Bomb attack on Dietzenbach in 1941
The 1941 bombing raid on Dietzenbach was an air raid by the British Royal Air Force on the then rural village of Dietzenbach in Hesse . It is assumed that the bombers involved did not find their actual target, Frankfurt am Main or Offenbach , and therefore attacked the 3,000-inhabitant town of Dietzenbach as an alternative target.
In the late evening of September 20, 1941, a Saturday, the center of Dietzenbach was attacked by four British bombers. Many villagers had just enjoyed a performance by the "Ahoi" harmonica club in the hall of the restaurant for the "New Lion" and were gradually making their way home. When the air raid alarm sounded, it was not taken very seriously at first, as the attack was supposedly either Frankfurt or Offenbach. But then explosive bombs , stick bombs and phosphorus canisters fell on the village and set large parts of the town center on fire within ten minutes.
The village's volunteer fire brigade was unable to cope with the major fire with its two motorized syringes. When the fire brigades from the neighboring towns came to the rescue, there was not enough water available. Only when the fire engines arrived from Offenbach at 1:30 a.m. could the fire gradually be brought under control, and around 11:00 a.m. the next morning the fire was finally extinguished. Two residents were killed, three houses were completely destroyed, 30 others were badly damaged and 12 barns and their entire contents were burned out.
Since bombs fell that night neither in Frankfurt nor in Offenbach, but in some smaller towns in the Rhine-Main area and the Royal Air Force reported attacks on Frankfurt, it is assumed that the planes on Frankfurt did not find their target and then looked for alternative destinations. The light falling at irregular intervals through the restaurant door opened by the departing concert-goers could have caught the eye of the British pilots as a target point.
literature
- Alfred Kurt, Otto Schlander: The Offenbach district and the Third Reich: Life and politics, persecution and resistance in the district from 1930 to 1945 , Verlag Mai, 1991 ISBN 978-3-87936209-7 , p. 292