The stretch of road upon which we now travelled brought ever worsening scenes of horror. I saw many women with their children held in their arms running, burning and then falling and not getting back up. We passed masses of people made up of four or five corpses, each probably a family, visible only as a pile of burned substance no larger than a small child. Many men and women fell over suddenly without having caught fire. Around us were hundreds of people. Some of them ran, some moved slowly, with a peculiar shuffling walk. All this happened in silence. The terrible heat had dried throats so much that no one could scream. Silently and with the last of their force, women tried to save their children. They carried them pressed close. Many of these children were already dead, without their mothers knowing. 27
A tornado, a whirl of sparks, the tops of trees bent to the street by the force of the burning wind – what these people were witnessing was the beginning of a unique phenomenon. The word Flammenmeer, ‘sea of flames’, comes up again and again in accounts of the firestorm. It is a literal description of what those people saw: a vast sea of fire in the grip of a hurricane. When a local priest saw what had overcome his neighbourhood in Eilbek he was reminded of the apocalyptic vision of St Matthew. 28For most people, however, they were witnessing, quite simply, a picture of hell. The fires spread for miles in each direction and there was literally no end to the flames – their entire world had been transformed into a blazing inferno.
The city authorities struggled vainly to keep the fires under control, but from the outset they were fighting a losing battle. With most of the fire service still in the west of the city there were few teams to combat the flames. Those who did appear soon gave up trying to put out the fires and concentrated instead on rescuing people from burning buildings. In Rothenburgsort, for example, the fire-service leader ordered his men to create an umbrella of water for the fugitives to escape beneath, and in this way brought up to five thousand people to safety. 29Such rescue attempts were still possible on the outer edges of the main firestorm area – but once the fire brigade ventured into Hammerbrook, Borgfelde and Hamm they were forced to abandon all hope of saving anyone. The head of one fire-fighting unit discovered that, not only was he unable to help the fugitives, he was lucky to escape with his own life:
In Hammer Weg there were people lying on the street. We climbed out of the car to rescue them. Then suddenly, along the Landstraße, there came a colossal sheet of flame, which I tried to escape by running ahead of it. The driver got away by turning the car down Horst-Wessel-Straße. The firestorm was a hurricane. No smoke on the streets, only flames and flying sparks as thick as a snowstorm… I ran until I was exhausted. 30
Ludwig Faupel was another fireman who had rushed to Hamm only to find himself embroiled in the full force of the firestorm. After driving through a ‘roaring, boiling hell’, he and his crew were forced to abandon their vehicle in the middle of the road and take whatever shelter they could find. 31
Closely pressed against the ground behind a heap of stones, the heat was unbearable. Again and again I had to put out my smouldering clothes. I put my gas mask on for lack of air. Bits of fire, dust and ash flew all around. In the howling and crashing of the wind people were blown over, stumbled and lay there exhausted, doomed to die. Above it all the growling drone of hundreds of aircraft. Bombs exploding.
Our fire engine was burning. My comrades had disappeared in the storm and heat. In order to stop myself being pulled into the fire I struggled against the storm and landed up in a huge bomb crater, full of water from a broken pipe. Trapped, I ripped the gas mask from my face and clung to the edge of the crater for fear of drowning. The rim broke off, my helmet was gone, dread began to take hold of me. I ducked under the water in order to escape the glowing heat. There was an insane noise in the air. 32
In this atmosphere, surrounded by incessant noise and unbearable heat, the terrifying scenes took on a surreal quality.
With a glance over the edge of the crater I saw a man kneeling right in front of me. With big, frightened eyes he fell forwards. I pulled the dead man into the crater. Only those who had left the cellars by this time would now survive. They rushed over glowing mountains of rubble. Many were killed by the ruins collapsing, or torn to pieces by bombs, suffocated or burned. I could not believe what I was seeing. In the thunderous din none of them could hear the screams of the others. Each struggled for survival. Parts of a collapsing house façade poured down on the other side of the crater and into the water. The brown sludge splashed around the edge and meant the end for some of those seeking shelter. 33
As he clung to the edge of the crater, Faupel lost all sense of time. He had no idea how long he stayed there, whether it was hours or merely minutes. Eventually, however, instinct told him to move on:
At some point in the night I ran on once more with the dripping wet jacket of the dead man over my head. In this whirling fire I had lost all sense of direction. On my way out of the chaos I came across a burnt-out tram. The windows had melted in the heat. Dead bodies lay naked on top of one another in the carriage. Their clothes had disintegrated into embers. The people had tried to shelter there from the firestorm. In Eiffestrasse they struggled for survival. Sinking into the hot Tarmac, they had tried to support themselves with their hands, and lay now on their knees. They ended their lives screaming with fear and pain. I could not help them. 34
Although he was only a child, Wolf Biermann remembers equally chilling scenes:
The firestorm was so strong that it converted streets into jets. Schwabenstrasse, where we lived, was in a good position, aslant to the suction of the fire. But once you got into a street which was part of the suction, people started to burn like tinder and they had no chance. So we ran close to the walls to escape the storm. I saw how roofs were flying through the air; it was like in the movies, like science fiction, but real. The asphalt was burning and boiling. I saw two women running, a young one and an older one, whose shoes got stuck in the boiling asphalt. They pulled their feet out of the shoes but that wasn’t a good idea because they had to step into the boiling asphalt. They fell and didn’t get up again. Like flies in the hot wax of a candle. 35
Ernst-Günther Haberland was another schoolchild who witnessed this uniquely awful vision, after leaving the safety of the main bunker at about five o’clock the next morning:
We looked around us at the area where we had once lived. All the buildings burned brightly, it was a single wall of fire. One could hear the terrible cries of people seeking help for their wounds. One saw people on Heidenkampsweg trying to cross from one side of the street to the other, where there was a canal. The asphalt of the road had become almost liquid with the immense heat. They reached the middle, where their feet got stuck in the asphalt. Their legs began to burn because of the heat, the flames ate their way up and met again above their heads. At first they screamed, then became quieter, and finally, they gave a last rattling breath and were dead. 36
* * *
Survival in the open streets of Hamburg was now virtually impossible. The hurricane was full of burning debris – roofs, branches, pieces of masonry and timber – and there are many accounts of people being bowled over by items that hit them. 37The air was so hot and so choked with smoke and poisonous gases as to be all but unbreathable. Sparks and embers caught on people’s hair, setting it on fire. To make things worse, the fugitives could not allow themselves to be carried along by the wind: since the hurricane was caused by the fire sucking air inwards to feed itself, that would have been suicide. Instead they had to battle againstit, and all the flaming debris it carried, to reach anything resembling safety. Neither were they able to seek shelter in doorways – often the heat from burning houses was so intense that they were obliged to stick to the middle of the road, where the force of the wind was strongest.