It was a terrible twilight, as I first began to make out the many corpses and the devastation all around. But of course my first worries were now for my family. Had they managed to survive? Luckily I found my mother again nearby, where I’d left her. She herself was unhurt, but beside her lay two dead bodies. Our joy at seeing one another again was huge. I took my mother with me to the other side of the street and started the search for my sister and father. And I was lucky. I found my sister nearby where we had last seen her during the night. She too had survived, albeit with bad burns on her legs caused by the devilish phosphorus. I myself had picked up some small burns, but nothing too bad. And then, like a wonder, my father turned up, relatively unscathed. He had had an unbelievable odyssey. Our joy at seeing one another again was overwhelming, and we were simply indescribably lucky to have survived this purgatory. 68
Others were not so lucky. Desperate stories emerged, of mothers losing their children in all the smoke and darkness, of children losing their parents when their buildings collapsed – stories that would be repeated again and again in the days to come. Countless others did not know what had become of their loved ones. They picked their way through the crowds searching and calling names. Occasionally family members were reunited in this way, but for the most part the calls echoed round the parks unanswered.
Meanwhile, those who had no one to look for remained silent, dazed by what they had experienced. Many, including some of the eyewitnesses quoted here, were too badly injured or burned to do anything but stay where they were. Herbert Wulff and his sister had fairly bad burns. The man in his forties who had watched his brother-in-law die in the fire, was himself badly burned and suffering from exhaustion. Fredy Borck’s eight-year-old brother fell into the flames as they were being evacuated from their Rothenburgsort cellar, and burned his legs severely.
One of the most common injuries was burns to the eyes. After spending the night in the open Erich Titschak complained that his eyes hurt so much he could no longer keep them open. Hans Jedlicka’s were scorched, as were those of Else Lohse and her son Peter, who soon began to lose their sight. 69Erika Wilken’s eyes were so badly damaged during her ordeal in the Grevenweg public lavatory that by the time she and her husband were evacuated she could no longer see. ‘From Horn onwards our eyesight became worse and worse, and once we reached the compound we were already blind.’ 70Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. In most cases people’s eyesight would return, but for now at least they were spared some of the gruesome sights others had to endure.
Most of the injuries that occurred were caused by the great heat – inflamed lungs, scorched eyes, severe burns – but many people had broken bones from the blasts of high-explosive bombs and falling masonry. When the authorities arrived en masseto oversee the evacuation, these people were taken away first, carried off in whatever vehicles could be commandeered: boats, lorries and even horse-drawn carriages. Most people, however, had to walk to the edge of the city to find transport. All the normal methods of escape – trams, subways and the railway – had been destroyed. Most roads were impassable. The only transport conduit relatively unaffected was the river, and even that was strewn with debris.
As tens of thousands of people streamed out of Hamburg, they left behind a broken city, shrouded in smoke, in many places still burning. Despite the terror they had all experienced, it was impossible to leave without a last glance at the place that had been their home. For many it seemed like their final farewell and, in a sense, it was: although most would return to Hamburg in future months and years, it would never be the same city again. In the course of a single night almost a quarter of it had been erased from the map.
Henni Klank, who had escaped to the river with her newborn baby, left the city by boat. She remembers her departure as a final moment of supreme sadness:
The boat was supposed to go to Lauenburg, and what took place aboard it on the journey is almost beyond description. There was no wound-dressing material, only paper bandages. I helped a young mother dress her half-burned baby with my makeshift gauze-nappy. We couldn’t do more… The woman and the others were all in a state of shock. We glanced back once more at our broken and beloved Hamburg, across which a giant mushroom-cloud was spreading. It was as if it wanted to say: I’ll cover up all of this horror that descended on Hamburg tonight, for ever! 71
17. The ‘Terror of Hamburg’
A stream of haggard, terrified refugees flowed into the neighbouring provinces.
In every large town people said: ‘What happened to Hamburg yesterday
can happen to us tomorrow.’
Luftwaffe General Adolf Galland 1
The events of 27/28 July 1943 shook the Nazi hierarchy to its core. Writing in his diary a few days later, Josef Goebbels called the disaster ‘the greatest crisis of the war’. 2For once, the normally resourceful propaganda minister seemed at a loss for what to do.
A city of a million inhabitants has been destroyed in a manner unparalleled in history. We are faced with problems that are almost impossible of solution. Food must be found for this population of a million. Shelter must be secured. The people must be evacuated as fast as possible. They must be given clothing. In short, we are facing problems there of which we had no conception even a few weeks ago. 3
Many other key figures in the Nazi establishment were just as shaken. Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production, told Hitler that if the British managed to attack another six German towns on the same scale then armaments production would be brought to a halt. 4Erhard Milch, the State Secretary for Air, went further: ‘It’s much blacker than Speer paints it,’ he told the members of his ministry. ‘If we get just five or six more attacks like these on Hamburg, the German people will just lay down their tools, however great their willpower.’ 5
The crisis of confidence became so bad that Hitler was forced to take action to avert a collapse of morale in the Party. A few days after the catastrophe, he instructed Goebbels to speak to an assembly of ministers and gauleiters to ‘inject some concrete into them’. Ever faithful to his master, Goebbels did as he was told. It was a tense meeting. During the discussion, Milch repeatedly interrupted Goebbels with the almost treasonable outcry, ‘We have lost the war! Finally lost the war!’ The propaganda minister had to appeal to his honour as an officer to quieten him. 6
While those around him were in deep shock at the scale of the disaster, Hitler appeared to react in much the same way as he did to all such catastrophes: by remaining in denial. To Speer’s announcement that further British attacks might halt German arms production, he simply said, ‘You’ll straighten all that out again.’ Neither was he sympathetic to the victims of the firestorm. When Hamburg’s gauleiter, Karl Kaufmann, repeatedly telegraphed him, begging him to visit the stricken city, Hitler steadfastly refused. When Kaufmann asked him at least to receive a delegation of the heroic rescue crews, Hitler refused that too. He was simply not interested in Hamburg, or the fate of its people. 7
* * *
On the other side of the North Sea, the mood was precisely the opposite of that in Germany. While the Nazis imposed a virtual news freeze on all but the most general reports of the firestorm, the British and American authorities were quick to announce their success to the international press. In London, The Timesprinted a large photograph of American bombs falling on the Howaldtswerke shipyards under the headline ‘Hamburg Battered’: ‘Air bombing reached a new intensity on Tuesday night,’ it said, causing damage that would ‘far exceed that caused in any previous attack’. 8The Daily Expresswas more graphic. ‘RAF blitz to wipe Hamburg off the war map’ was the front-page headline on 31 July: