Bombing of Berlin in World War II

When the Second World War began in 1939, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a request to the major belligerents to confine their air raids to military targets. The French and the British agreed to abide by the request "upon the understanding that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all of their opponents". Initially the British had a policy of using aerial bombing only against military targets and/or infrastructure such as ports and railways of direct military importance. It was acknowledged that the aerial bombing of Germany would cause civilian casualties, but the British government was initially reluctanct to deliberately bomb civilian property outside combat zones as a military tactic. The policy was abandoned on 15 May 1940, two days after the German air attack on Rotterdam, when the Royal Air Force was given permission to attack targets in the Ruhr, including oil plants and other civilian industrial targets that aided the German war effort, such as blast furnaces that at night were self-illuminating. The first RAF raid on the interior of Germany took place on 19 March 1940 at Hörnum. On the night of 10–11 May 1940 the RAF bombed Dortmund. Between 1939 and 1942, the policy of bombing only targets of direct military significance was gradually abandoned in favour of "area bombing", the large-scale bombing of German cities to destroy housing and civilian infrastructure. Although killing German civilians was never an explicit policy,{{contradictory inline ==1940 to 1943==

is striking back at Germany during 1940 Before 1941, Berlin, at from London, was at the extreme range attainable by the British bombers then available to the Allied forces. It could be bombed only at night in summer when the days were longer and skies clearwhich increased the risk to Allied bombers. The first RAF raid on Berlin took place on the night of 25 August 1940; 95 aircraft were dispatched to bomb Tempelhof Airport near the centre of Berlin and Siemensstadt, of which 81 dropped their bombs in and around Berlin, and while the damage was slight, the psychological effect on Hitler was greater. At the start of hostilities, the saying "if a single enemy bomber appears over Berlin, I want to be called Meier" made the rounds as attributed to Göring. The bombing raids on Berlin prompted Hitler to order the shift of the Luftwaffe's target from British airfields and air defenses to British cities. In the following two weeks there were a further five raids of a similar size, all nominally precision raids at specific targets, but with the difficulties of navigating at night the bombs that were dropped were widely dispersed. During 1940 there were more raids on Berlin, all of which did little damage. The raids grew more frequent in 1941, but were ineffective in hitting important targets. The head of the Air Staff of the RAF, Charles Portal, justified these raids by saying that to "get four million people out of bed and into the shelters" was worth the losses involved. The Soviet Union started a on Berlin on 8 August 1941 that extended into early September. Medium Navy bombers, accompanied from 12 August by Army bombers, conducted ten raids from Saaremaa island to Berlin with 3–12 aircraft in each raid, fifty in total reaching Berlin. On 7 November 1941, Sir Richard Peirse, head of RAF Bomber Command, launched a large raid on Berlin, sending over 160 bombers to the capital. 21 were shot down or crashed, and again little damage was done due to bad weather. At the same time, new bombers with longer ranges were coming into service, particularly the Avro Lancaster, which became available in large numbers during 1942. During most of 1942, however, Bomber Command's priority was attacking Germany's U-boat ports as part of Britain's effort to win the Battle of the Atlantic. During the whole of 1942 there were only nine air alerts in Berlin, none of them serious. Only in 1943 did Harris have both the means and the opportunity to put his belief in area bombing into practice. ==The Battle of Berlin==

The Battle of Berlin was launched by Harris in November 1943, a concerted air campaign against the German capital, although other cities continued to be attacked to prevent the Germans concentrating their defences in Berlin. Harris believed this could be the blow that would break German resistance. "It will cost us between 400 and 500 aircraft," he said. "It will cost Germany the war." By this time he could deploy over 800 long-range bombers on any given night, equipped with new and more sophisticated navigational devices such as H2S radar. Between November 1943 and March 1944, Bomber Command made 16 massed attacks on Berlin. A prelude to the 1943 raids came from De Havilland Mosquitos, which hit the capital on 30 January 1943, the tenth anniversary of the Nazis' . That same day, both Göring and Goebbels were known to be giving big speeches that were to be broadcast live by radio. At precisely 11am, Mosquitoes of No. 105 Squadron arrived over Berlin exactly on time to disrupt Göring's speech. Later that day, No. 139 Squadron repeated the trick for Goebbels. These were great propaganda raids whichmuch as the Doolittle Raid on the Japanese home islands had done for shaking Japanese complacency in April 1942were a severe embarrassment for the German leadership. 20 April 1943 was Hitler's 54th birthday. Bomber Command decided that they had to mark the occasion with a raid on Berlin, and it was decided that the Mosquito was the right aircraft for the job. Accordingly, No. 105 Squadron was dispatched to the German capital, successfully reaching the city with the loss of only one aircraft. in Moabit, damaged in the night of 22–23 November 1943 The first raid of the battle occurred on 18–19 November 1943. Berlin was the main target, and was attacked by 440 Avro Lancasters aided by four Mosquitos. The city was under cloud and the damage was not severe. The second major raid was on the night of 22–23 November 1943. This was the most effective raid by the RAF on Berlin. The raid caused extensive damage to the residential areas west of the centre, Tiergarten and Charlottenburg, Schöneberg and Spandau. Because of the dry weather conditions, several firestorms ignited. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was destroyed. Several other buildings of note were either damaged or destroyed, including the British, French, Italian and Japanese embassies, Charlottenburg Palace and Berlin Zoo, as were the Ministry of Munitions, the Waffen SS Administrative College, the barracks of the Imperial Guard at Spandau and several arms factories. There was another major raid on 28–29 January 1944, when Berlin's western and southern districts were hit in the most concentrated attack of this period. On 15–16 February, important war industries were hit, including the large Siemensstadt area, with the centre and south-western districts sustaining most of the damage. This was the largest raid by the RAF on Berlin. Raids continued until March 1944. B-17 "Miss Donna Mae II" is damaged by a mis-timed bomb release over Museum Island, Berlin in May 1944. All 11 airmen were killed. These raids caused immense devastation and loss of life in Berlin. The 22 November 1943 raid killed 2,000 Berliners and rendered 175,000 homeless. The following night, 1,000 were killed and 100,000 made homeless. During December and January regular raids killed hundreds of people each night and rendered between 20,000 and 80,000 homeless each time. Overall nearly 4,000 were killed, 10,000 injured and 450,000 made homeless. The 16 raids on Berlin cost Bomber Command more than 500 aircraft, with their crews killed or captured. This was a loss rate of 5.8%, which was above the 5% threshold that was considered the maximum sustainable operational loss rate by the RAF. In December 1943, for example, 11 crews from No. 460 Squadron RAAF alone were lost in operations against Berlin; and in January and February, another 14 crews were killed. Having 25 aircraft destroyed meant that the fighting force of the squadron had to be replaced in three months. At these rates "Bomber Command would have been wiped out before Berlin." It has been largely acknowledged that the Battle of Berlin was a failure; for the RAF, British official historians have stated that "in an operational sense the Battle of Berlin was more than a failure, it was a defeat". ==March 1944 to April 1945==

In 1943, the United States Army and the Standard Oil company built a set of replicas in western Utah of typical German working class housing estates, "German Village", which would be of key importance in acquiring the know-how and experience necessary to carry out the firebombings on Berlin. It was done with the assistance of Erich Mendelsohn, a Jewish architect of structures in Berlin who fled the Nazis in 1933. The Big Week (Sunday, 20–Friday, 25 February 1944) heavy bomber offensive began shortly after the Eighth Air Force commander, Maj. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, had implemented a major change in fighter defense of USAAF strategic bomber formations that had bolstered the confidence of U.S. strategic bombing crews. Until that time, Allied bombers avoided contact with the Luftwaffe; now, the Americans used any method that would force the Luftwaffe into combat. Implementing this policy, the United States looked toward Berlin. Raiding the German capital, the USAAF reasoned, would force the Luftwaffe into battle. Consequently, on 3 March, the USSTAF launched the first of several attacks against Berlin. Fierce battles raged and resulted in heavy losses for both sides; 69 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses were lost on 6 March but the Luftwaffe lost 160 aircraft. The Allies replaced their losses; the Luftwaffe could not. At the tail end of the Battle of Berlin the RAF made one last large raid on the city on the night of 24–25 March, losing 8.9% of the attacking force, but due to the failure of the Battle of Berlin, and the switch to the tactical bombing of France during the summer months in support of the Allied invasion of France, RAF Bomber Command left Berlin alone for most of 1944. Nevertheless, regular nuisance raids by both the RAF and USAAF continued. In 1945, the Eighth Air Force launched a number of very large daytime raids on Berlin, the last of them being on 18 March (there were bombing raids to Falkensee and Spandau, near Berlin, on 28 March), the 15th Air Force launched its only bombing mission to Berlin on 24 March, This was one of the few occasions on which the USAAF undertook a mass attack on a city centre. Lt-General James Doolittle, commander of the USAAF Eighth Air Force, objected to this tactic, but he was overruled by the USAAF commander, General Carl Spaatz, who was supported by the Allied commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower and Spaatz made it clear that the attack on Berlin was of great political importance in that it was designed to assist the Soviet offensive on the Oder east of Berlin, and was essential for Allied unity. In the raid, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Rosenthal of the 100th Bombardment Group flying in an H2X-equipped pathfinder B-17G Fortress s/n 44-8379 — commanding the entire First Air Division's bomber force on this raid, Rosenthal was among those shot down, but survived and was rescued by the Soviet armed forces and eventually returned to England. A number of monuments, such as French Luisenstadt Church, St. James Church, Jerusalem's Church, Luisenstadt Church, St. Michael's Church, St. Simeon Church, and the Marcher Protestant Consistory (today's entrance of Jewish Museum Berlin), as well as government and Nazi Party buildings were also hit, including the Reich Chancellery, the Party Chancellery, the Gestapo headquarters, and the People's Court. The Unter den Linden, Wilhelmstrasse and Friedrichstrasse areas were turned into expanses of ruins. Roland Freisler, the infamous head justice of the People's Court, was among the dead. The death toll amounted to 2,894, fewer than might have been expected because the raid took place in daytime with relatively few incendiary bombs. The number of wounded amounted to 20,000, and 120,000 were left homeless ("dehoused"). Up to the end of March 1945, there had been a total of 314 air raids on Berlin, with 85 of those coming in the last twelve months. Half of all houses were damaged and around a third uninhabitable, as much as of the city was simply rubble. About a third of Berlin's area was badly damaged by the war. From the city centre, buildings were completely destroyed or gutted for about 20 blocks in all directions. Among the shelled structures some residents and normal activity quickly resumed in the city post-war. Estimates of the total number of dead in Berlin from air raids range from 20,000 to 50,000; current German studies suggest that a figure in the lower part of this range is more likely. This compares to death tolls of between 25,000 and 35,000 in the single attack on Dresden on 14 February 1945, and the 42,000 killed at Hamburg in a single raid in 1943. Both the Hamburg and Dresden raids combined having a lower casualty total than the 9/10 March 1945 Operation Meetinghouse single firebombing raid on Tokyo, devastating some causing the loss of at least 100,000 lives in the Japanese capital. Assistant Secretary of War Robert A. Lovett advised softening of claims to have destroyed Hiroshima, saying that after making proclamations to have destroyed Berlin, "it becomes rather embarrassing after about the third time". ==Berlin's defences==

, April 1942 The Nazi regime was well aware of the political necessity of protecting the Reich capital against devastation from the air. Even before the war, work had begun on an extensive system of public air raid shelters, but by 1939 only 15% of the planned 2,000 shelters had been built. By 1941, however, the five huge public shelters (, , , and ) were complete, offering shelter to 65,000 people. Other shelters were built under or near government buildings, the best-known being the so-called underground in the backyard of the Reich Chancellery building. In addition, many U-Bahn stations were converted into shelters. The rest of the population had to make do with their own cellars.{{sfn |Rürup In 1943, the Germans decided to evacuate non-essential people from Berlin. By 1944 1.2million people, 790,000 of them women and children, about a quarter of the city's population, had been evacuated to rural areas. An effort was made to evacuate all children from Berlin, but this was resisted by parents, and many evacuees soon made their way back to the city (as was also the case in London in 1940–41). The increasing shortage of manpower as the war dragged on meant that female labour was essential to keep Berlin's war industries going, so the evacuation of all women with children was not possible. At the end of 1944 the city's population began to grow again as refugees fleeing the Red Army's advance in the east began to pour into Berlin. Refugees from the east () were officially denied permission to remain in Berlin for longer than two days and were housed in camps near the city before being moved on westwards; it is estimated less than 50,000 managed to remain in Berlin. By January 1945 the population was around 2.9million, although the demands of the German military were such that only 100,000 of these were males aged 18–30. Another 100,000 or so were forced labor, mainly French "foreign workers" () and Russian "eastern workers" (). The key to the Flak area were three huge Flak towers (), which provided enormously tough platforms for both searchlights and 12.8 cm FlaK 40 anti-aircraft guns as well as shelters (Hochbunker) for civilians. These towers were at the Berlin Zoo in the Tiergarten, Humboldthain and Friedrichshain. The Flak guns were increasingly manned by the teenagers of the Hitler Youth as older men were drafted to the front. By 1945 the girls of the League of German Girls (BDM) were also operating Flak guns. After 1944 there was little fighter protection from the , and the Flak defences were increasingly overwhelmed by the scale of the attacks. ==Timeline==