July 1943:Firestorm destroys Hamburg

In July 1943, the Allies launch massive air raids on Hamburg. They begin on the night of July 25th and trigger an inferno. Tens of thousands die in the firestorm.

by Bettina Lenner and Thomas Luerweg, NDR.de

"Operation Gomorrah":Under this code name, the British and Americans launch a series of heavy air raids on Hamburg on the night of July 24/25, 1943. First it hits the western districts of Altona, Eimsbüttel and Hoheluft, which are devastated by wildfires. At 11:40 p.m. on July 27, 1943, the air raid alarm sounded again. The residents of the city of 1.5 million react immediately and seek out the supposedly protective cellars and bunkers. But what people experience on the night of July 28 surpasses everything previously imaginable. The inferno of the firestorm destroyed large parts of the east of the Elbe metropolis - the traces are still visible today.

High-explosive and incendiary bombs on working-class district

On the evening of July 27, 739 British planes set off for Hamburg. In the hours that followed, they drop more than 100,000 explosive and incendiary bombs. Orientation point for the pilots:the Nikolai Church. The dense carpet of bombs hit the densely populated working-class districts of Hohenfelde, Hamm, Billbrook, Borgfelde, Rothenburgsort, Hammerbrook and eastern St. Georg. At the time of the second major attack, more than 400,000 people were in this area, about a quarter of the total population. The Alster camouflage, a network of wire mesh and small metal plates, is burning in the city center. An area of ​​250,000 square meters is on fire.

Wildfires combine to form a firestorm

British experts had already carried out extensive investigations in the 1930s and examined the flammability of the local construction methods in order to continue to perfect the bomb technology. Explosive bombs pierce roofs, walls and walls and clear the way for the incendiary bombs. Favored by weeks of heat and drought, the phenomenon of a firestorm appeared for the first time in the air war on July 28th, raging for more than five hours and centered in Hammerbrook:tens of thousands of fires combined within minutes to form huge wildfires. In the narrow streets, the air is sucked in like in a huge chimney. The five-storey blocks of flats and the warehouses along the canals provide plenty of nourishment for the flame rollers, in the center of which temperatures reach up to 1,000 degrees and at times reach hurricane force.

Bunkers and basements as death traps

The firestorm tears people by the hundreds into the flames, is trapped in the narrow terraces and courtyards of the apartment blocks and allows no escape. Shelters become death traps:"We had to use brute force to get people to leave the basement," says Hans Brunswig, then the fire chief. In the cellars and bunkers, the heat eventually becomes unbearable, and there is not enough water. Many unsuspectingly tear open the doors and give way to the raging flames, others block debris from the basement exits. People suffocate in their cellars, burn and burn up in the streets, are killed by flying pieces of wood and falling roofs. "When we came out of the bunker, I had the feeling of flames," says eyewitness Elfriede Sindel.

Contemporary witnesses report

Alwin Bellmann was an anti-aircraft helper at a battery on the Alster in the summer of 1943:
"The approach, the humming in the air, then these light fountains that just wouldn't go out and illuminated the city. And then this impotence of the anti-aircraft guns... The English had used a trick, they've heard of Stade was dropped on tinfoil strips and thus our radio measuring devices of that time, similar to radar devices, out of action. When the first bombs fell and fires appeared everywhere, the optical devices, these command devices were no longer operational. So that means - you can take it easy today say - we fired in the air without a localization."

John Petrie-Andrews was a British bomber pilot in 1943:
"It was just a target point. We were given a reference point on the map and that was our target point. We didn't care what it was exactly and we weren't told. It would be shipyards or industrial areas, we stuck to that. We didn't know anything about it until after the end of the war. It was just a completely normal attack that we flew there. And Hamburg was an important port."

Captain Alan Forsdyke was the British navigator in the 1943 attacks on Hamburg:
"The sky above us was a hazy, red mist. Below us it was burning like a blast furnace. I looked down, amazed and even horrified. Nobody on the plane spoke. I had never seen a fire like this and I will never be." never see something again."

Kurt-Heinz Wilkens saved himself from the flames in a park: "The fire came up Sachsenstraße like a lindworm. It burned everywhere. The houses were also on fire. The fire came out of the windows. They were hit by incendiary and explosive bombs at the same time as our house. And then we're over the Heidenkampsweg and ended up in Stoltenpark. The park was an oasis in such a way that you could get air there, more air than between the houses. There was no more air there. Everything was eaten away by the fire."

Elke Baresch fled to a bunker over glowing streets:
"We were first on Bergedorfer Heerweg in my grandparents' basement, until a firebomb went in there. Then it was 'everyone out and over to the bunker'. Everything was glowing in front of the station and in front of the railway area because the coal store was there and phosphorus bombs had fallen there It was a glowing mass. My mother shouted:'Don't stop, don't stop! You'll fall and then you'll burn.' My brother and I had touched each other while walking. When we got to the bunker, our soles were pretty thin and the tires were burned from the stroller."

Alfred Gödeke experienced the fire storm in Eilbek:
"When I left the basement in Blumenau between the first and second wave of attacks, it was daylight. Everything on Wagnerstrasse was on fire, everything on Blumenau was on fire. And a storm broke out, a storm, it must be called a hurricane and sometimes already called a typhoon, of such force, of such elemental violence that a normal citizen cannot imagine. And it roared and roared. The fire sparked and hissed like a beast. And above all it was with the flying sparks so strong that it came over us like a dense flurry of snow."

Andrej Stepanowitsch Pustilnick from Ukraine experienced the firestorm as a prisoner in the Neuengamme concentration camp:
"The windows were barred, the doors were barred and locked. We were locked up in our quarters overnight. The camp wasn't big. We were 100 Ostarbeiter and 150 French. The French - I don't know where they usually stayed - had their own air raid shelter nearby. During the attack, a bomb fell in the yard, right on the air raid shelter where the French were. None of them survived. The bomb fell right on their bunker. We had all the windows and doors flown out."

Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi was stuck in a bunker for twelve hours. He describes his experiences in the book "Neger, Neger, Chimney Sweep!".
"Slowly, as if waking up from a nightmare, we climbed out of the basement - a long line of people who had been given life again. Upstairs the people from the air raid shelters who had freed us were waiting for us. On their orders we laid blankets or towels over our heads to protect us from the sparks that filled the air.The rescuers urged us to remain calm no matter what we saw, which was good because we were faced with one of the most horrifying and saddening sights of our lives. The Stückenstrasse - no, all of Barmbek - our beloved district - was practically razed to the ground. As far as the eye could see, nothing but total destruction."

Lore Bünger survived the attacks in a bunker on Arnoldstrasse in Altona:
"The bunker swayed back and forth - that was the bombardment on old Altona. It didn't end until the all-clear was given. We sat in the bunker for four hours and it was so scary. When we were finally able to leave the bunker and came out, it was whole air pitch black. Everything was full of smoke and paper particles."

Michel von Ausloos, then a prisoner in the Neuengamme concentration camp, helped to recover the bodies:
"The SS people had asked for volunteers. And because I was curious, I signed up and went to Hamburg with them for three days. On the fourth day I didn't want to go back there. Because on the afternoon of the third day we cleared a very large air raid shelter with 1,500 bodies. What I wanted to see were dead soldiers. But there were very few of them. They were all old people, women and children. I found that horrible. And the next day I didn't want to see any more return there. If you touched the corpses, they crumbled to dust because of the heat that had been generated and because of the phosphorus bombs."

Margret Klauß was 16 years old at the time and looked after the refugees from Hamburg as a BdM girl:
"We were deployed at the Moisling train station near Lübeck. I will never forget these scenes - the sight of the people in the freight trains, for which we had food and drink ready. Most of them sat there completely apathetically, the horror still on their faces . Others rushed from car to car calling out the names of missing loved ones in the desperate hope of finding their spouse, parent or sibling. It was heartbreaking."

The fire brigade is powerless

Rescue workers can neither extinguish nor salvage. The streets in the affected districts are buried under rubble, telephone lines are cut. Clouds of smoke, dust and ash drift over the city, and daylight only seeps through around noon. During the day, American planes continue the bombardment. What remains is a glowing rubble landscape from which 900,000 people flee. Forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners recover tens of thousands of corpses and take them to the Ohlsdorf cemetery to bury them in mass graves.

40,000 people die in the inferno

The inferno lasted ten days and nights in the second largest city in the German Reich. Seven times between July 25 and August 3, 2,592 British and 146 US bombers drop 8,344 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs on the city. About 40,000 people die, including 22,500 women and 7,000 children. Around 750,000 Hamburgers become homeless. Almost exactly half of all 357,360 apartments have been destroyed. "Operation Gomorrah", a reference to the story in the Old Testament in which two cities on the Dead Sea were destroyed by fire and sulfur rain, reduced the Elbe metropolis to rubble.

Allied plan fails:arms production continues

According to Roosevelt's and Churchill's resolutions, the Allies' aim was "to destroy the German economy, industry and armed forces and to break the morale of the German people to such an extent that their ability for armed resistance is decisively weakened". This plan doesn't work. The last attack took place on August 3rd, but by the end of the month most of the people in Hamburg had returned and started to rebuild. At the end of the year production in the armaments industry reached 80 percent again. The Allies failed to achieve their goal of hastening the end of the war by carpet bombing.

Whole neighborhoods wiped out

The destruction of the firestorm is still visible in Hamburg's cityscape. In the former working-class district of Hammerbrook, there are hardly any residential buildings left, instead office buildings dominate. In Barmbek, Hamm and Eilbek, hastily built blocks of flats replaced the destroyed houses in the 1950s and characterize the appearance of the districts today. A dangerous legacy of the bombing nights also slumbers in the ground under the city and in the mud of the canals:around 2,900 dud bombs are still lurking there.