Hamburg - A Little History

I have mentioned the firebombing of Hamburg several times so far.  So, now seems to be a point to stop and show what my father was surrounded by.

Hamburg during the firebombing.

Photo taken soon after the fire.

 

Population returning to the remains of Hamburg.

42,000 were reported dead from the fire, 37,000 injured, over 1,000,000 left homeless, half of all buildings destroyed in the city.  This was the price borne by the population of Hamburg.  Net result?  War materials productions was stopped for one week and capacity reduced by 10%.  No, it was not manufacturing targeted, the British purposefully bombed the compact housing areas of the ordinary worker - for maximum damage and death tolls (well documented in even Britain's archives).

When people challenge me, as a Hutterite, as to my pacifism - I have to point no further than to Dresden and Hamburg, not to even mention other cities whom were also on the receiving side of the Allied cause of firebombing "strategic" targets.....

Physical Labor

Few Americans realize that World War II did not really end until 1957, with the surrender of the last SS unit operating as a terrorist group in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps, against American targets.  Up north, it was 1946 now and another story.  The war was over and the rebuilding of Germany was to commence.  The only fighting was verbal between the British, Canadian and Americans - and then again, collectively against the Russians on the east bank of the Elbe River.
Fritz and Irma had been wealthy before the war.  He was an architect and a decent investor.  However, the banks were gone, the Deutschmark devalued and any bank balances decreased by 90% automatically.  They were wiped out, but at least they still had something to pull from in an economy where cash ruled - as few had it.  And luckily for them, there was a real need for architects.

Drilling a new well, father center.

Father was able to get a job as a day laborer for basically starvation wages, especially considering that he now had a wife to support.  Hamburg had been flattened and the entire infrastructure had to be replaced.  You also must realize that by the time of father's capture he was more dead than alive.  The regular meals from working on the farms had helped him to recover somewhat, however he had little muscle to rely on and he really had need of them!

Ditches needed to be dug for sewers, water supply and gas pipelines - there was little machinery to do the jobs.  Roads rebuilt, factories restored, apartment complexes built, everything everywhere had to be replaced.  So the work was there but the economics were not.  There was nowhere to live other than the street and a day's labor provide little enough food for one - much less two.  Then there was the question of being able to find food for sale in the first place.  And father was stuck as he had no real skills for this labor market.

Something had to change and father had few resources in his favor.  He held a mathematics doctorate, however the university was gone and little need for instructors anywhere.  He could go over to the Americans under the Operation Paperclip offer to German scientists, but he still believed he would be executed, if he did.  The British and Canadians had no use for him, nor did the Germans for that matter.  His education had left him fluent in French, 5 forms of German and English.  So on weekends he was able to hold down a job as a waiter.  Notice in the photo that he is 6'1" tall and weighed all of 96 pounds at the time!  Interestingly, at the table is Uncle Fritz; I assume the dress is attached to his wife Irma.

In the local paper one day he saw an advertisement for seaman needed immediately for shipping out of Bremerhaven.  And so he had to take a chance and identify himself as a Captain in the now defunct German Navy, in hopes of at least being able to feed his wife.  As I mentioned earlier, how he acquired his commission, much less in the Navy, is beyond my knowledge.  Yet, he had managed it during the war and as a teenager to boot.

His hope was a posting on a North Sea freighter.....

Uncle Fritz' Story

Fritz returned from the North Africa POW camp and so was well documented by the British already.  He had been a SS colonel under Field Marshall Rommel.  Somewhere, I have a photo of him with Rommel, standing by a half track vehicle watching a tank battle from the first El Alamein battle.  Fritz actually had two claims to fame from his North African campaign, both involving El Alamein.

First, he had come up with an idea of using trucks at night to shift dead tanks around.  The German Army had run out of diesel so many of the tanks were inoperable.  By shifting the tanks it kept the Allies guessing at actual tank strength and held back the British and American forces long enough for Germany to remove some of their men and supplies.  (Supporting his idea, the Italians had come up with the idea of hauling a wheeled axle around at night so that there would be tracks in the shifting sands to make it look like there was much more activity going on at night!

Second, he had cautioned General Stumme, not to execute Rommel's complete orders - which would have led not only to a slaughter of the Allied advance but harsh reprisals against the Germans in their retreat for the survivors.  Fritz had been planning the retreat and surrender for months and indeed the Germans had been shifting important operations back to their base in Tunisia.

And, why you ask would an SS Colonel be thinking this way?  Seems not all SS were completely evil nor equal in their politics.....

Fritz was from Hamburg.  Under the German confederation, Hamburg was a Free State.  Yes, it was a member of the German community, but it was free from the national politics, interests, etc of the German State.  Once Hitler had seized power, one of his first moves was against the Free States, of which there were many.  Hence, the residents of Hamburg believed themselves to be prisoners of war and unwilling participants to the war.  And so, Fritz, was not only smart enough to know that in a battle, where you are out numbered two to one by your  enemy, your supply lines are hundreds of miles long, and you have NO fuel - you are going to lose.  He also hated the Nazi's.

The first Battle of El Alamein had already proven the Germans had no hope of capturing the fuel fields.  The continued build up of the Allied Forces only shifted the inevitable further into the realm of an Allied victory.

He told me it was his greatest joy to surrender and end his part in supporting Germany's war, as well as, saving as many lives as he could - on both sides.  However, it was his greatest sorrow to hear of the firebombing of Hamburg (an innocent captive city to the Nazi's, per him) and not knowing if his family survived or not.

I had always held a belief in Rommel as being perhaps one of the greatest German leaders, certainly of WWII in any event.  And Fritz agreed to a point.  But, his breaking point came when Rommel's complete orders for the taking of El Alamein included the command to fight to the death for each and every soldier.  Rommel expected the North African Army to commit suicide rather than retreat.  For that, Fritz lost all respect for Rommel and held that Stumme's willingness to stare facts in the face and listen to reason made him by far the greater German.

I remember commenting to Friz that he ought to have been awarded medals by the Americans and Brits for his effort, if he had told them the role he played.  The man actually turned white, broke out in a sweat and commented that he would have been killed, had something like that even have been suggested!  And a year later I was to find why and exactly how powerful the post-war SS organization still was.

In any event, the fact that Fritz was documented - allowed for the release of his wife, her release allowed for my father's, and his release allowed for Monika's.  And this little group of refugees were returned to the cindered remains of Hamburg.

Prisioner of War

Fühlsbüttel

It was south of Hamburg, in the Elbe River, where a British patrol intercepted father and his co-workers.  The little team was first taken to Fühlsbüttel, an ex-concentration camp.  Father and his team were not held as POW's for very long.  It did not take much interrogation for them to figure out that what they had on their hands were some very hungry teenagers, all of superior intelligence and scared beyond belief of the Americans.

From what I can piece together, they managed not to divulge their roles or knowledge of German weaponry.  And thinking about it, why would some scrawny youths have even been suspected of having designed the most terrifying weapons of the war!  Theirs was the tale of college students fleeing the bombing of Dresden and their long walk to Hamburg.  With the destruction of Dresden, so went the University records and naturally they knew they could bluff anyone on that account.

The British, satisfied they were dealing with non-combatants, transferred the youth to an various ex-concentration camps in the region outside of Hamburg.  These camps were used for the repatronization of undocumented Germans, which of course father and the team were considered.  Father was sent to a camp named Wöbbelin and from this camp, came some very interesting changes in my father's life.....