Armageddon - Max Hastings [242]
Everyone is convinced that no opposition could prevent the tragedy of the German people taking its fatal course . . . even bombing does not seem to have any influence on people’s morale. It is accepted as an inevitable fate. Nevertheless, there is much more interest in bombing than in events on the fields of battle, not because bombing is expected to hasten the end of the war, but because it directly affects the personal life of the individual. The main question for every German today is: “Shall I be bombed?”
“We discussed why the Germans carried on,” wrote Paul von Stemann.
Our answers were all inadequate. We said it was because they were apathetic, because they were tired, because they had no civic courage or initiative. They were mentally exhausted, and did not have the strength to end the war. When I came home to Denmark I was asked how the feeling was in Berlin. The answer was that there was no public feeling one way or the other. There was no reaction to be observed to the great events of the war. When the army tried to get rid of Hitler and did not succeed, there was no more reaction than if they had been told that the moon was not made of green cheese. It was all now beyond them.
The Berlin diarist “Missie” Vassiltchikov remarked upon the paradox that daylight bomber attacks mesmerized people by their terrible beauty as well as by the horrors they inflicted. When civilians were not in the shelters, they watched the perfect formations of glittering aircraft parade across the sky, inscribing signatures in condensation trails, their bombs often clearly visible as they fell.
The black-out was a dominant reality. “We lived in a dark world,” said Klaus Fischer, who lived in Jena in central Germany. “Even in the daylight hours you couldn’t see where you were going in the street cars with their windows painted black. At night you sometimes saw people in the street trying to read newspapers by moonlight.” The first alarm sounded when enemy aircraft were 120 miles away—perhaps forty minutes’ flying time. As soon as the sirens were heard, people knew that it was time to turn on the radio, fill the bath with water, turn off the gas. Families checked that luggage, thermoses, torches and gas masks were ready in the hall, and dressed children. In cinemas, a big V appeared on the screen. A second alarm sounded when raiders were much closer. The words Flieger Alarme appeared on cinema screens. The big feature stopped until the all-clear sounded. It was time to descend to the shelters, there to sit reading uneasily, listening in silence to the dull thunder above, or chatting in tense, muted tones to relations and neighbours. In Hamburg, Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg recorded in February 1945 that she and her fellow citizens had suffered five early warnings and three proper alarms in a single day and night “during this period of vast, general distress, of certain extinction.”
Although Germany’s armament production figures continued to rise through much of 1944, these would undoubtedly have been very much higher but for the effects of bombing on both plant and the workforce. In 1944, the Ford plant in Cologne reported 25 per cent absenteeism, and BMW in Munich 20 per cent. Such figures represented severe disruption of shift patterns and orderly working. Anyone who said that he was not frightened of being bombed was a liar or a fool. There was a glass-blower in Jena who always refused to go down to shelters when there a raid: “Either it gets you or it doesn’t,” the man shrugged fatalistically. “It” finally