The German public was largely free from these jurisdictional conflicts. Unlike other European states, the most important aspects of air-raid protection were to be undertaken by the German population on its own behalf. The Luftschutzbund very quickly established itself as the national agent for educating, training and supervising the community in every aspect of air-raid protection. By 1937 there were 2,300 local branches with over 400,000 officials and 11 million members. By 1942–3 there were 1.5 million office-holders, 22 million members. They paid just one mark a year in subscription. In return, members attended one of 3,400 air-raid schools, or local courses in first aid, self-protection and firefighting.12 For potential leaders there were Air Protection Academies to attend. In May 1937 the public’s civil defence role was defined in a law on ‘Self-Protection’. Three distinct forms of self-help were identified: ‘Self-Protection’ (Selbstschutz); ‘Extended Self-Protection’ (Erweiterter Selbstschutz); and ‘Work Protection’ (Werkluftschutz). Individual householders were expected to create their own ‘air-protection community’ in each house or apartment block, responsible for creating an air defence room (a cellar, or basement if possible), providing effective escape routes through adjoining walls, and maintaining in good working order a complete set of tools and equipment for post-raid assistance. These generally had to be paid for by the householders but were a statutory requirement; they included rope, a fire hose, ladders, a home first-aid kit, sand buckets, water storage, an axe, a shovel, and armbands for those who were ‘lay helpers’ or wardens.13 The intention was to ensure that every citizen assumed responsibility for their own protection, in their own home; if required they would have to help protect the immediate neighbourhood as well. This was an extreme form of decentralization, but at the same time a commitment by every member of the ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft) to a common defence of the nation. Self-protection was voluntary in only a limited sense, since Luftschutzbund officials were supposed to check every household to make sure that blackout material, anti-incendiary equipment and a secure air-protection room were available. Failure to comply with civil defence regulations could involve a fine or imprisonment.
The other forms of self-protection involved sites outside the home. ‘Extended Self-Protection’ was designed for all those buildings which were unoccupied in the evening or at weekends, including commercial offices, warehouses, museums, theatres, or administrative buildings. The system was not needed until war broke out and took time to establish, but it ensured that empty buildings did not become easy targets when incendiary bombing began. Work air-raid protection was placed in 1937 under the supervision of Reich Group Industry (Reichsgruppe Industrie). Each factory or plant had its own air defence unit, usually headed by a manager in charge of an emergency organization. Factories had to provide their own shelters and organize lookout schemes, and each one was linked by telephone with the main police control centre in the city.14 Again the object was to ensure that a high degree of community commitment would minimize damage and casualties and remove much of the air-protection burden from the public authorities. In the event that a building or workshop was bombed or set on fire, the local self-protection community had to tackle it first, then notify the local officials if it was too difficult to master, only finally receiving intervention from the police and emergency authorities when the incident was too serious. The onus in defending a locality from the effects of a bombing raid lay in the first instance, despite all the claims of the police and the air force, on those who lived and worked there.
The key figure in self-protection was the air-raid warden (Luftschutzwart). These were generally volunteers, men or women, most commonly members or officials from the Luftschutzbund, responsible for a group of apartment houses or a street. Their function was to ensure that air-raid rooms had been prepared, equipment was up-to-date and available, the blackout was observed, attics and cellars were cleared of waste and rubbish, air supply and escape routes both adequate and behaviour in the shelters orderly. They lacked the power of arrest, but did enjoy the right to compel local people to help with bombing incidents, even while the bombing was still going on.15 Before the war many of the wardens combined their role with that of local Party ‘block leader’, responsible for checking on each block of houses or apartments to make sure that Party instructions and propaganda were disseminated and no visible signs of dissent expressed. But by the time war broke out the role was generally divided to make sure that both functions could be performed effectively, adequate civil defence and adequate Party surveillance. With military mobilization in 1939, male wardens had to be replaced by women. Regular appeals were made in the early years of the war for female volunteers; at least 200,000 Luftschutzbund officials were women. The air-raid warden was to be chosen for evident qualities of leadership, an obsessive requirement in a system dominated by the ‘leadership principle’. The definition of typical leadership qualities produced early in 1942 presented a formidable range of requirements: ‘Personal example, involvement of the leader at the site of greatest danger, superlative capability, firm will, calmness, steadfastness and confidence in the most difficult situation, trustworthiness, pleasure in responsibility …’.16 Regular circulars were sent round in the war with stories of heroic individuals displaying, it is to be supposed, some or all of these characteristics.17 This was the front line on the German home front: ordinary people called upon to perform, if they could, extraordinary acts of heroism.
Nonetheless, the introduction of civil defence measures before the outbreak of war was far less extensive than the large organization and popular propaganda of civic mobilization might have suggested. This was partly a result of geography. Though the object was to involve the whole population, the Reich was divided into three zones to reflect the degree of imminent danger from air warfare. Zone I included all the major industrial cities in Germany, 94 in total, with augmented civil defences; Zone II covered 201 Air Defence Sites (Luftschutzorten) of lesser importance; and Zone III included small towns and rural areas, or regions too far distant for existing enemy aircraft to reach.18 Only those communities in Zone I were promised state finance to fund civil defence preparations. In late 1938 the association of municipalities complained to Göring that a lack of money for Zones II and III made it difficult either to build public shelters or to provide firefighting equipment, but the Air Ministry remained adamant and local Regional Air Commands were told to reject applications for less urgent air-raid facilities.19 Not until November 1941 was the order reversed and funds were made available for exceptional expenditure in areas still designated Zone II or III.20 Air-protection facilities and expenditure were targeted at the key areas only; the countryside had almost no organization, though its inhabitants were required to observe the blackout regulations. Only 12 million gas masks were distributed, again on the assumption that most people would not need them. A further explanation for the slow and uneven spread of air-raid protection lay in the air force conviction that anti-aircraft fire would be sufficiently concentrated to deter enemy aircraft even if they succeeded in penetrating Reich territory, a judgement largely shared at first by the wider German public. For all the fear earlier in the decade that Germany was exposed to a circle of hostile states capable of bombing the German heartland, preparation on the home front came later and on a more limited scale than in either Britain or France.
The most obvious deficiency came in the provision of public air-raid shelters and the supply of material to make the air defence room (Luftschutzraum) a safe and reliable refuge. The quality of the ‘room’ varied a great deal, sometimes an extensive cellar under an apartment block, sometimes little more than a small storeroom or a corridor. Most German industrial regions were of recent construction and the communal housing was large in scale and concentrated, though there was usually a basement or cellar. Older housing varied, though the evidence suggests that there were few people in the threatened cities who did not have access to local domestic shelter of some kind. Guidelines were
regularly published about the ideal ‘room’, which had to be gasproof, blastproof, clearly indicated, clear of obstruction, and provided with lighting and seating: ‘Everything prepared for the emergency!’21 In the summer of 1939 the Air Ministry calculated that it would cost 50 Reichsmark (RM) per person to provide adequate shelter for the 60 million people who needed it, a total of 3 billion marks for which the money was simply not available.22 The gap between ideal and reality was difficult to breach and cellars and basements had to be slowly improved over the war years. The same problems existed with public shelters. In late 1939, for example, it was discovered that the shelter programme for schools was well behind schedule, particularly in the areas outside Zone I. Many schools in more remote areas had neither cellar nor basement and had to be provided with trench shelters covered with concrete, or a strengthened ground-floor room, when the materials were available.23
The provision of shelter varied from area to area, since there was no common policy, but in 1939–40 the number of places available was far below what would eventually be required. In Hamburg in September 1939 there were just 88 public shelters for 7,000 people; by April 1940, 549 shelters for 51,000 out of a population of 1.7 million. Building work was directed at the 80,000 cellars in the city, of which three-quarters were provided with shoring and blast protection.24 In the west German town of Münster, likely to be in the path of incoming bombers, there were by April 1940 public shelter places for just 4,550 people, 3.3 per cent of the population. Only by the end of the year was this increased to 20,000, with room for an estimated 40,000 in private air defence rooms.25 Most public shelters were designed for those who were caught in the street during a raid; the preference was to ensure that people returned if they could to their house shelter in order to carry out their ‘self-protection’ duties. The one major difference between German practice and other European states was the legal compulsion to seek shelter during a raid, which almost certainly contributed to reducing casualties in the first war years. The wartime version of the Air Protection Law of 1935 carried the legal requirement to seek an air defence room or trench as soon as the alarm sounded, or to ask the nearest warden for help in finding a shelter place. In July 1940, after the first few RAF raids, the Luftschutzbund included in its regular bulletin for members a reminder that failing to take shelter was an offence: ‘The police have been instructed to take steps against offenders and report them for punishment.’26 Although it is unlikely that this happened in more than a few of the many cases, and merited little more than a nominal fine, shelter discipline was regarded as a serious question. Shelterers had to observe the simple rules of community, not smoke in the shelter, nor drink alcohol nor bring in animals except dogs for the blind. To ensure that the local wardens or ‘self-protection’ leaders could monitor the households for which they were responsible, formal notice had to be given of any overnight absence from home and copies of keys for all locked doors deposited with the officials. Once the bombing started in the summer, the rules became a ready instrument, with legal force, to control who would or would not have access in particular shelters.27
Rules for the blackout and evacuation also showed less immediate concern with the threat of bombing than had been apparent in Britain before the declaration of war. Blackout preparations in Germany had been insisted upon from the mid-1930s when extensive blackout exercises were held in major cities, though with mixed success. The main law covering the blackout was issued on 23 May 1939, with a subsidiary order on domestic lighting issued on 1 September, the day Germany attacked Poland.28 All householders had a responsibility to ensure that the blackout was effective; in offices or commercial buildings one designated person was held to be responsible, in multi-storey apartment blocks one person was required to extinguish the lights in the halls and stairwells. In the first months of the war blackout discipline was variable. Building sites and factories showed more light than permitted; street lighting was 60 per cent gas-fired and more difficult to turn off and on than electric lighting, so that in many cities dim lighting remained. Helpful propaganda and advice was liberally supplied to help the population cope with the sudden plunge into darkness. In March 1940 Himmler, as Chief of Police, issued detailed guidelines on blackout behaviour which included walking on pavements no more than two abreast, and avoiding excessive alcohol: ‘Drunk pedestrians bring not only themselves, but others into danger.’ Blackout infringements brought regular fines of up to 150 RM, but later on householders could also have their electricity supply cut off as a reminder not to leave a light showing.29
State-sponsored evacuation against bombing was, by contrast, almost non-existent. In October 1939 Göring announced that there would be no assisted evacuation from the threatened urban areas, though plans could be made to transfer schoolchildren if necessary. Voluntary evacuation was neither prevented nor encouraged. Decisions on evacuation were reserved for Göring himself.30 The initial wartime movements of population were away from the frontier (Red Zone) opposite France, only loosely connected with the bombing threat. Not until October 1940, more than a year after the start of the war, and six months after the start of British bombing, did the first trainloads of children leave Berlin at Hitler’s instigation. They went as part of a scheme authorized in late September 1940, under the direction of the head of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach, as an extension to the existing programme to send city children for invigorating breaks in the countryside (Kinderlandverschickung), first begun in the late nineteenth century. In 1938 alone 875,000 had benefited from the peacetime scheme. Now, to reduce public alarm, the pretence was kept up that what children subjected to regular air-raid alerts needed was an extended rest in rural areas, rather than permanent life in a bomb-free region. The first cities where the programme was introduced were Berlin and Hamburg, followed some months later by cities in the Ruhr. The children, all aged between 10 and 14, flowed out to youth hostels, summer camps and small guest houses, a total of 2,500 destinations with 100,000 places where they stayed for up to six months, unless cold, homesickness or the severe routine of the Hitler Youth sent them home sooner.31
The ‘phoney war’ period in the air war in Germany lasted a shorter time than in Britain. On 10 May 1940 the first bombs fell on the south German city of Freiburg im Breisgau, killing 57 people, including 13 children. The German press deplored the evidence of Allied butchery, but the town had been bombed in error by three German aircraft that had lost their way on a flight to attack the French town of Dijon on the first day of the German offensive. Freiburg was later bombed 25 times by Allied aircraft.32 It was the following night, on 11 May, that the first British bombs fell on the Rhineland; from then on across the summer months bombs fell on a German urban target almost every night. Since the raids were small and the bombing was scattered, the principal effect was to trigger the alarm system over wide parts of western Germany, compelling the population to seek shelter. In Münster in Westphalia there were 157 alarms in 1940, lasting a total of 295 hours, all but seven of them at night.33 The onset of bombing did not, however, signal the onset of a front-line mentality. Bombing was geographically restricted and distributed in small packets over villages as well as major cities. German propaganda immediately began to condemn the attacks as simple terror bombing, but this was also the view of the German Air Force which assumed on the basis of the random pattern of the bombs that the British object must be to terrorize the population rather than attack the war economy. This thinking dominated German perception of the Allied offensive for much of the rest of the war. The propaganda apparatus played down the actual effects of RAF raids, but suspicious foreign journalists soon discovered for themselves almost no evidence of damage in Berlin or the Ruhr cities, and what small damage there was quickly repaired or covered by wooden hoarding.34
The absence of a clear urban front line fitted oddly with the large organization dedicated to civil defence and the prevailing image of the Third Reich as an embattled ‘people’s community’. The secret intelligence (
SD) reports of the first few raids indicated that the population kept calm, except in places where the air-raid sirens failed to sound.35 Air-raid discipline proved at first to be shallower than anticipated from the endless training courses and the 4 to 5 million-strong army of trained civilian ‘self-protection’ helpers. In May 1940 it was observed that out of simple curiosity people stayed out on the street to watch the bombing, or stood at open windows or on balconies. The Luftschutzbund circulated warnings in May and July that as soon as searchlights and anti-aircraft gunfire began it was an obligation to seek shelter, even more to ensure that no light was left visible given the planless character of British aircrew who ‘threw their bombs wherever they saw a light’.36 But when the bombing spread to Berlin in late August, the same pattern became evident and sterner warnings had to be issued. In September the president of the Luftschutzbund, Lt. General Ludwig von Schröder, announced that anyone who sustained injury while deliberately failing to shelter would not be given any state medical assistance. A propaganda campaign was launched to advertise the air-raid room as the safest place to be in a raid and to highlight the numbers still being killed in the open, but the complaints disappeared in 1941 as the bombing became heavier and more deadly.37 During the summer and autumn of 1940 the population viewed the war differently from the embattled British; buoyed up by the sense of a historic victory and expecting Britain soon to abandon the war, the bombing did not seem to demand the same sense of battle.
The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 Page 57