Berlin at War (3 page)

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Berlin at War
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World War.

ISBN 978-0-465-00533-8

5 2 9 9 5

09/10

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

9 7 8 0 4 6 5 0 0 5 3 3 8

www.basicbooks.com

BERLIN

AT WAR

by the same author

Microcosm:

Portrait of a Central European City

(with Norman Davies)

Killing Hitler:

The Third Reich and the

Plots against the Führer

BERLIN

AT WAR

roger moorhouse

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

New York

Copyright © 2010 by Roger Moorhouse

Published in the United States by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

Published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head, Random House

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied

n critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books,

387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810.

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts

for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions,

and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special

Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street,

Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000,

or e-mail [email protected].

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

LCCN: 2010907169

ISBN: 978-0-465-00533-8

British ISBN: 9780224080712

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For

Amelia

in the hope that she

will never have to experience

times such as these

and for her great-grandparents

Paul & Hildegard Schmidt

who did

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgements

xi

Introduction

xiii

Prologue: ‘Führerweather’

1

1
Faith in the Führer

13

2
A Deadly Necessity

34

3
A Guarded Optimism

50

4
Marching on their Stomachs

74

5
Brutality Made Stone

100

6
Unwelcome Strangers

117

7
A Taste of Things to Come

136

8
Into Oblivion

160

9
An Evil Cradling

184

10
The People’s Friend

203

11
The Watchers and the Watched

220

12
The Persistent Shadow

247

13
Enemies of the State

267

14
Against All Odds

285

15
Reaping the Whirlwind

307

16
To Unreason and Beyond

336

17
Ghost Town

357

Epilogue: Hope

382

Notes

389

Select Bibliography

418

Index

423

List of Illustrations

Insert 1

Hitler’s birthday parade, Berlin, 20 April 1939
(Bundesarchiv, Bild

102-0008
9).

Announcement of the invasion of Poland to the German Reichstag,

1 September 1939 (
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-E10402
).

Whitewashing the kerb, 1939 (
akg-images/ullstein bild
).

Luftschutzraum
sign on a Berlin street (
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-E10650,
Fotograf: Wahner
).

Camouflage nets near the Brandenburg Gate (
akg-images
).

A Berlin street scene: Unter den Linden, 1940 (
akg-images
).

BdM girls preparing to welcome the Führer, July 1940

(akg-images/ullstein bild
).

Victory parade, July 1940 (
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-L07586, Fotograf:

Eisenhardt
).

Speer’s plans for ‘Germania’ (
akg-images/ullstein bild
).

Ploughing up the Gendarmenmarkt (
akg-images
).

Listening to the radio on a Berlin street (
akg-images/ullstein bild
).

Evacuation of children from Anhalter Station (
akg-images/ullstein bild
).

Woman and child with the
Judenstern
(
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B04491
).

Man with the
Judenstern
(
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R99993
).

Levetzowstrasse Synagogue,
c.
1930 (
Bildarchiv Pisarek/akg-images
).

Female forced labourers at Siemens, Berlin 1943 (
Bundesarchiv

Bild 183-S68014
).

Fourteen-year-old Ukrainian forced labourer, Berlin 1945

(
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H26334, Fotograf: Pips Plenik
).

A public air-raid shelter, 1942 (
akg-images/ullstein bild
).

Berliners in a private cellar (
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-L09148, Fotograf:

Ernst Schwahn
).

xx

berlin at w

berlin a

ar

t w

Insert 2

A bomb crater near the Brandenburg Gate (
akg-images/ullstein bild
).

Clearing the rubble (
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-L09712
).

Gestapo HQ: Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse (
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R97512
).

Beppo Römer (
Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
).

Otto Weidt (
Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
).

Johanna Solf (
Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
).

Stella Goldschlag (
akg-images/ullstein bild
).

The Invalidenfriedhof, autumn 1942 (
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J04378,

Fotograf: Schwanke
).

Victims of an air raid, autumn 1944 (
Bundesarchiv Bild

146-1970-050-31
).

Night scene, Jerusalem Strasse, July 1944 (
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-

J30142
).

Survivors clamber through the rubble, February 1945 (
Bundesarchiv

Bild 183-J31345
).

A soup kitchen for those bombed out, August 1943 (
Bundesarchiv

Bild 183-J07449, Fotograf: Ernst
).

The flak tower close to Berlin Zoo, 1943 (
akg-images/ullstein bild
).

Building barricades on a Berlin street, March 1945 (
Bundesarchiv

Bild 183-J31385
).

Combat in the capital’s streets, April 1945 (
akg-images
).

A Soviet T-34 passes Berlin civilians (
akg-images/Voller Ernst
).

Surrendering German soldiers (
akg-images
).

Berliners butchering a dead horse (
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R77871
).

Two old men (
akg-images/Voller Ernst
).

Acknowledgements

Any work of research carries many debts along with it and this book

is certainly no exception. Many people have helped along the way,

amongst them Philipp Rauh and Saskia Smellie, who helped with

ancillary research in Berlin; Kinga Boruc at Carta Blanca (Warsaw),

who designed the maps; and Phil Berks at Digital Services (Tring),

who rescued my manuscript from a potentially catastrophic hard-drive

crash.

Thanks are also due to all those friends and colleagues who answered

specific queries and kindly shared their knowledge, amongst them

Norman Groom, Cord Pagenstecher, Michael Foedrowitz, Gregers

Forssling, Giles MacDonogh, James Holland, Nick Stargardt and Nigel

Jones.

Special mention must of course be reserved for all those Berliners

of the wartime vintage with whom I spent so many enjoyable and

enlightening hours conducting interviews. Without their reminis-

cences, their manuscripts and their diaries, this book would simply

not have been possible, and I am only sorry that the march of time

has robbed some of them of the satisfaction of seeing the finished

product.

In setting up that programme of interviews, I incurred a number

of significant debts, not least to Wieland Giebel of ‘Berlin Story’ and

to Thessi Aselmeier and all those at the excellent Zeitzeugenbörse.

I would also like to extend my thanks to some of the institutions

in which the research and writing of this book was carried out,

amongst them the Deutsche Tagebucharchiv in Emmendingen, the

Landesarchiv Berlin, the National Archives in Kew, the British Library

and the excellent German Historical Institute in London. In addition,

the guides of Berliner Unterwelten deserve credit for making my

xii

berlin at war

visits to some of the more esoteric sights of the German capital so

enlightening.

Lastly, mention must be made of all those others who made this

project possible: my agents, Peter Robinson in London and Jill Grinberg

in New York, and my editors Lara Heimert and Brandon Proia in New

York and Will Sulkin and the incomparable Jörg Hensgen in London.

I am indebted to all of you for your insight, your perseverance and

your unflagging enthusiasm for this project. Thank you.

Convention dictates that I dedicate this book to my daughter Amelia,

but I would also like to acknowledge two other familial debts. The

first is to my wife’s grandparents, Paul and Hildegard Schmidt, who

experienced life in Nazi Germany – albeit not in Berlin – and whose

reminiscences spurred my interest in the subject. The second is to my

wife Melissa, without whose love, support, patience – and occasional

impatience – this book would scarcely have seen the light of day.

Roger Moorhouse

May 2010

Introduction

For all its breezy modernity, Berlin is a city that positively reeks of

history. If one were looking for a single location – a focal point – for

the bloody trials and tribulations of the twentieth century, then one

would have to look no further. From the bullet-scarred buildings to

the lingering shadows of totalitarian regimes, Berlin experienced world

events not as something remote or imperceptible, but rather as imme-

diate, tangible and very real. Last year the city celebrated the twen-

tieth anniversary of the fall of its hated Wall, the moment in which it

became the crucible of the death spasms of communism. A genera-

tion earlier it had been the plaything of the squabbling superpowers,

serving as the backdrop to earnest speechifying and sinister spy swaps.

And a generation further back, the then capital of the Third Reich had

been the very epicentre of Nazi power – the canvas upon which Speer’s

architectural dreams and Hitler’s racial vision would be made real.

Berlin was one of the very few European capitals to experience the

horror of the Second World War at first hand. Not only was the city

subjected to the full wrath of the Soviet ground offensive and siege in

1945, but it also found itself in the very front rank of the air war. Its

wartime military history, therefore, is a catalogue of superlatives. As

the most important Allied target, Berlin attracted more air raids, more

aircraft and more bombs than any other German city. It was the most

aggressively defended target, employing the largest number of personnel

in the most elaborate network of defences and costing the largest number

of Allied airmen’s lives. It also outstripped its rivals in its civilian death