Bombing of Lübeck in World War II
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Lübeck was bombed for the first time by the Royal Air Force on the night of 28/29 March 1942. It was the first major success for RAF Bomber Command against a German city.[1]
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[edit] Main raid
Lübeck, the old Hanseatic city and cultural centre on the shores of the Baltic Sea was easy to find under the light of the full moon on the Saturday night of 28 March 1942, and the early hours of 29 March (Palm Sunday),[2] because due to the hoar frost there was a clear visibility and the waters of Trave, Elbe-Lübeck Canal, Wakenitz and the Bay of Lübeck were reflecting the moonlight.[3] 234 Wellington and Stirling bombers dropped about 400 tons of bombs including 25,000 incendiary devices. The RAF Bomber Command lost twelve aircraft in the attack.[1]
There were few defences[4] so many crews attacked at 600 metres (2,000 feet). The attack took place in three waves, the first, which arrived over Lübeck at 23:18, consisting of experienced crews in aircraft fitted with Gee electronic navigation systems (Lübeck was beyond the range of Gee but it helped with preliminary navigation). The raid finished at 02:58 on Sunday morning.[3] 191 crews claimed successful attacks.[1]
Blockbuster bombs in the first wave of the raid opened the brick and copper roofs of the buildings and the following incendiaries set them afire.[3] 1,468 (or 7.1%) buildings in Lübeck were destroyed, 2,180 (10.6%) were seriously damaged and 9,103 (44.3%) were lightly damaged; these represented 62 per cent of all buildings in Lübeck.[1] The bombing of Lübeck struck a corridor about 300 metres (330 yards) wide from Lübeck Cathedral to St. Peter's Church, the town hall and St. Mary's Church, Lübeck. There was another minor area of damage north of St. Gilles (Aegidienkirche). Also St. Lorenz a residential suburb in the west of the Holstentor was severely damaged. The German police reported 301 dead, 3 persons missing and 783 injured, more than 15,000 (ca.10%) lost their residences.[3][5]
Arthur "Bomber" Harris, Air Officer Commanding Bomber Command, wrote of the raid that "[Lübeck] went up in flames" because "it was a city of moderate size of some importance as a port, and with some submarine building yards of moderate size not far from it. It was not a vital target, but it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to fail to destroy a large industrial city". He goes on to describe that the loss of 5.5% of the attacking force was no more than to be expected on a clear moon lit night, but if that loss rate was to continue for any length of time RAF Bomber Command would not be able to "operate at the fullest intensity of which it were capable".[6]
[edit] Retaliation
A. C. Grayling in his book Among the dead cities makes the point that as the Area bombing directive issued to the RAF on 14 February 1942, focused on the "morale of the enemy civil population", Lübeck, with its many timbered medieval buildings, was chosen because the RAF "Air Staff were eager to experiment with a bombing technique using a high proportion of incendiaries" to help them carry out the directive — The RAF was well aware that the techniques were effective because cities such as Coventry had been subject to such attacks by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz.[7] In the opinion of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi's Propaganda Minister, the raid fulfilled the RAF's directive for he wrote in his diary "The damage is really enormous, I have been shown a newsreel of the destruction. It is horrible. One can well imagine how such a bombardment affects the population".[8] To help offset the damage the raid had on German morale, the German hierarchy launched a well published raid on Exeter on 23 April 1942, which was the first of the 'Baedeker' raids.[7]
[edit] Red Cross port
In 1944 Eric M. Warburg, liaison officer between US Army Air Force and RAF, and Swiss diplomat Carl Jacob Burckhardt as president of the International Committee of the Red Cross declared the Lübeck port a Red Cross port to supply (under the Geneva Convention) allied prisoners of war in German custody with ships under Swedish flag from Gothenburg which protected the city from further Allied air strikes. The mail and the food was brought to the POW-camps all over Germany by truck under supervision of the Swedish Red Cross and its vice president Folke Bernadotte, who was in charge of the White Buses too. (Bernadotte met Heinrich Himmler in Lübeck in spring 1945, when Himmler made his offer of surrender to the allies.)
[edit] Lübeck martyrs
The Lübeck martyrs were a group of three Catholic clergymen and the Protestant reverend Karl Friedrich Stellbrink who were arrested following the raid, tried by the People's Court in 1943 and sentenced to death by decapitation, all of them beheaded 10 November 1943 in the Hamburg prison at Holstenglacis. Stellbrink explained the raid next morning in his palm Sunday sermon as a trial by ordeal, which the Nazi authorities interpreted to be an attack on their system of government and as such undermined morale and aided the enemy.[9][10]
[edit] Reconstruction and memorial
Under wartime and postwar conditions it took until 1948 to remove most of the construction waste and demolition rubble.[11]
The remaining and the rebuilt parts of the old town are now part of the World Heritage Site. The memorial for the bombing is in the ground floor of the southern tower of St. Mary's church: The bells as they fell out of the burning tower. Since the reconstruction of St. Mary had priority, the reconstruction of the cathedral was not finished before 1982, the reconstruction of St. Peter not before 1986.
[edit] Time line for air raids on Lübeck
- 28/29 March 1942: first and main RAF raid, followed by some minor raids in connection with the bombing of other north German cities as target:
- 16 July 1942: 21 Stirlings in an RAF raid. Only 8 aircraft reported bombing the main target; 2 Stirlings were lost.
- 24/25 July 1943: first raid of the Battle of Hamburg, 13 RAF Mosquitos carried out diversionary and nuisance raids to Bremen, Kiel, Lübeck and Duisburg.
- 15/16 September 1944: diversionary raid by 9 RAF Mosquitoes. The main raid was on Kiel with other cities hit by diversionary raids.
- 2/3 April 1945: training raid by one RAF aircraft.
[edit] See also
- Lübecker Märtyrer in the German Wikipedia
- The tragedy of the sinking of the SS Cap Arcona on 3 May 1945 happened on the Bay of Lübeck close to the port of Neustadt in Holstein and not in Lübeck itself.
[edit] References
- Graßmann, Antjekathrin: Lübeckische Geschichte. (Lübeck's history). 934p., Lübeck 1989. ISBN 3-79503-203-2
- Grayling, A. C. (2006); Among the dead cities; Bloomsbury (2006); ISBN 0-7475-7671-8 . Pages 50,51
- Harris, Arthur (1947); Bomber Offensive, Pen & Swords, (Paperback 2005), ISBN 1-84415-210-3; page 105
- Royal Air Force Bomber Command 60th Anniversary: Bomber Command Campaign Diary
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ a b c d Royal Air Force Bomber Command 60th Anniversary Campaign Diary March 1942
- ^ The raid is locally commemorated on Palm Sunday, not on exact the calendar day of the raid. Palm Sunday is traditionally the day of confirmation, the most important day in the life of young Christians and their families
- ^ a b c d Antjekathrin Graßmann: Lübeckische Geschichte, 2nd. edition, Lübeck 1989, p.723-728
- ^ Five heavy anti aircraft batteries and four light ones
- ^ Royal Air Force Bomber Command 60th Anniversary Campaign Diary March 1942 give the number of casualties as "312 or 320 people killed (accounts conflict), 136 seriously and 648 slightly injured"
- ^ Harris, Arthur (1947); Bomber Offensive, Pen & Swords, (Paperback 2005), ISBN 1-84415-210-3; page 105
- ^ a b A.C. Grayling (2006); Among the dead cities; Bloomsbury (2006); ISBN 0-7475-7671-8 . Pages 50,51
- ^ Grayling, Among the dead cities (see References) Page 101
- ^ "Ihr Blut floss ineinander" (in German)
- ^ James Sheard Must. Resist. Historical. Themes. "There is a small memorial stone in Lübeck to the Lübeck Church-Martyrs ... The stone is in German and English. It commemorates the arrest and execution of three Catholic churchmen and one Evangelical pastor - ostensibly for breaking the wireless laws and undermining morale. They had been active in exchanging information and ideas on the progress and morality of the war with other churches and individuals and had formed some sort of an anti-war movement. Interestingly, the Palm Sunday 1942 destruction of Lübeck - and their churches - had given their thinking a powerful and somewhat primitive religious impetus (of the 'sign from God' type)".
- ^ estimated total 700,000 m³; by the end of 1948 there were still 100,000 m³ left
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