In Germany’s big towns the people watched the havoc and waited their turn. During the spring and summer of 1943 civilian casualties rose steadily. In an attack on Essen on the night of 5/6 March, 482 died. A few weeks later, on the night of 20/21 April, the Baltic city of Stettin was bombed and 586 were killed. Three weeks afterwards 693 died in Dortmund. A new record was set on the night of 29/30 May when 710 aircraft attacked Wuppertal in the heart of the Ruhr. They were aiming for the Barmen district, one half of the long, narrow town. The Pathfinder marking was deadly accurate and the bulk of the main force’s bomb load tumbled into the narrow old streets. The fire that followed swallowed 80 per cent of the buildings. Some 3,400 people were killed, five times more than in any previous area raid.
Cologne had the unwanted distinction of having been the target of the first thousand-bomber raid, in May 1942. In that attack 469 people were killed. A year on, such a death toll had become commonplace. There had been several subsequent raids on the city, none of which came near to matching the trauma of that night. That was to change in the early hours of 29 June, a day which the fervently Catholic inhabitants celebrated as the feast of St Peter and St Paul.
Catholicism contributed greatly to Cologne’s strong and idiosyncratic identity. Of the pre-war population of 770,000, around 600,000 were of the faith. It was a northern city but with a southern outlook and way of doing things. It prided itself on its open-mindedness and humour, displayed in the annual carnival, the biggest and most celebrated in Germany, a theatre of the absurd in which an elaborate procession of floats mocked the authorities.
Enthusiasm for Hitler was muted in Cologne. In the Reichstag elections of 5 March 1933, the Nazis gained 33.1 per cent of the votes, considerably less than in other parts of Germany. They fared better in the local elections, winning 39.6 per cent. By forming a coalition with two other right-wing parties, this was enough to give them control of the city council. The existing mayor, Konrad Adenauer of the Catholic Zentrum party, who had vigorously opposed the Nazis and snubbed Hitler by refusing to receive him at the local airport, was deposed. Dr Günther Riesen was installed as the Nazi mayor.
So began the Nazification of Cologne. It proceeded as in the rest of the country, propelled by the enthusiasm of the true believers, and the opportunism or passivity of the rest. With Nazi rule came a gradual degradation of trust. Dr Hans Volmer watched the moral corrosion set in among the 600 staff of the Cologne employment exchange where he started work in 1936. ‘It was a conglomerate of the diligent and the indolent,’ he wrote, ‘[the] oppressors and the oppressed, of those who were or wanted to be National Socialists and others who weren’t or didn’t want to be. Officials, SA and SS people busily kept each other under surveillance … the greater part of the employees were very anxious about possible measures being taken against them on account of the political attitudes. An incredible mistrust was spreading. The slogan was “not a word too many …”’1
Much of such anti-Nazi feeling as existed was caused by the regime’s treatment of the Church. Anti-Catholic measures began in the 1930s but slackened after Hitler proscribed any further action against Catholics or Protestants to avoid unrest. The local party seized on the emergency created by the thousand-bomber raid to resume its campaign of persecution, however. The celebration of religious public holidays was banned and the Gestapo took over all confessional kindergartens and orphanages. The greatest uproar was caused by the seizure of eighteen convents and monasteries in the archbishopric of Cologne, an episode known as the Klostersturm. Nuns were turned out of their convents overnight and set to work in munitions factories. The theological college was also closed down.
Resistance to the moves was determined and courageous. The Church was led by Cardinal Joseph Frings. His predecessor, Cardinal Schulte, suffered a heart attack during a bombing raid on 10 March 1941 and died shortly afterwards. Unlike Schulte, who had tried to find compromises with the Nazis, Frings was tough, humane and charismatic. He was a popular figure in the air-raid shelter in the hospital at Cologne-Hohenlind. ‘The Cardinal would borrow our Karl May books [German children’s literature] to take his mind off things and to forget the fear,’ remembered Gerhard Uhlenbruck, a teenager who went on to become a professor of medicine. ‘I was fascinated by [his] extraordinary composure and his fine sense of humour.’2
He was leading a dedicated flock. Despite the repression of Catholic youth organizations, Cologne cathedral would be packed with young people on great Church holidays. ‘On the feast of Christ the King, to disturb the service, the Hitler Youth would sometimes march round the outside of the cathedral playing drums and trumpets,’ said Albert Roth who was sixteen in 1942. ‘The older ones amongst us would go outside and a fight with the Hitler Youth would ensue.’3 Although religious youth organizations were banned, the teaching of the faith was still allowed in classrooms. Some priests used religious instruction periods to preach against the regime. ‘Often these sessions were used to take a critical stand against the political situation,’ wrote Wilhelm Becker. ‘I remember our chaplain, Otto Köhler saying that Hitler was the Antichrist …’4
But as much as the Church protested against its own persecution, it did almost nothing to protect the Jewish or Roma and Sinti gypsy people of Cologne. Many Jews had fled by the time the war began but in 1940 there were still 6,044 registered in the city. The campaign of oppression, humiliation and dispossession began almost immediately the Nazis arrived in power. Within a month of the takeover, stormtroopers forced their way into the regional court in Reichensperger Platz. They dragged out Jewish judges and lawyers in the middle of proceedings, placed signs declaring ‘I am a Jew’ around their necks and paraded them around town on dustcarts.5 At the end of September 1938, all remaining Jewish lawyers and doctors in Cologne lost their right to practise. Jews were not allowed to leave their buildings after 8 p.m. and were only permitted to shop in certain stores. They became exiles in their own city. In the wake of the law prohibiting Jews and non-Jews from sharing dwelling space, certain buildings were designated as ‘Jew houses’ into which the outcasts were crammed. Erna Schoenenberg, who was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942 and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944, wrote to her brother Julius who had escaped to Shanghai: ‘The married couple Steiner live in our former dining room, and our former sitting room accommodates the two Levys. The two of us live in your former bedroom and the store room.’6
As Bomber Command’s attacks took their toll, Jewish homes were seized to shelter those who had been bombed out and Jewish property was systematically stolen. The first deportation to the death camps took place on 21 October 1941. Jews were permitted to take fifty kilograms of luggage each. They were told to chalk a number on each suitcase so it could be reclaimed when they reached their unknown destination in the east. In fact all the baggage was immediately taken to the customs administration where it was auctioned off to the citizens of Cologne.
After the thousand-bomber raid the city authorities set up a special department to offer seized Jewish goods to the homeless. Regular auctions were held to dispose of heaters, vacuum cleaners, cooker hobs, cooking utensils, irons, hair dryers, gramophones and records, opera glasses, cameras, sofas, cupboards, beds, lamps, chairs, crockery, clocks, sewing machines, picture frames, mirrors, curtain rods and more. They were offered to Cologne’s citizens as ‘non-Aryan property’ and thousands of people flocked to the sales.
For the Nazis it was an easy way of deflecting the grumbling and resentment that had come in the wake of the bombing. The legalized looting also had the effect of widening the circle of those who benefited from the persecution of the Jews.
There was another deportation on 30 November 1941, and a further spate after the thousand-bomber raid. Of the 6,000 Jews living in Cologne in August 1941, only half remained at the end of the year.
The deportations were carried out openly. The Jews left from the Cologne-Deutz station, jeered on their way by the SS and the SA who sang insulting, anti-Semitic s
ongs. Crowds of curious citizens stood by. The Swiss consul in the city, Franz-Rudolf von Weiss, reported to Berne that he had heard people complaining about the ‘bad taste’ of the spectacle. But there was no protest on any scale from the public or the Church.7
Individual, courageous acts of help towards the Jews are hard to quantify. There were, however, some. A schoolgirl, Anne Winnen, recalled how ‘once a week, my mother would prepare a parcel for them in our butcher’s shop. In the evening, when it was dark, she would let them in by the back door. One noticed how one by one they stayed away. We knew exactly what was happening but what could one do individually? Everybody was afraid.’8
The people of Cologne had begun the war in a mood of light-hearted stoicism similar to that displayed in Coventry before the big raid. At a midsummer night’s party in 1940 the programme included a firework display ‘courtesy of Tommy and Flak, London and Cologne’.
By the night of 28 June 1943, all such levity had long disappeared. Cologne was the nearest big German city to the British bomber bases. It was in the first trench of the very front line of the air war. Already it had been bombed fifty-eight times with varying degrees of intensity. The previous raid had come only twelve days before but a large part of the force had been recalled because of bad weather and thick cloud over the target. About a hundred aircraft struggled on to the city, destroying 400 houses and badly damaging a chemical works.
Apart from the attacks, the inhabitants also had to contend with the disruption and nervous wear and tear caused by the frequent blare of public air-raid warnings which sounded whenever there were Allied aircraft in the vicinity. So far there had been twenty-seven that June. The signal sent everyone trudging to the air-raid shelters. The noise of the sirens induced resignation rather than panic. By now, the population had become well used to life underground.
Public bunkers were built from reinforced concrete and were relatively robust but access to them was controlled and party notables and their families got first call on the space. Most of the population had to make do with the cellars of their own homes or apartment blocks. Few regarded them as secure refuges. ‘We sit in the cellars, defenceless, almost every night,’ wrote one Cologne resident. ‘I have reinforced the ceiling so that it will withstand the rubble above, but ceilings are no protection against even medium-sized bombs. It is a terrible feeling when the engines drone above us and when we hear the whine of the falling bombs.’ They learned to identify the progress of the raid from the sounds outside. ‘First there was the rattle of incendiaries … then blow by blow, the heavy, heavy impacts. As our cellar was not deep, we were crouching on mattresses on the floor by the opening. Everyone had a wet cloth over their head, a gas mask and matches. When the heavy bombs fell, we pressed the cloth to our face and kept our ears and nose shut with our fingers because of the blast.’9
Each cellar was connected to its neighbour by a hole in the wall, knocked through so that people could move from one to the other if the shelter collapsed. The feeling of insecurity was well founded. Of the 20,000 people killed by air raids in Cologne during the war, three out of five died inside shelters, asphyxiated by carbon monoxide as fire devoured the oyxgen in the air, crushed by falling brick, stone and timber, scalded by bursting hot-water pipes or battered by blast. Nonetheless, public shelters were always packed, so that the authorities imposed restrictions on who had the right to enter. Jews, gypsies and foreign slave labourers were naturally excluded on the grounds of their Untermenschen status. But such was the overcrowding in the bunkers of the Rhineland in the summer of 1943 that the bar had to be extended. Able-bodied men between the ages of sixteen and sixty and ‘uniform wearers’ were only allowed in at the highest level of alert when a raid was imminent.
The rules in the public bunkers were enforced by wardens recruited from the local party. In the private shelters a member of the house community was in charge. As well as their policing duties, they were expected to fight fires, removing the incendiaries that crashed through roofs and into attics before a blaze could take hold. Public bunker wardens seemed to relish their power. There were numerous stories of their bullying, arrogance and eagerness to punish those under their charge for the most trivial infractions.
For all the drawbacks, it seemed better to be in the shelters than outside them. In bad periods people went to them and stayed put. Bunker life was vile. ‘Just a few days in the bunker are making people dulled, coarse and indifferent,’ wrote a male ambulance worker. ‘Initially they are overwrought, then they become grumpy and monosyllabic. They steal things, show no respect for women and children. Any sense of order and cleanliness disappears. People who were formerly well-groomed don’t wash or comb their hair for days. Men don’t shave. They neglect their clothes. They come [to see me] dirty and stinking. They don’t use the lavatories in the bunkers any more but find some dark corner.’
The women, it appeared, were as bad. ‘Mothers are neglecting their children … About 70 per cent of bunker inmates have the so-called “bunker disease” [scabies] and there is no water, hardly any heating, no opportunities to delouse. I am horrified when I see children, ill with scarlet fever or diphtheria and wrapped in blankets.’ From his own observations and the reports of his fellow medical workers it seemed that everyone had lost their dignity and humanity. ‘Decent people become like animals after losing house and home, dwelling like cave men in the bunker night and day to escape with nothing but their lives.’10
On the night of the great raid, the people of Cologne could feel reasonably confident as they went to bed that they would still be alive in the morning. The sky was overcast which would make life difficult for the Oboe-equipped Mosquitoes leading the Pathfinder crews. They would have to drop their target indicators so they lit up above the cloud, a less accurate method than if they ignited on the ground. In fact the cloud cover offered no protection at all.
All together 608 aircraft – Lancasters, Halifaxes, Wellingtons, Stirlings and Mosquitoes – took part in the raid. The Mosquitoes arrived over the target at around 1 a.m. By the time the bombers had departed they had dropped 162,038 incendiaries and 1,084 high explosive bombs, a ratio that increased the chances of creating an inferno. The sixteen heavy flak batteries around the city, supported by the light and medium flak guns on the east bank of the Rhine put up a strong defence but were eventually overwhelmed.
Heinz Pettenberg, a forty-three-year-old journalist, married with three young children, recorded in his diary that the alarm announcing imminent attack sounded at 1.12 a.m. ‘Suddenly they are there,’ he wrote. ‘Engine noise, flak. We had just taken the children into the cellar and had brought the suitcases down and suddenly the raid is in full swing. The air is trembling with the thunder of the four-engined bombers … It’s 1.30 a.m. and the following fifty-five minutes are an eternity.’11
The Pettenbergs lived in the relative safety of the suburb of Lindenthal. In the centre of town, Albert Beckers and his family were cowering in their cellar shelter directly beneath the bombardment. He too noticed the way ‘the aircraft engines made the air vibrate. We were like rabbits in a warren. I was worried about the water pipes. What would happen if they burst and we would all be drowned? The air shook with detonations. Stuck in the cellar we hadn’t felt the hail of incendiaries but above us everything was ablaze. Now came the second wave, the explosives. You cannot imagine what it is like to cower in a hole when the air quakes, the eardrums burst from the blast, the light goes out, oxygen runs out and dust and mortar crumble from the ceiling.’
As the cellar roof sagged they scrambled through the breach in the wall to the neighbouring shelter. In the midst of the terror there was a moment of grotesque comedy. ‘A corpulent woman got stuck and we had to push and pull to get her through. She wailed, and some people were laughing, even in this potentially fatal situation. I prayed loudly, repeatedly. The “Our Father”.’
It was clear that if they stayed underground they would be entombed. But at street level they faced incineration. T
he Beckers family made their choice. They struggled up the cellar steps and outside into the Waidmarkt, a square in the old town overlooked by the church of St Georg. It was a ‘dreadful spectacle. Showers of sparks filled the air. Large and small pieces of burning wood floated through the air and landed on clothes and hair.’ The fire was eating oxygen. They found a restaurant, crammed with refugees from the flames. Someone found some beer and people were gulping it down to slake their parched throats. A dog was whimpering with fear. It seemed to Beckers that this was no better than what they had escaped from. They set off again, finally staggering into the concrete public bunker on Georgsplatz, ‘half blind and poisoned by smoke. It was completely full and wounded were being carried in all the time.’ They stayed there until dawn. Then, with the all-clear sounded, they stepped out to look for another refuge, passing on the way ‘the shrunken, charred corpses piled in a heap by the tower of St Georg.’12
In the panic and the chaos, children were easily separated from their parents. Hans Sester, a fourteen-year-old schoolboy, followed his mother and father, younger brother and sister after they smelled phosphorus smoke from incendiaries seeping into their cellar and ran outside. In the street ‘it seemed that the tarmac had caught fire and melted from the phosphorus. Across the street a part of the old orphanage was ablaze and it seemed as if the high wind would whip up the flames even further.’ There was a howling in the air, like a hurricane. It was, he learned later, the sound of the blaze devouring the oxygen.
His father, a postman, led them away, carrying his two-year-old daughter, Karin. Stumbling through the smoke they came across a group praying loudly, imploring Jesus to show them compassion. After a few dozen yards Hans became separated from the rest of the family. He was in a street called the Perlengraben, site of the old orphanage. He ‘fled down some dark stairs into the air-raid shelter of the orphanage where I was given a drink of water and was able to press a wet hankerchief to my smarting eyes.’ The next morning he went out to look for his family and found his six-year-old brother, who had also got lost but had been rescued by a woman. They comforted each other and after fruitlessly looking for their parents on the corpse-strewn Perlengraben, set out across the smoking rubble in the direction of the outlying district of Weiden where their aunt lived. Hans was still blinded by smoke. His little brother led him by the hand.
Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945 Page 67