from himself and those acting under him but (with a few exceptions only) the air-raid protection measures in Hamburg were exemplary. See Brunswig, Feuersturm, pp. 165–86.

21 Fredy Borck, ‘Feuersturm über Rothenburgsort 1943’ in Kerstin Hof (ed.), Rothenburgsort 27/28 Juli 1943(unpublished booklet, produced by Stadtteilinitiative Hamm e.V.), p. 11. Although I have not found any British record of a mission to drop such leaflets on Hamburg, many other German accounts attest to it. Such propaganda leaflets were regularly dropped all over Germany, and it is likely that the people of Hamburg only imbued them with portentious qualities after the event.

Part Two

6    A Brief History of Bombing

1 Primo Levi, ‘Give us’, Collected Poems(London, 1988), p. 68.

2 H. G. Wells, The War in the Air, and Particularly how Mr. Bert Smallways Fared While it Lasted(Leipzig, 1909), p. 312.

3 Ibid., p. 186.

4 Gustaf Janson, ‘A Vision of the Future’, in I. F. Clarke (ed.), The Tale of the Next Great War 1871–1914:Fictions of Future Warfare and Battles Still-to-come(Liverpool, 1995), p. 279.

5 See the many examples in Clarke, Next Great War; Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain 1859–1917(Manchester, 1992); and Lee Kennett, A History of Strategic Bombing(New York, 1982).

6 See Kennett, Strategic Bombing, p. 14.

7 In 1899, at the first Hague Peace Conference, Britain’s Lord Wolseley refused to agree to a motion to ban aerial bombing because he believed it would shorten future wars and so reduce the total numbers of casualties in any conflict. Not only that, but fear of the effects of bombing would make nations hesitate about going to war in the first place. (See Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing, trans. Linda Haverty Rugg (London, 2001), 58.) These claims were repeated eight years later by American commentators, such as Major George Squier of the US Signal Corps, who claimed that once politicians realized that aircraft could bypass the battle zone altogether – that the politicians could now become the target – they would be deterred from going to war in the first place. See Major George Squier, ‘Present status of military aeronautics’ (1907), reprinted in Flight, vol. 1, no. 9 (27 February 1909), p. 304. See also Paris, Winged Warfare, p. 164.

8 B. H. Liddell Hart, Paris, or the Future War(London, 1925), pp. 45–6.

9 Quoted in Andrew Boyle, Trenchard: Man of Vision(London, 1962), p. 229.

10 Quoted in the New York Times, 14 October 1917.

11 Boyle, Trenchard(London, 1962), p. 312.

12 Quoted in Max Hastings, Bomber Command(London, 1979), p. 46.

13 Leon Daudet, La Guerre Totale(Paris, 1918). Daudet is reputed to have coined the phrase ‘total war’.

14 Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (London, 1943), p. 151.

15 Cicely Hamilton, Theodore Savage(London, 1922), p. 75.

16 Desmond Shaw, Ragnarok(London, 1926), p. 349.

17 J. F. C. Fuller, The Reformation of War(London, 1923), p. 70.

18 Douhet, Command of the Air, p. 52.

19 See Kennett, Strategic Bombing, p. 38, for a description of the air-raid scares in Ottawa and New York in 1918; and Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive(London, 1947), pp. 65–6, for the scares in 1942.

20 J. M. Spaight, Air Power and the Cities(London, 1930), p. 162.

21 Sir Malcolm Campbell, The Peril from the Air(London, 1937), pp. 54–5.

22 For the reader who is interested in how the international community has tried to restrict the use of various weapons and military practices, I strongly recommend Michael Howard (ed.), Restraints on War(Oxford, 1979). See also James Brown Scott (ed.), The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907(London, 1915).

23 For a brief description of this international conference, see Philip S. Meilinger, ‘Clipping the Bomber’s Wings: The Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Royal Air Force 1932–34’, War in History(1999), vol. 6, no. 3. See also Lindqvist, Bombing(London, 2001), pp. 116 and 140.

24 See Richard Bessel, Nazism and War(London, 2004), whose main thesis is that ‘The ideology of Nazism was an ideology of war, which regarded peace merely as a preparation for war’ (p. 1).

25 UK National Archives, AIR 41/40, Appendix 4, Roosevelt message, 3 September 1939.

26 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s speech to the House of Commons, 14 September 1939.

27 See Hastings, Bomber Command, p. 59.

28 Quoted in Robin Neillands, The Bomber War(London, 2001), p. 41.

29 See Hastings, Bomber Command, p. 64.

30 For a description of this ‘ruchloser Terrorangriff auf die Zivilbevölkerung’, see Hans Brunswig, Feuersturm über Hamburg(Stuttgart, 2003), pp. 43–6.

31 See Cajus Bekker, The Luftwaffe War Diariestrans. Frank Ziegler (New York, 1994), p. 172.

32 Hitler’s speech in the Berliner Sportpalast, 4 September 1940, quoted in Uwe Bahnsen and Kerstin von Stürmer, Die Stadt, die sterben sollte: Hamburg im Bombenkrieg, Juli 1943(Hamburg, 2003), p. 72.

33 Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939–1945(London, 1961), vol.1, p.157.

34 These statistics are taken from John Ray, The Second World War(London, 1999), p. 95; and Neillands, Bomber War, p. 44.

35 See, for example, Churchill’s speech, 15 July 1941, claiming that the people of London would certainly wish to ‘mete out to the Germans the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us’; quoted in A. C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities(London, 2006), p. 187.

7    The Grand Alliance

1 During the German Blitz on London, Sir Arthur Harris claims that he stood on the roof of the Air Ministry watching the fires and said, in an echo of this Biblical quote, ‘Well, they are sowing the wind.’ Portal also swore at this time that ‘the enemy would get the same and more of it’. See Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive(London, 1947), pp. 51–2.

2 Stanley Baldwin’s famous quote about the bomber always getting through did not account for the difficulties of navigating at night and over thick cloud, which meant that the target was often not even found, let alone bombed. When the Butt Report was published in September 1941 it showed that even when the bombers found their targets only a third managed to bomb within five miles of it. See, for example, Robin Neillands, The Bomber War(London, 2001), p. 58.

3 Professor Pat Blackett, quoted in Max Hastings, Bomber Command(London, 1979), p. 111.

4 Quoted in ibid., p. 120.

5 See Harris, Bomber Offensive, pp. 9–69.

6 Quoted in Hastings, Bomber Command, p. 135. Harris’s memoirs have the politer version – ‘tanks that ate hay and thereafter made noises like a horse’, p. 24.

7 Harris, Bomber Offensive, p. 66.

8 Quoted in Hastings, Bomber Command, p. 135.

9 Ibid, p. 135.

10 Harris, Bomber Offensive, p. 52.

11 Harris, quoted in Hastings, Bomber Command, p. 147. The figure of 60 per cent was a British estimate from reconnaissance photographs – see Neillands, The Bomber War, p. 112; German estimates directly after the attack were as high as 80 per cent – see Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, trans. and ed. Louis P. Lochner (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1948), 31 March 1942, p. 109.

12 Goebbels, Diaries, 28 April 1942, p. 142.

13 These figures are taken from Hastings, Bomber Command, p. 152.

14 Their policy as regarded the Japanese was very different. The firebombing of Tokyo in 1945 owed much to the lessons the Americans had learned from observing British area bombing, and probably resulted in more casualties than Hamburg and Dresden put together.

15 See Roger A. Freeman, The Mighty Eighth(London, 2000), p. 1.

16 Towards the end of the war the Americans themselves began to realize that their ‘pickle-barrel’ accuracy was a myth for these very reasons. See Summary Report of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (European Theatre), p. 4, UK National Archives, DSIR 23/15754 and online at http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/ETOSummary.html

17 Quoted in Hastings, Bomber Command, p. 182.

18 Quoted in Neillands, Bomber War, p. 201.

19 The German rumours are reported in Earl R. Beck, Under the Bombs: The German Home Front 1942–45(Lexington, 1986), p. 59; the actual figures are taken from Neillands, Bomber War, pp. 218–21.

20 Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg, On the Other Side, trans. and ed. Ruth Evans (London, 1979), p. 65.

21 UK National Archives, AIR 24/257.

22 UK National Archives, PREM 3/11/8.

23 UK National Archives, PREM 3/11/8.

8    The British Plan

1 Theodore W. Adorno, Minima Moralia:Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben(Frankfurt am Main, 1962), chapter 19, p. 42. Adorno’s philosophical work, written during the war, is about the annihilation of the individual by society. His argument that technology only serves to distance us from our humanity applies equally to the new weapons employed by the Allies during the next few days and the civilian technologies of everyday life.

2 See the descriptions of Sir Arthur Harris’s ‘morning prayers’ in Max Hastings, Bomber Command(London, 1979), pp. 247–9; for the specific meeting that morning, see Martin Middlebrook, The Battle of Hamburg(London, 1980), pp. 97–8; and Gordon Musgrove, Operation Gomorrah(London, 1981), p. 1.

3 Bomber Command Intelligence Narrative of Operations No. 649, UK National Archives, AIR 24/257.

4 D Form, 24/25 July 1943, UK National Archives, AIR 24/257.

5 Report on German Flak Towers, Flak Disarmament Branch, Air Division BAFO (December 1946), UK National Archives, AIR 55/158.

6 See David Irving, The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe(Boston, 1973), pp. 213–14.

9    The First Strike

1 John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, ed. C. Vaughan (London, 1913), IV, ii, 254–5.

2 Quoted by Kevin Wilson, Bomber Boys(London, 2005), p. 245.

3 The average age of British bomber crews in 1944 was twenty-three, which means that those entering training were still twenty-one (an oft-quoted figure: see, for example, http://www.specialforces.co.uk/airgunners2.htm). In the event, many crew members were much younger. Colin Harrison of 467 Squadron was a perfect example: he joined up at eighteen, and was still only twenty when he was flying over Hamburg. ‘One minute I was a schoolboy wearing a cap, next minute they called me a man and put me in an aeroplane, next minute I’m a flight sergeant.’ Interview with the author, 8 December 2004.

4 Bill McCrea, interview with the author, 8 December 2003; as a pilot with 57 Squadron, he took part in all four Hamburg raids in July and August 1943. See also his book A Chequer-Board of Nights(Preston, 2003), pp. 77–85.

5 This speech was exactly the same in briefings across the country. The advent of Window was considered such an important innovation that each intelligence officer was given an identical document that they were told to read out verbatim at briefing. See UK National Archives, AIR 24/257.

6 Colin Harrison, pilot in 467 Squadron, interview with the author, 8 December 2004.

7 Bill McCrea, interview with the author, 8 December 2004.

8 Letter to the author, 1 December 2004. Kenneth Hills’s first operation with 9 Squadron was on the next Hamburg raid, on the night of 27 July 1943.

9 Quoted in Max Hastings, Bomber Command(London, 1979), p. 161.

10 While this job was usually allocated to the flight engineer, in some crews it would be the bomb-aimer or wireless operator.

11 See Martin Middlebrook, The Battle of Hamburg(London, 1980), p. 126.

12 Ibid., p. 120.

13 For exact times of all air-raid alarms, see the Hamburg Police Report, UK National Archives, AIR 20/7287, p. 13.

14 The German 2nd Fighter Division ( Jagddivision) had fighters stationed at Stade, Vechta, Wittmundhafen, Schleswig, Westerland, Wunstorf, Lüneburg, Grove, Kastrup, Aalborg, Jever, Husum, Oldenburg, Heligoland and Nordholz.

15 See Adolf Galland, The First and the Last, trans. Mervyn Savill (London, 1955), p. 209; Hastings, Bomber Command, p. 234; and Neillands, The Bomber War(London, 2001), p. 147.

16 Wilhelm Johnen, Duel Under the Stars(London, 1957), pp. 62–3.

17 UK National Archives, AIR 27/492. See also Middlebrook, Battle of Hamburg, p. 131.

18 See Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg, On the Other Side, trans. and ed. Ruth Evans (London, 1979), p. 61.

19 Colin Harrison interview. His bomb-aimer used to do this.

20 Middlebrook, Battle of Hamburg, p. 84. Middlebrook does not reveal his source for this information, but his numbers are backed up by a German website, www.lostplaces.de/flakhamburg, which has a map displaying the positions of each of the flak batteries in and around Hamburg (last viewed 1 December 2004).

21 Leonard Cooper, interview with the author, 19 November 2004.

22 Ted Edwards, interview with the author, 12 November 2004.

23 Leonard Bradfield, interview with the author, 20 October 2004.

24 Leonard Bradfield, who was also interviewed by Kevin Wilson, is quoted here from Wilson’s book, Bomber Boys(London, 2005), p. 248.

25 A Wellington, piloted by George Ashplant of 166 Squadron, was shot down over Hamburg, and Flight Sergeant A. G. Ashley’s 460 Squadron Lancaster was also shot down by flak near Cuxhaven. See W. R. Chorley, Bomber Command Losses, vol. 4 (1943), (Hersham, 2004), pp. 239–40.

26 Email to the author, 22 June 2004. See also Mel Rolfe, Gunning for the Enemy:Wallace McIntosh, DFC and Bar, DFM(London, 2003), p. 65.

27 See Interim Report on the Attack on Hamburg, 24/25 July 1943, UK National Archives, AIR 14/3012.

28 Leonard Bradfield, interview.

29 Trevor Timperley, pilot in 156 Squadron (PFF), interview with the author, 17 November 2004.

30 75 Sqn Operational Record Book, UK National Archives, AIR 27/646.

31 Operation Summary, ‘Royal Air Force Operations Record Book: Appendices’, UK National Archives, AIR 24/257.

32 Bomber Command Intelligence Narrative of Operations No 649, ‘Royal Air Force Operations Record Book: Appendices’, UK National Archives, AIR 24/257.

33 See Gordon Musgrove, Operation Gomorrah(London, 1981), p. 37.

34 Grzeskowiak went missing nine days later on another Hamburg raid. It was his second operation. See UK National Archives, AIR 27/1672.

35 Wallace McIntosh quoted in Rolfe, Gunning for the Enemy, p. 65.

10    The Devastation Begins

1 Text from propaganda leaflet dropped on Germany in 1943, with the caption ‘Das war Hamburg’, courtesy of Lishman Easby, 100 Squadron, RAF.

2 For rumours about the Ruhr, see Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg, On the Other Side(London, 1979), p. 65; for rumours about exploding fountain pens see Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, trans. and ed. Louis P. Lochner (London, 1948), 20 May 1943, pp. 304–5.

3 While it was illegal in Germany to tune in to the BBC many people in Hamburg no longer trusted Nazi propaganda, and preferred foreign broadcasts to their own. See, for example, Earl R. Beck, Under the Bombs: The German Home Front 1942–5(Lexington, 1986), p. 37; Hiltgunt Zassenhaus, in Volker Hage (ed.), Hamburg 1943: Literarische Zeugnisse Zum Feuersturm(Frunkfurt am Main, 2003), p. 167; Wiebke Stammers interview, IWM Sound Archive 9089/07.

4 See, for example, ‘Die Festung Europa hat kein Dach’, leaflet dropped on northern Germany late July 1943, sent to the author by Lishman Easby, 100 Squadron RAF. While it appears that these leaflets were not dropped directly on Hamburg until the attacks, there were widespread rumours that the RAF had dropped leaflets specifically mentioning the coming devastation of Hamburg. See Wolff-Mönckeberg, On the Other Side, p. 65; and Ilse Grassmann, Ausgebombt:Ein Hausfrauen-Kriegstagebuch von Ilse Grassmann(Hamburg, 2003), 25–26 June 1943, pp. 9–10.

5 Wolff-Mönckeberg, On the Other Side, p. 66. For the country-wide drop in morale, see also Goebbels, Diaries, 22 May 1943, p. 307.

6 Wolff-Mönckeberg, On the Other Side, p. 65. This rumour is uncannily similar to the arguments given by Sir Henry Tizard for not bombing Hamburg – see the end of chapter 7.

7 It was not until after the attacks that Kaufmann was finally able to announce to Goebbels that Hamburg’s anglophile attitude was a thing of the past. See Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich (München, 1993), 12 August 1943.

8 See Charles H. V. Ebert, ‘The Meteorological Factor in the Hamburg Fire Storm’, in Weatherwise, vol.16, no. 2 (April 1963), pp. 70–75. The gentle breeze described was instrumental in bringing about the eventual firestorm on the night of 27/28 July.