The Great Fear

As nearly as any German city has ever been in this war, Hamburg was dead last week. Its streets were twisting lanes through tumbled wreckage. A few busses crept along them, while cars equipped with loudspeakers called on the population to leave. Hamburg had no gas, no electricity, no water, little food. Money existed no longer -- food, busses and trains were simply taken where they could be had and no one asked for payment. In the ruins, on the streets, in the branches of trees where bombs had blown them, lay the dead, their eyes wide open, staring.

Foreign workers returning home to Denmark and Sweden brought such descriptions of the Reich's second city, blasted by 10,000 tons of bombs in seven night raids by the R.A.F., two daylight attacks by U.S. bombers. Dante's Inferno, said one, was incomparable with Hamburg. Entire city districts were wiped out: St. Pauli, known to sailors the world over for its roller coasters, shooting galleries, beer halls and other places of amusement; Altona, the "Red district" of pre-Hitler days, where Communists and Nazis had fought bitter, bloody battles on the streets; the harbor with its huge shipyards, docks and warehouses.

The Bitterness. There was no panic in Hamburg, said returning foreigners. "The population took everything with a bitter resignation which had a terribly depressing effect on foreigners. The suffering is so tremendous that many people have been plunged into apathy." In the shelters the people crowded together for hours, listening to the howl of bombs, the crash of gunfire. Women wept, children cried.

"When the all clear sounded," said a Danish worker, "the people came out of the shelters and many were almost naked." The food supply could not be organized at once and people pounced on fruits and vegetables outside or inside shops. Thirsty people besieged a truck from a fish market and drank the water dripping from the ice inside the fish boxes.

The Panic. The aftermath of Hamburg was a great fear throughout the Reich. Refugees streamed from the stricken city, spread tales of horror. German propagandists had once spoken gloatingly of the destruction which their Luftwaffe visited on British cities; they could find no words now to quell the rising terror of their people under the Allied bombs. The Voelkischer Beobachter, official organ of the Nazi Party, wrote: "The whole Reich and the largest cities are within reach of enemy planes. Nobody underestimates the imminence of danger." Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, who once said: "If a single bomb should fall on German territory, then my name is Meyer," visited Hamburg. There is no record of what Hamburg's people said to him.

Hardest hit of all German cities by the news from Hamburg was Berlin. By official order, "unessential" civilians were evacuated. The Berlin radio claimed that more than a million people jammed trains and busses, carrying bundles, dragging children. The alarm rose when the R.A.F. served official notice on Berliners that their city was the next target. In the parks and squares, perspiring citizens dug zigzag trenches while the long hospital trains with bomb-wounded crawled through the town.

The R.A.F. would strike again, and there was no comfort for the Germans in the lull that followed the Hamburg raids. They knew the meaning of such pauses, during which bombers are overhauled, crews rested or replaced, new targets studied.

Balance Sheet. For each R.A.F. night raid on Hamburg, 800 planes were used. They required 100,000 ground personnel and 40 to 60 airfields per raid. Lost were 88 bombers and 600 to 700 men. Estimated cost of lost planes and crews: $74,000,000. Dead were unknown thousands of Hamburg residents. Destroyed were seven sq. mi. of city (including 90% of the vital harbor area).

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