Air raids on Vienna

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Over 50 air strikes on Vienna caused severe damage to the city of Vienna during the Second World War . The air strikes were carried out by units of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). The heaviest attack on the area of Greater Vienna took place on March 12, 1945. A number of buildings and cultural monuments were destroyed or badly damaged. Almost 9,000 people were killed and around 37,000 apartments were destroyed in the 52 major air raids on Vienna. In contrast to other large cities in the German Empire, however, the bombing attacks and their effects on Vienna were much lower and therefore the old building fabric of the city was largely preserved even after the war.

The evolution of the attacks

The battle tower in Augarten was one of the six large flak towers in Vienna

As the area of " Reichsgau was not bombed Greater Vienna" to 1943 or British on the border of the reach and American long-range bombers or was the fighter escort, the city was considered together with the rest of Austria in the air war of World War II long as " the shelter of German Reich ”(also called“ Reichsluftschutzkeller ”). Only after the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943 did Vienna come within the direct range of the 15th US Air Force stationed near Foggia .

However, bombers of the 9th US Air Force attacked the Wiener Neustädter Flugzeugwerke on August 13, 1943 from bases in North Africa . In this first attack, the air defense was completely taken by surprise; in their second attack on the aircraft works on October 1, 1943, the attacking US aircraft suffered heavy losses. The shock of the first air strike on Wiener Neustadt and the knowledge gained from it led to an increased expansion of the air defense forces in Vienna.

Vienna was first hit on March 17, 1944. Primary should by United in this attack minung the Danube the tank marine and refinery Floridsdorf be taken.

On July 16, 1944, the districts of Favoriten, Simmering, Döbling, Floridsdorf and Klosterneuburg were bombed. After being hit by bombs, the five Simmeringer gasometers burned out and there was serious damage in the Fasanviertel .

In an attack on August 23, 1944, Margareten, Schwechat, Mödling, Liesing and Favoriten were affected. In the Rebbernig circus, a tiger escaped after being hit by a bomb; he was killed.

From the summer of 1944, due to the " Operation Overlord ", the Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944, a large part of the German air force was relocated to the west. Despite the reduced resistance, the American and British air forces suffered their greatest losses during this period. In some cases, a tenth of 550 bombers in a squadron could be brought down. The fighters of the Air Force were in spite of their numerical inferiority still very effective. It was supported by the ring of anti-aircraft guns that were built around the city, as well as the three pairs of Viennese flak towers that were built in the city in 1944. The military use of the flak towers was questionable, however, since the enemy bombers were flying at barely reachable heights.

Because of the increasing lack of high- octane aviation fuel from autumn 1944 , the air defense was then mainly only with the anti-aircraft units of the Luftwaffe . Because due to the Allied bombing of the hydrogenation works (→  German synthetic gasoline ) and the oil refineries (→  air raids on Ploieşti ), gasoline production had completely collapsed. While 175,000 tons of fuel were refined in April 1944, it was only 5,000 tons in September. Even with the mineral oil security plan drawn up in June 1944 (" Geilenberg Program") it was not possible to counteract the lack of fuel as the weakest point in the Wehrmacht's warfare . Towards the end of the war, the lack of engine and aviation fuel was omnipresent in the German Air Force and from February 1945 the Allies had absolute control of the air . In order to then additionally reduce the number of kills by the German flak, the Allied bomber formations could be split up and the attacks flown in several, smaller formations.

The first major air raid on Vienna took place on September 10, 1944. Around 350 US bombers dropped their bombs; nine districts including the Freyung, the old town hall, the interior ministry and the Heiligenkreuzer Hof were hit and 791 people were killed.

On October 17, 1944, the districts affected by the air raids were Leopoldstadt, Landstrasse, Wieden, Margareten, Favoriten, Simmering, Meidling, Hietzing, Penzing, Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus, Döbling, Floridsdorf and Donaustadt. The Karlskirche and the Belvedere Palace were damaged .

Attacks on November 5 and November 6, 1944 caused damage to the inner city, Leopoldstadt, Landstrasse , Wieden, Margareten, Josefstadt, Mariahilf, Alsergrund, Favoriten, Simmering, Meidling, Hernals, Währing, Döbling, Brigittenau, Floridsdorf, Mödling and Liesing.

On January 15, 1945, the districts of Innere Stadt, Leopoldstadt, Landstrasse, Josefstadt, Alsergrund, Penzing, Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus, Ottakring, Hernals, Währing, Döbling and Floridsdorf were hit.

The attack of February 19, 1945 is well known because in addition to the districts of Favoriten, Meidling and Hietzing, Schönbrunn Palace and the zoo were also bombed. Of the 3,500 animals in Schönbrunn Zoo , only 1,500 survived.

Tactics

The Allies agreed on the goals of the air raids as early as 1943, but not on the type of bombing. The Royal Air Force flew its attacks mostly at night, as the rate of fire by anti-aircraft guns and fighters was lower, but its own accuracy was also limited because strict blackout was required at night . People who did not make their windows light-tight were reported to the Gestapo and often convicted, which is why there was hardly anyone who resisted the blackout. In order to still hit the target, special target marker bombers of the RAF dropped light bombs (so-called “Christmas trees”) at the beginning of the attack in order to mark the target for the following bomber fleet. The British did not fly in fixed formations like the Americans, but each bomber had to aim at the target independently.

In contrast, the 15th US Air Force attacked from their bases near Foggia (Italy) almost entirely during the day in order to be able to carry out so-called precision attacks. The American planes also flew in fixed formations, protected by escort fighters against attacks by German fighters. The bombing was carried out on the command of the lead machine. Even by the end of the war, the Allies had failed to find consensus on tactics. The result of this was the so-called "around-the-clock-bombing", since bombers appeared at any time of the day.

In contrast to German cities, Austrian cities were largely spared from area bombing with conventional bombs and incendiary bombs. Even if there were mistakes, different tactics were used in Austria than in the " Altreich ". Today's Austria was the target of the Allied strategic bomber groups from the summer of 1943, whereby the focus was almost exclusively on the "Wiener Neustädter Flugzeugwerke" or the armaments industry in the Linz and Steyr area until mid-1944. Via the American Office of Strategic Services , the Allied General Staffs were informed of exact location sketches of the armaments industry that was hit by the resistance group around chaplain Heinrich Maier , which wanted to shift the bombing away from residential areas to the arms industry. After these were largely destroyed, the oil industry in the Vienna area was attacked and finally, from the end of 1944, the transport hubs of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. Also, leaflets calling for surrender were dropped over Austrian territory much more often . The reason for this was that the Allies saw Austria as a victim of Hitler's Germany, which was to be liberated from National Socialism .

Effects

The effects of the strategic bombing were initially greatly overestimated by the Allies, because initially the arms industry was able to increase its production despite the bombing. The factories were relocated to bomb-proof areas (for example in the Seegrotte Hinterbrühl) or hidden, and the increased use of prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates in slave labor in the armaments industry also offered the Nazis a large workforce.

The large oil refineries and hydrogenation plants, on the other hand, could neither be hidden nor relocated. Also was tanker transport through mining of the waterway hindered Donau, so that the supply of oil from the Romanian assisted areas Ploieşti not forthcoming. Between July 13, 1941 and August 19, 1944, the Allies carried out numerous air raids on Ploieşti ; on August 24, 1944, the refinery was occupied by the Red Army .

The transport infrastructure , which was the primary target towards the end of the war, was adversely affected, but traffic, transport, supplies and supplies did not come to a standstill. Even before the start of the bombing war, bypasses were built or expanded for the traffic junctions.

The total extent of war damage to buildings was recorded by the Vienna City Building Office in 1946 and is now freely accessible in the form of an electronic city map. Overall, the air strikes by the USA and Great Britain claimed 8,769 and 1,103 “non-residents” deaths among the Viennese civilian population. 21 percent of Vienna's houses (21,317) and 2.8 million square meters of roofs were destroyed or damaged. 36,851 apartments were totally destroyed and 50,024 partially destroyed. There was severe damage to the urban infrastructure, such as canals, water and gas pipes, bridges, trams and motor vehicles in the city's fleet.

Heaviest attack on March 12, 1945

The memorial against war and fascism on the site of the destroyed Philipphof

On the seventh anniversary of the Anschluss because of the approaching bad weather, there was hope that the bombing would not take place. Nevertheless, the US Air Force launched the largest bomb attack in Foggia that was ever flown against Austrian territory.

The planned destination was the oil refinery in Floridsdorf , which should be approached from the north. 747 bombers, accompanied by 229 fighters, bombed the city for 1½ hours. The oil refinery, located about six kilometers north-northeast of the center, was not hit badly. Parts of the center of Vienna were hit: the State Opera burned out, the Heinrichshof , the Burgtheater , the Albertina and the Messepalast were damaged and the Philipphof collapsed completely. Around 200 people who had sought protection in the air raid shelter , which was considered to be particularly safe , died. To this day, most of them are buried under the square on which the memorial against war and fascism erected by Alfred Hrdlicka has stood since 1988 . The Kunsthistorisches Museum , the Hofburg , St. Stephen's Cathedral , the Volkstheater and the Vienna Electric Light Rail were also seriously damaged . The Gestapo headquarters in Vienna, the Hotel Métropole on Morzinplatz and other buildings on the Danube Canal were also destroyed. The Nazi regime condemned this bombardment as “terror against Vienna” and accused the Allies of firing fire fighting teams with low-level planes.

Officially the visibility was too bad due to the weather to be able to aim exactly at the target. Photos of the attack, immediately after the attack, show a cloudless sky. Military experts now assume that the bombs were dropped incorrectly (too late).

statistics

city Attacks Bombs dead Building damage in% of the stock
Graz 56 1980 1200 33
innsbruck 22nd 504 344 60
Klagenfurt 48 477 434 69
Linz 22nd 1679 691 33
Salzburg 16 531 423 32
St. Polten 10 591 71 39
Villach 37 approx. 42,500 266 478 85
Vienna 53 > 100,000 8769 6214 28
Wr. Neustadt 29 approx. 55,000 790 1707 88

Basically, the accuracy of the hit of the bomber crews depended very much on the weather. With good visibility, around 40% of the bombs hit within 300 meters, a further 20% within 600 meters and 40% outside of 600 meters. In total cloud cover, despite the target device, only 0.2% of the bombs hit the target within a radius of 300 meters. In contrast, to shoot a bomber from the ground, around 5000 rounds were shot with the light and around 3400 rounds with the heavy caliber. During the day only one of 125 machines was shot down, at night one of 145 machines. However, around a third of the machines were badly damaged.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Keplinger: The air raid shelter network of Vienna's inner city
  2. ^ Air raid on Wiener Neustadt on October 1, 1943 , website regiowiki.at, accessed on December 6, 2014.
  3. ^ Losses of the 44th bomber group in the air raid on Wiener Neustadt on October 1, 1943 , website regiowiki.at, accessed on December 6, 2014.
  4. ^ Leopold Banny: Dröhnender Himmel - Brennendes Land - The deployment of air force helpers in Austria 1943–1945. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-215-06272-0 , pp. 145ff.
  5. ^ Air raids on Vienna in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
  6. ↑ List of allied aircraft shot down in World War II , website regiowiki.at, accessed on December 6, 2014.
  7. ↑ Flakturm becomes server center , article on ORF .at from February 24, 2013
  8. ↑ Major attack by the 15th US Air Force on Eastern Austria on July 26, 1944 , website regiowiki.at, accessed on January 7, 2015
  9. ↑ See Hansjakob Stehle "The spies from the rectory" in Die Zeit from January 5, 1996; Peter Broucek: The Austrian Identity in the Resistance 1938–1945. In: Military resistance: studies on the Austrian state sentiment and Nazi defense. Böhlau Verlag , 2008, p. 163 , accessed on August 3, 2017 . ; Peter Pirker: Subversion of German Rule: The British War Intelligence Service SOE and Austria . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-89971-990-1 , p. 252 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  10. ^ Markus Reisner: The air war 1944/45 over Austria. In: Magazine troop service. Federal Army , February 2015, accessed on September 21, 2017 .
  11. ^ Vienna cultural property: War damage. In: War damage to buildings, Wiener Stadtbauamt 1946.
  12. ↑ Second World War: Bombs over Austria - contemporary witnesses and shooters report . on profil.at, September 11, 2004
  13. ↑ The Philipphof on Albertinaplatz ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

literature

  • Marcello La Speranza: Bombs over Vienna. Contemporary witnesses report . Ibera, 2003.

Web links