…Der Schwerpunkt des Angriffs lag in der Innenstadt’
– Berichte der Hauptluftschutzstelle der Stadtverwaltung Berlin –

Fifteen minutes before 10:00pm of April 10th, 1945, Berlin’s air sirens wailed one more time, and the 369th air alarm on the city began. By the time they sounded again to indicate Berliners the end of the attack, the Klosterkirche and its adjacent monastery lay ablaze and half-destroyed, mortally struck by an RAF mine dropped by a Mosquito bomber in another nuisance night raid.

As we have seen on the previous post, only part of the church and monastery complex remains today (Klosterstraße 73), left since the 1960s as a reminder of Berlin’s turbulent history and the tragedy that war is.

The origins of the Franziskaner-Klosterkirche und Graues Kloster (red marked area in the cover Alexanderplatz photo, at left) goes back to the end of the 13th century when the Margraves of Brandenburg, Otto V and Albert III, gifted the site to the Franciscan order, recently settled in the city. The church, designed as a three-nave basilica with cross vaults, was built in brick Gothic style circa 1250 at the Berlin eastern limits. It is considered the first building in Berlin built entirely of brick. Along with the Klosterkirche, other buildings were successively erected here, including a Franciscans monastery (the Grauen Kloster) and in 1574 an elite high school, the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster. Famous students and teachers included Bismarck, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. With the introduction of the Reformation in Berlin in 1539, the Franciscan convent was dissolved and the church became a branch of the nearby St. Nikolai. The monastery complex suffered several transformations along the centuries, following major repairs and several fires, being expanded during the 19th century and again around 1900.

Following are three views of the monastery complex facing Klosterstr as it was circa 1900: First, a view of the western portal of the Gothic style Klosterkirche with its front twin towers, both demolished in the 1930s. Second, the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster at the northern side and, finally, a view of the Direktoren- und Lehrerhauses (Director’s and Teachers’ Houses) at the southern end of the complex.

Between 1936 and 1936, the church was vastly renovated again: pillars were repaired, the roof was re-covered, and the towers erected in 1843 on the west front and the roof turret were demolished. The interior was carefully restored. It was reconsecrated in 1936.

Bombenkrieg 1940-45 - Grosser Kloster’s destruction
Located in the main city centre area, the Kloster monastery complex was hit several times during the Allied air bombardments on Berlin. First damage recorded was done by one of the early RAF raids, when several fire bombs landed nearby on December 21, 1940, causing small fires at Grunerstr Ecke Neue Friedrichstr (renamed Littenstraße in 1950) and damaging the Landgericht building (today the District Court and the Berlin II Regional Court also). This court was severely damaged by bombs during the late November 1943 RAF raids and the entire area was badly hit by the May 24th 1944 US air raid when 464 heavy bombers reached the city centre with bombs falling here too. The attack left 18,000 homeless people just in the Mitte district; nearby Parolekirche (built in 1695) was mortally hit by incendiaries on that day also.

Death of the Klosterkirche was sealed on 10/11 April 1945: the city’s bomb damage reports show that an aerial mine landed at Klosterstr. 73 on that night, when Bomber Command sent 77 Mosquito fast-bombers to harass the German capital. RAF crews reported 10/10 clouds and light severe Flak AA fire. Another ‘Cookie’ (as RAF aerial mines were known) landed a few metres away at the opposite side of the street, causing severe damage to the Landgericht/Amtsgericht. Most articles and websites often report the church’s destruction date wrongly, repeating the erroneous April 3rd 1945 including the Wikipedia and some Berliner Zeitung articles, with no evidence to support this claim.

Further damage to the area was done months later, hit by Soviet howitzers’ shelling during the Red Army assault on the Third Reich’s capital in the last days of April 1945, with fierce street-to-street fighting around the ruined site. Here, Soviet forces advance through ruined Stralauer Str (just a few metres from Littenstr and Klosterkirche) aboard light self-propelled SU-76M guns following the end of the battle. Note severe damage to the background buildings with street covered by debris.

Ruins and Nemesis
The Allied bombing of the city centre during World War II severely damaged the buildings of the monastery quarter at Molkenmarkt. Most of them were completely demolished and cleared of rubble after 1945 and transferred to municipal ownership.

The Kloster monastery complex was in bad shape and rubble was removed starting in 1950. Only the outer walls on the north, east, and west sides of the church survived and parts of the nave walls were badly damaged. The northwestern corner of the north aisle and its outer wall were demolished in 1951 during the nearby Klosterstr U-Bahn construction, and in 1954, East Berlin monument conservator Bodo Köttler submitted a proposal for the reconstruction of the church and monastery but finally subsequent renovation work done between 1959 and 1961/63 demolished the eastern end south aisle, securing the ruins. The remaining monastery buildings, also in ruins, were completely demolished by 1968 to make room for the new and disproportionate Grunerstr. Main renovation work was done in the 1980s by the DDR government but, left as an open large space, Molkenmarkt and Klosterviertel total renovation is still open to debate nowadays.

This area of Berlin’s Alstadt was filmed in colour footage by the Stevens/Wyler camera team sent to the ruined city by the US Army in July 1945, with part of Littenstr and Klosterstr shown here looking west. Note the roofless Parochialkirche (built 1695, at top left) mortally hit on the May 24th, 1944, raid and located a few metres from the Kloster complex, part of its ruins of this can be seen at extreme right.

A Then/Now picture showing the original aspect and aftermath of the Kloster complex following the bombing raids which destroyed it in the final months of the war, in this case seen from the Neue Friedrichstraße side in 1903 and 1946.

Following are several views of the clearing debris’ and demolition work done at the ruined Kloster’s church and buildings complex following the end of the war, all taken during the 1947-1951 period.

A (languishing) glimpse into the past
In conclusion, the ruins of the former Franziskaner-Klosterkirche are one of the last remaining testimonies from Berlin’s founding history and from the last days of World War 2. Left for decades at their original location and surrounded by a cleared empty space, this unique and irreplaceable monument needs to be part of a greater visiting interaction and to be integrated into an historical landscape, wishing that the planned redevelopment of the Molkenmarkt/Klosterviertel bring the monastery and other structures back to us visitors meanwhile keep the memory of the bombings suffered by the city and its habitants between its medieval brick walls.

_______________

Bibliography:

• Adam-Tkalec, Maritta. Was wird aus dem Campus Klosterviertel? Berliner Zeitung, 15.07.2019 [accessed February 2026.]

• Bezirksamt Berlin-Mitte, Amt für Weiterbildung und Kultur, Fachbereich Kunst und Kultur. NUTZUNGSPERSPEKTIVE FÜR DIE RUINE DER FRANZISKANERKLOSTERKIRCHE BERLIN. Berlin, 2016

• Demps, Laurenz. Luftangriffe auf Berlin. Die Berichte der Hauptluftschutzstelle. Ch. Links Verlag, 2014

• Mitte-online (2018). Die Ruine der Franziskaner Klosterkirche. [accessed February 2026.]

• Historische Kommission zu Berlin e.V. (Hrsg.). Das Graue Kloster in Berlin, Perspektiven aus der Geschichte. BERLINER WISSENSCHAFTS-VERLAG, 2021

• Klosterruine Berlin. Von der Franziskaner Klosterkirche zum Denkmal und
  Ausstellungsort zeitgenössischer Kunst 750 Jahre Geschichte Klosterruine
  Berlin. [accessed February 2026.]

• Landesarchiv Berlin: LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 139 ff; A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 702, Bl. 85ff; A Rep. 005-07, Nr. 559, o. Bl; A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 703, Bl. 84

• Middlebrook, Martin and Everett, Chris. (1985). The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book. Pen & Sword Aviation. Reprint Edition 2014

• Molkenmarkt. Zerstörungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg und Abriss. Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, Bauen und Wohnen [accessed February 2026.]

• Wemhoff, Matthias. Das Graue Kloster. Erste Ausgrabungen und Überlegungen zur Neubebauung. Föderverein des Evangelischen Gymnasiums zum Grauen Kloster. [accessed February 2026.]

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

‘The last remaining evidence of medieval monastic culture in the city of Berlin’

– Historische Kommission zu Berlin –

Located a few hundred metres from the busy and always chaotic Alexanderplatz, in this area of ​​Berlin-Mitte we can find one of the last remaining testimonies from Berlin’s founding history and from the last days of World War 2: the ruins of the former Franziskaner-Klosterkirche, a silent memorial surrounded by a small green area. The ruins, located at Klosterstraße 73, south of the Rathauspassagen, were part of a bigger complex which included the church, a Franciscan monastery —known as the Grauen Kloster— and a Gymnasium (some kind of German High school) among other structures which no longer exist, demolished in the 1960s to make room to the modern and disproportionate Grunerstraße.

The Franciscan monastery church, designed as a three-nave basilica with cross vaults, was built in brick Gothic style (in the so-called Brandenburg brick) between the end of the 13th and the first half of the 14th century in the Berlin eastern limits against the city foundation wall and only part of it remains today, as the sacred complex was badly damaged in April 1945, hit by an aerial mine dropped by an RAF Mosquito in a nuisance night raid. Only the outer walls on the north, east, and west sides of the church survived. Before that, the monastery complex suffered several transformations along the centuries, so here we found ruins from different eras. Part of the foundations of the medieval monastery buildings and the subsequent use of the complex as a school are still preserved in the ground. There are some surviving rooms in the basement too, below the northern side corridor and some historical graves are still there.

The architecture and early origins of the church and the medieval site are beyond this blog but you can find here an exhaustive study about it written in 2016.

[The Kloster complex (red marked) and surrounding area, located south of Alexanderplatz, seen in the 1939-Berlin streetmap before the war’s destruction.]

Although not as well-known or visited as the world-famous Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, the Klosterkirche and her walls were left this way for decades, roofless and empty to maintain the remembrance of the bombings suffered by the city and its habitants during the Second World War, a living memory of the destruction from those days.

The ruins have been used for cultural purposes, primarily during the summer months, since the 1980s, thanks to the initiative of East Berlin sculptors and the work of the Förderverein Klosterruine e.V. (‘Friends of the Monastery Ruins Association’) founded in 1992. Currently, the ruined site is only open during the summer months from April to November (10 to 18:00 hrs), which included an annual two-part sculpture exhibition being held, along with theatre, music, and literature projects there, being managed by the Bezirksamt Mitte since 2016.

Here are some pics of the ruined church we took a few months ago, back in 2025 on a typical Berlin rainy day.

Two views of the old cast bronze memorial plaque placed at the main entrance of the memorial-church, and the more recent (2016) bilingual information sign, Berlin 2025.

Apart from the securing work of the ruins done during the 1960s, main renovation work was done in the 1980s by the DDR government, with further renovations in 2002 and 2005 and archaeological excavations held at the site since 2014. More recently, following a resolution of the Berlin Senate in 2016 the old urban settlement centre located adjacent to this ruined site, the Molkenmarkt, is planned to be rebuilt with a small-scale development of the district based on historical blocks, which led to a still open debate surrounding the historical city centre. Berlin’s Kultursenator Klaus Lederer back in 2019 called the medieval remains “the highlight of the district”, but is a long way until Klosterkirche’s ruins get integration on the city landscape finally.

Also, there is a sculpture cast in dark-patinated bronze installed in the green area which surrounded the ruined church, a “Pieta” made in 1978 by German artist Jürgen Pansow. Her sorrowful face is severely disfigured. The right side of her face bears a wounded figure of the dead son, both over a rectangular red brick base.

A memorial left without integration
The 700-year-old Klosterkirche offers visitors a glimpse into the past and a true living memorial to ww2 tragedies at a unique place in Berlin, but it needs to be part of a greater visiting interaction and to be integrated into an historical landscape. As the Historische Kommission zu Berlin e.V. (Hrsg.) summarizes in their published study (2021), Klosterkirche is currently only a ‘broken memorial site’, languishing there as a ruined monument at the busy Grunerstraße, its former vibrancy and diversity threatened with oblivion. Will the planned redevelopment of the Molkenmarkt/Klosterviertel bring us the monastery back? Time will tell.

On the next post we will dive into the early history of this medieval site, its destruction during the bombing war in 1945 and the demolished work done here during the postwar years.

_______________

Bibliography:

• Bezirksamt Berlin-Mitte, Amt für Weiterbildung und Kultur, Fachbereich Kunst und Kultur. NUTZUNGSPERSPEKTIVE FÜR DIE RUINE DER FRANZISKANERKLOSTERKIRCHE BERLIN. Berlin, 2016

• Bildhauerei in Berlin. Pietà - gewidmet den Lebenden [accessed February 2026.]

• Mitte-online (2018). Die Ruine der Franziskaner Klosterkirche. [accessed February 2026.]

• Historische Kommission zu Berlin e.V. (Hrsg.). Das Graue Kloster in Berlin, Perspektiven aus der Geschichte. BERLINER WISSENSCHAFTS-VERLAG, 2021

• Klosterruine Berlin. Von der Franziskaner Klosterkirche zum Denkmal und Ausstellungsort zeitgenössischer Kunst 750 Jahre Geschichte Klosterruine Berlin. [accessed February 2026.]

• Wemhoff, Matthias. Das Graue Kloster. Erste Ausgrabungen und Überlegungen zur Neubebauung. Föderverein des Evangelischen Gymnasiums zum Grauen Kloster. [accessed February 2026.]

• Whitemad (2024). The ruins of the Franciscan church in Berlin are a telling reminder. They are a reminder of the tragedy of war. [accessed February 2026.]

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

This page is about to research all those Allied air raids aimed to hit the German capital, the aircrews and the Berliners during WW2. We don’t look for any moment nor we have the objective to accusing its protagonists or any kind of revisionism of the past, only to expose the historical facts, relaying exclusively in primary sources and literature.

The city of Berlin was bombed more than 360 times during World War II (1939-1945). This personal blog tells the history of the German capital and its people before, during and after the Allied bombing campaign besides the war effort made by all those young British RAF and American USAAF crews sent to defeat Hitler through the ‘bombing war theory.’

About the author

Pablo López Ruiz is a historian and graphic designer who has studied and researched the air bombardment of Germany by Allied forces during WW2 for many years, specialising in the Berlin raids after living in the city for some years.
His work was defended as Bachelor’s Degree Final Project as part of his BA in History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 2007, with further studies in Contemporary History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin also.

Expertise

Our work focus on the Allied bombing campaign against the city of Berlin during the 1939-45 war, with military, economic and social aspects and its consequences on the German capital and their people.

We research also the Allied bombing missions and remember those days’ experiences from RAF Bomber Command and USAAF aircrews.

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Every day new photos of Berlin from the Second World War days appear on many photography auction pages, some of them taken following bombing raids on the city, mostly from family albums.

One of the most interesting pics which appeared on the last days is this one from a military albums seller (not a cheap one) labelled as “Ecke Dorothen - Friedrichstr. Variete-Wintergarten”, a 1944-view of ruined Friedrichstraße and the corner entrance of the Wintergarten-Central Hotel with both sides of the street covered with debris from the air raids. Picture seems to be taken from Dorotheenstraße, with camera looking west. You can read the Wintergarten’s (Friedrichstr Nr 143-149) full story, one of Berlin’s best-known variety theatres located in the heart of the city, here.

Façade damage is evident, with most of the windows walled up for protection against bomb splinters; the building prominent dome is gone, destroyed by the continuous air attacks on the capital’s city centre. Quite interesting also because at that time taking photos of the destruction caused by enemy raid was prohibited by the Nazi regime. Take a look to the same corner at the end of the post, taken years before the war outbreak and see the differences between them.

From the same seller we can find another Friedrichstraße photo, again a 1944-view of the Hotel, seen from Dorotheenstr from the opposite side of the previous one, and one more labelled as “Berlin Friedrichstr 1944 Bombing Raid”, in this case with camera looking north (note Bhf’s railway bridge in the background) but sadly the picture is partly obscured by something (or a finger?). Of course, both of them could be dated most probably 1945 instead of the captioned “1944”.

Not far from there is this view of Dorotheenstraße full of rubble and debris, another picture taken in 1944 and auctioned by the same seller too.

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…Explosions Heard Over Wireless. Only one Bomber Missing’
– The Observer, January 31, 1943 –

Today, 83 years ago (January 30, 1943), RAF Bomber Command sent twelve men to bomb the heart of the Third Reich alone in broad daylight. It was a special mission aimed to embarrass the Nazi hierarchy and to obtain a powerful morale victory.

At Berlin, it was 11 hours of that Saturday morning when Reichsmarschall and Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring was about to start an official speech from the Air Ministry building. That day marked the 10th anniversary of the Nazis seizure to power (‘Machtergreifung’) and major celebrations and parades were scheduled, including this speech, which was to be broadcast nationwide. Another radio address was scheduled for the afternoon, this time at the Sportpalast by Reichsminister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Suddenly, air-alarm sirens began to crawl all over the city, and the speech had to be abruptly interrupted.

The RAF, meanwhile, had planned to spoil the party with an audacious daylight bombing raid on the German capital. Six Mosquito bombers would bomb Berlin on two separate raids, exactly timed to disrupt both speeches by the Nazi leaders. Armed just with bombs, and relying on speed for protection, the new British fast-bomber and her crews made possible this “special blow” at the heart of the enemy, that would be a great publicity action —if succeed— back home.1

The ‘Big City’ (as RAF crews refer to Berlin) had been hit already for two consecutive nights by RAF aircraft on the previous week —January 17 & 18th, first time since November 1941 when heavy losses caused to halt the air offensive against the capital. It would be also the first time during the war that Berlin would be bombed (successfully) by daylight.2 London had cancelled daylight raids following unacceptable losses suffered during early years of the war, much less attack Berlin, the most heavily defended and feared target for Bomber Command pilots, in broad daylight. Now RAF had a new light and fast bomber: the revolutionary all-wooden and unarmed Mosquito. Mosquitoes had started to penetrate Occupied Northwestern Europe in low level day attacks just a few months before (from late May 1942) and this long range double-raid would be a great publicity achievement also.3 The daylight bombing concept over Berlin was settled originally to September 19, 1942, but bad weather hampered the mission.4 The new year and the new bombing directives (the one derived from the Casablanca conference) bring a new opportunity to deliver a great blow to the enemy.

The 30th January double-strike on Berlin has been widely mentioned in every RAF or Mosquito reference book. Bomber Command’s operational handbook (Middlebrook, 1985) as usual provides a detailed, day-by-day account of the air campaign, a reference to set the overall figure of the night operations; the most complete narration of the raid can be found online on the RAF’s Memorial Flight blog. For their part, the Mosquito monograph led by Clifford (1997) describes briefly the attacks although the raid date is wrong: January 31st instead of the 30th. In the latest book narrating the Berlin bombings, the infamous one “written” by Bowman (2023), the bombing is mentioned in a short way too, despite being focused on the early RAF raids (1940-43) on the city, meanwhile other books by the author (dedicated to the Mosquito, 1997) the action receives more attention and text lines.5 On the German side, the extensive analysis of the air bombings on Berlin city, led by Dr Demps, erroneously listed the number of attacking planes as being six and three, respectively.6 Finally, Berlin Story’s book about the Berlin air bombardments and their witnesses (Ed. Giebel, 2015), lists both attacks on the book’s city raids record but provides no further information about them.7

First raid - “Meier trumpets”
Six crews were picked up from the two Mosquito operational units at RAF Marham, Nos 105th and 139th Squadrons, then part of Bomber Command’s 2 Group. The exact target is not known, or at least neither the operation record books (ORB) nor Group orders indicate specific targets for them, just to drop bombs over the Berlin area by ‘dead reckoning’ to harass the Nazi anniversary.8 The Air Ministry February 1942 bombing directive indicated (in the case of Berlin) that“your operations should be of a harassing nature, the object being to maintain, the fear of attack over the city and to impose A.R.P. measures.”9 Anyway, the Royal Air Force’s blog states that target “was the Haus des Rundfunks, [Charlottenburg] headquarters of the German State broadcasting company”10 which is completely feasible too.

The first attack was made by three Mosquitoes from 105 Squadron, led by Squadron Leader ‘Reggie’ Reynolds DFC, with his navigator Pilot Officer Ted Sismore. They took off from Marham in B.IV DZ423 at 08.45 hours, accompanied seconds later by Mosquito DZ408, crewed by Flight Lieutenant John ‘Flash’ Gordon and Flying Officer Ralph Hayes, and by DZ372, flown by F/O Tony Wickham with his navigator, P/O Bill Makin.11 Each bomber was armed with three 500-lb MC high explosive bombs.

They flew at “wave top” height across the North Sea, before climbing to 25,000 feet entering German airspace to find the city covered by clouds. All three crews claimed to have successfully bombed Berlin’s northern area at ETA 11.00 hrs at that same height, exactly on time to disrupt the speech but bomb results were unobserved due to heavy overcast. Gordon and Hayes recognised the city thanks to the western Berlin lakes and a built up area seen through a gap in the clouds. By 13.52 hours all three crews were back in Marham unscathed.12

Planned to be an eulogy speech for the survivors of the German 6th Army trapped in Stalingrad, Göring was about to start his broadcast radio message in the Reichsluftfahrtministerium building at Wilhelmstraße in front of some Wehrmacht representatives when striking air sirens forced to halt the act. Most sources claim that the speech was delayed for an hour before the Reichsmarschall returned and speak to the microphone again, probably based on the Associated Press note released the following day.13 (the complete speech can be hear here) RAF’s blog goes further and assets that “the broadcast engineers shut down the transmission and listeners were instead treated to a scratchy recording of classical music for over an hour, before an apparently furious Goering was able to return to the microphone.” but no source is cited in their narration. Hours later and thousand of miles away, General Paulus would surrendered what left of his army to the Soviets finally —barely 91,000 survivors of the 250,000 encircled in the Stalingrad area since November 1942 .14

The Second Blow
A few minutes before the 105 Sqn trio landed back at Marham, the three Mosquitoes of 139 (Jamaica) Squadron took off from there and bound for Berlin, crewed by Squadron Leader Donald Darling DFC with his navigator F/O Bill Wright in Mosquito DZ367, Sgt Joe Massey and Richard Fletcher in DZ379, and Flight Sergeant Pete McGeehan (RNZAF) with F/O Reg Morris in DK337.15 Each one carried three 500-lbs MC bombs with a 25-second time delay fuzes.16

The bombers followed a similar route to the German capital at low level, becoming inland at Heligoland before climbing to 20,000 feet flying over the clouds until reach the target. They found Berlin in “brilliant sunshine at ETA with cloud having broken abruptly.” Massey/Fletcher dropped bombs at 15.52 on the southwestern part of the city with McGeehan/Morris doing the same at 16.00 hrs (“we had no difficulty in sighting the target and dropping our bombs just after the leading Mosquito” recalled the New Zealander), observing one burst aprox 1/2 mile to south of city centre. By then defences were on full alert and intense Flak received the raiders, seeing two enemy fighters too, which were evaded using clouds as cover. Both returned to base crossing Germany and Holland at low level without further incident.17

The third Mosquito (DZ367), flown by Sqn Ldr Darling and Wright, was hit by German anti-aircraft fire, crashing near Altengrabow, some 50 miles southwest of Berlin. Both the 24-year-old Londoner Darling and 34-year-old Wright, from Bedford, were killed and now rest side by side at the Berlin 1939-45 Commonwealth War Cemetery at Heerstraße.18

This second attack was set up to coincide with Goebbels’ address at the Sportpalast in the Schöneberg district. Berlin’s biggest indoor sports and meeting venue, the Sportpalast was full with a crowd of thousands reunited there expecting to hear the speech by Berlin’s Gauleiter at 16.00 hours. Most chronicles relate that when air alarms sounded again “the radio broadcasting engineers stayed with Goebbels, who delivered his address punctuated by the faint sounds of bomb blasts, roaring Merlin engines and anti-aircraft fire”, what appears to be more of an embellished account of what happened there than a realistic one, and surely drawn from AM/press reports of that day.19 (You can watch the complete speech here).

A bombing success - Jubilation in Britain
The bombing was inaccurate and did little damage, with any of the RAF bombs hitting the Sportpalast or the RLM building, but in both raids the morale blow effect was widely achieved. If we check the city’s bombing damage reports recorded on that day, seven high explosive bombs (five of them unexploded) were listed falling at Charlottenburg (Reichssportfeld), Lichtenberg and Reinickerndorf districts, all with minimal damage. Ironically, all damage recorded from the second raid came from some German Flak shells falling in Treptow and Steglitz areas. The attack left one woman injured and 1,700 people temporarily displaced to several public shelters (mostly in the Reinickendorf district) until some of the ‘duds’ were defused.20 By 16.26 hrs the all-clear alarm had already sounded.

Back in Britain, and following the mandatory post operation debriefing, crews were called to the Air Ministry at Whitehall to be decorated, with a follow up press conference and some official portraits taken. Sqn Ldr Reynolds was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) medal, meanwhile rest of the officers each received the DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) and finally Flight Sgt. and Sergeants received DFMs all.21

The action was widely narrated in the Allied press all across the home territory and overseas, quoted as an “spectacular raid” and “probably the most humiliating hour of his gangster life, for it was he [Göring] who promised the Germans that no British bomb should fall on their country.” Some crews testimonies were included also: ’’The cloud ran out and, bless my soul, we were over Berlin,” recalled one observer. “We started unloading our contribution to the festivities.”22

[The intrepid raid was widely used for RAF propaganda purposes during wartime days, here are two different versions of the same Air Ministry poster with the bombers dropping bombs over Berlin’s centre.]

The official press conference at the Air Ministry in London was also recorded on film, with the Mosquito surviving crews narrating the daring raid on the Third Reich’s heart. (Video source: British Pathé 1075.11.)

The RAF scored a great propaganda victory by bombing twice at the exact time that both Nazi leaders were due to speak in Berlin. Although the blast was inaccurate and did little damage, the Mosquito itself had proof its value and added a new menace for Berliners, who watched by themselves that RAF aircraft were able to fly unopposed over the Reich in broad daylight, a taste of what was to come in the next months.

Following the attack, an infuriated Göring claimed:“…it makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy.”23
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Bibliography:

• BRITISH BOMBING SURVEY UNIT. The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939 - 1945 - The Official Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit. Frank Cass, 1998

• Chorley, W R. Bomber Command Losses 1943. Aviation Books Ltd, 2025

• Hiestand, William E. Stalingrad Airlift 1942–43: The Luftwaffe’s broken promise to Sixth Army: 34 (Air Campaign). Osprey Publishing, 2023

• Key Military. Embarrassing the Reichsmarschall. Britain at War. (accessed January 2026)

• “LITTLE OPPOSITION. RAIDS ON BERLIN .” Waikato Times, Monday, February 1, 1943

• Overy, Richard. The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Allen Lane, 2013

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz.
Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

Already damaged by RAF raids in December 1940 (20/21 Dec) and by daylight USAAF air attacks in May 1944 and February-March 1945 which destroyed the lantern and top dome of the cathedral (and the Hohenzollern crypt), both facades of the Berliner Dom were heavily hit by Soviet howitzers shelling during the Red Army assault on the Third Reich’s capital in the last days of April 1945. Fierce street fighting in those days resulted in more shrapnel and bullets damaging the outside walls and columns of the monumental building. After the war, the cathedral was considered to be 25 percent destroyed.

Last time there we focused our attention on to take a closer look at the cathedral’s southwestern corner where you can see some battle-scars on her stone bricks (not heavy marks actually) from some submachine gun fire and/or shrapnel and what appears to be traces of Soviet conquerors’ graffities (¿?) in cyrillic from those May 1945 deathly days. Sadly these are mixed and overpainted by modern graffiti and scratches from other (much younger) visitors. Fortunately, some of these holes haven’t been repaired yet unlike many others located on the columns of the entrance itself and all along the Dom’s facade.

These scars are located at one of the side entries of the main building, part of the Karl-Liebknecht-Straße facade (next to the Domcafé), the left side from the main entrance. Also you can see the damage at the nearby column ‘Südportal’ which led to the Tauf- and Traukirche (baptistery and wedding church) which during this research we have learned that it’s one of the lesser known and less photographed spots of the cathedral. These pictures aren’t taken [obviously] during the snowy last few days, but in the last summer.

Here, 1945-shrapnel marks on the ‘Südportal’ which led to the Tauf- and Traukirche (baptistery and wedding church), located next to the side entry seen on the previous pictures.

It wasn’t until 1952 that Dom’s reconstruction work became reality, an extremely difficult enterprise inside the DDR and with such limited money funds. Major reconstruction work was finally done between 1975 and 1982. Today, the Berliner Dom is still being renovated with a major cleaning (oh dear what a mistake…) of their outside walls and statues —blackened by the air raids and fighting— like other main buildings and landmarks, losing this part of her history and the 1945-past of the city. Hope that these battle scars will not be erased too. On the other hand, the official Dom’s website reflects the different opinion of the administration: “However, the facade of the building, which dates back to 1905, is badly damaged and urgently needs extensive restoration work.”

Sadly among the nearly hundred Dom pictures taken in the summer 1945 in the last days of April or following the end of the war, we didn’t found more than just one close view of this southwestern corner to compare with today’s marks, being the rest taken from the Schloss side across the street. In the picture we can see a group of Soviet soldiers posing exactly at this point with what appears to be some gas tanks left behind during the battle (note GASAG lettering on the tanks). Damage from the battle to walls and columns of the cathedral is clearly evident in the photograph.

Following are three views of the heavily damaged cathedral seen from the Schloss side in Berlin’s immediate postwar days, summer 1945. Note shrapnel damage to the southwestern corner and that the gas tanks are still laying at the same spot.

This picture of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße (today’s Karl-Liebknecht-Str) looking eastwards was taken in 1946, clearly showing the damage to the side portal and columns (extreme left). Note Marienkirche in the background, one the few remaining spots from those days in this popular and centric area of the city.

[View of the main entrance of the cathedral, already restored and with most of its war wounds erased. The different colour clearly reveals the patching work of post-war repairs, Lustgarten, 2024.]

[The “dark” Berliner Cathedral at Lustgarten, back in 2008 before cleaning work began to restore its walls and statues, darkened and damaged by fires and fumes from the air raids and 1945-fighting.]

Pablo López Ruiz in collaboration with @Berlinbattledamage

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Bibliography:

• Antill, Peter. Berlin 1945: End of the Thousand Year Reich. Osprey Publishing, 2005

• Berliner Dom. DDR-Zeit und Wiederaufbau. [accessed January 2026.]

• Berliner Dom. Fassadensanierung. [accessed January 2026.]

• Demps, Laurenz. Luftangriffe auf Berlin. Die Berichte der Hauptluftschutzstelle. Ch. Links Verlag, 2014

• Landesarchiv Berlin: LAB A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 139 ff; LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 143 ff; LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 702, Bl. 85 ff.; s. a. LAB, A Rep. 005-07, Nr. 559, o. Bl

• Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, 2011

• Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag, 2013

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…Today over sixteen square miles of his capital is in smoking ruins and is ravaged by still burning fires.’
– Maj Gen Curtis LeMay to the B-29 returning crews, March 10, 1945 –

During our recent two-week trip to Japan we spent five days in Tokyo. I was so lucky that our hotel was located in the Asakusa district, near to one of the famous 1930s landmarks of the Japanese capital: the Matsuya Tobu Asakusa. Apart from its architecture, what caught my attention was the tragic incident that ocurried there during the first great fire raid against Tokyo.

On March 9/10, 1945, (80 years ago) ‘Operation Meetinghouse’ or the Great Tokyo Air Raid as it is known, left the entire Asakusa district incinerated by US bombs. It was the deadliest air raid ever, often overshadowed by the Atomic Hiroshima and Nagasaki raids. When the sun rose the following morning, 16 square miles (41 km2) of the capital, including the most crowded and heavily built-up area, was ashes. Used as an improvised air raid shelter on that terrible night, this building survived the raid and the war, but the outside fires, growing uncontrollably, consumed all of the oxygen in the building killing all inside.

80 years are between these two images of the Asakusa Tobu, September 1945 - December 2025.

This elegant Neo-Renaissance building is located at the intersection of Umamichi-dori Street and Edo-dori Avenue and was opened in May 1931. Its innovation came from its dual purpose: it was designed to include the Tokyo terminal (Asakusa Kaminarimon Station) of the Tobu railway, linking Tokyo with Nikko as well as a department store —the Matsuya Tobu— in the upper floors, the first one of its class at the time. The building even contained an amusement park on the rooftop, with gondolas and a pet zoo also. It was renamed Asakusa Station in 1945 following the end of the war. The site is located next to the Sumida river, a 5-minute walk from the famous Nakamise Street and the Sensō-ji Shrine, the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo with over 1,300 years of history.

Target for the bombers were the Asakusa and Sumida Wards. This district was one of the oldest in Japan’s capital, crowded with wooden buildings in narrow alleys, on the east bank of the river. This residential area was full of home factories and familiar industries that provided material to the major factories around Tokyo, subcontrators and home machine shops used later by the main aircraft industry with parts and assemblies. Located next to the river there were some major industries and refineries also. The average population density in that area was 103,000 habitants per square mile, 135,000 in the case of Asakusa (proof of this is that roof area was 40-50 percent of the total area).

Two views of the elegant Asakusa Matsuya department store building in the 1930s, before the war’s firestorm. Note the Playland amusement park on the rooftop with the gondolas.

More pictures of today’s appearance of Tokyo’s Asakusa Tobu building, as seen in December 2025. The station and building were renovated in the 1960s.

Civilians Become Targets
In February 1945 Maj Gen Curtis LeMay, who was recently appointed in charge of the XXI Bomber Command, was urged by Washington to achieve some success in the —by then— failed strategic bombing campaign against Japan which had achieved little by high altitude formation bombings, so he changed its tactics: this time the raid would be a low-level (5,000 to 8,000 feet instead of 33,000) nighttime area strike with the bombers fully loaded with incendiary bombs. Target: the urban area of Tokyo. USAAF bombers had already switched their precision bombing policy to carpet bombing a month before over Berlin (February 3rd raid) but this time the attack would be of unprecedented fury against Tokyo’s people. It was not a last-minute idea, XXI BC had spent months preparing maps of urban targets and conducting technical tests on how to better incinerate cities and typical Japanese houses.

On March 9th, LeMay sent nearly 300 B-29 heavy bombers from the Marianas bases to set ablaze the capital. Arriving over Tokyo past midnight, each B-29 pathfinder carried 184x 70lbs M-47 incendiary bombs and started to drop their bombs to mark with a huge flamed “X” the ‘Target Zone 1’, the densely populated area of Shitamachi (downtown) which included Asakusa and other zones. Follow-on aircraft arrived in the next hours at the target area with a payload of 24x 500lbs clusters of M-69 incendiaries, dropping bombs on surrounding areas next to the aiming point, spreading new fires across the city. For nearly three hours, US B-29s dropped 1665 tons of incendiary bombs.

The fires, increased by extraordinary northwestern high winds (near gale force), grew up quickly creating a powerful firestorm and overwhelmed the firefighters and the city’s civilian response. Returning US tail gunners reported seeing the glow of the city’s fires 150 miles from Tokyo and fires continued well until midday of March 10th.

It was a complete success. Undisturbed by enemy nightfighters and with the confused Japanese AA gunners and aiming radars searching for the bombers at higher altitudes, LeMay achieved more damage in this sole raid to the enemy’s war effort than in the previous 8 months of “precision” high altitude bombings on the important Mushashino aero engine factory located in the outskirts of the capital —although the plant itself had not been damaged. Just 13 B-29s were lost during the mission. Post-strike photos and reports provided visual evidence that the AAF had destroyed much of the city, beyond planners’ most optimistic predictions.

The postwar United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSB) —which registered the efficacy of the air war waged against Germany and Japan— estimated that the fires created by the air raid had killed at least 83,793 people and injured 40,000, but most modern studies concluded on a most probably well over 100,000 death figure (of a 6.6 million figure of wartime population). One-quarter of Tokyo’s buildings were lost on that night (267,171), and the raid made one million homeless. Literally one-fifth part of the Asakusa district was gone, incinerated overnight by fire bombs.

The death toll was unusually high. That night, Tokyoites made the same way as done before on previous raids: instead of runaway, they took cover on air raids shelters or concrete buildings, but this time this proved fatal, the huge firestorm engulfed most of the area, cremating everything around and creating numerous death traps in buildings and cellars. More people were killed in the Tokyo firebombing of March 9-10 than in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later.

An aerial USAAF post-strike bomb damage assessment photo of the still burning Great Tokyo area following the 9/10 March raid (looking south, Asakusa is at lower centre) and a damage map of the firebombing affected areas of Tokyo, March-May 1945.

Tokyo would receive five more fire raids from March to the end of May 1945, which destroyed nearly 51% of the great city, leaving 2.8 million homeless. These air raids and its memories can be studied deeply thanks to the work of Japan Air Raids, an exhaustive digital archive created by Bret Fisk and Cary Karacas.

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Sources and Bibliography:

• Asakusa Station Guide. Tobu Asakusa Station Orientation & Facilities. [accessed December 2025.]

• Dorr, Robert F. B-29 Superfortress Units of World War 2: 33 (Combat Aircraft). Osprey Publishing, 2002

• Dorr, Robert F. Mission to Tokyo: The American Airmen Who Took the War to the Heart of Japan. Zenith Press, 2012

• Fedman D, C. Karacas C: A cartographic fade to black: mapping the destruction of urban Japan during World War II, 2012. Journal of Historical Geography. Volume 38, Issue 3, July 2012, Pages 306-328

• Karacas, Cary. “Place, Public Memory, and the Tokyo Air Raids.” Geographical Review 100, no. 4 (October 1, 2010): 521–37

• Kohn, Richard. Strategic Air Warfare: An Interview With Generals Curtis E Lemay, Leon W Johnson, David a Burchinal and Jack J Catton (USAF Warrior Studies). United States Govt Printing Office, 1988

• Lardas, Mark. JAPAN 1944-45. LeMay’s B-29 strategic bombing campaign. Osprey Publishing, 2019

• Lardas, Mark. TOKYO 1944-45. The destruction of Imperial Japan’s capital. Osprey Publishing, 2024

• Old Tokyo. Matsuya (Asakuksa) Department Store & Tobu Railway, c. 1930. [accessed December 2025.]

• Takai, Koji & Sakaida, Henry. B-29 Hunters of the JAAF: No. 5 (Aviation Elite Units). Osprey Publishing, 2001

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– Berlin-Teltow, May 2025–

When History meets present day…

An unexploded aerial bomb was discovered during construction work in Berlin-Teltow (Potsdam-Mittelmark) last Monday (May 19, 2025). The American 250 kg ‘dud’ found (as unexploded bombs are known) has been successfully defused yesterday afternoon by an KMBD (Kampfmittelbeseitigungsdienst) team, which reported to be a troublesome activity due to the bad shape and jamming of the explosive-fuse, taking more than an hour to be deactivated and safe.

The bomb, with a live fuse, was found during construction work beneath the former border strip on Kirschblütenallee in Teltow, it seems that the American-built artifact just partially exploded when landed at that point, remaining silent during 80 years buried there.

A 600-meter exclusion zone around the site was established for the defusing work by Polizei authorities starting Wednesday early morning for safety reasons. More than 5,500 people had to leave their homes yesterday morning in the Berlin Steglitz-Zehlendorf district and Teltow before the defusing work started (3,800 and 1850 respectively.) The exclusion zone has already been reopened without incident.

Estimates suggest that between 135,000 and 270,000 tons of unexploded bombs remain just in Germany.

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– Peter Hannemann’s mother diary, April 25, 1945 –

On 24/25 April, 1945, 80 years ago tonight, Berlin suffered its last ‘strategic’ air bombing during World War Two. In this case, that last raid was made by Soviet air forces, one of the few times that Stalin’s biggest falcons targeted the Reich capital during the conflict, which usually had little emphasis in the strategic role or deep air penetrations.

As the Red armies closed the ring around the city, Soviet Air Chief Marshal Alexander Novikov ordered a last ‘big blow’. The Soviet high staff christened the bombings as Operation ‘Salute’ (Saliut), being part of a series of large-scale raids to pave the way for the assault into Berlin.

The Soviet air armada had already attacked the German defensive positions on the east- and southeastern edges of the capital during the night of April 20/21 (with 732 dive- and light bombers from two VVS Air Armies). Three nights later, the Soviet sent their strategic bombing air force —the 18th Air Army (former Long-Range Aviation, until December of the previous year), commanded by Marshal Golovanov— to raid the city with more than one hundred bombers, totalling 111 sorties aimed at potential strong-points in Berlin.

This time the attacking force, which in March/April had flown similar raids against Königsberg, Breslau or Danzig, included some of the long-range four engined Soviet heavy bombers, the Petlyakov Pe-8. Most of the raiders however were twin engined medium and light bombers including the old trusted Pe-2s and the newer Tupolev Tu-2s. Stalin’s prized massive Pe-8 (or TB-7) bomber of the 45th DBAD, built just in small numbers and a great stranger to general public, made on that night its first appearance over the Reich capital since 1942, when several small Soviet night raids disturbed the city that summer. Some authors question this however, asserting that just a few of them were still in service by May 1945 and were not used as a primary combat aircraft by then by the long-range Aviation Regiments.

Anyway, Soviet bombardment was heavy and was followed up by the 1st Belorussian Front’s 16th Air Army, which sent its bombing force to attack the city too during the early hours of the 25th with two raids totalling 1,368 sorties, mostly by Pe-2 dive bombers protected by a “cover umbrella” of hundreds of Soviet fighters. 563 bombers from the 18th Air Army concluded the bombing operations on that night (25/26 April) with another massive raid, dropping 569 tons of bombs on Berlin, most of them delayed-fuzed bombs.

During April 16 to May 8, 1945, VVS —the Red Air Force— aircraft made 90,674 sorties to which nearly 80% of them were in direct support of the advancing ground forces or in a tactical mission. Post-war Soviet analysis revealed that just 5.4 percent of their raids during the entire war had a strategic role.

Unfortunately, German bombing reports ended on April 16th and given the scarcity of sources and accounts of the raids carried out by Soviet forces, it is hard to know anything else about these attacks and their consequences or an estimated death toll. Let’s hope that in the near future some Russian-spoken historian with access to the Moscow archives (now opened) gives us some light about these bombardments.

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Bibliography:

• Antill, Peter. Berlin 1945: End of the Thousand Year Reich. Osprey Publishing, 2005

• Berlioz1935’s Blog. Wednesday, 25. April 1945 [accessed April 2025]

• Boog, Horst; Krebs, Gerhard; Vogel, Detlef. Germany and the Second World War, Vol. VII. The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943–1945. Clarendon Press, 2015

• Hiestand, William E. Eastern Front 1945: Triumph of the Soviet Air Force. Osprey Publishing, Air Campaign, 2024

• Higham, Robin; Kipp, Jacob. Soviet Aviation And Air Power: A Historical View. Routledge, 2019

• Kozhevnikov M, N.The Command and Staff of the Soviet Army Air Force in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. A Soviet view. DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE. US Government Printing Office, 1977

• Moore, Jason. Soviet Bombers Of The Second World War. Fonthill, 2019

• Overy, Richard. The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Allen Lane, 2013

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– Kreuzberger Chronik, April 2016 –

One of the most curious and eye-catching pictures from old Berlin is the one that shows an elevated train running through a “hole” in the middle of a residential building. This image was taken in the early 1900s at Dennewitztraße in Berlin-Schöneberg district, in the western side of the city. Sadly, as other Berlin important and unique landmarks it didn’t escape destruction during Second World War, being hit by the heavy RAF bombings in fall 1943 and never rebuilt.

The Dennewitztraße tunnel was part of the ‘Berliner Hochbahn’ comprising parts of today’s lines U1 and U2 and rans west-east from Warschauer Brücke through Gleisdreieck and along Landwehrkanal towards Stralauer Tor. This was the first elevated and underground railway of the city of Berlin and it was inaugurated in February 1902. At first built by Hochbahngesellschaft under a Siemens and Halske design, it was a quite simple steel viaducts structure through main avenues with elaborately designed stations, but soon started to have a negative impact on the cityscape, and on the residents of the first floors too (but that’s another story…)

No other section would affect its residents as much as the ‘Tunnelhaus’. The elevated railway line ran from Bhf Bülowstr towards the Gleisdreieck (“triangle of tracks”) train junction but there was a “small” problem: a building at Dennewitzstr blocked the way. Two floors of the building had to be demolished to build the tunnel pass, so the railway company (BVG) had no choice but to buy the building and so was born the so called ‘Durchbrochenes Haus’ which soon became one of the unusual sights and attractions of the city and achieved international fame, being visited by locals and tourist alike.

Chronics say that it became so famous that the subway company asked the new tenants for a very high payment meanwhile for the old ones’ original prices were maintained, so as not lose them and not give a poor image of the company. It’s hard to believe but newspapers back then that the train ran through the house completely “shock-free” and without disturbing the residents. More incredible, located on the ground floor beneath the tracks there was a brewery, the Akademischen Bierhallen, which served some Viktoria-Brauerei beers to clients there.

This 1938-39 Berlin’s street map allows us to locate the specific area showing the elevated tunnel location (marked in red), to see how it was during our research period and how far has changed during the past eighty years following the war and the reconstruction and division of the city. Of interest, there is another house passing at Dennewitzstraße further north, this one was built in 1926 to solve the U1’s railway traffic chaos crossing at U-Bhf Gleisdreieck. It wasn’t so famous as the ‘Tunnelhaus’ but survived the bombing war and can be seen today with trains running through (scroll down to end of the post).

Interestingly, a quick image search results in a high number of vintage postcards both black and white and coloured showing the place (at least twenty of them), which tells us that the building quickly became a popular site for curious tourists and locals alike, most of them show a printed scene taken in or about 1900-1905.

The location became so popular that it appeared in a 1927 cinema movie too, with several shots of trains passing through the building pass: “Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Großstadt”, directed by Walther Ruttmann (1887-1941). Ruttmann’s Berlin experimental silent film transports its audience to the Berlin of the 1920s, the metropolis and its daily life, the machines and the urban architecture. You can watch the film here (Dennewitzstr can be seen from minute 37 of the footage).

A few metres next to the elevated U-Bahn tunnel pass, Dennewitzstraße goes into a more open space known as Dennewitzplatz. There stands the Lutherkirche, a brick building built from 1891 to 1894 and designed by Johannes Otzen in Gothic style (“modern Gothic”) and intended to accommodate the further increase in population and Luther believers in the area. To go around the church, the viaduct was forced to make a small curve continuing its way towards Bülowstr, known as the ‘Pastorenkurve.’ Today, the church is home of the English-spoken Amerikanische Kirche in Berlin, an ecumenical congregation originally based at Nollendorfplatz, which moved here in November 2002. Hence the popular name of this church as ‘the American Church.’

Bomberkrieg 1940-45
Both Dennewitzstraße and Bülowstr were located in one of the western districts most heavily affected by bombs but, sadly, we have been unable to find any picture of the exact location during the war years or the immediate 1930s. Just a few blocks away of this area were located two notable Berlin ‘Bomberkrieg’ landmarks: the famous Sportpalast (destroyed in January 1944) and the huge air-raid shelter at Pallasstraße, which survived the war and can be found there today.

Curiously, this spot —Dennewitzstr 69— does not appear in any of the records listed on the city’s bomb damage archives, neither the November 22/23, 1943 date, which appeared on every website or text as loss date for both the Tunnelhaus and the Lutherkirche. That doesn’t mean that is not correct, but we can’t confirm which sources used those authors to affirm that it was destroyed on that night during one of the most destructive RAF raids of the entire war, which affected specially Schöneberg and Tiergarten districts. Just in one occasion the tunnel-bridge was mentioned: it was on the damage report about the 28/29 January 1944 RAF’s raid which recorded ”U-Bahn: …der Dennewitzstraße, wo die Brücke durch eine Sprengbombe getroffen wurde”, but most likely this refers to the other tunnel pass further north (Dennewitzstr Nummer 2) as not marked it as destroyed, something corroborated by aerial pictures from 1945.

In the case of the Lutherkirche at Dennewitzplatz, it had already been hit by British incendiary bombs on March 1, 1943; bomb damage was reported at Dennewitzstr. 28-36 and in Bülowstr. further west during that attack also. The church would be destroyed when fire bombs hit the building again in November 1943. Records don’t show an exact date, as listed it in the joint report covering the Bomber Command heavy attacks of the 23rd (the fiercest), 24th and 27th of that month, being declared as ‘total loss’ following the raids. The building would be rebuilt between 1959 and 1960.

Further notable damage was received in early 1945 there, when on 24/25 February a British nuisance raid hit the elevated railway at Bülowstr. 97 with aerial mines (already hit on July 1944), and also in March 1945, when RAF Mosquitoes raided all area and left heavily damaged the adjacent streets and the Bülowstraße railway bridges.

April 1945 - the Soviet advance

During the last week of April 1945, further damage was done to adjacent buildings at this area, especially along the Bülowstraße elevated railway axis of advance. Soviet forces reached this area on April 29th, following the German withdrawal from the Landwehr Canal at Potsdamer Str, with the powerful 3rd Guards Tank Army led by Rybalko attacking from the eastern part of the urban area of Schöneberg in the direction of Wilmersdorf and Charlottenburg. The area was defended by elements from the Panzer-Division ‘Müncheberg’ and several groups of Volkssturm battalions, which remained at Nollendorfplatz at several strong points. Units of the 9th Mechanized Corps attacked into Schöneberg district from the east (Yorckstraße) and from the south (Hauptstr.) The 70th Mechanized Brigade led an offensive advancing from today’s Gleisdreieck parks starting 9:00 hrs in the morning with heavy artillery support along the Bülowstr route, meanwhile the 91 Tank Brigade advanced in a parallel southern route. The armoured elements get the Pallasstraße-Goltzstr intersection by early morning hours and finally reached the Wittenbergplatz line in the early evening of that day after fierce battle with small defensive points, overcoming enemy resistance by the end of the day. German resistance ceased on May 2nd finally.

Postwar reconstruction?
At the end of the war in May 1945, the capital appeared chaotic and ruined. The area in question, like the rest of the district, was in bad shape, with both tunnels and train lines heavily damaged by Allied bombs and the final street-battle with the Red Army. The Gleisdreieck train connection was reopened in November, hastily repaired, and the northern elevated line from late 1946 but without stopping at Nollendorfplatz, not the same happened to the southern tunnel route.

This image is part of a series of scale maps commissioned by the Bezirksamt Tempelhof-Schöneberg as well as the Hauptamtes für Vermessung der Stadt Berlin detailing every building and its degree of destruction that were destroyed, damaged, and capable of reconstruction at the district after World War 2. The condition of the buildings was divided into four categories and colour-coded on the damage maps. Note that our tunnel-building located at Dennewitzstraße 69 and the adjacent house (Nr 22) are marked in red as ‘Total beschädigt’ (Totally damaged) meanwhile surrounding ones were in better condition (blue and green).

Despite this famous spot ‘fell’ inside the Western sectors, the division of the city during the Cold War and the post-war economy also led to a disruption in the reconstruction programs: the ‘Tunnelhaus’ was never rebuilt —it was too expensive. Adjacent buildings 67-68 with minor survived meanwhile at Bülowstraße numbers 72 and 73 were the only ones remaining today; the damaged houses at Bülowstraße 70-Dennewitzstr 21 are seen in the aerials gutted by fire both and were demolished during the 1950s. For their part, the northern part of Dennewitzstr had the entire block of buildings gone during the 80s (minus 24A building, which survived), now part of the Nelly-Sachs Park with new modern houses being built further east in the 2000s.

The division of Berlin also had an impact on the subway route: from 1972 to the 1990s, train service here was interrupted as a result of the discontinued connection to the eastern part of the city.

Today, the elevated railway line runs westwards undisturbed towards Bülowstraße, through Gleisdreieck’s Westpark (opened in 2011-14), one of the three public green areas of the Park am Gleisdreieck, an approx 31.5-hectare park located on the wasteland of the former Anhalter and Potsdam Güterbahnhof at Gleisdreieck and stretches from the Landwehr Canal across Yorckstraße to the east.

Since 2011, at the corner where the railway tunnel-house used to be, there is a post with an information sign and a couple of vintage pictures. This is an initiative of the Initiiert Quartiersmanagement Schöneberger Norden with support from the city council, marking important historical and cultural points in the district.

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Bibliography:

• Antill, Peter. Berlin 1945: End of the Thousand Year Reich. Osprey Publishing, 2005

• Berlins U-Bahnstrecken. U2 Die Westliche Stammstrecke. [accessed April 2025.]

• Berliner-Untergrundbahn. Die U-Bahn im 2. Weltkrieg. [accessed April 2025.]

• Berliner-Verkehrsseiten. U-Bahn Berlin. Der Wiederaufbau 1945 -1947. [accessed April 2025.]

• Gedenktafeln in Berlin. Historische Orte - Durchbrochenes Haus. [accessed April 2025.]

• Gympel, Jan. U-Bahn Berlin. Geschichte(n) für unterwegs. GVE e.V., 2002

• Landesarchiv Berlin: LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 701, Bl. 34 ff; 046-08, Nr. 58, Bl. 205; 005-07, Nr. 559, o. Bl

• Middlebrook, Martin. The Berlin Raids. R.A.F. Bomber Command Winter 1943/44. Cassell & Co, 1988

• Mittendran. Straßen im Kiez: Nochmals in die Dennewitzstraße. [accessed April 2025.]

• Orte und Plätze in Schöneberg. Napoleon ante portas. [accessed April 2025.]

• Park am Gleisdreieck. Storywalk Gleisdreieck. [accessed April 2025.]

• Secretcitytravel. Metropolitan living: a railway through an apartment block. [accessed April 2025.]

• Steinke, Karolin. Einst und jetzt. Berlin-Schöneberg. CULTURCON medien, 2015

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…about 1/4 mile from the coast.’
– P. O. Romans, September 1, 1940 –

Last week surfaced that remains of Hampden P2123 of 44 Squadron were filmed for the first time off the north Norfolk coast by sealife diver Rob Spray. This ww2 British medium bomber was lost more than 80 years ago in August 1940 returning from the fourth air raid on Berlin by RAF aircraft.

In 2022 Spray, chair of the Marine Conservation for Norfolk Action Group, whilst diving off Salthouse beach found in shallow water what appeared to be a Handley-Page bomber remains. “I was looking for interesting bits of seabed and this loomed out of the slight murk” he said, being interviewed by BBC reports. He contacted the Norfolk Research Wreck group to identify the wreck which finally turned out to be the P2123 remains lying there since that summer night. Paul Hennessey, from Norfolk Wreck Research, helped identify it as P2123 bomber, lost in the early hours of September 1, 1940.

August 31, 1940: R.A.F. planes renew attack on Berlin
On the night of 31 August / 1 September, 1940, RAF Bomber Command aircraft overflew and dropped bombs on the Third Reich’s heart again, less than twenty-four hours since the previous raid and for a fourth time in a week. Berliners ran to their cellars and shelters to take cover meanwhile the anti-aircraft defences and searchlights of the city tried to repel the British air raiders. London sent twenty-eight medium bombers to hit military and industrial targets. Bad weather prevented some of the bombers to reach their targets, in this case Tempelhof, the BMW factory and a gas work; most of the crews were somewhere in the Berlin area but failed to see under the cloud cover.

RAF’s only loss on this raid was Hampden P2123 of 44 Squadron: piloted by twenty-year-old Flying Officer Romans, this bomber found adverse weather over Berlin and after delivery the bombs on Tempelhof area the crew faced the return journey running out of fuel over the inhospitable North Sea. Finally, after being airborne for 9 and 30 minutes the engines stopped and Romans skillfully ditched the plane less than two miles off Salthouse —others say Cromer— on the Norfolk coast at 05.35 hours and the crew, unhurt, took to their dinghy and paddle to shore during more than 3 hours to safety.

Romans remarked on his report: “It is of interest that the Hampden remained afloat for 2 minutes before making its final plunge.”

On hitting the water, Sgt Jimmy Mandale (rear gunner aboard) reported that the Hampden bomber fully submerged upon impact and then popped back up again enabling the crew to exit the aircraft.

Hampden P2123’s wreck has been already found in 1975 after fishermen snagged their crab pots on it, with several parts of one of the 980hp Bristol Pegasus XV nine cylinder air cooled radial engines of the bomber being recovered, which had been at the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum at Flixton, near Bungay, Suffolk, ever since.

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Bibliography:

• Berlin Bombenkrieg. Four in a row: 31 August 1940. [accessed December 2024]

• Chorley, W R. RAF Bomber Command Losses of the Second World War. Volume 1 1939-40. Classic Publications, 2nd edition, 2013

• Donnelly, Larry. The Other Few: The Contribution Made by Bomber and Coastal Aircrew to the Winning of the Battle of Britain. Red Kite/Air Research, 2004

• Norfolk Wreck Research. Handley Page Hampden … P-2123. [accessed December 2024]

• Ward, Chris. 5 Group Bomber Command: An Operational Record. Pen & Sword Books, 2007

• Williston, Floyd.Through Footless Halls of Air: The Stories of a Few of the Many who Failed to Return. GSPH, 1996

• Young, Neil. The Role of the Bomber Command in the Battle of Britain. Imperial War Museum Review No. 06, 1991

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

Walking around the modern buildings at Potsdamer Platz and the immensity of the Sony Center in Berlin, few visitors notice a display case placed a few steps from the access hall of the underground station. Inside the glass façade, an old metal signal stands alone: the white S on a green background, saved from the 1939-1945 period as a reminder of the air bombings and war’s destruction in the city.

This vintage “S” is the S-Bahn Berlin icon trademark —which this year 2024 celebrates its 100th anniversary— and the keyvisual logo of the brand image of this blog also.

This wartime signal is on display at the ground floor of the BahnTower next to the Sony Center. The glass 26-story, 103-metre skyscraper was built in the years 1998-2000, today home of the Deutsche Bahn AG’s headquarters (DB), the new railway corporation founded in 1994. Don’t know the exact date it was placed here but if I remember well during my first visit in 2004 it was already there, so most probably it was when DB established their home at Potsdamer Platz (some other vintage signs are preserved at the Berliner S-Bahn Museum in Berlin too.) During my last visit in August 2024, the framed old S-Bahn sign, placed a few metres away from the remains of Hotel Esplanade’s Kaisersaal (a survivor of the air raids and the 1945-battle too) was not accessible, surrounded by wooden walls and building works. Potsdamer Platz, the only place in Berlin which was supposed to be rebuilt and finished, right now is a construction site, yes, again. [EDITED March 2025: the sign is already free to visit it again.]

I took these pictures of the partly damaged S-Bahn sign in August 2018, safeguarded inside the building’s glass at Potsdamer Platz.

Grün-weiße Symbol
A few years ago, the S-Bahn Museum was finally able to determine the origin of the white S on a green circle background: graphic artist Fritz Rosen created the iconic logo in 1929 at request of DR (receiving 800 Reichsmark as payment) and it was officially introduced in December 1930. Some say that the S stands for „Stadtbahn“, others refer to „Schnellbahn“ (fast train) but whatever the meaning was, it became the trademark of the railway’s urban traffic throughout Germany and an iconic logo.

According to TypeOff (an interesting blog about Design research and history), in 1935 the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft created a new lettering for use on all train stations signs in blackletter “German” style, in line with the National Socialist Germany principles. Its origin may come from the Element typeface, very similar in her Bold style. This lettering, which included the street-signals and the station’s platform walls, can be found at Nordbahnhof, Oranienburger Str, Brandenburger Tor, Potsdamer Platz or Anhalter Bahnhof stops among others.

S-Bahnhof Potsdamer Platz
The North-South S-Bahn tunnel was built in 1934-36 (already planned by the Weimar Republic) and the Nazi government expanded it in 1936 with this second underground link that included Potsdamer Platz-Anhalter Bhf-Yorckstraße. It was opened in April 1939, a few months before the outbreak of the war. Each of the nine exits of the station was marked by an S-Bahn pylon, as other stations in this route. Following wartime blackout policies, in 1940 the city’s S-Bahn poles and exit stairs were marked with white paint as were curbs and street signs.

Once described as the “most heavily bombed square in Europe”, Potsdamer Platz was badly hit during the 22-26 November 1943 RAF attacks, and during the June 21, 1944 and February 26, 1945, American air raids, a prominent target due to its proximity to the adjacent railway station and the Reich’s Chancellery complex at Voßstr, just one block away. The train service finally stopped in late April 1945 among fierce street-fighting (there is no power supply due to lack of coal).

Close examination of all known pictures taken in the aftermath of the war reveals that of the nine original “S” signs placed at Potsdamer Platz, at least six of them survived the battle with more or less damage.

Divided Berlin: devastation around
By war’s end Potsdamer Platz was border of three of the newly born occupation sectors (British and US at West side—Soviet at East). In 1945 the square became the perfect place for Berliners’ Black Market in those days, with daily police raids, mobs and riots with occupation troops. The S-Bahn service wasn’t reopened until 1946-47 but a few months later the city division made that trains didn’t stop here anymore: Potsdamer Platz station would be closed for nearly 30 years, reopening in March 1992.

Once a busy and traffic jammed area, by 1950-60 the square, now physically divided by barbed wire, armed guards and walled up, had become mostly an open space, empty, with most pre-war buildings being demolished except for the large train station and the ghostly Haus Vaterland whose ruins remained a few years more (1976). If you look closely at 1950s pictures, some of the “S” signs seem to have been replaced by metal discs. On the contrary, if you look at 1970 and 80s photos the underground entrances are still there (closed, of course) but the circled S signs are missing, just the poles remained.

With the 1990 Reunification and the DDR-GDR collapse, life came back to Potsdamer Platz. The square suffered a huge redevelopment and much of the surrounding area became the most modern part of the city. The S-Bahn and subway entrances were refurbished and reopened and new “S” signs, reminiscent of those built in the 1930s but in modern style were installed on each output, as well as two new built entrance halls in the middle of the newly born square.

This 1945-relic, probably one of the few surviving items from the original Potsdamer Platz, have been witness of the terrific air raids, the bloody battle between the Potsdamer King Tiger and Soviet tanks in May 1945, the end of the Third Reich, the June 1953 uprising, the wall construction in 1961, the no man’s land and finally, the Fall of the Wall and reunification in 1989-90. A true reminder of Berlin’s convulsed 20th century.

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Bibliography and Sources:

• Berliner S-Bahn Museum. 100 Jahre Berliner S-Bahn. [Accessed October 2024]

• Ebling, Hermann. Berlin um 1950: Fotografien von Ernst Hahn. Edition Friedenauer Brücke, 2013

• Hailstone, Allan. Berlin in the Cold War: 1959 to 1966. Amberley Publishing, 2017

• Landesarchiv Berlin: LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 701, Bl. 176; LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 702, Bl. 99 ff.; s. a. LAB, A Rep. 005-07, Nr. 559, o. Bl.); LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 703, Bl. 31 ff

• Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, 2011

• Potsdamer Platz. S-Bahnhof Potsdamer Platz. [Accessed October 2024]

• SSB Berlin. Geschichte und Geschichten rund um die Berliner S-Bahn. Potsdamer Platz. [Accessed October 2024]

• TypeOff. Blackletter signage in the Berlin S-Bahn. [Accessed October 2024]

• Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag, 2013

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

In this original colour footage we can see the bombed out and ruined U-Bhf Wittenbergplatz’s entrance hall and its original yellow mustard interior walls (built in 1912), following the end of the war and the reactivation of part of the underground train service in the city.

This soundless footage was recorded on July 9, 1945, by members of the AAF’s 4th Combat Camera Squadron led by Capt. William H. Clothier, which following their motion picture coverage of the war across northwestern Europe had been sent to the German capital that summer to capture the achievements of the air bombardment campaign against Hitler.

As we have seen before on previous posts (read here the 1945 and postwar history) the iconic Wittenbergplatz in Berlin-Schöneberg district and her underground station cross-shaped entrance building were totally wiped out during the 1939-45 war by Allied bombs and the final street-fighting to defeat Hitler’s regime. The hall was hit several times by explosive air bombs and artillery shells, which left in ruins the entrance and the surrounding area. Two months after the end of the hostilities, US servicemen entering the area found the station badly hit, but back in business and with U-bahn trains in service again.

This is a short reel of the original footage recorded on that day by the US camera team during their tour to visit the ruined Berlin streets:

Video source: Source: US NARA.

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

…Germans Say.’
– The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940 –

On September 10/11, 1940 (OTD 84 years ago last night), RAF fliers raided the centre of Berlin again. First air-alarms sounded starting at 23.54 hrs1 with searchlights and Flak guns scanning the dark skies to repel the intruders. The raid, which lasted one hour and a half, was described as “more intense than any Berlin has yet experienced.”2 Actually, the air attack was one of the weakest of the entire war, but it produced one of the most iconic photos of World War 2, at least of the early years of the conflict.

The bombers, which arrived over the German capital in small numbers (just six according to German sources of the nearly twenty sent by the British) dropped just a few bombs3 on that night, hampered by ground haze and clouds covering the city.4 Intended to hit the Tegel gasworks, Tempelhof and the nearby marshalling yards (including Potsdamer Bhf)5, several bombs landed at the city centre (Mitte district) damaging famous landmarks including Unter den Linden and Pariser Platz, where both the Brandenburger Tor and the Akademie der Künste were hit by some fire bombs which caused minor damage.6 Five civilians were killed and several injured. Bomb hits were reported also at Wilhelmplatz and immediate vicinity of the Reich Chancellery, the Bebelplatz and Dorotheenstr, and up north in the Charite and Invalidenstraße areas, with small fires caused by incendiaries too.7 Bombing pattern was scattered with other bombs hitting far areas as were Wilmesdorf or Spandau, and apparently (at least it was not reported) not inflicting damage to the aimed industrial targets of the night. Some reports included the old Reichstag in the list of buildings struck by bombs too.8

But without no doubt the image that caught most people attention was the one shot by a German photographer hours after the raid. Taken at Charlottenburger Chaussee, then part of the Nazi triumphal avenue Ost-West-Achse (today’s Straße des 17. Juni) a few metres from the famous Brandenburg Gate and surrounded by Tiergarten woods, Berliners take a look curious and amazed into the crater caused by a high explosive bomb dropped by the RAF.

“Three hundred yards up the “East-West Axis” a bomb estimated at between 500 and 1,000 pounds in weight (sic) smashed into the broad asphalt speedway, rocking buildings in a half-mile radius” reads the original text from the American correspondent in Berlin Percival Knauth which witnessed the raid’s aftermath in the German capital.9

The image, passed by Nazi censorship to Associated Press, was widely shared and reproduced all across the globe by international press in the next few days, its power and impact were far from evident, especially when it had the Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop. Some US papers even accompanied the picture with the caption “Bomb crater in Unter den Linden” and German press evidenced —for Nazi propaganda purposes, of course— the indignity of the Berliners seeing “hospitals, hotels, residential districts and monuments being bombed.“10 In the following days the striking scene, filmed by some PR cameraman quickly sent by Goebbels where the bomb crater was, appeared on a German newsreel all across the country too.

The German communique issued hours after the raid stated: “During the past night British planes again flew into North Germany. Several succeeded in reaching Berlin. The English fliers dropped isolated bombs on residential quarters of the capital. They succeeded in striking objectives not only of national importance but to a great extent of international importance. Thus is the house of the Union of German engineers, were students and scientists and technicians reside, was struck. Living rooms and assembly rooms were set afire. In addition the Academy of Art, near the Brandenburg Gate, in the immediate neighbourhood of the American Embassy, was struck.”11

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Bibliography:

• BRITISH BOMBING SURVEY UNIT. The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939 - 1945 - The Official Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit. Frank Cass, 1998

• Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, 2011

• Overy, Richard. The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Allen Lane, 2013

• Tress HB. Churchill, the First Berlin Raids, and the Blitz: A New Interpretation. Militaergeschichtliche Zeitschrift, Volume 32, Issue 2, Pages 65–78. 1982

• Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag, 2013

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

…British bomb populous section of the city - other damage also reported.’
– The New York Times, Thursday, August 29, 1940 –

Last night 84th years ago (28/29 August 1940), Berlin tasted the bloody and terrible bombing war for the first time. Last week we had the opportunity to visit the streets in Kreuzberg district where those first bombs hit the city centre.

Several RAF bombs fell at the Kottbusser Tor area (see full report and map area at the bottom of the page), hitting buildings at Kottbusser Str, Mariannenstraße and Skalitzer Str. along other areas as Prenzlauer Berg and some residential colonies in the outskirts. The Kottbusser Tor area has changed a lot and there are no tram lines anymore, with new buildings built during the postwar years and the original ones which had survived being refurbished too. It seems that no scars from the air bombings have survived.

Full account of this second air raid can be read on our blog’s two-part post:
Bombing raid on Berlin
Britische Luftangriffe über Berlin

A view of the dramatic ‘Bombenschäden’(bomb damage) panorama after the RAF’s second air raid on the German capital, Kottbusser Straße 21-17 buildings and the same spot as viewed today.

A view of the day after the raid at Kottbusser Str. 25-26, where two explosive bombs hit the pavement next to the tram lines causing damage. Note the alert sign behind and the Hochbahnhof U-Bhf. Kottbusser Tor (built in 1928) in the background where many Berliners took shelter during the raid.

Taken a few metres away, this is a warning sign of an unexploded bomb (‘dud’) at Kottbusser Str. 18-19 in the Berlin-Kreuzberg district (notice the U-Bahn highway in the distance). The notice advises the danger with the warning Blindgänger!! Lebensgefahr! which means “Unexploded ordnance”.

Around the corner, the roof structure of Mariannenstraße number 26 apartment (today part of Kottbusser Str 15) was thrown into the street by explosive bombs, we can see here the severe damage taken by the building’s last floor, August 29, 1940.

Close view of the roof and facade damage at Mariannenstraße 26 (today part of Kottbusser Str 15), August 29, 1940, and the same spot as viewed today in 2024.

Mariannenstraße 29-10 (at left) Ecke Skalitzer Str. (in front of the famous Astronaut Cosmonaut graffiti painted by Victor Ash). Damage was also inflicted by fires on Skalitzer Str. 122, Mariannenstraße numbers 11 and 9-10 (where the electricity plant was hit) and Oranienstraße 189.

The eastern Kreuzberg district, a very populated residential area, was severely hit by British bombs on 29 Aug. 1940. Several sticks of bombs dropped around U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor caused chaos and large fires there, flying debris shattered the streets, hitting everything around. Almost all the windows between the train station and the Kottbusser Brücke were smashed. Two high explosive bombs were dropped in front of Kottbusser Str. 25-26 causing severe damage to the pavement and the tram lines there. Another bomb hit Kottbusser Str. 21 destroying the roof structure and the last floor, and number 15’s roof was also destroyed by fire-bombs. Around the corner, the roof structure at Mariannenstraße 26 was thrown into the street by explosive bombs, with roof fires at numbers 24 and 42 Ecke Skalitzer Str. 24. Finally, two unexploded bombs (‘duds’) were located in front of Kottbusser Str. 18-19, next to the tram track.

Berlin admitted minor damage to several districts of the capital the following morning: the myth of the Reichhauptstadt’s inviolability had been finally shattered.

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Bibliography and sources:

• Berliner Morgenpost, Freitag, 30. Aug. 1940. Nr. 208

• BRITISH BOMBING SURVEY UNIT (1998).The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939 - 1945 - The Official Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit. Frank Cass

• Demps, Laurenz. Luftangriffe auf Berlin. Die Berichte der Hauptluftschutzstelle. Ch. Links Verlag, 2014

• Der Angriff, 30. Aug. 1940, Nr. 210

• Friedrich, Jörg. Der Brand Deutschland Im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945. Verlag Ullstein, 2005

• Landesarchiv Berlin. Die Kriegschronik der Reichshauptstadt Berlin – Quelle zur Geschichte Berlins in der NS-Zeit

• Landesarchiv Berlin. LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 8 f

• Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, 2011

• Overy, Richard.The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Allen Lane, 2013

• Shirer, William L. Berlin Diary: Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941. Galahad Books, 1997

• Shirer, William L.This Is Berlin. Random House, 2013

• Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag, 2013

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

– The Times, September 5, 1940 –

With the arrival of the new month of September a new phase in the air war was about to begin between Berlin and London. The invasion menace across the Channel forced Churchill and the War Cabinet to maintain the pressure over the enemy, with a vast list of territories and targets to be attacked by the RAF.

After a brief pause of two nights without being on the target lists (you can read more about the previous raid here), RAF’s Bomber Command effort included the ‘Big City’ again on the night of September 3/4, 1940, in what would be the British fifth raid on the German capital. On the first anniversary of Britain’s declaration of war, a mixed force of light and medium bombers from all Groups were sent to “Berlin, Magdeburg, the Ruhr and the German forests, and to airfields in France.”1 As on previous nights, the bombing effort was hampered by clouds and haze.

Again, the bombing force was sent to destroy “industrial and military targets” located in and around Berlin. Main effort was focused on the western part of the city with the Hampden squadrons (No. 5 Group) being dispatched to bomb the West power station in Berlin-Spandau and the Rheinmetall Borsig factory, meanwhile No. 4 Group’s mission was directed against a transformer station and gasworks in the Tegel area too.2 The Wellington group for its part was assigned a special task on this night: to raise fires on Grunewald, the largest wooded area in Berlin (For further info see Razzles - Firing the Grunewald Forest) dropping incendiary bombs “where, among other things, it was thought that the Germans had established enormous military storage facilities”.3 Similar raids were made on previous nights (to the Black Forest or to Falkensee near Berlin), but this was the first one of this type on the capital.4

Exact figures about how many bombers attacked Berlin on that night are impossible to come by, because known documents (mainly each squadron’s ORB — operations record books) are not so precise as in late war years, but an estimate is between 17-21 aircraft dispatched until more detailed data surfaces.

As with the rest of early raids on Berlin, this one was mostly obliterated by aviation historians and authors. Even the most recent Martin Bowman’s work, a focused book narrating the RAF’s early years bombing campaign against Berlin published last year, doesn’t mention it.5 Just brief descriptions can be found in the available literature, for example Bomber Command’s reference book (Middlebrook, 1985) “90 Blenheims, Hampdens, Wellingtons and Whitleys to Berlin…” or in 4 Group’s chronicle by Chris Ward. Former 10 Squadron air-gunner Larry Donnelly writes in his book a more detailed breakdown of the operation, meanwhile author Paul Tweddle gives us a deeper narration of the raid.6 On the German side, Prof. Demps in his research of the air bombardments on the city lists this raid as been made by just eleven British aircraft.7

‘Bombs on Woods’
Bomber Command’s 3 Group assigned the mission to two of its units, both equipped with Wellington medium bombers. Order Form B.259 was received at RAF Marham, Norfolk, earlier that day where Nos 38 and 115 Squadrons were based at the time. Six bombers were prepared to attack the Grunewald woods, with twelve more intended to bomb the Schwarzwald (Black Forest in Southwest Germany). Another four crews would target marshalling yards at Hamm and Schwerte with the north and western forests areas of Berlin as alternative targets.8

The bombers attacking the forests would be loaded with six containers of 25 lb parachute incendiary bombs each and several 250 lb light case incendiaries.9

At Marham, 115 Squadron put up four bombers from 20.41 hrs intended for Grunewald. Crews reported that many explosions were caused and fires started at the target area.10 However according to author Steve Smith just two a/c from this squadron were assigned Berlin’s forests on this night.11 Shortly thereafter No. 38 Squadron’s two bombers took off for their targets (off eleven attacking Germany) to fire Grunewald’s woods too, arriving over target area at 00:34 hrs*. The squadron’s combat log recorded that “many fires were started and many white and red explosions were seen, and much damage is believed to have been done.” By 04.43 hrs all aircraft had returned safely.12

For their part, No. 5 Group — then under Air Vice Marshal Harris’ command — sent Order Form B.212 to Scampton and Waddington stations. Attacking orders planned “To destroy power station at X Target B.56.” (the West power station located at Spandau/Siemensstadt) with eight aircraft from Nos 44 and 83 Squadrons, both equipped with Hampden bombers. Loaded with 250- and 500 lb GP bombs, in the case crews didn’t find it they would proceed to target G.69 (the Deutsche Industriewerke AG) and the Rheinmetall Borsig AG factory (coded E.15) at Berlin-Tegel where the company built guns and ammunition among other many things substantial for the German war effort. Another four Hampdens were to attack an oil refinery in Magbeburg with one Berlin target as the secondary (an oil storage coded A.160).13

Operating from RAF Feltwell as advance airstrip the Scampton crews (No 83 Sqn) are to lead the attack with five bombers, however results were poor: two of the bombers returned to base early due to engine trouble and the remaining three reached the German capital but just one reported to have identified and attacked the target, with other claiming to drop bombs over a “large factory west of Spandau”, none of them seen their effects.14 The three 44 Squadron bombers arrived at the target area between 23.45 and 00.40 hrs and dropped their bombs in a swallow dive but results were not seen owing to intense searchlights and A.A. fire. By 04.45 all the aircraft were back at their bases in England safely.15

Finally, No 4 Group’s contribution to that night included just one of its units, in this case No 10 Squadron based at RAF Leeming, North Yorkshire. The night before the squadron had been sent to attack a power station in Genoa, Italy, a very long trip at the limit of the Whitley’s endurance losing two crews. (see Richard Worrall, The Italian Blitz 1940–43: Bomber Command’s war against Mussolini’s cities, docks and factories. Osprey, 2020, for further information)16

Earlier that day the crews had been briefed to raid targets in Italy again, but at mid-morning new orders reassigned the Group to Berlin. The seven bombers detailed were to attack targets in west Berlin area, with the power plant as primary target and the coal gasworks in Berlin-Tegel as secondary objective. Their Whitley bombers would be loaded with 2x500 lb plus 6x250 lb high explosive bombs.

Leaving RAF Leeming from 20.30 hours, the seven bombers dispatched by the squadron reached the Reich’s capital, but only one claimed to have bombed the primary target (“one large fire was started”) and another the secondary, rest of the crews attacked targets of opportunity due to total darkness: a marshalling yard, a factory near Stendal, and an aerodrome south of the capital, with the last one dropping bombs over an aerodrome at Magdeburg. Returning crews reported ten-tenth clouds and intense Flak over the target. At 06.20 the last aircraft landed after completing operations.17

‘crashed against a tree’
RAF intruders suffered no losses over Germany on that night but one bomber crash-landed on the return journey due to fuel exhaustion. This aircraft, bomber Whitley P4967 ZA-J ‘J for Johnny’ of No 10 Sqn, made two attacks on a marshalling yard two miles from the primary target and returned to Yorkshire but ran low on fuel, the pilot (Flight Lt D.G. Tomlinson) was forced to make a ‘wheels-up’ landing at 06.45 hrs five miles of Northallerton in North Yorkshire. All crewmembers escaped unhurt.18 Another Whitley (serial P4994) from the same unit suffered Flak damage over the target when a piece of shrapnel damaged the bomber’s windscreen but returned without problem to England.19

‘Mass Bombing of Secret Targets’
On the next day, press reports and the official Air Ministry communique resumed the operation with high claims: “British planes last night bombed electric power stations, lighting installations and an armament factory. Other planes attacked military objectives in the Harz Mountains and in the Grunewald Forest north of Berlin, starting fires and causing explosions.”20 Pilots returning reported fierce blazes “seen from 100 miles on their homeward flight” with squadron’s log records narrating explosions and large fires seen too. British and American press highlighted even more the bombing effects on Berlin that night: “a devastating attack with incendiary bombs” wrote for example The New York Times two days after the raid.21

Reality was far from that and results were poor. Just nine crews (of 19 that probably reached the Great Berlin area) returned claims of have bombed their primary target, with two others attacking the secondary. Heavy clouds and ground haze over the targets were encountered, which made it difficult to locate them and to observe the immediate effects of the swallow attacks.22 Almost all returning crews reported intense German Flak and accurate fire, with a high number of searchlights over the target area; one crewmember remembered that “searchlights were very active… two of these were red, but changed to yellow” meanwhile another one stated that “the Black-out in Berlin was very poor.”23

On the other hand, the Luftwaffe continued its aerial campaign against the Thames estuary, resulting in heavy air combats over Kent and Essex during the day. On the evening, small German bombing formations attacked the Midlands, the Wash area and Merseyside, offensive described as “widespread over many parts of this country, but reports indicate that the general damage was slight”, losing two to RAF night fighters.24

As seen before, with the arrival of the new month the air bombing campaign continued, although with less intensity, the Reich’s capital being targeted regularly through the autumn and winter of 1940. This new attack by RAF raiders, overclaimed by the British, left a small tonnage of bombs dropped and minimal damage on the city but achieved its main purpose of keeping the pressure over the Nazi authorities and reminded the German people that they were at war also.

On the next post we will explore the effects of this bombardment on the city, its people and its terrible consequences… London would soon suffer the power of the German air fleet.

*British and German time zones differ due to the different time zones during the war years.

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Bibliography:

• BRITISH BOMBING SURVEY UNIT. The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939 - 1945 - The Official Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit. Frank Cass, 1998

• Churchill, Winston. Their Finest Hour. Houghton Mifflin, 1949

• Tress HB. Churchill, the First Berlin Raids, and the Blitz: A New Interpretation. Militaergeschichtliche Zeitschrift, Volume 32, Issue 2, Pages 65–78. 1982

• Ward, Chris. 5 Group Bomber Command: An Operational Record. Pen & Sword Books, 2007

• Ward, Chris and Smith, Steve. 3 Group Bomber Command: An Operational Record. Pen & Sword Books, 2009

• Williston, Floyd. Through Footless Halls of Air: The Stories of a Few of the Many who Failed to Return. GSPH, 1996

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

resulted from our bombing but it’s very likely these raids had a consequential effect; triggering a most profound change of strategy by the enemy.’

On the 83rd anniversary of the first RAF raids on Berlin, it is very interesting to note what remembered one of Bomber Command’s boys (those which some authors call ‘the Many’) years later, in this case Sqdn. Ldr. Andrew Jackson (DFC, AE, MID.) who participated in several of the attacks against the Third Reich capital in August 1940 (see previous posts here).

Jackson, who completed his first operational tour flying Wellington bombers with RAF Nos 115 and 149 Squadrons and volunteered for a second tour (joining No 49 Squadron to fly Hampden and Manchester bombers and later Avro Lancasters with No 207 Squadron), was a major contributor to the memory of RAF Bomber Command and was the author of ‘The First Raids on Berlin’ and ‘Flying 40 missions with Red’ among other books telling his personal eye-witness accounts of the air war. He died in Edinburgh on January 31, 2009, aged 91.

Here is his account of the events and how crucial he thought the Berlin raids were in changing enemy’s tactics during the Battle of Britain:
“On the 28th August 1940, we took off from Norwich Airfield, as an advanced base from Marham to attack BERLIN, on the first operation by Wellington bombers (actually two squadrons of Wellingtons participated on the first raid also, not only Hampden bombers, author’s note). An earlier raid by Hampden aircraft was made on the 25th August 1940. The target was considered to be at the extreme operational range of the Wimpey; hence the use of Norwich Airfield. To further conserve fuel, we began a very gentle climb over the North Sea, which was covered by low cloud. Without warning we were under attack from anti-aircraft fire coming from our own ships below, presumably protecting an allied convoy. Having escaped serious damage, we continued on our long flight to the German capital.

Searchlights and heavy flak were encountered on our flight, but over the actual target there was very little opposition - not what we expected. We had a clear view of the city and the marshalling yards were easily identified and attacked. Two nights later (August 30, author’s note) we returned to be met by numerous searchlights and well-directed and intensive flak. The enemy was learning fast!

The target this time was Templehoff (sic) Airfield. Our numbers were small and there is no claim that much damage resulted from our bombing but it’s very likely these raids had a consequential effect; triggering a most profound change of strategy by the enemy.

In retrospect, it seems the raids destroyed the myth of German invincibility; causing embarrassment and considerable anger against those who had openly boasted that such raids would never happen. It’s widely believed the attacks on the German capital infuriated Hitler and prompted him to seek an alternative strategy. In future, the Luftwaffe would concentrate their bombing on British cities in a renewed effort to achieve a quick victory.

At that time, Fighter Command was in dire straits. Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Manson (sic) and other airfields were being subjected to a terrible pasting. In some attacks, 100 bombs would be dropped on one single airfield and their viability, as an operational unit, was dubious at best. The sudden change of targeting by Goering’s Luftwaffe gave Fighter Command the respite it so desperately needed. A.C.M. Lord Dowding described it as a miracle! The daylight attacks on our cities were undertaken at high level, giving our C.H.L.’s the opportunity to detect the approach of enemy aircraft at an early stage, and to give our fighters enough time to reach optimum height. London was at the extreme range of the deadly Bf109’s and this undoubtedly contributed to higher enemy losses. Historians can regard these early raids on Berlin of immense importance since they resulted in changing the enemy’s tactics from a winning formula - to one that denied them victory. Fighter Command was able to recover from the former onslaught of airfields and aircraft – going on to defeat the Luftwaffe in one of the famous aerial battles of all time.

For the first time in World War Two, Hitler’s rampage through Europe was checked. His plans concerning the invasion of the United Kingdom required an early decision as regards the date of invasion but the heavy losses incurred by the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain raised serious doubt whether a position of air superiority could be attained. Operation ‘Sea Lion’ was initially postoned then later cancelled.

The raids on Berlin helped shape aerial battlefields of the future and helped to shape future strategy and effort. They destroyed the mythology of German invicibility and illustrated the possibility of victory at a time when news and events pointed towards darkness and defeat. It was not achieved without cost. That cost is correctly recorded in the Roll of Honour in the Battle of Britain Memorial Chapel within Westminster Abbey in London.”

Bibliography:

• Donnelly, Larry. The Other Few: The Contribution Made by Bomber and Coastal Aircrew to the Winning of the Battle of Britain. Red Kite/Air Research, 2004

• Middlebrook, Martin and Everett, Chris. (1985). The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book. Pen & Sword Aviation. Reprint Edition 2014

• Napier, Michael. Vickers Wellington Units of Bomber Command. Combat Aircraft 133. Osprey Publishing, 2020

• Scottish Saltire Aircrew Association. The First Raids on Berlin, Library Reference Number: 002. (accessed Sept 2023)

• The Tiller. RTB Mrs. Lavinia Flint - Leonard Ing - Andrew Jackson. Newsletter of 115 Squadron Association, April 2009. (accessed Sept 2023)

• Ward, Chris and Smith, Steve. 3 Group Bomber Command: An Operational Record. Pen & Sword Books, 2009

• Ward, Chris. 115 Squadron Profile. Mention the War Ltd, 2019

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.

This #WWII dud has been successfully defused by the city’s specialist explosives team LKA after more than 12,000 people living nearby were evacuated. The police has restricted an area of ​​around 500 meters around the site.

In 2011 it was estimated that over 5,500 unexploded bombs or weapons from the war that need to be defused are uncovered each year. The daily average is 15, most of them aerial bombs. A new sample that the ‘bombing war’ is still living among us.

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During the 1914-1918 war, both the British and the Germans planned to attack the enemy’s cities by air: thus several attacks by zeppelins first and huge bombers later were carried out from 1915 with varied results but in general with little or no consequences for the development of the war.3 Of course, it had been made clear that in future wars, the delimitation of the battlefield no longer existed. It would be fought both in the battlefront as in the home front. This is how the new “warrior” appeared, the one who would suffer the most from the harshness and cruelty of the battles of the 20th century: the civilian population. This new war extended its destructive power even to non-combatants. Modern air warfare was born with the planners of the Kaiser’s Empire4: starting from reconnaissance flights over the frontline to destroy a military target that resides in an urban area.

With this new way of waging war, another element that strategists and generals would have to count on: moral (which includes morality and morale). Lt Col Ash defines military morale: “If morale is the desire to continue the fight, then strategist must target morale in order to break the enemy’s will to resist. This is why morale is so important. It can lie at the heart of targeting for effect”.5 That morale also extends, as von Clausewitz said, to the leadership of society. The theory was simple: the enemy nation should also be attacked in its own territory, in its facilities, in its cities and in its homes to nullify the possible future combat capacity of its inhabitants, either as soldiers or as workers of the war effort. Directly choosing moral as an objective involved attacking group goals, cultural histories and traditions, symbols, and ideology. In addition, it should be achieved in this way to break the trust of the society placed in their leaders, and prevent them from continuing to abide by their directives; an army is sustained by soldiers and weapons, so if the people were prevented from filling their ranks, no one would handle the manufactured weapons. On the other hand, this strategy also wanted to achieve the double effect of demoralising the battlefront soldier, who when seeing his home city -and therefore, his family- reduced to rubble, would lose faith in victory. That is to say, in times of war, the will to fight is attacked. In World War II, the moral bombing strategy involved both positive (which gives strength, given the success achieved) and negative (which, on the contrary, leads to depression and defeat after seeing the enemy superiority).6

Ash signaled on the direction of the attacks: “…leadership influence can be eliminated by cutting command or social-structure linkages so that society no longer associates its confidence with its leaders. Another indirect option involves bombing the society at large so as to kill the populace or at least cause loss of sleep and reduced worker performance. That sounds like direct targeting, but it is not. It eliminates the confidence of the victims, but the actual target is the confidence and morale of the surviving population.”7

This attack on morale will be extended and completed with the inclusion of raids on the elements that produce the another’s war effort, such as facilities, factories, oil refineries, docks, warehouses and marshalling yards should be attacked wherever they are, which implied to fly over enemy territory crossing defended airspace in great risk.

In the interwar years, the different powers studied the military contributions of strategic air attacks, appearing a whole doctrine of bombing and air warfare, with several representatives who formulated the basic guidelines to follow in future conflicts. In Great Britain (which has always been one of the leading powers in air development) Lord Hugh Trenchard, Chief of the Air Staff, RAF, had a great importance. His are the dogmas that “in air warfare the greatest defense is counterattack”8 and that “the country that resisted the bombardment the longest would win in the end.”9 He will bet on the creation of a powerful bombardment arm among the British air ranks, believing that the moral effect of the bombings was much more effective than the physical one, and that in the future the bombers would win the battles alone. Critics have accused him of his dogmatic approach to offensive tactics against morale and of promotion of bombing of urban populations.10

Even more extreme were the conceptions of the Italian army General Giulio Douhet in his book Il dominio dell’aria (first published in 1921), head of aviation at the Mussolini’s fascist regime. He considered air warfare as a saving element that would prevent the slaughter between soldiers on the ground; the bomber would break the stalemate of the war, seeking the surrender of the enemy by annihilating its defences, for which, according to him, the large-scale slaughter of civilians was justified. Douhet also approved the bombardment with toxic gases, with attacks that “slowly emit gas, thus poisoning the atmosphere for weeks”.11 He appropriated Trenchard’s basic idea and carried it to its logical, amoral conclusion. Douhet believed that the decisive action against the enemy should be the attack on the population itself and that the instrument for this was the bomber. Frankland says that the figure of the Italian general as the sole mentor of this doctrine is questionable, but he granted his later influence in the US, meanwhile Taylor believes that Trenchard’s ideas, and even Douhet’s, could carry deterrence at their heart:“So terrible would be the damage the bombers would inflict that in the future no sane leader could envisage unleashing a European war.”12. Friedrich states of the impossibility of dissociating the concepts of “bomber”, “State” and “war” since then, and that“making war means, above all, to bomb cities. This was indicated by the Trenchard doctrine, the raison d’être of the Royal Air Force”13, a highly accusatory judgment, possibly because its country of origin (Germany) was the main victim of these theories.

The evolution of these theories after the First World War led to an increase in the air branch of each nation, especially the bombing arm, with a constant technical improvement that allowed the maximum bomb load to be carried as far as possible.

Bombing aircraft were the weapon of the future, and with them the enemy would be defeated. In the 30s, the “Multiplace de combat”14 theory, would pick up this concept, with large and heavy bombers -but slow- armed with numerous machine guns in turrets, for self-defense, that would make their way into the enemy’s skies alone. The great conflict of that decade, the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), would contribute to assert this principle further. From Spain experiences, great powers drew very wrong conclusions (and which would pay on the first years of the imminent world war), led to the conviction of the bombing aircraft power and its ability to survive against enemy defences alone, but this was due to the very special circumstances of warfare of the Spanish conflict (a mix of traditional strategies and new weapons yet to be tested). Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union tested bombing aircraft in Spain, developing their weapons and training their crews. Both Germans and Soviets started to develop a new type of bomber too: the sleek, monoplane, and fast plane which carried a small bomb load designed to penetrate enemy airspace and leave behind the fighters thanks to its greater speed and defensive fire (examples of that were the Luftwaffe’s Heinkel He 111 or the Soviet SB-2 Katiuska).

The civilian population would suffer for the first time a sustained and aimed bombing campaign targeted to break its resistance: Madrid, the capital city, had the “honour” of being the first city in the world to suffer the terror bombing strategy (since October 1936) with daily attacks by German and Fascist Italian aviation which supported General Franco15 [see our “Evacuad Madrid” post]; the following year both Barcelona and Valencia cities would suffer daily punishment from the air with hundreds of civilian killed, just as the most famous air bombing was also carried out in Spain by Legión Cóndor aircraft: Guernica (or Gernika), on April 26th, 1937.16

Both Great Britain and the United States carefully studied the operations and experiments carried on in Spain and China (where the Japanese bombed civilian targets like Shanghai or Chengdu during the Second Sino-Japanese War as early as 1931), knowing that they were a prior act of the air war that would be fought in the incoming years. What was learned was put into practice, in different ways, against the inhabitants of Europe (and months later in other parts of the world).

Strategic moral bombing was an attack against community, which in the case of World War II experienced the most critical and high mark moments, although at times it achieved just the opposite result of that aimed by strategists. Civilians morale, far from declining increased, due to the feeling of hatred towards the enemy bomber that bring devastation to their homes. And among the attacking aircrews, the effort and toughness encountered led to combat sickness in the face of the losses experienced and the poor visible results.

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After the end of the Second World War and with the Iron Curtain already instaured, and the subsequent division of the city into four sectors, Berlin Steglitz continued its reconstruction work as an essential part of the US occupation zone. But that effort and money went principally to the main artery of the suburb’s life, Schloßstraße and its surrounding area. With streets cleared of rubble stores, groceries, markets and cinemas reopened and a new commercial life sponsored by the American giant glow on the great avenue that crosses that district from north to south with the red Rathaus building as an a iconic.

In the aerial view of the reconstructed Steglitzer Schloßstraße in the 1950s seen above, it seems like war has ever happened, with clear streets, the majestic Rathaus and the new Volkswagen-pavilion (built in 1951) at left. Notice at right that there is no Hermann-Ehlers-Platz yet.

In this silent film footage taken at Steglitz after the end of the war we can see the Rathaus Steglitz from Albrechtstraße with trams and buses running again and finally the street market next to Hermann-Ehlers-Platz, with several scenes showing Berliners’ new life at Schloßstraße. Notice the Albrechtshof-Lichtspiele cinema at Albrechtstraße (01:47) and the Titania-Palast theatre views’ (02:05). [Video credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Theodor Röckle Collection. ID:3917.]

Much of that American economic support was managed by the High Commission for Occupied Germany - Alliierte Hohe Kommission (AHK). Established in 1948, the US HICOG was created by the victorious Western Allies to supervise and regulate the politic, economic and social directives of the new born West Germany. For example, in 1951 a program of US HICOG was carried out with 8 1/2 million Deutsche marks to deliver food between the population.

However, in the adjacent streets there were still images of destruction until well into the 50s with rubble and ruins, remains of the Bombenkrieg past. Here, Two scenes of ruined buildings in Steglitz, probably Markelstraße in 1952.

One of the highlights of Steglitz district throughout its Berlin history has been transportation, as we saw in previous posts the world’s first electrified tram line ran through there in 1881. As the rest of the Western zone, it had to restart and rebuild the entire transport and communications network after the war, a very hazardous enterprise not only difficult due to the economic precariousness but also due to the recent tension and division of the capital by the victors.

The Berliner Verkehrs-Gesellschaft (from 1938 known as BVG or Bezeichnung Berliner Verkehrs-Betriebe) was responsible of all tram and omnibus systems, the last was part of the bus network so it carries identical characteristic yellow colour too.

Next, as a conclusion about the history of this Berlin city district during the air-bombings, war period and subsequent years, we share several scenes of the post-war years. Life goes on at Steglitz and after reconstruction Berliners go about their business, and we hope that never again it be known as ‘steht nichts’ - nothing is standing.

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Sources and Bibliography:

• Aengeneyndt, Jan-Derk. Südwest-Berlin als Kriegsgebiet. Die Bezirke Zehlendorf und Steglitz von Januar bis Juni 1945. 2003

• Berliner Verkehrsseiten. Nahverkehrsgeschichten aus Berlin <http://www.berliner-verkehrsseiten.de/>

• Dost, S. Richard Brademann (1884-1965) Architekt der Berliner S-Bahn. Verlag Bernd Neddermeyer. 2002

• Feustel Jan, Köhler Hörst. Lebensader durch Sumpf und Sand, 100 Jahre Teltowkanal. 1. Auflage. Hendrik Bäßler Verlag. 2006

• Friese, Wolfgang. Lankwitz und seine Geschichte. Teil 5: Kloster und Luftangriff. Gabriele Schuster Eigen. 2013

• Hopfe, Christian. Berlin-Steglitz. Die Reihe Archivbilder. Sutton Archivbilder. 2017.

• Kunstamt Steglitz (Hrsg.). Alles neu: 50 Jahre Kriegsende in Steglitz. 1995

• Major, Patrick. The Death of the KPD: Communism and Anti-Communism in West Germany, 1945-1956. OUP Oxford. 1998

• Roberts, Maxwell J. The Decade of Diagrams. Department of Psychology University of Essex. Colchester. 2019

• Simon, Christian. Steglitz im Wandel der Geschichte: vom grössten Dorf Preussens. be.bra-Verlag. 1997

• Steglitz-Museum Archiv. Heimatverein Steglitz e.V. Berlin. <http://steglitz-museum.de/archiv>

• Stivers, William and Carter Donald A. The city becomes a symbol: the U.S. Army in the occupation of Berlin, 1945-1949. Center of Military History United States Army. Washington, D.C. 2017

Thank you for reading Berlin Bombenkrieg by Pablo López Ruiz. Please subscribe, if you haven’t yet, to comment, follow and share. All images used for non profit / educational purposes.