A Capital Is Dying

The Germans last week were evacuating Berlin. Through the rubble-littered streets where gangs of workers dug in dusty ruins, past forlorn groups of people standing before bombed-out homes, drove radio propaganda cars, urging women and children to leave. The newspapers, on sale again in reduced format, gave the same bleak advice to all nonessential residents. Outside the city, in suburban recreation centers, thousands camped in tents or beneath the open sky, waiting for transport.

Berlin's Ministries and Government offices were leaving, too. This exodus reportedly began months ago, but it was far from complete when the R.A.F. began to strike in force. All vital offices, said Stockholm, would be or were being transferred elsewhere, as far as they could get from the R.A.F. bombers. Most of them, it appeared, would be set up anew in eastern cities; the Foreign Office was known to be going to Breslau. The Propaganda Ministry alone seemed likely to remain, at least temporarily; its presence in the capital was important for morale.

Berlin, as a city, still lived. Berlin, as a capital, was dying.

New Fires. Fifteen hundred tons of bombs in a raid last week raised the tonnage dropped on Berlin in one fortnight to as much as London took in all the blitz of 1940-41. A force of 500 heavy bombers attacked industrial areas in southeast Berlin, which had been largely spared, impeded recovery from the fires and terror of the previous fortnight's serial raids. Strengthened defenses cost the R.A.F. 41 planes.

New Target. Next night the R.A.F. used tactics which strained the Germans still further. Heavy bombers "in strength" headed for Berlin.* The Germans were ready: they roofed the skyroad to the capital with flares and swarms of night fighters. But within sight of Berlin itself, the bombers turned away and flew 90 miles to the southward. The tricked night fighters, out of fuel, had to land.

On Leipzig, fifth largest German city, newly industrialized with evacuated war plants and crowded with refugees from Berlin, the bombers poured more than 1,500 tons of explosive and fire. No night fighters met them; Leipzig had only searchlights and flak. Then, while bombs were falling on Leipzig, a large force of swift Mosquito bombers flashed in on Berlin.

The Objective. The R.A.F. was achieving its objective. That objective could not be measured only in terms of Berlin acreage laid waste, of people killed, of factories and ministries destroyed. Damage could be repaired; as London and many German cities had proved, human beings and cities alike could show incredible powers of recovery.

But Berlin's value as a capital and war center could be and was being destroyed. Deep in every German heart, a fear grew. However busily the Germans might rebuild, whatever weapons they might send against the bombers from England, or even against England itself, they could not stop nor adequately hinder the great, disrupting offensive from the air.

*"Very great strength," the Air Ministry's highest category of attack, usually indicates between 750 and 1,000 planes; "great strength," next highest category, between 500 and 750 planes; "in strength" between 300 and 500 planes. Two other categories are "medium" and "moderate" attacks.

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